Necroscope: The Mobius Murders (23 page)

Always the same old story
, Harry replied, shaking his head.
I was nobody, nothing in your eyes, as I’ve been in the eyes of so many others, so often; just another imminent victim…until suddenly I became the one those previous victims call the Necroscope. That’s who or what I am: the Necroscope. And I know that with your much vaunted knowledge of metaphysics—your assumed intelligence and alleged familiarity with every variety of esoteric subject—you’re well able to work that one out for yourself.

And with Hemmings pressing ever closer, as they gyrated and tumbled toward their appointment with the sea, Harry continued:
As for what I’m doing: let’s call it an eye for an eye. Far too many eyes, and all of them innocent. Or if not innocent, guileless. Or if not guileless, then at least human. But in any case it’s what a handful of
your
previous victims want me to do; and more to the point, it’s what you were about to do to me!

Also what he might yet succeed in doing, if the Necroscope didn’t immediately put an end to what he now felt was happening to him all over again: his will and his strength draining away, as the near-sentient aura surrounding the fat man’s gross body slowly but surely took on the inky sepia of an octopus’s smokescreen. And as Harry was well aware, in the normal light of the three-dimensional world they had left behind, that colour would be a pale but deepening shade of red!

And now the big questions: how much of his life-force could he allow Hemmings to siphon off before reaching the point of no return? Harry knew such a tipping point existed, as witness the diminished estate of the whisperers under the sea, (or wherever they were now.) But were such conditions permanent from the onset? Was his soul
already
in jeopardy, forever depleted, by the small amount that this monster had already stolen from him? And if so would he still be an entire, functioning being and “soulful” entity as a survivor of this enterprise—
if
he survived?

For the time being, however, all these were questions without answers; but Harry also knew that he could regulate his and Hemmings’ rate of travel through the Continuum—even as he had been doing since entering,—causing them to speed up and instantly shoot through the exit portal over the sea, so calling an abrupt halt to whatever scheme the great leech was still trying desperately hard to bring to completion.

Except…lessons remained that he had hoped to teach this creature, and there were other things he’d hoped to learn. Hemmings was a madman, that went without saying, but in his own way he was something of a genius too. A great pity and a waste, but the stage was set and promises had been made.

And meanwhile, even as Harry considered these things, the fat man was fastening to him closer still, much like the vampirish annelid worm for which Harry had named him. Moreover, the devil in this monstrous man was still trying to reach some sort of fallacious accommodation with him:

Not long now, Harry, but my offer stands. Save us from this place and I shall let you live; for once we are ejected, that’s the end of both of us. After falling for a good half mile, even an ocean like a millpond is as hard as concrete!

Correct—and yet wrong!
Harry replied.
For as I’ve already told you, I believe I know how this will end for me. But as for you: you won’t have far to fall,—not nearly so far as half a mile,—following which the easiest way for you to die would be by drowning, which is something I can’t guarantee. Your previous victims may have other ideas.

“VICTIMS?” Hemmings howled.
Is that what they were? Those useless, despicable creatures I disposed of? Each and every one of them, they’re dead! What do you think you know of them? A handful of psychic messages from beyond their watery graves, that’s all you’ve learned of them, you…you miserable necromancer!

No, you shouldn’t call me that
, said Harry.
Not necromancer but the Necroscope. Perhaps you weren’t listening, or maybe you’re not as clever as I supposed.

And finally, as a glimmering of understanding dawned:

Ahhh!
Hemmings cried.
Necroscope! From the Greek,
Skopos
: a watcher. And as for
Necro
, that speaks for itself! So then, you misguidedly believe you have some sort of grand connection with the dead: that in fact you “watch” over them!

Or over what’s left of them
, said Harry.
Which in the normal course of things I like to think of as their souls. Why yes, that’s correct!

Oh really?
The monster immediately shot back at him.
But my so-called victims—the scum of the earth, the rabble I’ve got rid of—they have no souls, not any longer.

Not as individuals
, said Harry,
but as a group? You live on what you took from them—and what you are trying to take from me—as a parasite lives on its unwilling host. You are a mutation, Hemmings, a different kind of vampire, a loathsome
thing
that derives sustenance from the souls of the poor unfortunates it dispatches into oblivion. But you didn’t get it all! A spark remained in each of them, and as a group they now have a single voice that speaks out against you…and I have heard it!

Hemmings gnashed his teeth, foamed at the mouth.
What? Am I to die because of your sick predilection with dead men? Then so be it…but at least I’ll leave no spark of
you
behind!

The Necroscope felt his life-force—his very soul—being sucked out of him faster yet, and concentrated his will to stop it from happening. But since there was nothing more he could do for or against Hemmings, he knew the easiest way to fight would be to distract the man, give him something else to think about. And what better than an imminent plunge into the grey North Sea from what Hemmings might still believe was a colossal height?

He removed the restriction that governed velocity. Distance immediately shrank from the indefinitely far to the absolutely contiguous—and time, no longer in suspension, became the NOW. One place and one time: the Möbius interface over the grey North Sea, which spat them out just thirty feet and approximately one second above the gently lapping ocean!

Only a single second—the interval between two ticks of a clock—but oh-so-much can happen in a second. Stars that have lasted a billion years may go novae in a second; an entire universe of stars can be—
has been
—born from nothing in far less time than that; while even the strongest of hearts have eventually grown tired…faltered…and
stopped!
…in the space of just one final, very special second, as each and every heart will and must stop given time.

