Brian Lumley- Necroscope 09 - Lost Years 01 - The Lost Years

IN THE ECHOING CAVERN OF THE PIT

"This one must not be wasted,' Anthony Francezci cautioned his unseen father. 'Her knowledge can't be lost. We paid

for her, dearly. We may never see another opportunity like this. And remember, Father: what threatens us threatens

you ...'

I understand, yesss. Send her down.

'But you are hungry, we know, and occasionally ... impatient? And if—'

—SEND HER DOWN ... NOW!

There was nothing else for it. Franeesco Francezci operated the machinery, and together the brothers manoeuvred

the platform and girl into position over the pit. Finally Anthony broke an ampoule under her nose, and she groaned a

little. But before she could wake up more fully, they sent her on her way to hell.

Her weight was measured on a dial. She sank sixty, seventy, seventy-five feet... She must surely be awake by now ...

And suddenly her weight became zero.

'Get it up!' Anthony croaked, as Franeesco reversed the gears. The platform came up empty. While from down

below—

—A shriek to end all shrieks!

Also by Brian Lumley in New English Library paperback

Dagon's Bell and Other Discords The Second Wish and Other Exhalations

Necroscope: The Lost Years

Volume I

Brian Lumley

About the author

Brian Lumley is the internationally bestselling author of the Necroscope and Vampire World series. A career British

Army Military Policeman for over twenty years, he has been a full-time writer since leaving the army. He lives in

Torquay, South Devon.

i

NEW ENGLISH LIBRARY Hodder and Stoughton

First published in 1995 by Hodder and Stoughton A division of Hodder Headline PLC

First published in paperback in 1996 by Hodder and Stoughton

A New English Library paperback

The right of Brian Lumley to be identified as the Author of

the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4

reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,

in any form or by any means without the prior written

permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated

in any form of binding or cover other than that in which

it is published and without a similar condition being

imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious

and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead,

is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 0 340 64962 3

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading, Berkshire

Hodder and Stoughton

A division of Hodder Headline PLC

338 Euston Road

London NW1 3BH

For Bonnie Jane Johnson, who took me to new heights, and Zahanine for her name's sake (if not her

namesake); but mostly for Silky — so necessary to my way of life ...

CONTENTS

HARRY KEOGH: A Resume and Chronology 1

PROLOGUE 9

PART ONE: The Necroscope . . . Harry Keogh? 25

CHAPTER I: A Devious Thing 27

CHAPTER II: But where is Harry Keogh? 41

CHAPTER III: Dead Reckoning 57

CHAPTER IV: Keenan Gormley, and Other Victims 72

CHAPTER V: R. L. Stevenson Jamieson, and his Brother ... 88

CHAPTER VI: ... And One Other 103

PART TWO: Searching

CHAPTER I: For Brenda, and for Himself 119

CHAPTER II: B.J.'s 136

CHAPTER III: Home with Bonnie Jean 151

CHAPTER IV: .Harry: Weird Warnings. Bonnie Jean: She Wonders and Worries. 166

', CHAPTER V: Harry: Presentiments and Precautions.

Bonnie Jean: The Route to the Lair. 182

'. PART THREE: Vampire Genesis

«CHAPTER I: Shaitan: His Rise and Fall. Canis Sapiens: The Werewolf Connection. 201

iCHAPTER II: Changeling! 218

! CHAPTER III: Red Revenge! 232

247

264

HARRY KEOGH

281

298

314

331

346CHAPTER IV: Baled - To Earth! CHAPTER V: Dreams in Resin

PART FOUR: Wamphyri: Ancient and Modern

CHAPTER I: More of Radu's Story.

Bonnie Jean: She Visits her Master

CHAPTER II: Bonnie Jean: Her Duties.

The Dog-Lord: His Solution

CHAPTER III: A Picture of the Mind,

A Photograph of the Future

CHAPTER IV: Darcy's Target.

Bonnie Jean at Harry's.

CHAPTER V: One of the other ways.

Truths, Half-truths and damned lies.

A R£SUM£ AND CHRONOLOGY

365

381

398

416

PART FIVE: Manse and Monastery: Aeries!

CHAPTER I: Bonnie Jean: Birthday Party. Harry: Getting in Shape, and Funding his Search.

CHAPTER II: Daham Drakesh-

Le Manse Madonie - Dead Silence

CHAPTER III: Humph, and others.

