6
Sandra
Sandra Markham was twenty-seven, possessed a beautiful face and figure, and was a neophyte telepath. As yet her talent was a fifty-fifty thing; she had very little control over it; it came and went. But where Harry Keogh was concerned, that might be just as well. Sometimes, in Harry's mind, she'd read things she was sure had no right to be there - or in any sane mind, for that matter.
She and Harry had made love only an hour ago, and afterwards he had at once fallen asleep. Sandra had come to know Harry's habits well enough: he'd stay asleep for three or four hours, which for him would serve as a full night's rest. As for Sandra: she would have to sleep tomorrow, at her own place in Edinburgh, making up the night's deficiency.
Staring right into Harry's pale, relaxed, almost little-boyish face, she saw no sign as yet of the rapid eye movements which would tell her that he was dreaming. So for now she too could relax. It was Harry's dreams which most interested her. That was what she tried to keep telling herself, anyway.
She worked for E-Branch. Sometimes she wished she didn't, but she did. That was how she earned her daily bread (the meat and gravy, too), so she really shouldn't complain. And in fact there hadn't been too much to complain about, until Harry came along. At first he'd been just another job - a new friend to get close to, learn about and try to understand - but then she'd got in deeper. It had 'just happened', and afterwards she'd wanted it to happen again, and again. Until in a little while he wasn't just a job but more a way of life, not only 'on her mind', as it were, but under her skin as well. And finally she'd started to suppose, and still did, that she was in love with him.
Certainly working on Harry's case (she hated thinking of it like that, but it was the truth however she dressed it up) had been more interesting than being a human divining rod on cases the police couldn't solve. That was how E-Branch used her, usually: to eavesdrop criminal minds - the minds of prisoners in their cells, too tough for the law to crack - looking for those damning clues which more orthodox methods couldn't turn up. Which would be satisfying enough work in itself, if only she didn't actually have to go in there. Because minds like those were often cesspools, which frequently left her knowing how sewers smell. And sometimes, especially if it was a brutal murder or rape, the smell could linger for a long, long time.
Which was probably the reason she'd fallen in love with Harry Keogh. Because his mind was a field of daisies... most of the time. In fact he had the gentlest mind she'd ever come across: not soft, no way! Not even naive, though there was something of that in him too, but just ... just gentle. Harry wouldn't much like hurting anything, or anybody.
With Sandra's looks it would be strange if there had been no men. There had been men, a few. But her talent wasn't something she could just switch on and off. Indeed that was its one big drawback: without so much as a by your leave, it came and went. Tonight a man would wine and dine you, take you home and kiss your hand on your doorstep, and ask to see you again. And as you were about to say yes his mind would open like a book and you would see him in there like some great rutting satyr - and you'd be in there with him. Not all men, no, but enough.
But that wasn't all; there was also the deceit; the fact that people lie. Like the neighbour in the flat next door who smiles and says, 'Good morning,' to you on the stairs, when she's actually thinking: Piss off and die, you ugly bitch! Or the hairdresser who makes small talk while he does your hair, and you suddenly hear him thinking: God, they pay me nine pounds an hour for this! She must have more money than sense, the stupid cow!
Oh, there had been men, all right. The good-looking ones who only worried how they looked. And the not-so-good lookers whose minds seethed with jealousy if anyone else even smiled at you. And then, having got safely through an entire week of evenings with a 'perfect' companion, to have him make love to you and lie there beside you in your bed, wondering if he'll have time for another and still catch the last bus home.
It was life and Sandra knew it, and she'd learned to live with it ever since her middle teens when the thing had first started to develop in her. But it hadn't left much room for 'love'. Not until Harry, anyway.
He was such ... an anomaly.
She'd read his file, as well as his mind. He had killed men, a great many. That's what it said in his file. But it didn't say he remembered and regretted almost every one of them, or how every now and then he'd get the urge to go back and tell them he was sorry, but really he'd had no choice. It didn't say he still had nightmares about some of the things he'd seen and done. And anyway, Sandra really couldn't believe half of the things credited (credited? Or better perhaps, ascribed?) to him. Her own talent was paranormal, yes, but what Harry could do - what he'd used to do - was supernatural. And he'd used his powers the best way he knew how. He had killed many men with them, but he'd never murdered a one.
