Necroscope

Dragosani and Batu had ever thought to hear; and at the very end, just before the horror dragged him under, words which at last the petrified watchers could understand:

'Not you!' Shukshin babbled. 'Oh God, oh no, not you!'

Then he was gone, and the thing of bones and mud and weeds and death with him…

And Harry Keogh was left to scramble out on to the river bank.

Batu might perhaps have gone blindly, numbly after him but Dragosani still clutched at his arm. He clutched it, almost for support. Batu began to adopt his killing crouch but Dragosani stopped that, too. 'No, Max,' he hoarsely whispered, 'we don't dare. We've seen something of what he can do, but what other talents does he possess?'

Batu understood, relaxed, drew himself upright. On the bank above them Harry Keogh became aware of their presence for the first time. He turned his face towards them, found them, stared at them. His eyes focused on them at last and he looked as though he might speak, but he said nothing. For long moments they simply stared at

each other, all three, and then Keogh glanced back at the jagged patch of black water. 'Thanks, Ma,' he said, simply.

Dragosani and Batu watched as he turned, staggered, stumbled and then began to run weavingly back towards Shukshin's house. They watched him go, and made no attempt to follow. Not yet. When he was out of sight Batu hissed:

'But that thing, Comrade Dragosani? It wasn't — couldn't be — human. So what was it?'

Dragosani shook his head. He believed he knew the answer but wouldn't commit himself now. 'I'm not sure,' he said. 'It had been human once, though. One thing is certain: when Keogh needed help it came to him. That's his talent, Max: the dead answer his call.' And he turned to the other, his eyes darker still in sunken orbits.

'They answer his call, Max. And there are a lot more of the dead than there are of the living.'

Chapter Thirteen

On Thursday morning Harry went back to the river, back to the place where his mother lay once more locked in mud and weed. Except that there were two of them there now, and he had not gone to talk to her but to Viktor Shukshin. He took a cushion from the car and carried it down to the river bank, putting it down in snow six inches deep before seating himself and hugging his knees. Below where he sat the ice had crusted over again and snow had settled on the place where he'd cut his escape hole, so that only an outline showed through.

After sitting in silence for a while, he said: 'Stepfather, can you hear me?'

'…Yes,' came the answer in a little while. 'Yes, I can hear you, Harry Keogh. I hear you and I feel your presence! Why don't you go away and leave me in peace?'

'Be careful, Stepfather. Mine might be the last voice you ever hear. If I 'go away and leave you in peace', who'll speak to you then?'

'So that's your talent, is it, Harry? You speak to the dead. You're a corpse rabble-rouser! Well, I want you to know that it hurts me, like all ESP hurts me. But last night, for the first time in many long years, I lay here in my freezing bed and slept soundly, and there was no pain. Who'll speak to me? I don't want anyone to speak to me! I want peace.'

'What do you mean, it hurts you?' Harry pressed. 'How can my just being here hurt anything?'

Shukshin told him.

'And that's why you killed my mother?'

'Yes, and it's why I tried to kill you. But in your case,

it might also have served to save my own life.' And now he told Harry about the men Borowitz had sent to kill him, Dragosani and Batu.

Harry wasn't satisfied. He wanted to know it all, from the beginning right to the present. Tell me about it,' he said, 'all of it, and I swear I won't bother you again.'

And so Shukshin told him.

About Borowitz and the Chateau Bronnitsy. About the Russian ESPers where they worked for world conquest through ESP in their secret den in the heart of the USSR. He told of how Borowitz had sent him out of Russia to England to find and kill British ESPers, and how he had broken away and become a British citizen. And he told him again about the curse that dogged him: how ESP-talented people rubbed his nerves raw and brought on the madness in him. And at last Harry understood and might almost have pitied Shukshin — were it not for his mother.

And as Shukshin talked so Harry thought of Sir Keenan Gormley and the British E-Branch, and he remembered his promise to go and see Gormley and perhaps join his group when all of this had been sorted out. Well, now it was sorted out. And now Harry knew that he must go and see Gormley. For Viktor Shukshin wasn't the only guilty one. There were others far worse than he could ever be. The one who had sent him out on his murderous mission in the first place, for instance. For if Shukshin had never come here, Harry's mother would still be alive.

And at last Harry was satisfied. Until now his life had seemed greatly aimless, unfulfilled — his one ambition had been to kill Shukshin — but now he knew that it was bigger than that, and suddenly he felt small in view of the task which still awaited him.

'All right, Stepfather,' he finally said, I'll leave you now and let you rest. But it's a peace you don't deserve. I can't and won't forgive you.'

'I don't want your forgiveness, Harry Keogh, just your promise that you'll leave me alone here,' Shukshin told him. 'And you've given me that. So now go and get yourself killed and let me be.. '

Harry climbed stiffly to his feet. Every bone in his body ached — his head, too — and he felt completely sapped of strength. It was partly physical, but mostly emotional. It was the calm which follows on the storm, and, although he couldn't yet know it, it was also the lull before the greater storm still to come.

But now he shrugged himself upright, left the cushion lying there forgotten in the snow, headed back towards his car. Behind him and yet with him a voice said in his mind: 'Goodbye, Harry.' But it wasn't Shukshin's voice.

'Goodbye, Ma,' he answered. 'And thanks. I'll always love you.'

'And I'll always love you, Harry.'

'What?' now came Shukshin's horrified mental gasp. 'What! Keogh, what's this? I saw you raise her up, but — ?'

Harry didn't answer. He let Mary Keogh do it for him:

'Hello, Viktor. No, you're wrong. Harry didn't raise me up. I raised myself up. For the sake of love, which is something you can't understand. But that's over now and I'll not do it again. My Harry has others to look after him now; so I'll just lie here, lonely in the mud. Except maybe it won't be so lonely now…'

'Keogh!' Shukshin frantically called out after Harry again. 'Keogh, you promised me — you said you were the only one who could talk to me. But now she is talking to me — and she hurts me most of all!'

Harry kept on walking.

'Now, now, Viktor,' he heard his mother's answer, as if she spoke to a small child. 'That will get you nowhere. Did you say you want peace and quiet? Oh, but you'll soon get bored with peace and quiet, Viktor.'

'Keogh!' Shukshin's voice was a diminishing mental shriek now. 'Keogh, you have to get me out of this. Dig me up — tell them where to find my body — only don't leave me here with her!'

'Actually, Viktor,' Mary Keogh remorselessly continued, 'I think I'll rather enjoy talking to you. You're so close to me here that it's no effort at all!'

'Keogh, you bastard! Come back! Oh… please…. come… back!'

But Harry kept on walking.

By 1:30 p.m. Harry was back in Hartlepool. The roads were nightmarish, layered with compacted snow for more than half the journey, so that in the main he was driving on his nerves. This only served to drain more of his strength, and when at last he got home it was as much as he could do to drag himself upstairs.