In the Vaults Beneath.

CHAPTER IV: The Pit-Thing -

The Climb - The Example

437

454

PART SIX: Harry Keogh, Catalyst

CHAPTER I: The Calm Before the Storm CHAPTER II: 'It Begins ...'

EPILOGUE

473

C

hristened 'Snaith' in Edinburgh in 1957, the infant Harry was the son of a psychic sensitive mother, Mary Keogh

(herself the daughter of a gifted expatriate Russian lady), and Gerald Snaith, a banker. Harry's father died of a stroke a

year later, and in the winter of 1960 his mother remarried, this time to a Russian dissident, Viktor Shukshin. In the

winter of '63 Shukshin murdered Harry's mother by drowning her under the ice of a frozen river; he escaped

punishment by alleging that while skating she'd crashed through the thin crust and been washed away. Shukshin

inherited her isolated Bonnyrig house and the not inconsiderable monies left to her by her first husband.

Within six months the young Harry 'Keogh' had gone to live with an uncle and his wife at Harden on the north-east

coast of England, an arrangement that was more than satisfactory to Viktor Shukshin, who could never stand the child.

Harry commenced schooling with the roughneck kids of the colliery; but a dreamy and introspective sort of boy, he

was a loner, developed few friendships - not with his fellow pupils, anyway - and thus fell easy prey to bullying. Later,

as he grew towards his teens, Harry's daydreaming spirit, psychic insights and instincts led him into further conflict

with his teachers.

His problem was that he had inherited his maternal forebears' mediumistic talents, which were developing in him to

an extraordinary degree. He had no requirement for 'real' or physical companions as such, because the many friends he

already had were more than sufficient and willing to supply his every need. As to who his friends were - they were

the myriad dead in their graves!

Up against the school bully, Harry defeated him with the telepathi-cally communicated skills of an Kt-ex-Army physical training

instructor, an expert in unarmed combat. Punished with maths homework, he received extra tuition from an ex-Headmaster

of the school. But here

4Brian Lumley

he required only a little help, for in fact he was something of a mathematician himself. Except Harry leaned more

towards the metaphysical; his intuitive grasp of numbers was lateral to the point of sidereal; his numeracy was as alien

to mundane science as his telepathic intercourse with the dead was to speech.

In 1969 Harry gained entry into a technical college, and until the end of his formal (and orthodox) education, did his best to

tone down the use of his extraordinary talent-and be a 'normal, average student.' Aware that he must soon begin to

support himself, he began writing, and by the time his schooling was at an end several short pieces of his fiction had

seen print.

Three years later, he finished his first novel, Diary of a 17th-Century Rake. While the book fell short of the

bestseller lists, still it did well. It wasn't so much a sensation for its storyline as for its historical authenticity; hardly

surprising considering the qualifications of Harry's co-author and collaborator - namely a 17th-century rake, shot dead

by an outraged husband in 1672!

By the summer of 1976, Harry had his own unassuming top-floor flat in an old three-storey house on the coast road

out of Hartlepool towards Sunderland. Perhaps typically, the house stood opposite one of the town's oldest

graveyards; Harry was never short of friends to talk to. But by then, too, his headmaster of a few years ago had

discovered his grotesque secret, and passed it on to others more secretive yet . . .

Blithely ignorant of the fact that he was now under wary scrutiny, Harry let his talent develop. He was the

Necroscope, the only man who could talk to the dead and befriend them. Now that his weird talent was fully formed,

he could converse with exanimate persons even over great distances; once introduced to a member of the Great

Majority, thereafter he could always contact him again. With Harry, however, it was a point of common decency that

whenever possible he would physically attend them at their gravesides; he wasn't one to 'shout' at his friends.

In their turn (and in return for his friendship), Harry's dead people loved him. He was like a pharos among them, the one shining

light in an otherwise eternal darkness, their observatory on a world they'd thought left behind and gone forever. For

contrary to the beliefs of the living, death is not The End but a transition to incorporeality and immobility. Great

artists, when they die, continue to visualize magnificent canvases they can never paint; architects plan fantastic,

continent-spanning cities, that can never be built; scientists follow up research they commenced in life but never had

time to complete . . .

