Necroscope: Harry and the Pirates: and Other Tales from the Lost Years (15 page)

The Necroscope, and the trembling young couple where they clung to each other, all three of them could only agree. . . .

Muffled by the crackle and
whoosh!
of the fire, Constable Jack Forester’s arrival had gone unheard, until a voice from behind the group of four snapped: “Greg Miller, you bloody crazy man! And Harry Keogh?” Then, as they turned to face him, the policeman also recognised the scratched and bloodied couple in their rags. “And you two?” he said. “Gloria Stafford and Alex Munroe, isn’t it? Now what the hell . . . !?”

Behind the four the blaze was spreading. Wide-eyed, shaking his head in disbelief, the constable went on: “Miller, you mad bastard! Did you do this? What, are you trying to burn Hazeldene to the ground or something?” His voice hardened. “Or are you simply destroying evidence? Is that what it’s all about?”

For to Forester it seemed that this part of the woods had been set on fire deliberately—which it had been, if not for the reason he’d proposed. But still it
seemed
that way to him—at least until a crippled, smouldering tendril came snaking out of the blaze, hooked itself onto his lower right leg and almost yanked his feet out from under him! Even as the constable cried out in shock and astonishment, however, trying instinctively to pull away, so the writhing tendril released him and shrivelled back into the inferno.

Shaken and staggering, completely off balance until Miller grabbed and steadied him, Forester looked again at the fire and saw blackened branches humping and vibrating where they burned: the involuntary, mindless activity of the ancient Thing’s melting nervous
system, or perhaps the expansion of internal fluids in the vicious heat. For the thing itself—or the central nest of ganglia that was or had been its alien brain—was most definitely dead.

The constable’s lower jaw had fallen open. Closing it, he started to ask: “What in God’s name . . . ?” But as his mouth dried up he shook his head and left the obvious question hanging—

—Until Greg Miller finished it for him. “
Nothing
in God’s name!” he snarled, drawing Forester closer. “Nothing whatsoever to do with God, Jack. But now that you’ve seen it for yourself, surely you must see what it’s got—and what it’s
had
—to do with me? Or with
both
of us?”

Forester again shook his head . . . in denial, perhaps? But the Necroscope would have none of that. He showed the constable one of the severed “branches” which he’d dragged from the fire, the one with Gar Unkh’s primitive wolf’s head “tattoo” outlined in woad and the wartlike blemishes of self-mutilation, and kept as a trophy down through the ages by the ancient Thing. “So now you tell me, Jack,” he said. “What do you make of this?”

As Forester’s jaw fell open again, so Miller staggered and moaned, then stooped to take up into his trembling hands one of the other limbs that Harry had saved. And:

“
Look!
” he gasped, showing what he’d noticed to the constable. The Necroscope looked also, and at first saw nothing that meant anything to him—until the looks of understanding on the horrified faces of the two old enemies finally told the rest of the story, or more properly what remained of it.

“B-b-birthmark!” Forester stuttered, finding difficulty in getting the word out. But he was right: a raised, near-perfect, four-leafed clover design in dark red—a natural “blemish” or birthmark—was clearly visible on the scorched sleeve of preserved human skin that covered the severed limb.

“Janet’s birthmark, yes,” Miller confirmed the constable’s observation in a hoarse whisper. “Inside her right calf, two or three inches below the knee.”

“I know!” the policeman husked. “Janet was always self-conscious about that mark, even as a kid at school taking swimming lessons on Friday afternoons. I remember! Oh, I remember! I was in a class for older kids, but we all used the same pool on the same afternoon together. Poor Janet! She’d sit poolside, trying to hide that harmless little mark. Oh God! Oh God! As long as I can remember, I was always . . . was always . . .”

“You loved her, yes,” Greg Miller sobbed. “But it was me—
I
was the one that Janet loved—and you’ve been making me pay for it ever since. Well that’s all over and done with now!
Damn you,
Jack Forester!” Lashing out suddenly with a clenched fist, he knocked the policeman to the ground.

Touching a split, bleeding lip, Forester scrambled to his feet, shook his head to clear it, and mumbled, “Well, I suppose that after all you’ve suffered I had that one coming.”

