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Harry Keogh: Necroscope
Harry sat on the rim of the river and talked to his mother He believed he was alone and unobserved, but it would make no difference anyway: no one would object to a crazy her to hiht of hiarded warily, but mainly harmless He suspected it and didn’t much care one way or the other In their position he’d probably feel the same way about it
Indeed he soarden, everyday people Homo sapiens, with normal lives to lead But he wasn’t in their position, he was in his, and it could hardly be described as normal He was a Necroscope and as far as he kneas the only Necroscope in the world There should be at least one other like hier in the world Or if he was, Harry didn’t knohere
Harry looked down between his knees and dangling legs at his own face mirrored on the surface of the water He watched its blank expression turn to a cynical scowl ’His own face’, indeed! For to complicate matters, it wasn’t his face at all! Or it was - now But it had been the face of Alec Kyle, one-time head of British E-Branch And yet Harry also seeh he’d once been - superi up a coe at all Not any longer But it had taken hi up in the : Jesus! Who’s this? Until in the end the question had been merely academic He’d knoho it was: himself, in mind if not in body
’Harry?’ his mother’s suddenly anxious voice broke in on his mental paradox ’You know you really shouldn’t worry any s like that That side of your life is over, done with You were called to do a job and you did it You did more than any other man could possibly have done And for all that there have been well, changes, you know that you’re still you’
’But in another man’s body,’ he answered, wryly
’Alec was dead, Harry,’ she made the point bluntly, for there was no other way toleft of his mind at all - not even of his soul And anyway, you had no choice’
Harry’s thoughts, spurred by his ht years ago:
Alec Kyle had been on a mission to Roround there Thibor Ferenczy had been dead, but he’d left part of himself in the earth to pollute it, and to pollute anyone ent near it Kyle had succeeded, burned the thing, and was on the point of returning to England when Soviet espers had picked him up Flown in secrecy to Russia, to the Chateau Bronnitsy, the then HQ of Soviet E-Branch, he’d been subjected to a particularly horrificHis mind had been electronically drained, his brain literally ee It wasn’t hts, the rubber hose, truth-drugs and the like: the very contents of his ood tooth, and throay And in the process Soviet telepaths had stolen the bits that were useful to them, all the secrets of their enemies, the British espers When they’d finished with Kyle he’d been alive -been kept alive, for the ti - but his brain had been completely vacant, dead Taken off life-support, his body too would die And that had been the intention of his tormentors: to let him die and have his corpse duist in the whole orld who could state with any certainty what had killed him
That was to have been the scenario Except while Alec Kyle had been a husk, an eh had been mind alone! Incorporeal, a bodiless inhabitant of the Mobius Continuum, Harry had searched for Kyle, found him, and the rest had been almost beyond his control Nature abhors a vacuum, whether in the physical or metaphysical worlds The nor And Kyle’s brain had been an aching void Thus Harry’s reat deal had happened since then Harry forced the scowl froe in the calm river water His hair (or Alec’s?) was russet-brown, plentiful and naturally wavy; but in the last eight years a lot of the lustre had disappeared, and streaks of grey had becorey overtook and ruled the brown, and Harry not yet thirty His eyes, too, were honey-brown; very wide, very intelligent, and (strange beyond words) very innocent! Even now, for all he’d seen, experienced and learned, innocent It could be argued that certain murderers have the saenuine He had not asked to be what he was, or to be called upon to do the things he’d done
His teeth were strong, not quite white, a little uneven; they were set in a mouth which was unusually sensitive but could also be cruel, caustic He had a high brohich now and then he’d search for freckles The old Harry used to have freckles, but no longer
As for the rest of Harry’s body: it had been well-fleshed, ht, however, that hadn’t reat deal Not to Alec Kyle, whose job with E-Branch had been in large part sedentary But it had ot it to a peak of condition It wasn’t bad for a forty-year-old body But better if it was only thirty, like Harry hiain, Harry,’ said hisyou, son? Is it Brenda still, and little Harry?’
