But the dream had stayed away and so had B.J. And a fortnight is a long time. Also, certain things she had said to him during their last phone conversation continued to bother him:
“Harry, it could be that we, the girls and I, will need to be moving on from here pretty soon now. There are people watching my place. Not just the watcher, the little man you saw that time, but people. People—and some who probably aren’t people. Asiatic types, I mean, but no longer dressed in those lying red robes of theirs. They’re difficult to spot, until they’re right on top of you! And there’s also a pair of shady types who just might be policemen, but I don’t think so. I did have some dealings with the police but that was before I last saw you, since when I’ve heard nothing. I’m pretty sure that no one suspects me of … well, anything! So these strangers could be Ferenczy thralls, or simply ordinary men in their pay, or just my imagination. But when I’m out I find I’m frequently followed—the girls, too—and we can’t stay cooped up forever. We feel like we’re trapped, and as time goes by it gets worse. So maybe now you understand why I can’t be with you as much as I would like—because I don’t want to put you in jeopardy.”
Harry had been switched on at the time, capable of holding a “normal” conversation. B.J. ’s “wee man,” he’d known exactly what she was talking about; more than Bonnie Jean herself would have believed. He’d felt her fear, not only for herself but for him—indeed mainly for him—and that had put everything right and made him want to tell her oh so much … Except he couldn’t possibly, because it was forbidden.
But by whom forbidden? By what? By something inside him, was all Harry knew. Something that restricted his powers until they were all but useless to him. He couldn’t talk about them, daren’t display them, felt less and less inclined towards using them—even for his own protection.
But for B.J.’s?
“Why don’t you turn me loose?” he had asked her then.
“What?” (As if the thought hadn’t occurred to her—which in fact it hadn’t. She loved him, and you don’t unleash the one you love on things that would gladly eat his raw, smoking heart right out of him! Moreover, he would have to be there at Radu’s resurgence. First to see him up, and then to put him down! B.J. knew that now: that somehow she must find a way to use the dog-Lord to destroy their enemies—before destroying Radu himself. It was the only way, if she and Harry were to survive and go on together.)
“I know about them,” he’d told her then. “You told me all about them—that the time might come when we would have to go up against them. I’ve accepted that and I’m ready. So don’t try to fight them alone, B.J. Also, what good can it do to run from them when you know they’ll only catch up with you? And you even know where they’ll catch up—in the lair of the dog-Lord! Why leave it until the last minute?”
It was as if he had read her mind. But B.J. knew that in fact he was only remembering what little she’d let him retain. Yet still he seemed to know so much, and to accept it so readily.
“Harry, you listen to me!” she had snarled then, in something close to panic. “You’ll keep out of it! Oh, you’re good, I know—but not that good. We were very lucky that time, up there in …” But there she had paused in sudden confusion. For it was something she’d erased from his mind: the failed attack of the Drakuls. Or at least she thought she had erased it. Yet when she’d mentioned Asiatics, “no longer in their red robes,” he hadn’t queried her. It had been a slip of the tongue on her part but he hadn’t picked it up. It was as if he knew! So what the hell was going on here?
And again it was as though he had read her mind:
“Those Tibetan priests,” he said, in an oddly neutral tone that defined her hypnotic influence on him (but how much of an influence?) “I felt there was something strange about them the first time we saw them. They’ve been on my mind ever since …”
At which Bonnie Jean had let out an audible sigh of relief, so clear that Harry heard it over the line. And he, too, sighed his relief, albeit inaudibly, for once again he’d protected his powers. And:
“Anyway,” B.J. had gone on, after a brief pause to get her thoughts in order, “that’s what we’re up against. The Tibetans—who I believe are Drakuls—and the watcher and his friends, who are probably Ferenczys. Lieutenants or simple thralls, or a mix, we don’t know. Mostly thralls, I would guess. And their intentions: we can’t be absolutely certain except that they’re looking for Radu.” But in fact she could be sure, for the Drakuls had tried to kill them that time. Harry didn’t know that, however (or he couldn’t remember), which was how she preferred it. She didn’t want his two levels of awareness merging again, and certainly not at a time like this.
