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Necroscope

Harry and the Pirates and other Tales from the Lost Years

Tom Doherty Associates

For the Dead Travel Slowly

In the gloom of the woodssomething stirred, moving slowly and yet, for a Thing of its nature, paradoxically quickly and with purpose. It was an ancient Thing, and these woods had been its habitat for millennia. Upon a time centuries ago, a handful of its long-lived kind had dwelled in these selfsame woods, until all but this one had died in a vengeful fire.

The last of its species, the Thing was as weird as can be, but then again the sweet rains and dark plasms of earth — and on occasion the salty juices and nutrients of other than clay-cold soil — have nurtured myriad bizarre species on the three-billion-year-old paths of evolution; while fires, usually but not always natural, have destroyed a great many more.

The Thing had intelligence that was more instinct; it was "sentient" in ways totally alien to men; it had nothing in the form of true emotions, except perhaps the frustration of loneliness and — in times of necessity, and others of ungovernable urges, when it sought out and fed lustfully upon certain alternatives to the bland nutrients of soil and leaf-mould — something of the awful pleasure derived from indulging its needs.

Being a survivor and asexual both, the Thing had recently become aware of an important fact: that after these many centuries it would soon be time to reproduce, when bare subsistance on the mainly inert juices and minerals of earth would be insufficient to its needs. But it was summer, and summer had brought creatures into the borders of the forest; not little creatures like the ones that rustled in the fallen leaves or sang in the wood's highest branches and nested there, but other, larger beings who sought out secret, shady places in which to embrace.

Sexual activity ... not that the old Thing understood very much about that, but it did understand the fatigue, the temporary loss of consciousness that often resulted from this behaviour; understood, welcomed, and even possessed a means of inducing such weariness. For in dimly remembered times past, through myriad summer seasons since, when lovers embraced in secrecy in these dark, uncut woods, then it had been the old Thing's time.

... And would be again!

It happened during the lost years, that chaotic, long-drawn-out period in the Necroscope Harry Keogh's life of which, later, he would "believe" he remembered much while in fact recalling nothing of any real substance, clarity, or durability. And while he would know he had employed a mathematical (indeed metaphysical) formula, unique in himself, to conjure a means of teleportation and enable an exhaustive worldwide search for his runaway wife and infant son, still he would never manage to focus his memory upon more than a handful of the locations which he'd supposedly visited in this way. Vague and shifting landscapes, like forgotten phrases on the tip of his tongue, would form wraithlike yet frustratingly familiar scenes in the dimmest corners of Harry's mind, collapsing into smoke there if he should attempt to bring them into permanence. Which was why — whenever he was caused to reflect on that persistently opaque period — thoughts that were usually inadvertent, or if not that then certainly reluctant — it would always be in terms of time lost. Even of years lost.

The lost years, yes ...

All of this, however, this hiatus created by some blockage in Harry's mind, was just as well; and because deep in the core of his being he knew or suspected this was so, he took care not to pursue the mystery too closely. Certainly the macabre events of the years in question were not such as to invite examination or investigation by any entirely normal man — a statement which should not be construed to imply that Harry was entirely normal or natural. No, hardly that. Human and physically normal, certainly, but mentally, intellectually? — never! He was apart from other living men as they are apart from the Great Majority, the teeming dead. For despite that Harry Keogh was very much alive, as the Necroscope he was by no means apart from the dead!

"Necroscope": a composite word created by Harry Keogh himself, and the only word that accurately described him or rather his function. For as the telescope spies on things afar and the ITLµITLscope scans the incredibly small, so a Necroscope tunes in on the thoughts of the dead and can even converse with corpses! But no faker Harry Keogh; no cheating, so-called "spiritualist" but the real thing, the world's only true master of matroclinic abilities passed down from genuine psychics: forebears of great power whose parapsychological talents had been inherited by one in whom even weirder skills, if such may be imagined, had evolved and continued to evolve if not entirely "naturally."

It was during those oh-so-confusing lost years, then — at a time when Harry had left his lonely old house near Edinburgh and returned to the fields, villages, and country lanes of the County of Durham on England's sadly declining north-east coast, that same region where he had grown to manhood, courted Brenda, and first explored his eerie skills — that the following incidents occurred. For it was in just such familiar settings, where yet again he had failed to discover a single clue to the whereabouts of his wife and infant son, that the Necroscope stumbled across something entirely different....