Sandra knew how murderers thought, and they didn't think like Harry Keogh. Their thoughts were deep and dark as red wine, but tumbled as a rough sea, and full of shoals and eddies; while his were clear spring water over rounded pebbles. Oh, his mind could be sharp, too; there were plenty of daggers in there, if you gave him cause to whet them; but they were clearly visible at all times, not hidden away, neither afraid of themselves nor of detection. No, there were no dark corners or mean streets in Harry's mind. Or if there were, he wasn't the one to dwell on or in them.
And in that same moment, lying there beside him, Sandra knew how she'd defined him. He was, could only be, one of two things: either completely amoral, or naturally innocent. And since she knew there was no lack of morality, that made him an innocent. A bloody innocent, but nevertheless blameless. A child with blood on his hands and on his conscience and in his nightmares, which he had chosen to keep to himself except when they were unbearable, when he went to Bettley. Well, she wasn't sure what that made Bettley - a Judas-priest? A father confessor who told? - but she couldn't be happy with what it made her. And the most terrible thing of all, she believed he half-suspected. Which would explain why he was never completely at his ease with her, and why he couldn't seem to enjoy her the way she wanted him to, the way she enjoyed him. Christ, to have found a man like Harry, only to discover that of all men he was the one she probably couldn't have! Not the way she wanted him, anyway.
Suddenly angry with herself - wanting to throw off all the covers and leap out of bed, but caring enough that she wouldn't disturb him - she carefully removed his hand from where it lay draped diagonally across her and slid sideways out from between the sheets. And naked she went to the bathroom.
She was neither warm nor cold nor thirsty, but she felt she had to do something. Something ordinary, to herself, to change herself physically. And that way perhaps to change her mood, too. In the daytime it would be the simplest thing: she would walk to the park and watch the smallest children at play, and know that something of their worlds of faerie would soon find its way into her own far less Elysian existence. And when that thought came, she knew for certain that for someone who was usually so positive, she must now be feeling pretty damned negative. That she should need someone else's innocence to balance the weight of her own guilt.
She drank a glass of water, splashed cold water up under her arms and breasts where their lovemaking had made her perspire, towelled her flesh dry and examined herself critically in the long bathroom mirror.
Unlike Harry, there was little or no naivet�� in Sandra. There might be, except for her telepathy. But it's hard to be naive or innocent in a world where people's minds are wont to flutter open like pages in a book, and you don't have the power to look away but must read what's written there. The other E-Branch telepaths - people like Trevor Jordan - were luckier in this respect; they were obliged to apply, channel their talent; it didn't just come and go for them, like a badly-tuned radio station.
Angry again, Sandra shook her head. There she went again: great waves of self-pity! What? Pity for herself? For this beautiful creature in the mirror? And how often had she heard it broadcast, from so many of those stations out there: God, but what I'd give to be like her!
Ah, if only they knew!
But how much worse if she'd been ugly... ?
She had large, greeny-blue, penetrating eyes over a small, tilted nose; a mouth she'd trained to be soft and uncynical; small ears almost lost in the burnish of copper hair, and high cheek-bones curving down delicately to a rounded, rather self-conscious chin. Of course she was conscious of herself. Other people were, and so she had to be.
Her right eyebrow, a slightly upward-tilted line of bronze, was questioning, almost challenging. As if she were saying: 'Go on - think it!' And sometimes she was.
Her smile was bright, rewarding, involuntary on those occasions when she detected complimentary thoughts. Or she might darken her high brow and narrow her eyes to knife-point at some of the other things she 'heard'. At a glance, then, Sandra's face might well be mistaken for the face on the cover of any number of glossy, popular ladies' magazines. But on closer inspection it would be seen that there were boundless tracts of character there, too. Her twenty-seven years had not left her unblemished; there were laughter lines in the corners of her eyes, yes, but other faint lines lay parallel and horizontal on her brow, speaking volumes for the number of times she'd frowned. She was grateful that the latter didn't detract from her looks overall.