“You should let me help you,” he’d told her. “Don’t switch me off. Let me come to you, protect you. Two of us together, we have to have a better chance than one. And B.J., you’re right: I am … good at this sort of thing.” Then, hurriedly, as if to clarify what he’d said: “It’s what I used to do, remember?”
“I’ve seen what you can do,” she’d told him then. “I have lots of evidence as to what you can do. But you don’t know what they can do! Anyway, it’s decided. Pretty soon we’ll be out of here … out of B J.’s Wine Bar, I mean. And Harry, it might be a good idea if you got out of there, out of your house. If they decide you’re a threat—if they suspect you’re more than just my lover …”
“Am I?” He had cut in. “Am I your lover? And are you mine, B.J.? Do you love me?”
“Don’t you know it?” She’d sighed again, this time a very different sigh, as human a sound as she’d ever made. “Love you? Harry, I love the sight of you, the air you breathe, the ground you walk on, the touch of you inside and out—the very thought of you! I don’t know why, but I do.”
“But you won’t let me help.”
“No, I forbid it. And when I switch you off you’ll remember that, Harry: that you’re forbidden to get any more involved than you are already. And that you won’t act except on my word, or in order to protect yourself in my absence. Is that clear?”
“Yes,” and his tone had been vacant, robotic again. “Perfectly clear. But if you’re moving out, and if I move out, too, how will I know where to find you?”
“One of my girls will be watching, following you. You’ll know her but you mustn’t try to talk to her. And don’t go anywhere too far or too fast; I mean, don’t lose her. For when it comes to losing people, well you’re too damn good at that, Mr. Harry Keogh! And if she loses you we may have trouble finding you again. But if we do somehow get separated, as a last resort you can always try my place. I can have someone watch out for you.”
And when he said nothing: “Well?” B.J. had queried.
“That’s it, then?” he had finally said, in a wavery, misunderstanding tone of voice that made her heart want to cry out loud. A tone that spoke all too eloquently of his tangled emotions, damaged personality and bewildered psyche all in one. And a tone that he really shouldn’t be capable of, not while he was under her influence like this; not even while conversing “normally.” Still and all, that was why she loved him: because there was no one else like him, not who B.J. had ever met before. But whatever else she did, she knew she mustn’t weaken now.
“That’s it, yes. Until we’re together again. But Harry, I want you to remember this, too: that we will be together again. As for the rest, the usual rules apply.”
“The usual rules?”
“Forget about the Drakuls, the Ferenczys, the vampires we are up against. Unless you come under threat, forget them. But if or when you are threatened, then you’ll remember everything I’ve told you about them and be able to act against them. It’s for your own good; I just can’t have you fighting them on your own and getting yourself killed. For you see, I don’t think I could bear that, Harry … mah wee man.”
After a long pause he said, “I’ll … remember?” And that was that …
And he had remembered—if only what “the usual rules” allowe
d him to—and wondered and worried about the rest of it. He remembered that B.J. would soon be moving out of her place in the city, but didn’t know why. Also that she’d advised him to move out, too. (But that had been more in the way of advice, not an order.) And he was vaguely aware that certain enemies were closing in even now but that he couldn’t go against them until she said so or until he himself was threatened directly. He remembered too that she loved him, that they would be together again, and that despite all the seeming ambiguities she was innocent.
She was innocent! … innocent! … innocent! The shout of an idiot in an empty church, echoing in the Necroscope’s aching head. Aching because of all the strange stuff that was in there trying to find its way out, and all the natural—or unnatural—stuff that was the real Harry Keogh, that he no longer dared to let out.
All of which further served to remind the Necroscope that his life was screwed up and being screwed tighter all the time, perhaps to a fatal degree, and that someone or someones was or were responsible. Like—maybe Bonnie Jean herself? But no, for she was an innocent. Then who? And how?