It was summertime, and Harry was feeling tired, or not so much tired as drowsy; the heat of the summer sun was getting to him, and his face, his forearms, and his chest in the V of an open-necked shirt, were tanned to a degree that was unusual for him. Even a light tan would make a sharp contrast with the normally pallid complexion of one who was not by nature a sun worshipper. What, Harry Keogh, a sun worshipper? No, far more likely a child of the night, the Necroscope: a creature of the moon and stars, a familiar of cobwebs, shadows, and gloom ... even of the gloomiest places of all, though the latter was more a matter of convenience than preference. For there in the darkness of the last and longest night, that was where the majority — even the Great Majority — of Harry's friends existed still.

It had not always been that way. In earlier, less troubled or problematic times when he was with his wife, things had been very different. Brenda had loved beaches, breezes off the sea, cliff-hugging paths and leaf-dappled forest ways; she'd enjoyed the grass-tufted sand-dunes at Crimdon Dene, the sprawling mile of pure white sand at Seaton Carew, the penny arcades and fish-and-chip shops of the seaside resorts. Which was why the Necroscope had done it all over again — the beaches, breezes, penny arcades, fish-'n'-chips, the lot — while he searched for Brenda. Which was also how he had earned the patch of mild but irritating sunburn on the crown of his head.

Today, having learned his lesson, Harry had worn a floppy, wide-brimmed hat that in its way looked camp on his young head; more especially so in the raw-knuckled ex-coal-mining village on the coast where he was staying, where the miner's flat grey cap was still the customary mode of headgear; this despite the fact that the local coal mines had closed down many years ago. For however much the fortunes of villages like Easingham, Blackhill Rocks, Morton, and Harden had suffered with the decline of "the pits," somehow they managed to retain the character and customs of their salt-of-the-earth inhabitants; customs that would live on for some time yet, even as long as the last of the old-timers who had once hewed coal in the mines. But Harry's hat — however out of place it might look — had served a double, even a triple purpose. It kept the sun from his itching scalp (kept it out of his eyes, too) and, in the privacy of its floppy brim, he could mumble — apparently to himself — without being observed by anyone who might otherwise have reason to consider him an idiot.

At the moment, however — relaxing as best a restless nature would allow, in a deck chair, in the seclusion of the garden of a friend he had known since pre-teen secondary-modern school-days prior to the start of his technical education and the continuation of pursuits that were rather more esoteric — there was no fear of that.

His boyhood friend was James "Jimmy" Collins, who was once Captain of the school's football team and later became the best striker Harden Colliery Football Club ever had — until, at only seventeen years of age, his right knee bent sideways in a game and failed to get better, ever. Since when he had been an electrician like his father before him, which was a lot better than working down in the pits would have been, if they'd lasted longer. Despite Jimmy's alleged boyhood aversion to girls (he had once sworn that he would "hang himself from a goalpost" rather than get caught with his arm around a girl when the lights went up at the local cinema), he had ended up getting one in trouble, done the right thing and married her, and just seven months later learned that the baby wasn't his. No, it belonged to the youth he caught his wife with when he came home early from a job one morning. Well, he was not the first young man who had fallen for that one, and he certainly wouldn't be the last. Fortunately the little house his parents had given him as a wedding present was in his name; the "lady" had moved out — and right out of the district, too — and Jimmy had gone back to swearing off girls.

"Still weird, eh Harry?" Jimmy's voice broke the garden's sunny afternoon silence, and broke into Harry's mental privacy. Actually, it roused him from a drowsy, very-nearly-asleep condition of semi-consciousness. He'd been dreaming about ... someone calling? A cry for help? A distant, desperate, and possibly dead voice? An SOS from beyond? Well, perhaps. But far more likely a daydream, gone now into that limbo where all dreams are said to have origin. Whichever, he wasn't too concerned; he had "heard" or become aware or conscious of several ill-defined, out-of-the-ordinary sounds or thoughts just recently, especially that time when he'd discovered that even fossils from Earth's prehistoric past can have "voices" of a sort.

Lifting his head, Harry blinked owlishly as Jimmy Collins came from the house into the garden. Jimmy was carrying chilled fruit drinks in tall glasses, one in each hand, and as he drew closer Harry muttered, "Eh? What's that you say?"

Jimmy nodded, and answered: "Yep, you're still weird! Even if I didn't recognize the physical Harry Keogh — or rather your face, which I couldn't, and didn't — still I think I would have sensed the weirdness anyway and known it was you. Like who else could it be, knowing what you knew? And you know something? For all that you look different, still the longer you're around and the more I see of you — even though you've only been here for a week — damned if you haven't started to look more and more like ... well, like you! Like Harry! I mean like the Harry you used to be! Damn!"

Wide awake now, Harry knew precisely what the other meant. But grinning at his young old friend from the shade of his hat, and reaching for the welcome drink that Jimmy was offering him, still he said, "Oh yes? And after a muddled mouthful like that, you still have the nerve to call me weird? Was that English you were speaking just then, Jimmy?"