As for the rest of her:
But for two personal criticisms, Sandra's body would be near-perfect, or as close as she would wish it to be. She was too large 'up top', which gave her a bouncing elasticity she was afraid might type-cast her, and her legs were far too long.
'Well, you might find those things a disadvantage,' Harry's voice came back to her from a previous time, 'but I'm all for it!' He liked it when, in their lovemaking, she'd wrap her legs right round him; or when she let her breasts dangle in his face, inviting his attentions. Her large nipples, asymmetrical as most nipples are, seemed a constant fascination to him, at least on those occasions when he was all there. But far too often he'd be somewhere else entirely. And now another truth dawned on her: too often she'd used her sex to trap him in the here and now, as if she were afraid that if she released him he'd fly ... somewhere else.
Suddenly cold, she put out the bathroom light and went back to the bedroom.
Harry lay just as she'd left him, on his side, facing left, his right arm draped in the hollow she'd occupied. And still his breathing was deep and steady, his eyelids unmoving. A brief telepathic glimpse, unbidden, denned endless, empty vaults of dream, through which he drifted looking for a door. It came and went, and Sandra sighed. There were always doors in Harry's dreams, revenant perhaps of the Möbius doors he'd once called up mathematically out of thin air.
He'd once told her: 'Now that it's over I sometimes get this feeling it was all a dream, or a story read in a book of fantasy. Unreal, something I made up, or maybe an out-of-body experience. But that brings back all too clearly what it was really like to be incorporeal, and I know that it happened for a fact. How can I explain it? Have you ever dreamed you could fly? That you actually knew how to fly?'
'Yes,' she'd answered, in her mildly Edinburghian Scottish accent. 'Often, and very vividly. I used to run down a steeply sloping field to take off, and soar up over the Pentland hills, over the village where I was born. It was sometimes frightening, but I remember knowing exactly how it was done!'
Harry had been excited. 'That's right! And waking up you tried to hang on to it, you were reluctant to let the secret vanish with the dream. And it vexed you when you were completely awake to learn that you were earthbound again. Well,' (and he'd sighed as his excitement ebbed), 'that's pretty much how it sometimes is for me. Like something I had in a long series of childhood dreams, but burned out of me now and gone forever.'
Better for you, Harry, she'd thought. That world was a dangerous place. You're safe now.
But not much good for E-Branch, and definitely not why she was here. On the contrary, they wanted his powers restored and didn't much care how. And she was supposed to be part of the restoration team.
She slipped into bed with him, as much for his warmth as for anything, and his free hand automatically cupped her breast. His body was lean and hard, well-trained. He insisted on keeping it that way. 'It's years older than me,' he'd once told her, without an ounce of humour, 'and so I have to look after it.' As if it wasn't his but something he was care-taking. Hard to believe there'd been a time when it really wasn't his. But she hadn't known him - or it - then, and was glad for that.
'Ummm?' he murmured now, as she moulded herself to him.
'Nothing,' she whispered in the darkness of the room. 'Shh!'
'Ummm...' he said again, and instinctively drew her closer.
He was warm and he was Harry. She'd never felt so safe with anyone before. Him with all his hangups, and yet when she was with him like this it was like clinging to a rock. She stroked his chest, but gently so as not to awaken or arouse him, and tried to will him into deeper sleep -
- And like a fool willed herself there instead.
Haaarry... ! Harry's Ma, Mary Keogh, called to him from her watery grave, and couldn't get through to him. She never could these days, and knew why, but it didn't stop her from trying. Harry, there's someone who's trying very hard to talk to you. He says you were friends, and that what he has to say is very important.
