This was not the pure, shining, somehow innocent blue of a newly born child; it was the dull, washed-out blue of a fading soul, an expiring life. Yet here it appeared to gain something of colour as it extended itself and sped further back in time. And as Harry controlled his velocity in an effort to match the other’s, so the stranger’s thread became yet more recognizable by virtue of its skittering, irregular, even hag-ridden flight: by analogy, a “mirror-image” of its performance as witnessed by the Necroscope in the Möbius Continuum proper.
Then with a huge effort of will—and enormous faith in his own extramundane skills—Harry achieved something which he had never before so much as attempted: he flexed his own past life-thread, wielding it like a living whip across the skein of time past and laying it down parallel with the erratic track of the other! And now he sped forward (or rather backward!) and barely “in time” caught up with the whirling thread at the coordinates where its corporeal counterpart had entered the Continuum. This was precisely what Harry had desired to discover: where, and if possible how, such an entry had occurred.
At which moment something else happened, something he might even have anticipated, when entirely unbidden mutating mathematical equations began scrolling down the screen of his innermost mind: fluxional symbols that duplicated almost exactly the Necroscope’s own formula for calling into existence a Möbius door! Indeed, the formulae were so similar that he was almost tempted to believe that somehow, however involuntarily, subconsciously, he had brought these continuously mutating equations into being himself! Almost tempted to believe it, but not quite. For there were subtle differences.
Harry knew instinctively that unless he found time to study this new formula more closely, he might well be hard pressed to pin these differences down; but right now, sensing that a door was about to open, there was little or no time for that!
As best he was able, before the foreign formula took effect and shrank back into whichever mind had conjured it, Harry took mental note of its apparent irregularities and attempted to fix them in the back of his own mind. Hopefully he would be able to recall these anomalies as and when required. But now the door—an “alien” door, as he considered it—was warping into existence to one side of him and almost within touching distance.
It formed into being, an interface between the “real” world of three dimensions and the Continuum’s time-streams, but by no means any kind of exit. And anyway, Harry would never attempt a departure from a previous time into the real world, for if that were at all possible it would mean duplicating and perhaps annihilating one or both of himselves! But he believed he might be able to use such a door more properly as a window on times past, which was precisely why he had taken such pains to be here. And in another moment it became apparent that he was not mistaken.
Beyond the door, as viewed through a tenuous mist, the Necroscope saw two male figures, the closest with his back to the door—as if unaware that it was there—and the other facing the door but somewhat obscured by the first figure, whose owner was perhaps physically disadvantaged; he was leaning heavily to the right, and shuffling from side to side in order to keep his balance. Small and slim, this one’s rather ragged clothing appeared to hang loosely on him. The other was tall, fat and pale-faced, with red, receding hair and flabby chin; his plumpish fingers were visible where they grasped the seemingly disabled figure’s slumped shoulders, apparently holding him steady.
They were engaged in conversation; the fat man’s lips were moving, but Harry could hear nothing. He took note, however, of a poster on the corner of a brick wall directly behind the disparate pair: an advertisement for the Edinburgh festival, which was due to commence in a week’s time. All of which was seen but dimly, made vague and nebulous by the flux of time on the Necroscope’s side of the door; whereas on the far side time ran true.
But as Harry narrowed his eyes, to focus more surely on the scene beyond the door, what happened next was anything but nebulous and he saw it all too clearly.
The fat man wasn’t holding the other steady after all; his fingers suddenly tightened on the thin man’s threadbare jacket, taking a firmer, preparatory grip on him—and without further warning those fat hands pushed!
In no way suicide, but murder most foul!
As the disabled man staggered backwards through the Möbius door, he instantly morphed from a human figure to a blue luminescence, his parallel life-thread in the time-streams: a thread that was already fading, pulsating and wavering, and—but what the hell was this?—even shrivelling, as it began to die out!
There in the silence of past time Harry could hear nothing at all, not even a thought. But as the doomed man’s life-thread went plummeting from sight, snatched off into a brief, terrible future by the time-stream, he recalled only too well the whimpering and sobbing he had heard previously in the Möbius Continuum proper, and his blood ran cold…
At that moment the Necroscope could have let go, could have stopped holding his position in time and followed on behind, if only out of pity…which would have changed nothing, achieved nothing, since he had already been there and the immutable past was over and done with. But now that his view of this fat murderer and the scene of his crime was no longer obscured—except by the mistiness caused by the temporal tide on Harry’s side of the door—there was more he desired to learn; not only of the killer himself but his location in the real world. For example, there was that poster on the corner of the brick wall.
Harry believed he’d seen that poster before, in fact a good many of them, along with banners and colourful bunting, decorating Princes Street in central Edinburgh. Now he saw that he was correct; for beyond the wall’s corner the massive volcanic rock of Edinburgh Castle’s shrub-clad base was totally unmistakable. The murder had occurred in broad daylight, perhaps no more than an hour ago, right there in the city’s bustling centre!
But there was more.
