Necroscope

on his own, or rather in the company of his dead uncle. Aunt Jackie had made him promise he wouldn't leave Sir Keenan on his own, and of course he hadn't refused her that.

But when he got back to the house after putting his wife on the Chichester train -

That had been the worst of all. It had been — mindless! Ghoulish! Unbelievable! And for all that it had been fifteen minutes ago, he was still reeling, still sick, numb to his brain with shock and horror, when Harry Keogh's ring at the doorbell took him staggering to the front door.

Tin Harry Keogh,' said the young man on the door step. 'Sir Keenan Gormley asked me to come and see — '

'H-help!' Banks whispered, choking the word out as if there was no wind in him, as if all the spit had dried up in him. 'God, Jesus Christ! — whoever you are — h-help me!'

Harry looked at him in amazement, grabbed him in order to hold him up. 'What is it? What's happened? This is Sir Keenan Gormley's house, isn't it?'

The other nodded. He was slowly turning green, about to throw up — again — at any moment. 'C-come in. He's in… in there. In the living-room, of all bloody places — but don't go in there. I have to… have to call the police. Somebody has to, anyway!' His legs began to buckle and Harry thought he would fall. Before that could happen he pushed him backwards and down into a chair in the lobby. Then he crouched down beside him and shook him.

'Is it Sir Keenan? What's happened to him?'

Even before the answer came, Harry knew.

Soon to die in agony. First and foremost a patriot.

Banks looked up, stared at Harry from a green-tinged face. 'Did you… did you work for him?'

'I was going to.'

Banks baulked, burst to his feet, staggered to a tiny

room to one side of the lobby. 'He died last night,' he managed to gulp the words out. 'A heart attack. He was to be cremated tomorrow. But now — ' He yanked open the door and the odour of fresh vomit welled out. The room was a toilet and it was obvious that he'd already used it.

Harry turned his face away, grabbed a mouthful of fresh air from the open front door before quietly closing it. Then he left Banks retching and walked through into the living-room — and saw for himself what was wrong with Banks.

And what was wrong with Sir Keenan Gormley.

A heart attack, Banks had said. One look at the room told Harry there'd been an attack, all right, but what sort didn't bear thinking about. He fought down the bile which at once rose up and threatened to swamp him, went back to Banks where he crouched weakly at the bowl of the toilet in the small room. 'Call the police when you can,' he said. 'Sir Keenan's office, too, if anyone's on duty there. I'm sure he would want them to know about… this. I'll stay here with you — with him — for a little while.'

'Th-thanks,' said Banks, without looking up. 'I'm sorry I can't be more help right now. But when I came in and found him like that…'

'I understand,' said Harry.

'I'll be OK in a minute. I'm working on it.'

'Of course.'

Harry went back to the other room. He saw everything, began to catalogue the horror, then stopped. What stopped him was this: a Queen Anne chair with claw feet lay on its side on the floor. One of its wooden legs was broken off just below the platform of the seat. Embedded in the club-like foot was a tooth; other teeth, wrenched out, lay scattered on the floor; the mouth of the corpse

had been forced open and now gaped like a black shaft in ' the wildly distorted, frozen grimace of the face!

Harry gropingly found himself a seat — another chair, but one free of debris — and collapsed into it. He closed his eyes, pictured the room as it must have looked before this. Sir Keenan in his coffin on an oak table draped in black, rose-scented candles burning at head and feet. And then, as he lay here alone, the… intrusion.

But why?

'Why, Keenan?' he asked.

'Noooo! No, keep off!' came the answer at once, causing Harry to rock back in his chair with its force, its fear, its freezing terror. 'Dragosani, you monster! No more — for God's sake have pity, man!'

'Dragosani?' Harry reached out soothing mental fingers. 'This isn't Dragosani, Keenan. It's me, Harry Keogh.'

'What?' the single word was a gasp in his mind. 'Keogh? Harry?' Then a sigh, a sob of relief. 'Thank God! Thank God it's you, Harry, and not… not him!'

'Was this Dragosani?' Harry gritted his teeth. 'But why? Is he insane? He would have to be totally — '

'No,' Gormley's vigorous denial cut him off. 'Oh, he is crazy, of course he is — but crazy like a fox! And his talent is… hideous!'

Suddenly the answer — or what he thought was the answer — came to Keogh in a flash. He felt the blood draining from him. 'He came to you after you died!' he gasped. 'He's like me, a necroscope.'

'No, absolutely not!' again Gormley's denial. 'Not like you at all, Harry. I'm talking to you because I want to. All of… of us, talk to you. You're the bringer of warmth, of peace. You're contact with the dream that went before and which now has faded. You're a chance — the one last chance — that something worthwhile might

linger over, might even be passed on. A light in the darkness, Harry, that's what you are. But Dragosani — '

'What is his talent?'

'He's a necromancer — and that's a different thing entirely!'

Harry opened his eyes a crack and glanced once more at the state of the room. But as the horror welled up again he closed his eyes and said: 'But this is the work of a ghoul!'

That and worse,' Gormley shuddered, and Harry felt it — felt the dead man's shudder of absolute terror shaking his spirit. 'He… he doesn't just talk, Harry, he doesn't ask. Doesn't even try. He just reaches in and takes, steals. You can't hide anything from him. He finds his answers in your blood, your guts, in the marrow of your very bones. The dead can't feel pain, Harry, or they shouldn't. But that's part of his talent, too. When Boris Dragosani works, he makes us feel it. I felt his knives, his hands, his tearing nails. I knew everything he did, and all of it was hell! After one minute I would have told him everything, but that's not his way, it's not his art. How could he be sure I told the truth? But his way he knows it's the truth! It's written in skin and muscle, in ligaments and tendons and corpuscles. He can read it in brain fluid, in the mucus of the eye and ear, in the texture of the dead tissue itself!'

Harry kept his eyes closed, shook his head, felt sick and dizzy and totally disoriented, as if this were all happening to someone else. At last he said: 'This can't — mustn't — happen again. He has to be stopped. I have to stop him. But I can't do it alone.'

'Oh, yes, he has to be stopped, Harry. Especially now. You see, he took everything. He knows it all. He knows our strengths, our weaknesses, and all of it is knowledge he can use. Him and his master, Gregor Borowitz. And you may well be the only one who can stop him.'

With another part of his awareness, Harry heard Banks on the telephone in the lobby. Time was now short, and there was so much Gormley must tell him. 'Listen, Keenan. We have to hurry now. I'll stay with you a little while longer, and then I'll find a hotel in the city. But if I stay here now the police will want to talk to me. Anyway, I'll find a place and from now until you — ' he realised what he had almost said and bit the words off unspoken, but not unvisioned.

' — Until I'm cremated, yes,' said Gormley, and Harry could picture him nodding understandingly. 'It was to have been soon, but now it will probably be delayed.'

'I'll stay in touch,' Harry said. 'There's still a lot I don't know. About our organisation, theirs, how to go about tracking them down. Many things.'

'Do you know about Batu?' again Gormley's fear was apparent. 'The little Mongol, Harry — do you know about him?'

'I know he's one of them, but — ' 'He has the evil eye — he can kill with a glance! My heart attack — he