Necroscope IV: Deadspeak

appointments. No racks of amphorae or frescoed walls here; the place was more habitation than warehouse; woven tapestries were on the walls, and the floor was of green-glazed tiles set in mortar. Centrally, a mosaic of smaller tiles described the prophetic crest of the Ferenczy, while to one side and close to a massive fireplace stood an ancient table of dense, black oak.

The wall hangings were falling into mouldering tatters and the dust lay as thick here as anywhere, but yet there was a seeming anomaly. Upon the desk were papers, books, envelopes, various seals and waxes, pens and inks: modern things by comparison with anything else Dumitru had seen. The Ferenczy's things? He had assumed the Old One to be dead — or undead — but all of this seemed to suggest otherwise.

No, the Baron's viscous mental voice contradicted him, not mine but the property of… shall we say, a student of mine? He studied my works, and might even have dared to study me! Oh, he knew well enow the words to call me up, but he did not know where to find me, nor even that I was here at all! But alas, I fancy he's no more. Most likely his bones adorn the upper ruins somewhere. It shall delight me to discover them there one day, and do for him what he might so easily have done for me!

While the voice of Janos Ferenczy so darkly and yet obscurely reminisced, so Dumitru Zirra had crossed to the table. There were copies of letters there, but not in any language he could read. He could make out the dates, though, from fifty years earlier, and something of the far-flung postal addresses and addressees. There had been a M. Raynaud in Paris, a Josef Nadek in Prague, one Colin Grieve in Edinburgh, and a Joseph Curwen in Providence; oh, and a host of others in the towns and cities of as many different lands again. The writer to all of these names and addresses, as witness his handwriting on the browned paper, was one and the same person: a certain Mr Hutchinson, or 'Edw. H.', as he more frequently signed himself.

As for the books: they meant nothing to Dumitru. A peasant, however much travelled and practised in certain tongues and dialects, such titles as the Turba Philosopho-rum, Bacon's Thesaurus Chemicus and Trithemius's De Lapide Philosophico meant nothing to him. Or if they did, he made no real connection.

But in one book which still lay open, and despite the dust lying thick on its pages, Dumitru saw pictures which did mean something, and something quite horrific. For there, in painstaking and pain-giving detail, were shown a series of the most hideous and brutal tortures, the like of which caused him — even half-hypnotized as he was — to flinch and draw back a little, distancing himself from the page. But in the next moment his eyes were drawn to the rest of that room's appurtenances, which until now had not impressed themselves upon his mind; that is, to the great manacles fastened to the walls by heavy chains, to certain badly corroded implements idly tossed to the floor in one corner, and to the several iron braziers which still contained the ashes of olden fires.

Before he could give these items any further attention, however, if he had wanted to:

Dumiitruuu, crooned that gurgling voice in his head, now tell me: have you ever thirsted? Have you ever wandered in a dry desert, with never sight nor sign of water, and felt your throat contract to a throbbing ulcer through which you can scarce draw breath? Well, possibly you may have known a time when you felt dry as salt, which might help you to understand something of the way I feel now. But only something of it. Certainly you have never been as salt. Ah, if only I could describe my thirst, my son!

But enough; I'm sure now that you perceive something of my arts, my meaning, my power and destiny, and that the requirements of One such as I have importance far above any question of common life and lives. And the time has come to introduce you to the final mystery, wherein we both shall know the most exquisite ecstasies. The great chimney, Dumiitruuu — go in.

Go into a chimney, a fireplace? Dumitru looked at it, felt the urge to draw back from it, and could not. Massively built, the fire-scarred hole was all of four feet wide and five high, arched over and set with a central keystone at its top; he need stoop only a little to pass inside. Before doing so he lit another torch — a pause which Janes Ferenczy saw as a sign of hesitancy. Quickly now, Dumiitruuu, the awful voice urged, for even in dissolution — no, especially in dissolution — my need is not to be kept waiting. It is such that I cannot endure it.

