Necroscope 4: Deadspeak (29 page)

The hospital was off Papalouca, one of the New Town’s main roads. It was a big, sprawling place with a frontage all of a hundred yards long. “One section—a ward, clinic and dispensary—is reserved mainly for the treatment of the tourists,” Papastamos explained as their taxi took them in through the gates. “It’s not much in use now, but in July and August the work doesn’t stop. The broken bones, bad sunburns, heatstroke, stings, cuts and bruises. Ken Layard has a room of his own.”

He told their driver to wait, led the way into a side wing where a receptionist sat in her booth clipping her fingernails. As soon as she saw Papastamos she sprang to her feet and spoke to him in breathless, very much subdued Greek. Papastamos at once gasped and went pale. “My friends, you are too late,” he said. “He is … dead!” He looked at Sandra, Darcy and Harry in turn, and shook his head. “There is nothing I can say.”

They were too dumbstruck to answer for a moment, until Harry said: “Can we see him anyway?”

Harry looked cool in a pale blue jacket, white shirt and slacks. He and the others had slept on the plane, catching up on a lot of lost sleep. And despite his travails of the night before, he seemed to have come through it better than them. His face was calm, resigned; unlike Sandra’s and Darcy’s, Papastamos saw no sorrow in it. And the Greek thought:
A cold-blooded one, this Harry Keogh.

But he was wrong: it was simply that Harry had learned to view death differently. Ken Layard might be finished “here”—finished physically, materially, in the corporeal world—but he wasn’t all dead. Not all of him. Why, for all Harry knew Ken might be seeking him out right now, desperate to engage him in deadspeak. Except Harry was forbidden to hear him, and forbidden to answer even if he did.

“See him?” Papastamos answered. “Of course you can. But the girl tells me that first the doctor wishes to see us. His office is this way.” And he led them down a cool corridor where the light came slanting in through high, narrow windows.

They found the doctor, a small bald man with thick-lensed spectacles perched on the end of his hook of a nose, in his tiny office room signing and stamping papers. When Papastamos introduced them to him, Dr Sakellarakis was at once the soul of concern, displaying his very genuine dismay at the loss of their friend.

Speaking half-decent English and shaking his head sadly, he told them: “This bump on the Layard’s head—I ‘fraid is much more than the simple bump, gentlemen, lady. There is perhaps the damage inside? This is not certain until the autopsy, naturally, but I thinks this one is causing the death. The damage, the blood clot, something.” Again he shook his head, gave a sad shrug.

“Can we see him?” Harry asked again. And as the doctor led the way: “When is the autopsy?”

Again the Greek’s shrug. “One days, two—as soon as it can be arranged. But soon. Until then I am having him removed to the morgue.”

“And when did he die—exactly?” Harry was relentless.

“Exactly? To the minute? Is not known. One hour, I thinks. About… ah, 1800 hours?”

“Six o’clock local time,” said Sandra. “We were on the plane.”

“Does there have to be an autopsy?” Harry hated the thought of it; he knew the effect necromancy had on the dead, how much they feared it. Dragosani had been a necromancer, and oh how the dead had loathed and feared him! Of course, this wouldn’t be the same; Layard would feel nothing at the hands of a pathologist, whose skills would be those of the surgeon as opposed to the torturer, but still Harry didn’t like it.

Sakellarakis held up his hands. “It is the law.”

Layard’s room was small, white, clean and pungently antiseptic. He lay full length on a trolley, covered head to toe by a sheet. The bed he’d used had been made up again, and the window closed to keep out flies. Darcy carefully laid back the sheet to show Layard’s face – and drew back at once, wincing. Sandra, too. Layard’s face wasn’t in repose.

“Is the spasm,” Sakellarakis informed, nodding. “The muscles, a contraction. The mortician is putting this one right. Then Layard, he is doing the correct sleeping.”

Harry hadn’t drawn back. Instead he stood over Layard, looking down at him. The esper was grey, clay-cold, frozen in rigor mortis. But his face was fixed in something rather more than that. His jaws were open in a scream and his upper lip at the left had lifted up and away from the teeth, leaving them visible and shining. His entire face seemed pulled to the left in a sort of rictus, as if he screamed his denial of something unbelievable, unbearable.

His eyes were closed, but in the eyelids under the brows Harry saw twin slits in the membranous skin. They were fine but dark and plainly visible against the overall pallor. “He’s been … cut?” Harry glanced at the Greek doctor.