Time enough, then, for Harry to scan the night ocean as he fell toward the gently heaving, darkly sheeny deep; time enough to glimpse the silver-eyed rowers in their eight-man inflatable where the vessel stood off not fifty feet away, and to read the legend on the starlit starboard hull’s flexible rubber pontoon:
Seagasso VI
: the sixth of the nearby rig’s small support fleet, silently pirated from safe anchorage under the platform’s titan legs.

Time, too, for Hemmings to snatch a panicked breath through his gaping mouth and wide yawning nostrils, but insufficient to release it in a scream as he hit the water. And
between
times—somewhere within that solitary second—the fluid mantle of his soul-stealing aura shrivelling back into him as the bulk of its semisentient tendrils recoiled like some weird sea-anemone galvanized by a spear-fisherman’s probing trident.

Harry Keogh
sensed
that retraction, a reluctant relaxation of what to any other man would be an impalpable psychic suction and inexplicable loss of strength, of will, of life itself: the membrane of his metaphysical existence—a soul
in extremis
—suddenly wrenched toward its breaking point. But unlike the fat man’s previous victims, Harry knew exactly what he was feeling; and unlike the great leech himself he wasn’t at all distracted, neither by his surroundings nor the immediate situation, which was of course of his own making.

And as the glittering black water closed over the mutant’s spreadeagled form—and as the Necroscope sank knee-deep in the churning brine thrown up by the other’s fall—so Harry exerted pressures of his own, hauling on the psychic vincula that continued to attach his soul to the web of Hemmings’ sucking aura.

Moreover, having glimpsed those silent, silver-eyed rowers in their stolen or commandeered inflatable, Harry knew his work was done here, his promise kept and that it was time to move on. The last thing he desired was to witness or be party to the beginning of the end of the Möbius murderer; that wasn’t the arrangement; let the dead people in the rubber vessel—who doubtless had their own take on how matters should proceed from here on—have the final say.

And as Hemmings’ aura weakened and failed, and the connecting membrane was broken—even as the great leech surfaced and Harry sank to his waist—so the Necroscope conjured a door of his own. At which a
second
second commenced, whose simultaneous events were even more momentous than those of the first.

Harry had brought his door into being, directly beneath his plummeting body, in the sea just inches below his feet. By simply letting himself fall he would enter into it, but he couldn’t close it behind him until he was satisfied that he was complete in himself, that his integrity had not been compromised and the essential Necroscope was not only physically but also spiritually whole; in short, that as well as being sound of mind, body, and limb, his entire soul remained intact within him!

Which was why, in addition to the sudden shock of cold and salty water, a feeling of intense relief had also flooded over Harry as he felt the web of Hemmings psychic aura rupturing and its torn tendrils shrinking back into the fat man’s gross body. For nothing of him went with it; and indeed that portion of his life-force which had been partially drawn off at once rebounded into him, buoying him up, renewing and returning him to spiritual and therefore physical completion. Nor had he realized just how feeble, how diminished he had been feeling, until that moment when he was whole again. It was as if his body and mind had been mired, and now were set free again.

Harry snatched a single shallow breath in the split second before the water closed over his head, but that was enough. And a further split second later—or more properly, in no time at all—he hurtled home and staggered unsteadily from the Continuum into his rank, creeper- and weed-choked garden in a pool of yellow light from his study’s patio doors, and another pool (of sea water) that fell from him in a shining near-solid column to go coursing down the garden’s crazy-paving path, away under the rickety gate, and eventually down to the river.

Then, after swaying and shivering there for a minute or so, drenched, stinking of brine and breathing deeply as he regained his sense of balance and something of three-dimensional reality and objectivity, finally the Necroscope gave himself a shuddery shake; and heedless, entirely uncaring of where each soggy item of his clothing fell to earth, he stripped naked right there in the garden before trudging indoors and wearily upstairs to take a long hot shower.

For at long last he felt he could afford to relax a little—or indeed a lot—and that he could now do so without feeling guilty. Because for Harry, where he closed his eyes, tilted his head back and sighed his relief as the clean water sluiced over him, simultaneously easing away his tension and steaming up the frosted glass door of his shower, the case of the Möbius murders was now as good as closed.

For
Harry
it was closed, over and done with, yes…

But not by a long shot for Gordon J. Hemmings.

Despite the excess of bodily fat that should have given the great leech excellent buoyancy, he was not a good swimmer. Also, he had swallowed a lot of water, which was causing him to choke and splutter where he foundered among the small waves. This was hardly conducive to “pure thought,” or to clear thinking of any kind; but with survival uppermost in his mind, having incredibly (however inexplicably) survived his own mantrap, the fat man could at least explore his situation from the viewpoint of someone who was obviously not destined to die just yet.

That being the case, sobbing and panting his relief without as yet wholly accepting the fact that he was indeed still alive, Hemmings trod water in an ungainly fashion, coughed up the rest of the brine that he’d taken in, and tried to catch his breath. And as the sting of salt ocean abated and his eyesight cleared, he scanned out across the mercifully calm night sea.

There was no sign of Harry Keogh; with any luck that infuriating, meddling necrophile had gone straight to the bottom…and good riddance to him! But, if Keogh was indeed as clever as Hemmings was only now beginning to accept he was, it might also be possible that he had somehow taken himself out of here, presumably via a parallel dimension; an option that was not available to Gordon J. Hemmings, whose conjured doors all led in the same lethal direction.