"Huh!" said his friend, pulling a face. "Oh, you're weird all right, Harry! But hey — is it any wonder I get my words all tangled? I mean, after all this time, showing up here, like ... like this? Who else would have believed that story you told me, if not someone who would recognise Harry Keogh's weirdness, eh? It may have been a long time, but yours is a brand of peculiar that's unmistakable. Well to me it is, anyway."

"Precisely why I came to see you!" said Harry, with a curt nod. "Because I knew you would know it was me. But also to find out if you'd heard anything of Brenda; and to check on you, see how you were doing — because I'd heard you had problems. Yes, I knew you'd accept me, Jimmy ... and you're right, it has been a long time since I moved from school here in Harden to the technical college in Hartlepool. After that, I don't know, we just seemed to lose touch."

Nodding, Jimmy seated himself in a deck chair next to the Necroscope. "Yes, we did," he said, "until you showed up again and asked me to be your Best Man. You and Brenda Cowell, sweethearts at first sight, or as nearly so as makes no difference." Reaching out, he lifted the floppy brim of Harry's hat to stare deep into the other's eyes, and continued: "Both of us married, eh, Harry? As it happens, way too young, and both regretting it. Mine has gone — good riddance, I say — and yours has flown the coop, leaving you to wonder why and to grieve over it."

"No," said Harry, "I don't think I am grieving any longer. And I do know why; at least I think I do. It's this new face of mine. My face, and my ... my ..." He paused for a single moment, then hurriedly went on: "And anyway, Jimmy, as you just pointed out, we were much too young. ..." He had caught himself barely in time, having almost said, "my face and body!" Which could only have led to a lot more questions.

For the body he was wearing — despite that it was a good, healthy one — wasn't the original that he had been born inside. Neither the face, nor the body. No, for not long ago the Necroscope had undergone an astonishing, involuntary metempsychosis, until now "he," the mind and soul of Harry Keogh, inhabited the body of someone else. Mercifully that someone had been completely brain-dead when Harry commandeered his empty shell; there'd been no arguing over possession, as it were. But there had also been precious little hope that his wife would accept him in his new identity, and it was one of a number of reasons why she had fled and taken the baby with her; or more properly why the baby had caused or enabled her flight ... which is another, and perhaps even stranger story....

As if reading Harry's mind, Jimmy was now frowning, examinining his guest more closely and biting his lip as his narrowed eyes swept the Necroscope up and down. And finally, shaking his head, he said, "Even now — I mean, you know what I mean — even now I'm not quite, not entirely —"

"What, not sure, Jimmy?" Harry cut him short. "And is this the same bloke who stood beside me on the beach after I knocked that bully Stanley Green on his fat backside? Oh, you were sure enough then! There was a whole bunch of our classmates there. I had given Green a beating, then offered the same to anyone else who fancied it. I told them: 'What I said to this shit goes for the rest of you.' Something like that, anyway. Then I said: 'Or should any one of you just happen to fancy his chances here and now ...?' Which was when —"

"— When I came to stand beside you," Jimmy took over from him, "and said, 'Or any two of you?' There were no takers. Huh! They weren't cowards, just a bunch of ordinary schoolkids. And after they'd seen big bully Green knocked down in the dirt, his nose all wobbly, blubbing and grovelling, they were relieved it was over, that's all...."

Harry nodded. "Yes, that's exactly how it was. So then, is this me or isn't it?"

"Well, it better be," the other grinned ruefully. "Especially since you've been sleeping in my spare bedroom for a week! But even so you tell a damn strange story. Like, you were working for the government on a secret job when you were caught in an explosion that wrecked your face, so they fixed you up with plastic surgery? I mean, how weird is that?"

The Necroscope shrugged. He wasn't much for lying — certainly not to a friend — but he knew that the truth was stranger yet. Jimmy really wouldn't have been able to accept the truth, which would have thrown everything else into doubt, causing all sorts of complications. Harry might have had to find other lodgings, for one thing, or go back along the Möbius route to his place on the outskirts of Edinburgh every night, which wasn't a good idea. He was actually enjoying his time away from that old house, in the company of one of his few living friends from his school days, and the trouble with indiscriminate and unnecessary use of the Möbius Continuum was that he might be observed stepping out of nowhere when he arrived back in Harden one morning. Life was difficult enough already, and Harry was an adherent of the creed that the easiest plan is usually the best.

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Excerpted from Necroscope by Brian Lumley. Copyright © 2009 Brian Lumley. Excerpted by permission of Tom Doherty Associates.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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