Necroscope

'Shut it, shithead!' Harry growled, turning back and facing the bully. 'You're ugly enough without me making it worse!'

'Wha-?' Green couldn't believe his ears. What was that Keogh had said? No, it couldn't have been. Why, it hadn't even sounded like him. He must have a frog in his throat, or he was all choked up with fear.

'Whyn't you leave him alone?' said Jimmy Collins, pushing through the crowd. Three or four of them grabbed him, held him back.

'Stay out of it, Jimmy,' said Harry in his new, gritty voice. 'I'm all right.'

'All right, is it?' cried Big Stanley. I'll say you're not, Speccy my son. I'll say you're — in — the — shit!'-

With his last word he swung his fist for the smaller boy's head. Harry ducked easily, stepped forward, jabbed with a straight arm, fingers straight and stiff. Big Stanley folded in the middle, jack-knifed, his face coming down on Harry's knee — which was coming up! The crack was like a pistol shot. Green straightened up and flew backward, his arms straight out from his shoulders. And down he crashed on the sand.

Harry stepped close. Seconds passed but Green just lay there. Then he sat up, shook his head groggily. His nose was the wrong shape, bleeding profusely; his eyes were glassy behind welling tears of pain. 'You… you… you!' he spat blood.

Harry bent over him, showed him a white, knobbly fist. 'You what?' he growled, the corner of his mouth lifting from his teeth. 'Go on, Bully, say something. Give me a reason to hit you again.'

Green said nothing, reached up a trembling hand to touch his broken nose, his split mouth. Then he started to cry real tears.

But Harry wasn't finished with him. He wanted him to remember. 'Listen, shithead,' he said. 'If ever — if you ever once — call me Speccy or Favourite or any other bloody funny name again — if you even speak to me, I'll hit you so hard you'll be shitting teeth for a month! Have you got that, shithead?'

Big Stanley turned on his side in the sand and cried even harder.

Harry looked up, glared at the rest of them. He took off his spectacles, put them in a pocket, scowled. He didn't squint, didn't look as though he'd needed the glasses at all. His eyes were bright as marbles, full of sparks. 'What I said to this shit goes for the rest of you. Or if any one of you fancies his chances here and now — ?'

Jimmy Collins stepped beside him. 'Or any two of you?' he said. The crowd was silent. As a man, all their mouths were wide, their eyes even wider. Slowly they turned away, began talking, nervously laughing, fooling about as if nothing had happened. It was over — and strangely, they were all glad it was over.

'Harry,' said Jimmy quietly out of the corner of his mouth, 'I never seen anything like that! Not ever. Why, you did it like — like — like a man! Like a grown man! Like old 'Sergeant' when he used to shadow-fight in the gym. Unarmed combat, he called it.' He elbowed his pal in the ribs — but gingerly. 'Hey, you know something?'

'What?' Harry asked, trembling all over, his voice his own again.

'You're weird, you are, Harry Keogh. You're really weird!'

Harry Keogh sat his examination a fortnight later.

The weather had changed in the first week of September, since when it had grown progressively worse until the sky seemed permanently filled with rain. It rained on the day of the examination, too, a downpour which washed the windows of the head's study where Harry sat at a huge desk with his papers and pens.

Jack Harmon himself invigilated, seated behind his own desk, reading the minutes of (and adding his comments and recommendations to) the observations and notes of the last Staff Meeting. But while he worked, occasionally he would look up, glance at the boy, wonder about him.