’No use denying it,’ he gruffly answered, with so ’You never met him, did you? He’d have been able to talk to you too, you know ButI still can’t get over the way he did it It’s one thing to lose somebody - or even two so why He could have toldher, could have explained his reasons After all, it wasn’t ain his shrug) ’I don’t know any more’
His mother had heard all of this before; she knehat he ue words and expressions, even his tone of voice For while he didn’t need to, he usually spoke out loud to her He didn’t need to because he was a Necroscope (no, the Necroscope, the man who communicated with the dead) and also because she was dead, and had been since Harry was an infant She was down there, where she’d been for more than twenty-seven years, in the o by Harry’s stepfather Yes, and now that same traitor was down there with her, put there by Harry, but he’d stopped speaking to anybody long ago
’Why not look at it from their point of view?’ his h an awful lot for a set away froht years?’ There was a brittle edge to Harry’s voice
’But having made the break,’ his mother hurriedly went on, at her diplomatic best, ’she found she was happier And he could see she was happier, and so they didn’t come back After all’s said and done, your main concern was for their happiness, wasn’t it, Harry? And you’d be the first to admit that you weren’t the man she’d married Well, not exactly Ohr And he could picture her hand flying to her er had either of those things Alas, she’d stu not only her mind but Harry’s, too ’I ht,’ he stifled her ’I knohat you o’ But because she had tried to be diploh And Harry knew that, too
What had happened back then, eight years ago, was this:
In the Mobius Continuum, Harry had discovered by chance the ele in the mundane world The varadual metamorphosis in a child as yet unborn He had physically (and psychically, spiritually) defiled an innocent unsuspectingto her foetal child Now that child was grown to a youth, Yulian Bodescu, and as he had developed so his potential for evil had outstripped his human and humane side to achieve a monstrous vampire dominance
The task of the British E-Branch had been twofold: to seek out and destroy whatever re vampire influences (especially what remained of Thibor) in the USSR and her satellites, and so ensure that the ’Bodescu situation’ could never arise again; also to destroy Yulian Bodescu hih whom Thibor had determined to terrorize the world anew
But Bodescu had discovered the covert workings of E-Branch, specifically their plot and deter vampire powers and cold, cruel fury upon them His principal adversary in the Branch had been the incorporeal Harry Keogh, who at that time was trapped in the psyche of his own infant son Kill Harry Jnr and Bodescu would also rid hi members of E-Branch could be tracked down and picked off one by one, at the vah in itself, but the true horror of the situation would lie in the after Bodescu, who could create almost at will an arue across the face of the entire earth! And this was a very real possibility, for while Bodescu had become one of the Wamphyri, he did not have their self-discipline They were essentially territorial; they had their cold pride; they were solitary and cautious, and usually firmly in control of their own destinies Most of all, they were jealous of their powers, deviously protective of their Wamphyri nature and history, aware and appreciative of huenuity Only let mankind become aware that they were real and not end, and men would strive to hunt them down and destroy theht’; he had had no Was which had made them what they were and possessed none of their dubious qualities He was only a vampire, and he was insane!
Brenda and her arret flat in Hartlepool on the north-east coast of England whena trail of bloodshed and destruction behind him, Bodescu evaded E-Branch’s attempts at entrap inherited his mentor’s expertise in hideous necromancy, he could ’examine’ the desecrated corpses of his victiuts all of their innermost secrets This was his intention in respect of the two Harrys, father and son: to murder them and steal the secrets of the Necroscope, and so discover the nature and properties of theon the Devon house to destroy it, missed their main quarry but discovered unthinkable horror there Bodescu’s aunt, uncle and cousin had been tortured and vainhabited the earth under the extensive cellars, and Bodescu’s e of what Yulian had become The house and all elled in it were put to the torch
E-Branch had men in Hartlepool, psychically talented people ere keeping a low profile in and around the Edwardian building which housed Brenda’s flat The local police and Special Branch had also been inforuardedly, so as not to panic the populace) that the woets for an ’escaped lunatic’ Their presence hardly deterred the va, killed all who stood before him mercilessly and with dreadful efficiency, and finally reached his objective But where the incorporeal Harry Keogh hi but His father’s freakish powers had come down to him; he could talk to the dead, could even call theraves in the cemetery across the road from the house
Harry Snr had considered himself ’trapped’ in the baby’s psyche, but this had not been the case The infant had held him there for one reason only: to explore Harry’s mind and learn from it Physically he was a baby, apparently helpless, but mentally -
Harry Jnr’s talents were already vaster far than anything his father possessed or ever drea And his potential was enormous All the theory was there in the child’sBut not for long
Brenda, attehtmare which was Yulian Bodescu, had been tossed aside by the vampire Unconscious, she had not seen the final confrontation Thinking back on that scene in the flat now, Harry remembered it as vividly as if it were yesterday:
The two Harrys had looked out through the infant’s eyes into the face of terror itself, the face of Yulian Bodescu Crouched over the baby’s cot, the leering nancy of his eyes spoke all too clearly of his intentions
Finished! Harry had thought All done, and it ends like this
No, another voice, not his own, had spoken in his h you I’ve learned what I had to learn I don’t need you that way any o, save yourself
It could only have been one person speaking to hier any time to question the hows and whys of it Then Harry had felt the child’s restraints falling froain Free to will his incorporeal one, right there and then, leaving his son to face whatever was coone - but he couldn’t!
