Necroscope 9: The Lost Years (26 page)

In short, they were obviously worried about her, no less in their way than Harry himself. And equally obvious, it wasn’t a put-up job … Brenda wasn’t with them and they really didn’t know her whereabouts. He got the same story from all of her old friends. So Harden was out; she simply wasn’t there, and no one knew where she was.

Then another thought had occurred, and one that really was worrying. The Necroscope had given the Russian E-Branch (known to Darcy Clarke and his lot as ‘the Opposition’) a hard time of it in the last two and a half years. They’d lost three Heads of Branch over that same period, and seen their HQ outside Moscow reduced to so much rubble! What if this thing with his wife and baby was something they had been engineering ever since Harry’s showdown with Boris Dragosani? What if they knew that he, Harry Keogh, was alive, despite that his body - his
original
body - was dead? If anyone was likely to have that information, it had to be the world’s ESPionage organizations! The Opposition’s top telepath, Zek Foener, had known it definitely … and following the destruction of the Chateau Bronnitsy, Harry had let her go free. Could Zek have told them? And had they then taken Brenda and the baby in order to facilitate the coercion of the Necroscope himself?

But no, a large part of that didn’t make sense; he’d been incorporeal following his fight with Dragosani, and no one in the world would have believed that he’d
ever
be back, not even Harry himself! But on the other hand part of it
did
make sense. Right at the end of it, up in the Khorvaty region of the eastern Carpathians, Zek Foener
had
known that he was back. So she could have given him away after all; which would mean that her Russian superiors had put this thing together all in the space of… what, eighteen months? Even after he’d decimated their E-Branch?

No way; he hadn’t left the Soviets nearly enough machinery to bring it into being! Which meant it had to be another dead end, and in a way the Necroscope was glad. He would hate to have to blame this on Zek Foener; partly because he had genuinely liked her, but mainly because his last words to her had been a warning never to come up against him or his again. If a threat carries no weight, then it isn’t a threat; But this way he wouldn’t have to enforce it…

So … where had Brenda ever been, that she might want to return to? Nowhere to mention. Where had she ever expressed a yearning to go? Again, nowhere. Since their early teens she’d only ever wanted to be with Harry. And he hadn’t been the most responsive of sweethearts,

either. Indeed, he’d asked himself a hundred times if he really loved her or if she was just some kind of habit. She had never known his uncertainty (he hadn’t been able to tell her, because she herself had been so absolutely sure), but now he despised himself for it anyway.

But on the other hand, how do you tell someone who has loved you for so long - as long as you can remember - that you just aren’t sure of your own feelings’? Not so easy. And a lot harder when she’s pregnant with your child.

Misted landscapes, dramatic scenery, cliff paths and gardens grown wild, and starry skies …

It brought a certain picture to mind, but of what?
High passes and mountain peaks, and stars like chips of ice glinting on high.

And a plain of boulders stretching away to a far northern horizon under the weave of ghostly auroras.

The picture came and went like … like an invention of his own imagination? It had to be, for he had certainly never visited such a place! But in any case it was already fading, melting into unreality like a fantastic dreamscape; which was probably as good an explanation as any: that in trying to visualize Brenda’s ideal habitat, he’d evoked a leftover from some old dream. Not so old, in fact… indeed so new that the actual
fact
of it - its basis in reality - was yet to happen. But the Necroscope couldn’t know that, and in the space of just a second or so the picture had faded entirely.

The future was ever a jealous place …

A million places? Hell no, there were a
million
million places! Since Brenda had never been anywhere or done anything very much, she could literally be anywhere doing anything! But the northeast coast was where she’d been born and grown up, and it still had to be the best bet.

Harry had tried all the towns and villages between Harden and Hartlepool, and had then backtracked all the way to Sunderland and Durham City … to no avail. But he had been surprised how many small villages there were that he’d never heard of or visited before, and how easy it was to
try
to find a lost someone, albeit hopelessly. Housing and building societies, hotels and flats and bedsits, and temporary accommodations, these were the obvious places to check: Brenda had to be living somewhere, had to have a roof over her head. She wasn’t registered at any of the agencies; the dozen or so girls with small babies who were registered weren’t Brenda. And Harry wasn’t greatly surprised, but he’d had to try anyway.

Somewhere abroad: that letter she wrote to her father had said she was going abroad, hence the milion milion places. For if there were a couple of hundred towns in the northeast that the Necroscope had never

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visited, and five thousand in the rest of England, then what of the rest of the world?

Somewhere abroad.

…
A garden in a fertile saddle between ruggedly weathered spurs, where dusty beams of sunlight came slanting through the high passes
during the long daylight hours, and the stars glittered like frosted jewels at night, or ice-shards suspended in the
warp and weave of ghostly auroras …

The northernmost of the North American States? Canada? The frozen tundras of the northern Soviet Union?

Switzerland? (Did they even
see
the aurora borealis in Switzerland - and why the northern lights anyway?) But Brenda was a British girl, naive in most things even in her native country, even in her native
county!
And as the Necroscope rubbished his own inward directed queries, so that fleeting picture of some far, alien land once more retreated. Which was just as well, for search as he might he would never discover it on Earth.

Never find them … never find his baby son … never even see them again … not on Earth!

Harry started awake in a cold sweat, in his bedroom in the old house not far from Bonnyrig. A sweat of fear and frustration, yes, and a feeling of utter loneliness.

He lay panting in his bed, damp with perspiration, feeling his heart racing and his blood pumping. So that for a few brief moments it wasn’t as if Brenda and the baby were missing at all but simply that… that
he
was the lost one! And of course the genuine Harry Keogh, the original Harry,
was
lost.

That again: his body, gone. And piece by piece his entire world going, too. Was that why he had to find Brenda, in order to find himself? In which case his search was useless, for she would only deny him.