Harry could hear her, but he couldn't answer. He knew that he must not answer, for talking to the dead had been forbidden to him. If he should try it, or ever consider trying it, then once more he'd hear that irresistible voice in his mind, reinforcing those commands by means of which his Necroscope powers had been made worthless:
Under penalty of pain, you may not, Harry! Aye, great pain. Such torture that the voices of the teeming dead would be distorted beyond recognition. Such mental agony that you would never dare try again. I've no desire to be cruel, father, but it's for your own protection - as well as mine. Faethor Ferenczy, Thibor, and Yulian Bodescu, they might well have been the last - or they might not. The Wamphyri have powers, father! And if there are more of them hidden in your world, how long before they seek you out and find you... before you can find them? But they will only seek you out if they have reason to fear you. Which is why I now remove such reason utterly! Do you understand?
To which Harry had answered: 'You do it for yourself. Not because you fear for me, but for you. You fear that I'll come back one day, discover you in your aerie and destroy you. I've told you I could never do that. Obviously my word isn't good enough.'
People change, Harry. You could change, too. I'm your son, but I'm also a vampire. I can't chance it that you'll not come looking for me one day with sword and stake and fire. I've said it before: as a Necroscope you're dangerous, but without the dead you're impotent. Without them, no more Möbius Continuum. You can't come back here, nor seek me in the other places. And yes, this is another reason why I place these strictures upon you.
'Then you doom me to torture. It's inescapable. The dead love me. They will talk to me!'
They may try, but you will neither hear nor answer them. Not consciously. I hereby deny you that talent.
'But I'm a Necroscope! I talk to the dead out of habit! And what about when I grow old? If I ramble to the dead when I'm an old man, what then? Am I still bound to suffer? All my days?'
Habits are for breaking, Harry. I say it one last time, and then if you doubt me you may try it for yourself: you may not consciously speak to the dead, and if they speak to you, you must strike their words immediately from memory or - suffer the consequences. So be it.
'And all the maths Möbius taught me, am I to forget that, too?'
You have already forgotten it! That is my most immediate stricture, for I won't be invaded in my own territory! Now be done with arguing, for it's over, it ... is ... done!
At which Harry had felt a terrible wrenching in his mind, which made him cry out; followed by darkness; followed by ...
... His return to consciousness in London, at E-Branch HQ.
That had been four years ago. He had told E-Branch all he could, helped them complete and close their files on him and all his works. He was no longer a Necroscope; he could no longer impose his metaphysical will on the physical universe; the branch should have no further use for him now. But even after they'd tried and discarded every means at their disposal to return his paranormal powers to him, still he'd been certain they wouldn't let it rest there. As a Necroscope he'd been too great an asset. They'd never forget him, and if they could get him back they would. And so would his millions of friends, the teeming dead. Oh, Harry's actual friends - his real comrades among the Great Majority - numbered around one hundred only. But the rest knew of him. To them he would always be the one light in their eternal darkness.
And now one of them, by far the most important one to Harry, was trying to speak to him again:
Harry, oh my poor little Harry! Why won't you answer me, son? He had always been her little Harry.
'Because I can't,' he wanted to tell her - but dare not, not even asleep and dreaming. For he'd tried once before, down at the riverbank, and now remembered it only too well:
He'd gone there within the hour of his return to his home near Bonnyrig, the house which she had owned before him, and Viktor Shukshin in between. Shukshin had drowned her under the ice, and left her body to float to this bight in the frozen river. There she'd settled to the bottom, to become one with the mud, the weeds and the silt. And there she'd stayed - until the night Harry called her up again to take her revenge! Since when she'd lain here in peace, or been gradually washed away in pieces. But her spirit was here still.
And it had been here when, like so many times before, he'd gone to sit on the riverbank and look down at the water where it was untroubled and deep and dark in that slowly swirling backwater of reeds and crumbling clay bank. It had been daylight; brambles and weeds growing across the old, disused paths by the river; birdsong in the shady willows and spiky blackthorns.
There were three other houses there beside his own, two of them detached and standing well apart, in large walled gardens extending almost to the river. These two were empty and rapidly falling into disrepair; the third, next door, had been up for sale for several years now. Every so often people would come to look at it, and go away shaking their heads. These were not 'desirable' residences. No, it was a lonely place, which was why Harry liked it. He and his Ma had used to talk in private here, and he'd never had to fear that someone might see him sitting here on his own, apparently mouthing nonsense to himself.