Concurrent with the weird shrivelling of the victim’s life-thread, the fat man’s pale unhealthy face had seemed to thrive; it had suddenly developed a florid complexion, a reddening much deeper than a blush, and a totally evil aspect—an expression of monstrous, malignant satisfaction! And though the murderer’s features remained out of focus, indistinct, still in that self-same moment the Necroscope felt he could well be looking at the face of the Devil himself!
Then once again, as Harry drifted closer to the door, there came that variant formula, this time in reverse, scrolling down the screen of his mind. Voided by the fat man, the door was now closing. But even as it collapsed, so the murderer’s expression abruptly changed, and he gave a massive start as at last he saw or sensed Harry there beyond the threshold!
And the last thing Harry saw was the man’s bottom jaw falling open in a silent gasp, and his piggish eyes starting out in disbelief, as the door “slammed” soundlessly shut…
The Necroscope went home, had a meal he barely tasted, showered and took to his bed just as the light began to fade. Somehow he felt drained, as if he too had suffered some kind of depletion, a sort of shrivelling. He dreamed, nightmared, and jerked awake. He slept again, dreamed, nightmared, came shuddering awake in a cold sweat. It was like that all night; he would no sooner fall asleep than he was there:
Back in the Möbius Continuum or its time-streams: mathematical dimensions full of crumpled bodies, souls as flat as burst balloons, and whirling fleshless corpses whose coronas were lit by the ghostly, flickering glimmer of rotting toadstools rather than the steady blue glow of healthy life-threads!
It wasn’t unusual for Harry to have nightmares—such as he was that was unavoidable—but his dreams were rarely as vivid or as monstrous as this! And morning’s light couldn’t come soon enough…
He woke up yawning, reaching out over his bed, fumbling for the comforting presence of Bonnie Jean—who of course was not there. Nor would she be—not until he’d dealt with this thing, or at least investigated it to the best of his ability and perhaps set it to rights. He knew that t
he teeming dead, the Great Majority, would want it that way.
After breakfast and a pot of coffee, he called Darcy Clarke at E-Branch HQ in London.
Harry had worked in E-Branch however briefly (the “E” stood for ESPionage,) and he thought of Darcy as being foremost among only a handful of friends—even a close friend, or as close as most living people could ever get to the Necroscope. Harry knew that he owed the man one or two favours, but also that E-Branch owed him a far greater number. By E-Branch standards, however—considering the Branch’s “normal” line of work—the favour he was about to ask was only a very small one.
But first there were the various security protocols, as the Head-of-Branch activated scrambler devices in his office, monitoring Harry and confirming his identity. Until finally:
“Harry?” came Darcy’s voice down the wire. “What a pleasant surprise—I think! We don’t hear from you any too often these days—not often enough, anyway. But having said that, whenever we do hear from you I get these…oh, I don’t know, these nervous twinges? Telling me like maybe I should run the hell away? If you know what I mean…”
Harry smiled, however wrily. He knew exactly what the other meant, for Darcy was a deflector. Like everyone at E-Branch HQ, he had his own peculiar talent; in his case it stopped him getting into trouble, deflecting him away from anything that might prove to be dangerous. Probably unique and largely inexplicable, the thing was Darcy’s personal parapsychological guardian angel which, since the Branch handled cases that were decidedly weird and usually dangerous, made him the perfect man for the job. It was obviously of great benefit to him…but on the other hand he had no control over it, was only fully aware of the thing on those none-too-rare occasions when he gazed either deliberately or even unconsciously directly into the face of danger.
“Yes, sure I understand,” Harry finally replied. “But don’t let it bother you, Darcy. This time all I want is information.”
“Damn!” said the other. “I was hoping you were going to ask me for your job back—or even my job, except I know there’s no way you’d take it…er, is there?”
“I couldn’t take it, Darcy,” said the Necroscope. “All that paperwork and so forth; being in charge and responsible for all you mind-spies; having the Minister Responsible forever looking over my shoulder and breathing down my neck—it just wouldn’t work for me, or for E-Branch. I have my own things to do and my own way of doing them. And anyway you know why I left…why I had to leave.”
“Yes,” Darcy answered. “Brenda and the child. And I’m guessing you haven’t found them yet, that you’re still searching for them? Any luck, Harry? Everyone here would like to think so. We know how much it means to you.”
“How much it used to, you mean,” Harry corrected him. “I’ll tell you something, Darcy. You know that old saw about absence: how it makes the heart grow fonder? Well, it doesn’t—not my heart—not when the absence drags on and on, year after year, apparently endlessly. I search for them out of a sense of…I don’t know, duty? That’s all it comes down to now, duty. And if I should find them, then what?”
For a moment Darcy was silent—didn’t know how to answer, found himself in a quandary—until finally he said, “You think maybe we should stop searching for them, too?”
“No, by no means!” Harry at once replied, perhaps a little too harshly. “And who told you I’d stopped searching? I didn’t! I only said I was tired of it all, worn down by it, or words to that effect.” In the next moment, however, as he sensed Darcy’s dismay, he let him off the hook by changing the subject. “No, I don’t want you to stop searching for Brenda and the baby, but I would like you to research something else for me.”
Darcy sighed his relief. “Anything I can do for you, Harry, you know you only have to ask. What’s the problem, and how can we help?”