Actually, Harmon didn't particularly want Harry Keogh at the Tech. Not for any personal motive — not even because he half felt that he'd been pushed into this unheard-of situation: that of being obliged to test a boy who had, quite simply, already missed his chance — but because it might set an unfortunate precedent. Time was precious enough without extra work of this sort being found or manufactured. Exams were exams: they were held annually and the colliery boys who passed them had the opportunity to finish their final years of schooling here, where perhaps they could go on to better things than their fathers had known. The system was long-established and worked very well. But this new thing — Howard Jamieson pushing the Keogh boy forward like this…

On the other hand, the headmaster at Harden Modern Boys' was a proven friend from the old days, and it was also true that Harmon owed him a favour or two. Even so, when Jamieson had first approached him on the subject, Harmon had been cool about it; but the other had persisted. Finally Harmon's curiosity had been aroused: he'd wanted to see this 'teenage prodigy' for himself. At the same time, however, and as stated, he had not wanted to set any sort of precedent. He had looked for an easy way out and believed he'd found one. He himself had set the questions, choosing only the most difficult problems from the last six years' examination papers. No boy of Keogh's educational background could possibly hope to answer them (not all of them, anyway, and certainly not correctly) but while the examination itself would almost constitute a farce, still Harmon would be able to look at examples of Keogh's work and so satisfy his curiosity. Jamieson, too, would have been mollified, at least in respect of his request that the boy be tested; Keogh's failure would destroy the credibility of any further, like requests in the future. And so Jack Harmon invigilated, keeping an eye on the boy while he worked at the papers.

An hour had been allowed for each subject; there were to be ten-minute breaks between subjects; tea and biscuits would be served right here in the head's study during the breaks, and a staff toilet was right next door. The first paper had been the English exam, following which Keogh had sat quietly drinking his tea, staring pallidly at the rain beyond the windows. Now he was half-way into the maths paper — or should be. That was a moot point.

Harmon had watched him. The boy's pen had seemed barely to scratch the answer paper; or if it had, then it was during those moments when the Tech's headmaster had been busy with his own work. Oh, the boy had been hard enough at it through the first hour, the first test: the English paper had seemed to interest him, he'd done a lot of frowning and pen-chewing and had written and rewritten — indeed he'd still been working when Harmon had called time — but the maths paper obviously had him stumped. He made the occasional, sporadic attempt at it, Harmon must give him that much (and there he went again, even now, his pen flying, scratching away) but after only a moment or two he'd sit back, stare out of the windows, go pale and quiet again, almost as if he were exhausted.

Then he would appear to pick up, glance at the next question, scribble away at frantic speed, as if inspired — before pausing again, exhausted — and so on. Harmon could well understand his tension or anxiety or whatever it was: the questions were very difficult. There were six of them, each one of which would normally take at least a quarter of an hour to complete — and only then if the boy's aptitude was well in advance of his years and present level of education at Harden Modern.

What Harmon couldn't understand was why he bothered at all, why he kept making these furious attacks on the paper, only to sit back each time after a little while, frustrated and tired. Wasn't it obvious to him that he couldn't win? What were his thoughts as he gazed out of the windows? Where was he when his face took on that blank, almost vacant expression?

Maybe Harmon should stop this now, put an end to it. Plainly the lad wasn't getting anywhere…

They were now (the headmaster glanced at his watch) thirty-five minutes into the maths section. As the boy sat back yet again, his arms dangling and his eyes half-closed behind the lenses of his spectacles, so Harmon quietly stood up and approached him from the rear. Outside, the rain was blowing in gusts against the windowpanes; in here, an old clock ticked on the wall, pacing the head's breathing. He glanced over Keogh's shoulder, not really knowing what he expected to see.

His glance became a fixed stare. He blinked, blinked again, and his eyes opened wide. His eyebrows drew together as he craned his neck the better to see. If Keogh heard his gasp of astonishment he made no sign, remained seated, continued to gaze blearily at the rain rivering the windows.

Harmon took a step backwards away from the boy, turned and went back to his desk. He seated himself, slid open a drawer, held his breath and took out the answers to the maths section. Keogh had not only answered the questions, he'd got them right! All of them! That last frenzied burst of work had been him working on the sixth and last. Moreover he'd accomplished it with the very minimum of rough work and hardly any use at all of the familiar and accepted formulae.

Finally the head allowed himself a deep, deep breath, gawped again at the printed answer sheets in his hand — the masses of complicated workings and neatly resolved solutions — then carefully placed them back in the drawer and slid it shut. He could hardly credit it. If he hadn't been sitting here through the entire examination, he'd