If only he could get a look—take a peek, a single glimpse—at the picture on the box, then he might be able to work it out for himself, the whole bloody jigsaw puzzle. But all he had was the frame, and a twisted frame at that, and no picture at all. Or at best ajumble of pieces that wouldn’t interlock, because they worked in three dimensions and Harry was working in only two of them (was only allowed to work in two of them), and then not at the same time …
The conversation with B.J. had been yesterday morning. In the afternoon, the Necroscope had got out his bicycle and pedalled it furiously five miles and back. His fitness programme (or so he told himself), and God he was fit! In his body anyway. Then, leaving the bike in the yard out front, Harry had gone through the house into the back garden—no longer an utter wilderness but something of a garden at least—and walked the riverbank to the tiny bight that was his Ma’s grave. And for a long time he had stood there in silence, looking at the ruffled water.
He would have loved to talk to his Ma but couldn’t … or wouldn’t. She knew all about her son’s weird talent, naturally, and he knew she wasn’t about to betray him even if she could—but it was this thing again. Someone might be watching him, and someone might guess what he was doing: talking to dead people.
Crazy! Who in hell would ever guess he was doing something like that!? But nonetheless, Harry had looked all about, up and down and across the river, to see if anyone was there. And damn it if someone wasn’t! A parked car, gleaming in the pale afternoon sunshine, maybe a hundred and eighty yards up-river on the grass verge of the road that ran parallel with the water. And a blurred figure at the steering wheel, whose breath was steaming the windows.
Then back to the house with his heart beating just a little faster, walking briskly, but trying not to act or look too concerned about anything (and wondering just how fast is a bullet anyway, and why would anyone want to shoot him in the first place?) and up to his bedroom, where he had tried to focus his binoculars through a chink in his curtains, only to be frustrated by his own breath on the windowpane.
And then there’d been nothing else for it …
… But a Möbius jump to the deserted country road some two hundred yards “downwind” of the suspect car, where the Necroscope had stepped out of his metaphysical door behind a shielding clump of bushes. There, peering through fringing foliage, finally he’d got his glasses focused on the car.
Zahanine’s car! One of Bonnie Jean’s girls. The gorgeous black girl with the legs that went up forever—well, almost. And Harry had almost chuckled: that in his situation, whatever it was, he was still capable of thinking along such lines. But not quite, because the sight of the girl standing there out of the car now, training binoculars of her own on his house, had served to bring back the rest of his conversation with Bonnie Jean. Some of it, anyway:
That she would have one of her girls follow him, keep an eye on him … protect him? And something else, about the girl herself. And about all of B. J.’s girls. A question he knew he should ask himself, without knowing what the question was. But ridiculous anyway, because they were all as innocent as B.J.
—Weren’t they?
What, innocent? Zahanine, too? Really? With a body like that? And this time he had chuckled, albeit wryly, as he conjured a door and returned to the house—where the telephone in his study had been ringing, ringing.
But for how long? His answering machine wasn’t switched on, and this could be B.J.! Flying across the room and snatching the phone from its cradle, he had almost tripped, before stumbling to his knees beside his desk. And:
“Hallo?” he had panted into the mouthpiece. And in a moment, when there was no answer, “This is Harry?”
Still no reply, only silence. Or at best, the merest suggestion of a shallow, somehow sinister breathing. And, “Harry Keogh?” he had felt obliged to prompt the caller, wonderingly, before stopping himself and pausing to think it out.
But in the next moment, kneeling there before his desk, he had started to think, and thought: This isn’t B.J.!
Who then? And anyway, his number was listed. Not that that meant anything; there were ways round that, if someone was determined. But having called him, why the silence? For what good, or bad, reason? Shit, how he’d wished that the answerphone was on!
Perhaps the unknown caller had heard his gasp, for a moment later the telephone had gone ch-click!and started to purr at him. And staring at the dead plastic thing in his hand, the Necroscope had felt a weird panic rising in him as he wondered if that was back again:
His fear and loathing of the telephone.