“Simply put, the problem is murder!” The Necroscope replied. “At least one really weird murder. I can tell you what I’m looking for but can’t go into any great detail, not even on a scrambled line. I don’t want to compromise myself…my skills? But you know what I’m talking about.”
“A really weird murder,” Darcy repeated Harry thoughtfully, cautiously. “And you’re worried about compromising your abilities, your ‘speciality?’ Harry, please tell me we’re not talking about—”
“About a vampire?” Harry cut him short. “No, not that.” But at the same time he was thinking: Not that kind of vampire, anyway. But some sort of big fat leech, that’s for sure!
“Well at least that’s a relief!” said Darcy. “So okay, I’ll press you no further. But how can E-Branch help? What is it you want us to research, Harry?”
“I’m correct in thinking you use a clipping agency, right?”
“Yes, several. And not merely clipping agencies. In fact we have fairly comprehensive access to almost everything that goes down, especially the weird stuff. And if we don’t have it there are other Security Services that do. We can dig into almost anything that’s been of special interest to us as far back as—I don’t know—way back in the middle ’60s when Sir Keenan Gormley first got E-Branch on its feet.”
“Good!” Harry nodded—if only to himself. And after a moment’s pause for thought: “This murderer I’m looking for, I have reason to believe his crime or crimes are of a sort that end up in the police’s unsolved files, so-called cold cases. And while of course there will be ‘missing’ people, there may not be many bodies or identifiable victims, without which it’s difficult to prove anything. Do you follow?”
“So far so good,” Darcy replied. “Go on.”
“So what I’m asking for is a list of people who’ve suddenly gone missing, and especially from the Edinburgh area, let’s say in the last six months or so? Because apart from the one I know of, there may have been others. You see, I think my murderer is probably a serial killer. I think murder—his particular kind of murder—is something from which he derives a weird sort of benefit. It isn’t money or revenge, at least I don’t reckon so, but something I can’t put my finger on just yet. And I’m sorry, but that’s it; I can’t be more specific than that.”
Darcy mulled it over, then said, “Harry, have you any idea how many people go missing from the Edinburgh area, or any city of a comparable size, in the space of six months?”
Harry chewed his upper lip. “Quite a few, I’m sure.”
“Dozens!” Darcy came back at him. “Maybe as many as a hundred! Usually they’re kids, runaways. And let’s not forget the itinerants: wanderers in search of work, or maybe escaping from work, or just running from whatever problems they can’t face up to. There are criminals on the run from the law, and from other criminals; wives escaping from brutal husbands, and vice versa! There are a hell of a lot of reasons, other than murder, Harry, why people go missing.”
“Of course,” said the Necroscope. “But the reason for this missing person is murder—bloody awful murder! I know, because I saw it! So, can you help me?”
“Absolutely,” Darcy replied. “When do you need your list?”
And now there was another avenue of inquiry available to Harry: his dear drowned Ma and her contacts among the teeming dead. Of course, the Necroscope had his own contacts, dead friends among the Great Majority; but impatient as rarely before, he intended to busy himself with other matters while his mother looked into that side of things.
It was still mid-morning when he walked along the riverside path to the bight in the bank where the river swirled in a backwater, deep and murky. Harry’s Ma was down there—her remains, at least—and this was the best place to contact her. He might have used his unique talent to talk to her from a distance, but that was not the Necroscope’s way. Whenever it became necessary to converse with the deceased he preferred, if at all possible, to do it at their convenience. That way, in close proximity, he knew they would sense his corporeal presence and living warmth: a reminder that in their absence the world they had known continued, and that as well as a past there would be a
future, when finally they could “move on” out of the darkness to a promised, better place. Harry’s mother should have moved on long ago, but she preferred to remain behind as counsel to her only son whenever he might need her.
Seated on the riverbank, his feet dangling over the slowly rotating water, the Necroscope had no need to announce himself; sensing him like a candle’s glow through the dank and the dark, his Ma immediately acknowledged his presence:
Harry? But it’s been a while, son, and I’ve missed you!
He at once felt guilty and neglectful; she sensed that too, relented and told him: Still, I know how very busy you’ve been. The teeming dead are full tales of your adventures—related and passed on by those who have been touched by you—and I am so very proud of you!
His dear Ma—a revered figure among the Great Majority—and Harry thought: If only I could feel your warmth as you feel mine. Just for a moment he had forgotten that his thoughts were deadspeak, and that she would hear and doubtless answer them.
But that’s not how it is, son, she comforted him, her disembodied voice low but composed, resigned in Harry’s mind. We are the Great Majority, true, but great in numbers only—no longer quick, no longer…warm.
But then, on afterthought and more vigorously, as if having given herself a shake: Now tell me, Harry: why are our conversations so frequently morbid? We’re lucky after all; for despite that I’m no longer there, still I am here! And we can always be together, if only like this.
“And we always will be, until you decide it’s time to move on.” Harry now spoke out loud, as was his custom when there was no one nearby to see him talking ‘to himself,’ as it were. “But some among the quick and the dead are less fortunate, undeservedly so. I’m thinking of one in particular who was incapable of defending himself. He was murdered, and recently!”