Necroscope

On impulse, out loud, he suddenly called out: 'See, I didn't forget. I came back. I came here. To your place. No, to my place. My secret place!'

His breath plumed in the air in bursts which turned white and drifted upward, dispersing. And Boris listened with every fibre of his being. Blue icicles depended from the rim of a leaning slab like gleaming teeth; the pine needles formed a frozen crust beneath his pigskin-booted feet; his last breath fell to earth in frozen crystals before he drew another. And still he listened. But… nothing.

The sun was sinking. Boris must go. He turned from the tomb. His words, caught in the frozen crystals of his breath, sent down their message into the earth.

Ahhh! It might have been the sighing of a wind in the high branches, but it rooted Boris to the spot like nails through his feet.

'You…!' he heard himself saying to no one, to nothing, to the gloom. 'Is it… you?'

Ahhh! Dragosaaniiii! And has the iron crept into your blood then, boy? Is that why you've returned?

Boris had rehearsed this moment a hundred times: his response, his reaction, should the voice ever speak to him again in the secret place. Bravado, he remembered none of it now.

Well? And has the winter frozen your tongue to your teeth? Say it in your head if you can't speak it, boy. What, are you a vacuum? The wolves howl over the passes even now, the winds likewise above the seas and mountains. Even the snow in its falling seems to sigh. And you, so full of words — bursting with questions, thirsting for knowledge — are you struck dumb?

Boris had meant to say: 'These hills are mine. This place is mine alone. You are merely buried here. So be quiet!' And he had meant to say it boldly, just as he'd rehearsed it. But now what he said, and stumblingly, was this: 'Are you…real? Who — what — how are you? How can you be?'

How can the mountains be? How can the full moon be? The mountains grow and are eroded. The moon waxes and wanes. They are, and so am I…

For all that he failed to understand, Boris grew bolder. He at least knew where this being was — in the ground — and how could he harm anyone from down there?

'If you are real, show yourself to me.'

Do you play with me? You know it cannot be. Would you have me put on flesh? I cannot do that. Not yet. Also, I see that your blood is yet water. Yes, and it would freeze like the ice on my tomb, if you saw me, Dragosani. 'Are you… a dead thing?'

/ am an undead thing.

'I know you!' Boris suddenly clapped his cold hands.

‘You're what my step-father calls 'imagination'. You're my imagination. He says I have a strong one.'

And so you have, but my nature is … other than that.

'No, I am not merely a thing of your mind. Do not flatter yourself.'

Boris tried hard to understand. Finally he asked: 'But what do you do?'

I wait.

'For what?'

For you, my son.

'But I'm here!'

It grew darker in a moment, as if the trees had leaned closer together, shutting out the light.

The touch of the unseen presences was feather-light but suddenly bitter as rime. Boris had almost forgotten his fear, but now it flooded back. And because it is a true adage that famili arity breeds contempt, he had almost forgotten just how much evil that voice in his head contained. Now he was reminded of that, too:

Child, do not tempt me! It would be quick, it would be sweet, and it would be futile. There is not enough of you, Dragosani, and your blood lacks substance. I hunger and would feast — and what are you but a nibble?

'I… I'm going now…'

Aye, begone. Come back when you're a man and not merely an irritation.

And over his shoulder as he quickly, tremblingly left the place and headed for the clean snow of the firebreak, Boris called back: 'You're only a dead thing. You know nothing! What can you tell me? ¹

/ am an undead thing. I know everything that needs to be known. I can tell you everything.

'About what?'

About life, about death, about undeath!

'I don't want to know those things!'

But you will, you will.

'And when will you tell me these things?'

When you can understand, Dragosani.

'You said I was your future. You said you were my past. That's a lie. I have no past. I'm just a boy.'

Oh? Ha, ha, ha! So you are, so you are. But in your thin blood runs the history of a race, Dragosani. I am in you and you are in me. And our line is… ancient! I know all you want to know, all you will want to know. Aye, and this knowledge shall be yours, and you shall be one of an elite and ancient order of beings.

Boris was half-way to the break now. Until this point and from the moment he fled, his conversation had been part bravado, part terror, like a man whistling in the dark. Now, feeling safer, he became curious again. Clinging to the bole of a tree and turning to look back, he asked: 'Why do you offer anything to me? What do you want of me?'

Nothing which you will not give freely. Only that which is offered freely. I want something of your youth, your blood, your life, Dragosani, that you may live in me. And in return… your life shall be as long, perhaps even longer, than mine.

Boris sensed something of the lust, the greed, the eternal endless craving. He understood — or misunderstood — and the darkness behind him seemed to swell, expand, rush upon him like some black poisonous cloud. He turned from it, fled, saw ahead the dazzling white of firebreak through the black boles of trees. 'You want to kill me!' he sobbed. 'You want me dead, like you!'

No, I want you undead. There is a difference. I am that d ifference. And so are you. It's in your blood — it's in your try name — Dragosaaniiii…

And as the voice faded to silence Boris emerged into the open space of the firebreak. In the fading light he felt fear falling from him like a weight, felt strangely — uplifted? — so that he held himself erect as he descended to the foot of the hill and found his sledge. Bubba had waited there, patiently, but when Boris reached out a hand to pat him the dog snarled and drew back, the hair rising in a stiff ridge all along his back. And after that Bubba would have nothing at all to do with him…

Under Dragosani's gaze the snow faded from memory and the slopes turned green again. The old scar of the firebreak was there still, but merging into the natural.contours of the hill under the weight of almost twenty years of growth. Saplings were grown into trees now, their foliage thickening, and in another twenty years it would be difficult to tell that the firebreak had ever been there in the first place.

Dragosani supposed that somewhere in the land ordi nances governing these parts, there must be a clause which still forbade farming or hewing or gaming on the green cross of the hills. Yes, for despite old Kinkovsi's lack of more typical peasant superstition (which was doubtless a direct spin-off of the relative tourist boom) the old fears still lived. The taboos were still there, even if their origins were forgotten. They still existed, as surely as the thing in the ground existed. Laws which were intended to isolate it now protected it, preserved it.

The thing in the ground. That was how he thought of it. Not as 'he' but 'it'. The old devil, the dragon, the vampir. The real vampire and not merely a creature of sensational novels and films. Still there, lying in the ground, waiting.

Again Dragosani let his mind slip back through the years…

When he was nine the local school in Lonesti had closed and his step-father had boarded him out to a school in Ploiesti. There in a very short time it had been discovered that his intelligence was of a high order, and the State