Necroscope 9: The Lost Years (76 page)

‘Safes?’

That’s right. For banks, for rich folks, and sometimes for thieves who were worried that someone might try to steal it all back. I designed
and installed safes, strongrooms, vaults. Big steel piggy-banks for little greedy piggies.

‘Well, I’m very glad to meet you, Humph,’ Harry told him. ‘Especially since no one else around here seems interested!’

Oh, they’re interested for sure!
Humph told him.
But talk about close-mouthed? Cliques, Harry, a whole bunch of cliques,
clans, families. Why, they talk to each other all the time - or rather, they whisper! But if you’re an outsider … forget it.

‘But … in death, too? I would have thought silence was the last thing they’d want.’

Wel, you don’t know much about the history of this island, do you?
(Humph gave an incorporeal snort).
Ifs a bloody place, Necroscope. Me,
I sort of found out the hard way - and so could you. That’s why I spoke up. See, I was beginning to fall into their ways. I mean, there
are
people
here I can speak to, sure, but recently I’ve been as tight-assed as the rest of them! Then I sensed you’d come on the scene; you could only be the
Necroscope because you were warm and I could hear you thinking
- and
what you were thinking about: Le Manse Madonie.

‘That’s why you spoke to me?’

Mainly, yes …
The dead man’s thoughts were suddenly hard, cold.

His was an uneasy spirit; in life, he’d either left something undone, or there had been a great injustice. Giving him a chance to organize his thoughts, Harry said:

‘You sound pretty close, Humph. I mean, is there a cemetery close by? Where’s your grave? I could come and talk to you there. It seems only right.’

Grave? Step to the other side of the road, Harry. And look down.t

Harry crossed the narrow road and came to a halt at a knee-high metal safety barrier that didn’t look any too safe.

That wasn’t there in 1938,
Humph told him.
No blacktop on the road, either. Just a potholed track. An easy place to take a dive into the
next world, if you were a careless driver-or if someone figured your time was up…

‘You crossed the wrong people?’ The Necroscope took a cautious step over the barrier, one leg only, and looked down. Two or three hundred feet of thin air to a scree-strewn slope that went down to the next loop of road.

That’s where I ended up in my burned-out wreck,
Humph told him.
Right there on that stretch of road. Mercifuly, I didn’t feel a thing after the first bounce.

And no, I didn’t cross the wrong people … I
worked
for them!

Harry guessed what was coming next. ‘The Francezcis?’

Absolutely. Three months to put in their vault -1 supplied the brain, they supplied the brawn - and this is how I got paid of. A couple of their
boys, their soldiers, flagged me down on my way of the mountain; they rapped me on the head hard enough to knock me dizzy, took the brake
of, Pushed me over. An ‘ accident,’ of course.

‘But why?’

Two reasons,
(Harry sensed a shrug).
One: they took back my cash payment before I went over … miserable bastards! And two … Two has to be obvious.

‘You were the only one who knew about their strongroom?’

That’s how I figure it, yeah.

‘Murder.’ Harry’s voice had been quiet enough before; now it was the merest murmur.

Most foul,
Humph agreed. And a moment later; So,
my bones went into a grave somewhere, but I hung about down there, where it happened. And what
do you know, forty-odd years later, along comes Harry Keogh, Necroscope! Enough to make a man believe in God. Vengeance is thine, sayeth the Lord!

‘Except that’s not what I’m here for,’ Harry told him.

And after a moment’s silence:
Then maybe we should forget I ever spoke to you …

‘…
But I’ll see what I can do.’ Humph’s lead was too good to let go of. It might be exactly what Harry was looking for.

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Promise?

‘Absolutely.’

How? I mean, how will you get my own back?

The Necroscope’s turn to shrug. ‘They robbed you … it’s my intention to rob them.’

They
kiled
me, Harry! And I don’t go for this turning the other cheek stuf! I mean, I’ve been hearing some things in the last couple of
years; like, you’re a man who believes in an eye for an eye?

That’s true enough,’ Harry answered. ‘But I also need to believe in what I’m doing. And as yet I don’t have much information on the Francezcis. I’m pretty sure it’s within my parameters to
steal
from
\
them, but as for anything else

… try to put yourself in my position. j There’s no way I can right
every
wrong that’s ever been done to the dead. Not on my own. There are an awful lot of you, Humph - you’re of a very large, even a Great Majority - and I’m only one. But yes, when I j can see the whole picture, then I’ll see what can be done.’

(A thoughtful pause, and): So
what can I tell you?

‘First, do you know anything about their family history?’

What?
(Utter bewilderment). /
mean, what the hell would I know about family histories? I build safes, Harry! Or I did.

‘Is there nothing you might have seen inside that place?’

i

Shit, I wasn’t
alowed
to see anything inside that place! I had a room. I
;

could go from my room to my place of work, and from my place of work to

my room. And also to the place where I ate, always alone. Oh, and the

grounds; it was okay if I wanted to walk around the grounds. Layout? Oh,

I can tell you the layout, roughly. I can tell you where their treasury is, for

sure! But history?

\

‘Very wel, let’s setle for the layout. For now, anyway.’

!

And Humph told him. Taking it al in, The Necroscope listened intently as he moved out of the glaring sunlight into the shade of an embankment where the winding road had been blasted through the solid rock of the spur.

]

It had been some time since Humph was inside Le Manse Madonie, but it had been on his mind ever since. Also, his description was enhanced by pictures straight out of his dead mind, so that Harry was enabled to ‘see’ the route he had taken from his room to the vault that | he’d been securing in the bowels of the place as if he himself were | walking it. He could actualy get the feel of the place, take co-ordinates.

‘Right down in the bedrock,’ he eventualy commented.

