Necroscope

"I've missed the board,' he said, and hardly recognised his own voice. The words came out in a dry croak. He tried to laugh and managed a cough. 'Also, I think I'm missing a couple of pounds! I haven't moved from this chair in over seven hours, but it's been the best day's exercise I've had in years. My suit feels loose on me. And dirty!'

The spectre nodded. 'I know,' he said, 'and I'm sorry. I've taxed your mind and body both. But don't you think it was worth it?'

'Worth it?' Kyle laughed again, and this time made it. 'The Soviet E-Branch is destroyed -'

'Will be,' the other corrected him, 'a week from now.'

' - and you ask if it's been worth it? Oh, yes!' Then his face fell. 'But I've missed the board. That was important.'

'Not really,' the spectre told him. 'Anyway, you didn't miss it. Or rather, you did but I didn't.'

Kyle frowned, shook his head. 'I don't understand.'

Time -' the other began.

' - Is relative!' Kyle finished it for him in a gasp.

The spectre smiled. 'There's a door to all times out there on the Mobius strip. I am here - but I'm also there. They might have given you a hard time, but not me. Gormley's work - your work, and mine - goes on. You'll get all the help you need and no hassle.'

Kyle slowly closed his mouth, let his brain reel for a moment until it steadied itself. He felt weary now, worn out. 'I expect you'll want to be going now,' he said, 'but there are still a couple of things I'd like to ask you. I mean, I know who you are, for you couldn't be anyone else, but -'

'Yes?'

'Well, where are you now? I mean, your now? What's your base? Where is it? Are you speaking to me from the Mobius continuum, or through it? Harry, where are you?'

Again the spectre's patient smile. 'Ask instead, "who are you?'" he said. And answered: 'I'm still Harry Keogh. Harry Keogh Junior.'

Kyle's mouth once more fell open. It was all there in his notes but it hadn't jelled, until now. Now the pieces fell into place. 'But Brenda - I mean, your wife - was due to die. Her death has been foretold. And how can anyone change or avoid the future? You yourself have shown how that's impossible.'

Harry nodded. 'She will die,' he said. 'Briefly, in childbirth, she'll die - but the dead won't accept her.'

'The dead won't - ?' Kyle was lost.

'Death is a place beyond the body,' said Harry. 'The dead have their own existence. Some of them knew it but most didn't. Now they do. It will change nothing in the world of the living, but it means a lot to the dead. Also, they understand that life is precious. They know because they've lost it. If Brenda dies, my life, too, will be in jeopardy. That's something they can't allow. They owe . me, you see?'

They won't accept her? You mean they'll give her life back to her?'

'In a nutshell, yes. There are brilliant talents there in the netherworld, Alec, a billion of them. There's not much they can't do if they really want to. As for my own epitaph: that was just my mother being over-protective -and pessimistic!' His outline began to shimmer and the light from the windows seemed to glance more readily through him. 'And now I think it's time I -'

'Wait!' said Kyle, starting to his feet. 'Wait, please. Just one more thing.'

Harry raised ghostly eyebrows. 'But I thought I'd explained it all. And even if I haven't, I'm sure you'll work it out.'

Kyle quickly nodded his agreement. 'I'm sure I will -1 think. All except why. Why did you bother to come back and tell me?'

'Simple,' said Harry. 'My son will be me. But he will have his own personality, he will be his own being. I don't know how much of the real me will get through to him, that's all. There might be times when he, we, need reminding. One thing's certain, though: he'll be a very talented boy!'

And at last Kyle understood. 'You want me - us, the branch - to sort of look after him, is that it?'

'That's it,' said Harry Keogh, beginning to fade away, shimmering now with a strange blue light, as though

composed of a million fibre-thin neons. 'You'll look after him - until he's ready to start looking after you. All of you. Do you think you can do that?'

Kyle stumbled out from behind his desk, held out his arms to the shimmering, rapidly diminishing spectral thing. 'Oh, yes! Yes, we can do that!'

'That's all I ask,' said Harry. 'And also that you look after his mother.'

The blue shimmer became a haze, snapped into a single vertical line or tube of electric blue light, shortened to a single point of blinding blue fire at eye-level - and blinked out. And Kyle knew that Keogh had gone to be born.

'We'll do it, Harry!' he shouted hoarsely, feeling tears hot on his cheeks and not knowing why he cried. 'We'll do it... Harry?'

Epilogue

Dragosani fell into his own past along the vampire life-thread, but not very far. For all that it was short, it was a journey which left him dazed and frightened; but at its end he once again found himself clothed in flesh. And clothed in more than flesh. A body surrounded him, yes, and also a mind other than his own. He was part of someone else, and the other was also blind - or buried!

For even now his unknown host struggled to rise up from a shallow grave, from the blackness of a night centuries long, from the bitter imprisonment of the soil.

There was no time to consider the implications, no time even to declare his presence to the other. Dragosani felt stifled, smothered, yet again on the brink of oblivion. He had known enough of pain and wanted no more of it. He added his own will to that of his host and strove for the surface. And above him, suddenly the earth cracked open and host and Dragosani both sat up.

Scabs of earth fell from them as they turned their head to gaze all about. It was night but overhead, viewed through the black twining branches of trees, stars gleamed bright in a cold sky. Dragosani could see!

But... didn't he know this place?

Someone stood there in the darkness, staring at him where he sat half-in, half-out of the earth. Dragosani's vision cleared along with that of his host - and the shock he felt then was like a sledge-hammer blow to his still teetering mind 'I... I CAN SEE... YOU!' he rumbled.

He saw - he knew - and terror gibbered again in the night of the cruciform hills!

Then there was a second figure in the darkness, a squat

figure whose voice was soft when he said: 'Ho, Thing from the earth!' And in another moment the sighing thud of his lignum vitae bolt where it crashed through the host body and was wedged there. Then Dragosani added his voice to that of his awful host in a hissing shriek and tried to draw down again into the earth. But there was no escape, and he knew there was no escape.

He couldn't believe it. It couldn't end like this!

'WAIT!' he croaked with his host's voice as the first figure staggered closer, holding something that gleamed bright in starlight. 'CAN'T YOU SEE? ITS ME'!!'

But the other Dragosani didn't know, couldn't understand, wouldn't wait. And the sickle he carried became a blur of steel as it struck home with an irresistible force.

'FOOL! DAMNED FOOL!' Ferenczy/Dragosani howled from a head already flying free. And he knew that this was only one of many agonies, many deaths, in the unending scarlet loop of his Mobius existence. It had happened before, was happening now, would happen again... and again... and again...

And, 'Fool!' his bubbling, bloody lips whispered his final comment, his final word - only this time he spoke to himself ...