The spasm,” the other nodded. “The eyes come open. It can happen. I make the small cuts in the muscles … no problem.”

Harry licked his lips, frowned, peered intently at the large blue lump showing on Layard’s forehead and continuing into his hair. The shiny skin was broken in the centre, a small abrasion where flesh white as fishbelly showed through. Harry looked at the lump, reached out a hand as if to touch it, then turned away. And: “That look on his face,” he said, under his breath. “No muscular spasm that, but sheer terror!”

Darcy Clarke, for his part, had taken one look at Layard and drawn back first one pace, then another. But he hadn’t stopped drawing back and was now out in the corridor. His face was drawn, eyes staring into the room at the figure on the trolley. Sandra joined him; Harry, too.

“Darcy, what is it?” Sandra’s voice was hushed.

Darcy only shook his head. “I don’t know,” he gulped. “But whatever it is, it’s not right!” It was his talent working, looking out for him.

Papastamos put back the sheet over Layard’s face; he and Sakellarakis came out of the room into the corridor. “Not the spasm, you say?” The doctor looked at Harry and cocked his head on one side. “You are knowing about these things?”

“I know some things about the dead, yes,” Harry nodded.

“Harry’s … an expert,” Darcy had himself under control now.

“Ah!” said Sakellarakis. “A doctor!”

“Listen,” Harry took him by the arm, spoke earnestly to him. “The autopsy must be tonight. And then he must be burned!”

“Burned? You are meaning cremated?”

“Yes, cremated. Reduced to ashes. Tomorrow at the latest.”

“My God!” Manolis Papastamos burst out. “And Ken Layard was your friend? Such friends I don’t need! I thought you were the cold one but… you are not merely cold, you are as dead as he is!”

Cold sweat was beading Harry’s forehead now and he was beginning to look sick. “But that’s just the point,” he said. “I don’t think he is dead!”

“You don’t—?” Dr Sakellarakis’s jaw fell open. “But I know this thing for sure! The gentleman, he is
certain
dead!”

“Undead!” Harry was swaying now.

Sandra’s eyes flew wide. So this was really it. But Harry had been caught off guard; he was shocked, saying too much. “It’s … an English expression!” she quickly cut in. “Undead: not dead but merely departed. Old friends simply … pass on. That’s what he meant. Ken’s not dead but in the hands of God.”

Or the devil!
Harry thought. But he was steadier now and glad that she’d come to his rescue.

Darcy’s mind was also working overtime. “It’s Layard’s religion,” he said, “which requires that he’s burned—cremated—within a day of his dying. Harry only wants to be sure it will be the way he would want it.”

“Ah!” Manolis Papastamos still wasn’t sure, but he thought that at least he was beginning to understand. “Then I have to apologize. I am sorry, Harry.”

“That’s OK,” said Harry. “Can we see Trevor Jordan now?”

“We’ll go right now,” Papastamos nodded. “The asylum is in the Old Town, inside the old Crusader walls. It’s off Pythagoras Street. The nuns run it.”

They used the taxi again and reached their destination in a little over twenty minutes. By now the sun was setting and a cool breeze off the sea brought relief from the heat of the day. During the journey Darcy asked Papastamos: “Incidentally, can you fix us up with somewhere to stay? A decent hotel?”

“Better than that,” said the other. “The tourist season is just starting; many of the villas are still empty; I found you a place as soon as I knew you were coming. After you have seen poor Trevor, then I take you there.”

At the asylum they had to wait until a Sister of Rhodos could be spared from her duties to take them to Jordan’s cell. He was strait jacketed, seated in a deep, high-sided leather chair with his feet inches off the ground. In this position he could do himself no harm, but in any case he seemed asleep. With Papastamos to translate, the Sister explained that they were administering a mild sedative at regular intervals. It wasn’t that Jordan was violent, more that he seemed desperately afraid of something.

“Tell her she can leave us with him,” Harry told the Greek. “We won’t stay long, and we know the way out.” And when Papastamos had complied and the Sister left: “And you, too, Manolis, if you please.”

“Eh?”

Darcy laid a hand on his arm. “Be a good fellow, Manolis, and wait for us outside,” he told him. “Believe me, we know what we’re doing.”

The other shrugged, however sourly, and left.