He hadn't known what to expect that time; he only knew that conversation was forbidden, and that there'd be a penalty to pay if he tried to break the strictures placed on his esper's mind. The acid test was the one thing E-Branch hadn't attempted, mainly because he'd refused to go so far. Darcy Clarke had been in charge then, and Darcy's talent had warned him away from pushing Harry, and Harry's friends, too far.
But there on the river Harry's mother, the spirit of the innocent girl she had been, had not been able to resist talking to her son again.
At first there had been only the solitude, the slow gurgle of the river, the birdsong. But in a little while Harry's singular presence had been noted. And: Harry? she had come breathlessly awake in his mind. Harry, is that you, son? Oh, I know it is! You've come home again, Harry!
That was all she'd said to him - but it had been enough.
'Ma - don't!' he'd cried out, staggering to his feet and running, as someone ignited a Roman candle in his skull to shoot off its fireballs into the soft tissues of his brain! And only then had he known what The Dweller, Harry Jnr, had really done to him.
Such mental agony that you will never dare try again! That was what his vampire son had promised, and it was what he'd delivered. Not The Dweller himself, but the post-hypnotic commands he'd left behind, sealed in Harry's mind.
And nightfall had found Harry in the long grasses by the river's edge, painfully regaining consciousness in a world where he now knew beyond any doubt that he was a Necroscope no more. He could no longer communicate with the dead. Or at least, not consciously.
But asleep and dreaming... ?
Haaarry ... his mother's voice called to him again, echoing through the endlessly labyrinthine vaults of his otherwise empty dream. I'm here, Harry, here. And before he knew it he'd turned off and passed through a door, and stood once again on the riverbank, this time in streaming moonlight. And: Is that you, Harry? Her hushed mental voice told him that she scarcely dared to believe it. Have you really come to me?
'I can't answer you, Ma!' he wanted to say, but could only remain silent.
But you have answered me, Harry, was her reply. And he knew it was so. For the dead don't require the spoken word; sufficient to think at them, if you have the talent.
Harry crumpled to the riverbank, adopted a foetal position, hugged his head with his arms and hands and waited for the pain - which didn't come!
Oh, Harry, Harry! she said at once. Did you think that after that first time, I'd deliberately hurt you or cause you to hurt yourself?
'Ma, I - ' (he tried it again, wincing expectantly as he got to his feet),' -1 don't understand!'
Yes, you do, son, she tut-tutted. Of course you do! It's just that you've forgotten. You forget every time, Harry.
'Forgotten? Forgotten what, Ma? What do I forget every time?'
You forget that you've been here before, in dreams, and that what my grandson did to you doesn't count here. That's what you've forgotten, and you do it every time! Now call me up, Harry, so that I can talk to you properly and walk with you a little way.
Was that right, that he could talk to her in dreams? He had used to in the old days - waking and dreaming alike - but it wasn't like that now.
But it is like it now, son. It's just that you need reminding each time!
And then another voice, not his mother's, echoing more in the caverns of his memory than his sleeping mind proper:
... You may not consciously speak to the dead. And if they speak to you, then you must strike their words immediately from memory or - suffer the consequences.
'My son's voice,' he sighed, as understanding came at last. 'So, how many times have we talked, Ma? I mean, since it started to hurt me ... in the last four years, say?' And even as she began to answer him he called her up, so that she rose from the water, reached out and took his hand, and was drawn up onto the bank - a young woman again, as she'd been on the day she died.
A dozen, twenty, fifty times (a mental shrug). It's hard to say, Harry. For always it's more difficult to get through to you. And oh, how we've missed you, Harry.
'We?' He took her hand and they walked along the dark river path together, under a full moon riding high through a cloud-wispy sky.
Me and all your friends, the teeming dead. A hundred there are all eager to hear your gentle voice again, son; a million more who would ask what you said; and all the rest to inquire how you're doing and what's become of you. And as for me: why, I'm like an oracle! For they know that I'm the one you speak to most of all. Or used to ...