No,
Humph told him.
Deep, but not right down. There were other levels below that one. I just sort of happened to stray down there one
time. I can’t remember if I lost my way or if I was just curious. Probably the latter - no, definitely the latter. Anyway, I found a place with a
steel-barred door hooked up to a generator. Electrified! Oh, yeah! 1938, but Le Manse Madonie had its own juice. That was something
in Sicily in those days.

‘Maybe that was the old strongroom that yours was replacing?’ Harry reasoned.

Maybe, but I don’t think so,
Humph’s thoughts were very dark now.
There was just something down there that they didn’t want anyone to
see … Not anyone. Anyway, a guard caught me, gave me hell, frog-marched me in front of Emilia Francezci, my
employer.
(Harry caught a ‘reflection’ of the man from Humph’s mind - and gave a start).

Oh?
Humph said.
Something up?

Something was up, yes. This could easily be one of those photographs that Darcy Clarke had shown him. The family resemblance was
that
close! And like the photographs, this picture from the mind of a dead man was somehow blurred, indistinct.

/
know what you mean,
Humph said.
These people were shady characters in more ways than one. I never could remember
precisely what they looked like. Funny, eh? But in no way funny ha-ha …

‘You say this Emilio was your employer, singular,’ Harry frowned, felt a litle confused. ‘But you’ve also been talking in the plural: “they,” and

“these people.” ‘

Emilia’s brother,
Humph explained.
He was a big cheese in Le Manse Madonie, but didn’t go out much. Never, that I saw. I saw
the pair together, though, frequently. Brothers, but definitely. Twins, even, if not identical.

Darcy had said exactly the same thing, but about the
current
owners of Le Manse, the current generation of Francezcis. And this time it was Humph who saw their pictures in the Necroscope’s mind.

That’s them!
he said at once.

‘Can’t be,’ Harry shook his head. “These are Francesco and Tony, or Anthony … today people. What you’re seeing is from a recent photograph.’ He felt Humph’s astonishment. And:

You know something?
the dead man said, very quietly.
Emilia’s brother was called Francesco …

‘Wel, why not?’ Harry wanted to know. ‘Names can carry on down the generations as wel as family resemblance. And anyway, I’m not so much concerned with the current family as with the historical …’ (But for the life of him he couldn’t say why, even to himself!) 7
don’t know anything about that,
said Humph, stubbornly.

‘Maybe you do. Let’s go the route again, from your room to the tunnel where you were putting those vault doors in.’ He had remembered seeing something and wanted to see it again.

Humph took him back along the route, from his first floor rooms in the manse, down a winding marble staircase into a huge hall or balroom. And on the wals - glimpsed however dimly in the eye of the American’s memory - rich, gilt-framed portraits of…

…
Francezcis!
Humph had surprised himself.
Hey, I remember now! Why, there’s a whole damn family tree on those walls! Except… I’m
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sorry, Harry, but I can’t remember what a single one of ‘em looked like.
Try to look a little closer,’ the Necroscope begged him. And Humph obliged. As he had said, these people were shady characters in more ways than one; even their brooding portraits seemed obscured, either by Humph’s memory or the patina of age, or … whatever. But the family likeness was there in every one of them, certainly.

Harry leaned against the rocky wall of the cutting through the spur and closed his eyes the better to see through Humph’s. And he saw— —A woman. Misty in Humph’s memory, but still beautiful. She was long-necked, had an elegant or perhaps haughty tilt to her head, and was classically Sicilian. And under the picture, her name on a brass plate, swimming up uncertainly in the eye of the dead American’s memory:

Constanza … Constanza de …

Constanza de’ Petralia …!
And this time Harry’s start was violent indeed. Humph felt it, and moving on to the next portrait asked:
Are you okay, Necroscope? Are you getting all of this?
Harry nodded, knew Humph would sense it, peered yet more intensely through his incorporeal eyes. And next to Constanza’s portrait, that of her son, Angelo as a young boy. But the very next frame was Angelo again, this time as a young man. And now he had changed his name. To Angelo
Ferenczini,
of course!

The Necroscope withdrew, crashing out of Humph’s mind as if al the devils of hel were after him. Wel, they weren’t, but evidence of them was in there for sure. Even as they were in -
still
in - Le Manse Madonie!

Harry?
Humph queried as from very far away.
You okay, Necroscope?
Harry knew what he’d seen and recognized, but already the information was subsuming itself into his inner identity, into his subconscious mind. It wasn’t for him, this information, but for some other. He was only the one who gathered it. He mustn’t alow it to register. That part of his mind - or Bonnie Jean’s part - was like her personal computer. What was in there would not be activated until
she
pressed the right keys.

Hearing the warning toot of a car’s horn, Harry opened his eyes. He’d staggered out into the middle of the road, and a car was coming through the cuting.

Slowing to avoid him, it puled to a halt and the driver leaned out of his window and made some inquiry in Italian. Harry stumblingly apologized, shrugged, got out of the way. And the car roled forward, picked up speed and set off again down the mountainside.

Harry? }.
Humphrey Jackson Jr caled again, a faint cry from a long, long way off as the Necroscope deliberately tried to shut him out entirely. He felt ill and didn’t know why. Sunstroke? Possibly. But

suddenly his entire being seemed to reel like a drunkard. What in hell had happened -
was
happening - here? What was happening
in his head?

He had felt this before, when that lunatic telepath ‘wolfman’ had invaded his mind. But that had been in London and this was Sicily. Was someone trying to get at him, or get through to him? Normally Harry could guard his thoughts to exclude whoever he wanted to. But something - some shock or other - must have thrown him out of kilter, off balance.

However temporarily, his mind was wide open.

And they came …

…
Whoooo? Whoo? Who? Who are you? Who? Yes, who? Who
are
you???
A dozen of them, al speaking at once.