Bodescu’s jaws had yawned open like a pit, revealing a snake’s tongue flickering behind gleaain, with ency
You’re o! I can’t leave you to this!
Leave me to this? It had been as if the infant couldn’t follow his reasoning But then he had, and said: But did you think I was going to stay here?
The beast’s taloned hands were reaching for the child in his cot Little Harry had seen the lust in the monster’s eyes; he turned his s a Mobius door A door had appeared, floating up out of his pillows It was easy, instinct, in his genes It had been there all along His control over his mind esome; over his body, e thisinexpert h the Mobius door The vampire’s hands and jaws had closed on thin air!
After that it had been all up for Yulian Bodescu Harry had not called up the dead froraveyard, but his son had For the dead had learned to love this child who talked to them, who had talked to them even from the womb! They loved him even as they loved and trusted his father; and if Harry Jnr was in trouble, that was all the incentive they needed to move limbs stiffened by death, to will back into pseudolife tissues and sinews long turned to leather and ravaged by the worm
They had pinned the varaves, lopped his harshly screa head froer imprisoned but once more master of the Mobius Continuum, had watched them do it and instructed them when they faltered
Later Harry had discovered that his infant son had not only saved his own life but also reer The child had used Mobius or Zollnerist metaphysics to move both himself and Brenda to a place of safety - indeed, to the safest possible place: E-Branch HQ in London! And Harry had been left to pursue his own destiny and inhabit the shell of the once-Alec Kyle
This he had done, and in the process destroyed the KGB’s new toy, the Soviet ESPionage centre at the Chateau Bronnitsy
After that it should have been a time for relaxation, a tin lives But the staff of E-Branch, jubilant over their triple success - the elimination of Yulian Bodescu, the termination of residual vampire sources abroad, and the destruction of Russia’s KGB-corrupted esper corps -hadn’t fully appreciated the stresses Harry and his family had suffered Now that the job was done they wanted the entire thing pegged out, mapped, recorded, studied and more fully understood; and the only ave the on the job of Director of E-Branch; but over that saly apparent that all was not ith Brenda As Harry’s mother had so recently pointed out, there was hardly any mystery that anyone could attach to that; indeed Brenda’s breakdoas only to have been expected, ht even have been anticipated
After all, she’d only recently beco from an uncomfortable confinement and difficult birth Indeed, for a little while the doctors had thought they’d lost her Add to this the fact of her husband’s talent (that he was a Necroscope) which she had known and which had preyed on her mind for months; the fact that her infant child see powers, so that even in the midst of E-Branch men, ere the of a freak; the fact that Harry was now (literally) a different person, a person as Harry, with all of his past, his er’s body; the fact of the absolute terror she had endured through that night, face to face with the monster Yulian Bodescu, whose like she couldn’t possibly have ihtirl’s ive way under the strain! On top of all of which she hated London and couldn’t return to Hartlepool; her old flat was poison to her nohere radully, as her mental connections with the real world were eroded, so her visits to various specialists and psychiatric clinics increased - until one one!’ Harry said it out loud ’They weren’t there They weren’t anywhere that I’ve been able to discover And what gets to , no hint He simply up and took her somewhere And you know, he never spoke to me? After that first time in the flat, when Yulian Bodescu almost had us, he never once spoke to me! He could have; he’d look at me in that way babies have, and I knew he could have spoken to ed ’So maybe he blamed me, too Maybe they both did And who can say they weren’t right to blame me? If I hadn’t been the way I was - ’
’Oh?’ his ry now She didn’t like the tone of self-pity which had started to creep into Harry’s voice Where was all that quiet strength he’d used to have? ’If you hadn’t been what you were? And Boris Dragosani still alive in Russia? And Yulian Bodescu, spreading heaven-only-knohat evil through the world? And thetheir dead thoughts forever in the cold earth and never knowing that they weren’t really alone at all? But you’ve changed all that, Harry And there’s no way back Hah! If you weren’t what you are, indeed!’
He nodded to hiht, then picked up a pebble and tossed it in the water so that its ripples shivered his ie into ribbons ’Still,’ he said as his face slowly reformed ’I’d like to knohere they went I’d like to be sure they’re OK Are you certain, Ma, that you haven’t heard anything?’