Dumitru passed into the fireplace, held up his torch to light the place. Above him soared a wide, scorched flue, which angled back gradually into the wall. Holding his torch away, the youth looked for light from above and saw only darkness. That was not strange: the chimney must pass through several angles in its climb to the surface, and of course it would be blocked where the upper regions lay in ruins.

Bringing the torch close again, Dumitru saw iron rungs set in the sloping back wall of the flue. In its heyday, the castle's chimneys would need sweeping from time to time. And yet… there was no accumulation of soot such as might be expected; apart from a superficial scorching, the chimney seemed hardly used at all.

Oh, it has been used, my son, Janos Ferenczy's mental voice chuckled obscenely. You shall see, you shall see. But first, step aside a little. Before you ascend there are those who must descend! Small minions of mine, small friends…

Dumitru crushed back against a side wall; there came a fluttering, rapidly amplified by the chimney into a roar, and a colony of small bats whose hurtling bodies formed an almost solid shaft rushed down and out from the flue, dispersing into the subterranean vaults. For long moments they issued from the flue, until Dumitru began to think they must be without number. But then the roaring in the chimney diminished, a few latecomers shot by him, and all was silence once more.

Now climb, said the Ferenczy, again closing his grip on the mind of his mental slave.

The rungs were wide and shallow, twelve inches apart and set very firmly into the mortar between the stones. Dumitru found that he could carry his torch and, using only his feet and one hand, still climb easily enough. After only nine or ten rungs the chimney narrowed considerably, and after as many again flattened through about forty-five degrees to become little more than an upward-sloping shaft. Within the space of a further twenty feet the rungs petered out and were replaced by shallow slab-like steps; the 'floor' then levelled out entirely and the 'ceiling' gradually receded to a height of some nine or ten feet.

Now Dumitru found himself in a narrow, featureless stone passageway no more than three feet wide and of indeterminate length, where a feeling of utmost dread quickly enveloped him, bringing him to a crouching halt. Trembling and oozing cold sweat — with his heart fluttering in his chest like a trapped bird, and clammy perspiration sticking his clothes to his back and thighs — the youth thrust out his torch before him. Up ahead in the shadows where they flickered beyond the full range of illumination, a pair of yellow triangular eyes — wolf eyes and feral — floated low to the floor and reflected the torch's fitful light. They were fixed upon Dumitru.

An old friend of mine, Dumiitruuu, Janos Ferenczy's voice crawled in his mind like mental slime. Just like the Szgany, he and his kith and kin have watched over me many a year. Why, all manner of curious folk might come wandering up here but for these wolves of mine! Did he perhaps frighten you? You thought him below and behind you, and here he is ahead? But can't you see that this is my bolthole? And what sort of a bolthole, pray, with just one way in and out? No, only follow this passage far enough, and it emerges in a hole in the face of the sheer cliff. Except… you shall not be required to go so far.

The voice scarcely bothered to disguise its threat; the Ferenczy would not be denied his dues now; his grip on Dumitru's mind and will tightened like a vice of ice. And: Proceed, he coldly commanded.

Ahead of the youth the great wolf turned and loped on, a grey shadow that merged with the greater darkness. Dumitru followed, his step uncertain, his heart pounding until he thought he could actually hear the blood singing in his ears, like the ocean in the whorl of a conch. And he wasn't the only one who could hear it.

Ah, my son, my son! The voice was a gurgle of monstrous anticipation, of unbridled lust. Your heart leaps in you like a stag fixed with a bolt! Such strength, such youth! I feel it all! But whatever it is that causes such panic in you, be sure it is almost at an end, Dumiitruuu… The passage widened; on Dumitru's left the wall as before, but on his right a depression, a trench running parallel, cut in the solid rock — indeed in bedrock — that deepened with each pace he took. He extended his torch out over the rim and looked down, and in the deepest section of the trench saw… the rim and narrow neck of a black urn, half- buried in dark soil!

The rim of the urn — like a dark pouting mouth, with lips that seemed to expand and contract loathsomely in the flickering light — stood some five feet below the level of Dumitru's path. Beyond the urn, the bed of the trench had been raised up. Cut in a 'V, like a sluice, it sloped gently downwards to a raised rim channelled into a narrow