Fuck it… that was why she’d run away in
the first
place! Because he wasn’t him!

She’d run, or been taken away. By the baby or by … someone else?

The Russians? But he’d already been over that and it seemed very unlikely. So if not the Opposition, the much-ravaged Soviet E-Branch, then who?

As his sweat dried on him, so Harry’s thoughts cleared and his mind seemed to sharpen and focus as he hadn’t been able to focus it for quite some time. He went right back to square one: to that night at E-Branch HQ when he’d first been told that his wife was missing. At the time he had put aside the possibility that A.C. Doyle Jamieson - self-styled ‘werewolf - could have been responsible for the double disappearance. But now?

The man
had
been into his mind, after all… but for how long? Harry had become his ‘enemy’ the moment he became involved with the dead police officers and took up their case. Had A. C. been ‘listening’ to

him - to his thoughts and worries and problems - from that time on? In which case he would know about Brenda, Harry’s one weakness. But surely if that were the case, ;/ he and his gang of car thieves were responsible for Brenda’s disappearance, then right at the end when A.C. himself had come under fire, he would have used her as a threat, to stand Harry off. Yes, of course he would -but he hadn’t. So …

… So, damn it to hell, it was another blind alley!

After speaking to his Ma he’d come back to the house full of resolve, and now it was almost burned out of him again. But while his mind was sharp he must pursue the problem. It was so frustrating: to be equipped with his powers - the powers of a Necroscope - and no way to use them to solve his problem, except by trial and error.

He got up from the bed feeling stiff; this damned
body
of his, which wasn’t nearly as flexible as it had used to be. Because it was a different one, naturally. Or unnaturally?

The light coming through fly-specked windows was grey as the day outside. He had been down only an hour or two. An hour or two wasted. Down and out. Wilting. Going to seed. Oh, really? And suddenly Harry was angry with himself. He had to shake himself out of it and get on with the search, get on with life. He was ten years older than he should be, sure, but he didn’t have to settle for that, did he? His mind was still in shape, wasn’t it? And the mind governs the body,
doesn’t
it? Well then, he’d have to get the fucking body in shape, too!

He was dressed; he went out into his overgrown garden and did twenty furious press-ups, then felt ridiculous and sat hugging his knees in the deep grass and shivering from the difference in temperature between the house and the garden. And in a while he thought:

My Ma’s right… I’ll catch my death!

Death, yes.

Always a close companion of Harry’s, death wasn’t something he worried about. Not from a distance, anyway. Close up it would be different, of course. If ever death should attempt his stealthy (or sometimes abrupt!) approach, then like anyone else Harry would be galvanized - to life! But as for the
idea
of death and the dead themselves, he knew no fear.

Indeed, he had a thousand dead friends, but not one of them who could help him now, not this time. While among the living … did he have any friends at all?

Well, some - like Darcy Clarke and his people - but even they weren’t like the dead, because the dead were true friends and rarely demanded payment. As for the exceptions to the rule, the one or two monstrous members of the Great Majority who
had
demanded payment … but they were in the Necroscope’s past now and couldn’t resurface. At least he prayed not.

It was a morbid train of thought, which he tried to break by numbering his friends among the living. These were a handful at best;

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no, not even that, for he couldn’t any longer approach them as Harry Keogh. They would ‘know’ that he wasn’t!

Depression, was that it? Probably. And Harry thought: ///
believed in psychiatry I might even go and see a shrink. But if he started to explore
my past, how could I explain it? He’d be
certain /
was incurably insane! Or, if I liked strong drink, I might go and get drunk and see how I felt
when I woke up. Except… I wouldn’t know where to
go
to drink, and I’d probably feel out of place when I got there. But damn
it, I really
feel
like I could use a good stif drink! And a talk with a genuine friend. Yet I have no one to talk to but the teeming dead, and they’re
the only ones who give a damn anyway!

A morbid train of thought, yes …

But now the entire
chain
of his thoughts, ever since he’d started awake in a cold sweat, began to join up link upon link. And there was one missing link, which was integral to the rest. He hadn’t thought of it until now because it had seemed wrong, especially when he was searching, or trying to search, for his wife and child. But there might be something in it at that.

Initials writhed on the screen of Harry’s mind. Not A.C. Doyle Jamieson and his brother R.L. Stevenson’s initials, but someone else’s. Someone the Necroscope had studiously avoided thinking of until now. But now … maybe he did have a friend among the living after al.

Or someone who owed him, at least. And maybe, just maybe, it went a lot deeper than that. For one thing, the time frame was right: the disappearance of his wife and child had coincided precisely with this one’s advent. And since that was true, mightn’t there be a more relevant, more sinister connection?

Psychiatry? Maybe that was the last thing Harry needed. Maybe al he needed was a rest - from al of this, even from thinking about it! Or a change. Didn’t they say that a change was as good as a rest?

Have a good stif drink and sleep it of, sleep it right out of his system. Clear the air.
Christ, he needed a drink! Or was it simply his body - or somebody
else’s
body - that needed it? But… the mind controls the body, doesn’t it? Wel, yes, it does, except when the body has habits or needs that control the mind!

Suddenly things clicked into place in the Necroscope’s metaphysical, his lateral-thinking mind. But
his
mind in another’s body. And a litle shakily - shaky with realization, albeit as yet unproven - he went back into the house, to the telephone.

Darcy Clarke was at E-Branch, and he at once sensed something of the excitement in Harry’s voice. And in answer to the Necroscope’s question:

‘What, Alec Kyle? What did he do when he was under pressure?’ Darcy said. ‘Well, he would just ride it out, Harry.

When there was work to be done, or a problem to be solved, he’d work at it al the way