Darcy and Harry looked at Sandra. “Do you feel up to it?” Darcy said.

She was nervous, but: “It should be easy,” she answered at last. “We’re two of a kind. I’ve had plenty of practice with Trevor and know the way in.” But it was as if she spoke more to convince herself than anyone else. And as she took up a position behind Jordan, with her hands on the back of his chair, so the last rays of the sun began to fade in the tiny, high, recessed stained-glass windows of the cell.

Sandra closed her eyes and the silence grew. Jordan sat locked in his chair; his chest rising and falling, his eyelids fluttering as he dreamed or thought whatever thoughts they were that troubled him; his left hand fluttering a little, too, where it was strapped down by his thigh. Harry and Darcy stood watching, aware now of the gathering dusk, the fading light …

And without warning Sandra was in!

She looked, saw, gave a strangled little cry and stumbled back away from Jordan’s chair until she crashed into the wall. Jordan’s eyes snapped open. They were terrified! His head swivelled left and right and he saw the two espers standing before him—and just for a moment, he knew them!

“Darcy! Harry!” he croaked.

And as simply and suddenly as that Harry knew who had come to him in his dreams at Bonnyrig to beg his help!

But in the next moment Jordan’s white face began to twitch and shake in dreadful spasms of effort and agony. He tried to say something but was denied the chance. The shuddering stopped, his fevered eyes closed and his head lolled, and he slumped down again. But even as he returned to his monstrous dreams, so he managed one last word:
“Ha-Ha-Haarrry!”

They rushed to Sandra where she stood half-fainting against the wall. And when she stopped gasping for air and was able to hold them off: “What was it?” Harry asked her. “Did you see?”

“I saw,” she nodded, swallowing rapidly. “He’s not mad, Harry, just trapped.”

Trapped?”

“In his own mind, yes. Like some innocent, cringing, terrified victim locked in a dungeon.”

“A victim of what?” Darcy wanted to know, slack-jawed as he gaped at her trembling in Harry’s arms.

“Oh God! Oh God!” she whispered, her trembling threatening to shake Harry, too, as her eyes went fearfully back to Trevor Jordan lolling there unconscious in his chair. And Darcy felt his blood stiffen to ice in the haunted light of her eyes, as finally she answered: “Of the monster who’s in there with him! Of that Thing who’s in there right now, talking to him, questioning him …
about us!”

VIII: Undead!

N
IGHT WAS ALREADY DRAWING IN, THE EARLY-BREAK TOURISTS
promenading in their evening finery, and the town’s lights beginning to come on as the taxi sped the three to their villa. But in the front of the car with the driver, Manolis Papastamos was very quiet. Darcy supposed that the Greek felt out of things and probably considered he’d been snubbed, and he wondered how best to make up for it. There was still a lot Papastamos could do for them; indeed, without his co-operation they might find the going very difficult.

The villa stood in its own high-walled gardens of lemon, almond and olive trees, overlooking the sea on the Akti Canari promenade towards the airport. It was square and flat-roofed, had shuttered windows, squealing wrought-iron gates and a pebbled path to the main door, where a dim lamp glowed under the roof of a pine porch. The lamp had already attracted a cloud of moths, and they in their turn had lured several small green geckoes, which scattered across the wall as Papastamos turned the key gratingly in the door. And while the stubble-jawed, chain smoking taxi driver patiently waited, so the Greek police-man showed his three very odd foreign visitors around the place.

It wasn’t the best but it was private and gave easy access to the town; there were cooking facilities but the three would be well advised to eat at any one of the half-dozen excellent tavernas which stood within a stone’s throw; and there was a telephone, which came with a typed list of useful local numbers kept clean in a plastic folder. Downstairs were two bedrooms, both equipped with two single beds, bedside tables, reading lamps and built-in wardrobes. There was also a spacious sitting- or reading-room, with glass doors to a patio under a striped, wind-down canvas awning. And lastly a small toilet and bathroom; no bath as such but a tiled shower recess and all the rest of the amenities. Upstairs didn’t matter.

When Papastamos was through he automatically assumed he wouldn’t be needed any more that night; but when he went back out to the taxi Darcy followed him, saying, “Manolis, we really don’t know how to thank you. I mean, how do we pay for all of this? Oh, we can pay—of course we can—but you’ll have to tell us how, and how much, and … et cetera.”