“That one and a lot more,” Miller growled, closing on him.

But then the Necroscope stepped in. “That’s enough. Now we should get the rest of these awful things into the fire.” Turning quickly, he used his momentum to hurl the tendril with the prehistoric wolf hunter’s sigil into the blaze.

“But that’s evidence!” Forester at once protested.

“Of what?” said Miller. “Of your stupidity? The stupidity of all the people who called me a lunatic and convicted me? Do you really want to dig all of that up again? Me, I’ve had more than enough of that kind of limelight! I say Harry’s right: we should finish this—all of it—right here and now.”

“Cover it up, you mean?” Forester was doubtful. “After you spent all this time tracking it down? After what it’s cost you? I don’t understand.”

“I did it for Janet,” said Miller, his throat raw from the smoke and his broken sobbing. “I can move away from here, where no one knows me. I would have gone long ago, except I needed to do this first. And now . . . well, now it’s done. But if you want to report this, well go on, go right ahead. And people will say you’re even more crazy than I was—especially when there’s no bloody evidence!”

Sobbing still, he spun around, hurling the branch with his lost love’s birthmark into the heart of the fire. . . .

Harry spoke to Forester. “Is there a radio in your car?”

“Yes, of course.” Again the policeman shook himself, as if he had just woken up.

“Then get back there and use it,” said Harry. “Let’s have a few fire engines out here before this gets completely out of control.”

Forester nodded, headed back the way he’d come. But young Alex Munroe called out after him: “Hey, what about us?”

The policeman glanced at the trembling couple where they stood in their rags, daubed with dried blood and crisscrossed with cuts and scratches. They were fortunate that most of their injuries were minor, but still they needed attention. And turning to Harry, Forester asked: “Yes, what about them? I can call up an ambulance, of course, but then what?”

The Necroscope wasn’t slow when it came to supplying quick answers and alibis. “They saw the blaze,” he said, “and came to investigate. But they were caught between the fire and the brambles and got scratched up fighting their way out of the forest. Bramble thorns can rip your clothing right off your back. . . .”

And turning to the couple—or more properly to the girl—he asked: “Does that sound about right to you, miss? Or perhaps you’d prefer to let everyone know what you were really doing in the woods?”

She tilted her chin at him. “We’re not ashamed of being in love, Mr. Keogh!” But then—glancing sideways at Alex Munroe, and seeing the way he nodded his head pointedly—she went on: “Still . . . your suggestion is probably for the best, er, Harry? And we’re
very
glad you were here to save us a second time!”

Following which they found their way out of there into the cool clean air of the nearby fields. . . .

“What was that thing?” Munroe asked of no one in particular, as the five stood well back from the action, watching fire engines
arriving and their crews scrambling to tackle the fire, a blaze that would yet go on to destroy more than two and a half acres.

“It was something alien,” the Necroscope answered him. “It lured you into the forest, to a spot where it could do its evil work and remain unseen, unknown. It was a very ancient thing—as old as the hills and the last of its kind—a horror out of time that could either scare you off or draw you into its trap, then put you to sleep and kill you. Or maybe it would cause you to kill yourself!” With that last, he glanced knowingly at Jack Forester.

“Old Arnold Symonds?” The constable knew it was so.

“I think so, yes,” said Harry.

Forester nodded. “And I might have been another victim. It doesn’t bear thinking about.”

And Greg Miller, far more in control of himself now, said: “I might have killed myself, too. Probably would have, except I think I was mainly immune to the monster’s influence. It was my
hatred
kept me immune; I wasn’t about to kill myself until I at least tried to kill it first! But you know, I think it may even have grown to recognise my presence? I felt it was playing some kind of game with me!”

Pointing at a near-distant vehicle kicking up dust along a dirt track, Gloria Stafford said, “I think that’s the ambulance coming now.”

And Harry asked her, “Have you two got your story right?”

Alex Munroe answered for both of them: “We were out walking, went to investigate a column of smoke in the woods and saw the fire. We panicked, stumbled into a large bramble patch, and so on and so forth.”