'You make me feel like I've forsaken some olden trust,' he told her. 'But there never was one. And anyway, it isn't so! I can't help it that I can no longer talk to you. Or that I can't remember the times when I do. And how has it become difficult to get through to me? You called me and I came. Was that so difficult?'
But you don't always come, Harry. Sometimes I can feel you there, and I call out to you, and you shy away. And each time the waiting grows longer between visits, as if you no longer cared, or had forgotten us. Or as if, perhaps, we'd become a habit? Which you now desire... to break?
'None of that is true!' Harry burst out. But he knew that it was. Not a habit which he would break, no, but one which was being broken for him - by his fear. By his terror of the mental torture which talking to the dead would bring down on him. 'Or if it is true,' he said, more quietly now, 'then it's not my fault. My mind would be no good to you burned out, Ma. And that's what will happen if I push my luck.'
Well, (and suddenly he was aware of a new resolve in her voice, and of the strengthening of her cold fingers where they gripped his hand), then something must be done about it! About your situation, I mean - for there's trouble brewing, son, and the dead lie uneasy in their graves. Do you remember I told you, Harry, there was someone who wanted to talk to you? And how what he had to say was important?
'Yes, I remember. Who is he, Ma, and what is it that's so important?'
He wouldn't say, and his voice came from far, far away. But it's strange when the dead feel pain, Harry, for death usually puts them beyond it.
Harry felt his blood run cold. He remembered only too well how the dead, in certain circumstances, felt pain. Sir Keenan Gormley, murdered by Soviet mindspies, had been 'examined' by Boris Dragosani, a necromancer. And dead as he had been, he had felt the pain. 'Is it ... like that?' he asked his mother now, holding his breath until she answered.
I don't know how it is, she turned to him and looked him straight in the eye, for this is something I've never known before. But Harry, I fear for you! And before he could even attempt to reassure her: Oh, son, son, my poor little Harry - I fear so very, very much for you! Is it like that, you ask? And I say: will it be - can it ever be -like that again? And how, if you're no longer a Necroscope? And then I pray that it can't be. So you see, son, how I'm torn two ways. I miss you, and all the dead miss you, but if it puts you in danger then we can do without it.
He sensed that she was avoiding something. 'Ma, are you sure you don't know who he is, this one who tried to contact me? Are you sure you don't know where he is, right now?'
She let go his hand, turned away, avoided his eyes. Who he is, no, she said. But his voice, his mental voice, Harry, crying out like that. Oh, yes, I know where he is. And all the dead know it, too. He's in hell!
Frowning, he took her shoulders, gently turned her until she faced him again, and said, 'In hell?'
She looked at him, opened her mouth - and nothing but a gurgle came out! She coughed chokingly, spat blood... then straightened up, swelled out, wrenched herself free of his suddenly feeble grasp. He saw something in her mouth, forked and flickering, which wasn't a human tongue! Her skin sagged and grew old, becoming wormy as centuried parchment in a moment! Flesh sloughed from her bones, revealed her skull, smoked into dust as it fell from her like a rotting shroud! She cried out her horror, turned and fled away from him along the riverbank, paused a moment over the bight and looked back. A rancid, disintegrating skeleton, she laughed at him even as she toppled into the water - and he saw that her eyes glowed crimson in the moonlight, and that the teeth in her skull were sharp, curving fangs!
Nailed to the spot - fear-frozen there - Harry could only cry out after her: 'Ma-aaa!' But it wasn't his mother who heard and answered him:
Haaarry! the voice came from a long way away, but still Harry whirled on the riverbank, staring this way and that in the moon-silvered night. There was no one there. Haaarry! it came again, but clearer in his mind. Haaarry Keeeooogh! And it was just as his mother had described it: a voice full of hell's own torment.
Still stunned by his mother's metamorphosis - which he knew could only be some sort of dire warning, for it was nothing she would ever deliberately engineer - Harry was at first unable to answer. But he recognized the voice's despair, its anguish, its hopelessness, as it continued to call to him:
Harry, for God's sake! If you're out there please answer me. I know you shouldn't, I know you daren't - but you must! It's happening again, Harry, it's happening again!