But no, surely not, for it had been a long time now since anything like that had happened.
Which in itself had been like an invocation!
The ground had seemed to move under his feet; Harry actually felt his body swaying to compensate, clutched at the desk with his free hand, tried to throw the telephone away from him. For he’d known what was coming—known at least that something was coming—and that when it got here he wasn’t going to like it too much.
It was in the sudden gloom that swept through or over his study—in the fading light that turned the garden beyond the patio windows to night, as if someone had switched off the sun—and in the blurring of reality as the vestigial talent of a dead mentality surfaced like a drowned thing from the swirling deeps of Harry’s id, or the contours of his re-inhabited mind. It was Alec Kyle’s prescience which, as applied to the Necroscope, could only manifest itself as a curse!
He had tried to hurl the telephone away. But the yellow hand that had squeezed itself out through the speaker to grip his wrist and sink its long curved nails into his flesh until they drew blood wouldn’t let him! And the basin of the speaker was expanding, warping out of shape as the fingers of a second hand, twin to the first, came writhing up onto the rim, clawing their way to freedom. Then both hands elongated out of the telephone, and while the one continued to clasp Harry’s wrist, the other went for his throat!
At first paralysed, the Necroscope’s jaws had fallen open, and apart from a spontaneous spasm as he had tried to jerk away from what was happening—an instinctive recoil from the horror of it—he hadn’t moved but an inch or so. But then, galvanized by terror, he had fought back. And it was as if he’d fought for his life, for the strength of this thing was supernatural.
And even knowing that this couldn’t possibly be happening, still it had looked, felt, and even smelled like it was happening. Smelled like it, yes: the acrid stench of alien sweat, and a poisonous reek that had struck the Necroscope an almost physical blow as someone or something breathed directly into his face.
It had come from the telephone, its speaker grown to the size of a great fleshy pipe, a hugely convulsing vulva, as out from between the spindly, rubbery, reaching arms a bald, domed yellow head dragged itself into view. The thing was all froth, bubbles, sweat, and mucus; it was as if
the mutating telephone had tried to give birth and squeeze this loathsome anomaly out into Harry’s study.
Half out, the thing had squirmed in its own juices as it used Harry’s straining against it to drag itself from the collapsing tube of the telephone. But then, in the next moment, as if the effort had been too much for it, it too had collapsed!
The hands on Harry’s wrist and neck had turned to so much mush and bone. Pulsing yellow eyes had fallen in on themselves, sucked back into the madly wobbling head. And in that same moment, before complete katabolism, Harry had seen that the yellow face wasn’t so much horrifying as horrified. And even as a rotting tongue wriggled between crumbling lips, he had heard his visitor’s choked or whispered:
“H-h-h-help meeeeeee!”
And then the awful gurgling and slopping of the thing as it melted like a black and gold candle under a blowtorch …
With which dim daylight had flooded Harry’s room, and a bird had chirped sleepily in the garden as his tottering universe warped back into something of focus, however unclear.
There had been no blood on his wrist, no slime on his clothing, no marks or hurt to Harry’s throat. But still he’d slumped there in the coils of the telephone’s spiral cable, leaning on the solid reality of his desk for long, long moments, satisfied simply to listen to the great pounding hammer that was his heart.
And it had taken him as long again to get to his feet and find the strength and spit to swallow …
That had been yesterday afternoon … following which he’d decided to take B.J.’s advice (that maybe he should get out of the house) a lot more seriously. And indeed he had determined to do just that. But his frustration—that he wasn’t able to grasp the meaning of such occurrences—and his ever-increasing irritation or obsession with his own patently flawed faculties, his reasoning and recall processes, plus his naturally stubborn nature, had served to keep him at home for at least one more night. Perhaps he had been hoping that the telephone would ring again, if only to defy the thing or maybe learn something from it now that he knew it wasn’t capable of physical harm.