“I’ll never again feel safe in the shade of a tree,” said the girl. “And I know that I’ll always have nightmares.”

“That goes for me too.” Munroe put an arm around her, drew her close. “But when the nightmares come we’ll always have each other.” And she smiled at him, however wanly.

“That’s it then,” said Forester. “It’s over.”

Miller simply nodded, and Harry agreed, saying, “It would seem so, yes.” And that was that . . .

_____

. . . At least until the young lovers had been driven away, when it became plain there was that on Miller’s mind which had been there for quite some time. For suddenly he turned to the Necroscope and asked: “Who are you, Harry? Not just your name but—I don’t know—something else? I mean, who are you
really
?”

And Constable Jack Forester was quick to agree: “Yes, I’ve felt the same way about you ever since I first laid eyes on you dealing with that pair of local ne’er-do-wells. So who are you, Harry?”

“I’m nobody important,” said the Necroscope. “I just know some things, that’s all. You could say I feel things that other people don’t. It’s what I do. And sometimes it works out right, like this time. I mean, if I can help people, ease their minds, that’s enough.”
But more especially if they’re dead people, who need all the breaks they can get and all they’ve got is me.

But: “No,” said Miller and Forester almost as one. And the policeman followed it up with: “I’m sure you’re a lot more than that—but I’m damned if I can figure out what!”

And Greg Miller said, “I suppose we’ll just have to let it go, like everything else that’s happened today. But anyway, who or whatever you are, you have my thanks, Harry.”

“Mine too,” said the constable, nodding. . . .

When the Necroscope was on his own he spoke to his mother, who already knew much of what had happened. She’d heard it from the newcomers, of course, who were now firmly incorporated into the Great Majority.

That’s a very wonderful thing that you’ve done, Harry,
she said.
But you did put yourself in danger . . . again!
Harry could sense her incorporeal frown.

“You would have done the same, Ma,” he told her. “You know you would, if you were able. And of course, we now know why you couldn’t find any information on the girl: she just wasn’t with
you—she hadn’t joined the Great Majority—couldn’t, because she was trapped inside that thing along with all the others.”

Still sensing his mother’s frown, however, and before she could further upbraid him, the Necroscope quickly went on: “Ma, I won’t argue with you; I’m simply asking after your newcomers, that’s all. Because some of them were caught up with that creature for a very long time.”

Yes they were,
she replied,
and they suffered greatly. But the oldest of them—who should have moved on to higher places long ago—they have already caught up and passed on. Thanks to you, Son, all thanks to you.

“Not all of it,” Harry answered, shaking his head, humbled in the presence of his mother and the teeming dead. “I had help this time: Greg Miller. And anyway, I wasn’t looking for praise, Ma.”

Oh, we know you weren’t, Son,
she told him, but still her deadspeak “voice” was full of pride.

“What of the girl, Janet?” Harry inquired.

She’s with her father now,
the Necroscope’s Ma replied.
We forgave him a long time ago for what he did, for he was in such pain, poor man. We frown on suicide, as you know; for if
anyone
knows how precious life is, it’s surely the Great Majority! But we accepted him anyway. What else could we do? He was so . . . so disturbed. But now that they’re together, we believe he’ll be a lot better.

Harry knew she would sense his nod when he said, “Yes, and it really wasn’t his fault. Well, not entirely and probably not at all. Arnold Symonds was made to do what he did by that thing in the forest. You do understand that now, don’t you?”

Indeed we do,
she answered.
So you needn’t any longer feel concerned, Son. Not about anything. All’s well that ends well.

And with that, feeling satisfied and fulfilled, the Necroscope nodded and went his lonely way. . . .

O
n this dreary mid-September day,
Harry Keogh, Necroscope, was back in the graveyard in the old steelworking and shipbuilding town of Hartlepool, only seven or eight miles from the village on England’s north-east coast where he had grown up in the care of a kindly aunt and uncle. However, to speak of Hartlepool in terms of steel and ships alone—terms more in keeping with an extinct but comparatively recent industrial past—while ignoring its rather more antique historical background, would be to do it an injustice. Indeed, for there’s far more to this hoary old place than that.