At his flat in Hartlepool, when he wasn't working, Harry entertained his childhood sweetheart, Brenda. Shortly,

finding herself pregnant, she became his wife. But a shadow out of the Necroscope's past was rapidly becoming an

obsession. He brooded over dreams of his poor

Necroscope: The Lost Years - Vol. I 5

drowned mother, and in nightmares revisited the frozen river where Mary Keogh had died before her time. Finally,

Harry resolved to take revenge on his evil stepfather. In this as in all things he had the blessings of the dead, for

knowing only too well the horror of death, cold-blooded murder was a crime the teeming dead could never tolerate.

In the winter of 1976-77 Harry tempted Viktor Shukshin out onto the ice of the frozen river to skate with him, as once

the murderer had skated with his mother. But his plan backfired and they both crashed through the ice into the bitterly

cold water. The Russian had the strength of a madman; he would surely drown his stepson . . . but no, for at the last

moment Mary Keogh - or what remained of her - rose from her watery grave to drag her murderer down!

And with that Harry had discovered a new talent; or rather, he now knew how far the teeming dead would go in

order to protect him - knew that in fact they would rise from their graves for him . . .

The Necroscope's weird abilities had not gone unnoticed; a top-secret British intelligence organization known as

E-Branch ('£' for 'ESP' or ESPionage), and its Soviet counterpart, were both aware of his powers. But he was no sooner

approached to join E-Branch than its head, his contact, was taken out, 'with extreme prejudice,' by Boris Dragosani, a

Romanian spy and necromancer. Dragosani's terrible 'talent' lay in ripping open the bodies of dead enemy agents to

steal their secrets right out of their violated brains, blood, and guts!

Harry vowed to track Dragosani down and even the score, and the Great Majority offered him their help. Of course

they did, for even the dead weren't safe from a man who violated corpses! What Harry and his friends couldn't know

was that Dragosani had been infected with vampirism. What was more, he had murdered a colleague, the Mongol Max

Batu, to learn the secret of his evil eye. The necromancer could now kill at a glance!

Time was short; Harry must follow the vampire back to the USSR, to Soviet E-Branch Headquarters at the Chateau

Bronnitsy south of Moscow, and there put him down . . . but how? A British 'precog' - an esper whose talent enabled

him to scan fragments of the future - had foreseen the Necroscope's involvement not only with vampires but also with

the twisted figure 8 or 'eternity' symbol of the Mobius Strip. In order to get to Dragosani, Harry first must understand

the Mobius connection. But here at least he was on familiar ground; the astronomer and mathematician August Ferdinand

Mobius had been dead since 1868 - and the dead would do anything for Harry Keogh . . .

In Leipzig Harry visited Mobius's grave and discovered him at work on his space-time equations. What he had done in

life he continued,

Brian Lumley

Necroscope: The Lost Years - Vol. I

undisturbed, to do in death; and in the course of a century he had reduced the physical universe to a set of

mathematical symbols. Mobius knew how to bend space-time! Teleportation: an easy route into the Chateau Bronnitsy.

For days Mobius instructed Harry, until the Necroscope was sure that the answer lay right there in front of him -

just an inch beyond his grasp. But the East German GREPO (the Grenz Polizei) were watching him, and on the orders of

Dragosani tried to arrest him at Mobius's graveside . . . where suddenly Mobius's equations transformed themselves

into doorways into the strange immaterial universe of the Mobius Continuum! Using one of these doors to escape

from the GREPO, finally Harry was able to project himself into the grounds of Soviet E-Branch HQ.

Calling up from their graves an army of long-dead Crimean Tartars, the Necroscope destroyed the chateau's

defences, then sought out and killed Dragosani. But in the fight he, too, was killed ... his body died; but in the last

moment his mind, his will, transferred to the metaphysical Mobius Continuum.

And riding the Mobius Strip into future time, Harry's identity was absorbed into the as yet unformed infant

mentality - of his own son!

August 1977

Drawn to Harry Jr's all-absorbing mind like an iron filing to a magnet, Harry Keogh's identity was in danger of being

entirely subsumed and wiped clean. His only avenue of freedom lay in the Mobius Continuum, which he could only use when his

infant son was asleep. But while exploring the infinite future timestream, Harry had noted among the myriad blue

life-threads of Mankind a scarlet thread: another vampire! Worse than this, in the near future he'd seen that red thread

crossing the innocent blue of young Harry's!

The Necroscope investigated. He was incorporeal, yes, but so were the teeming dead; he could still communicate

with them, and they were still in his debt. In September of 1977 he spoke to the spirit of Thibor Ferenczy - once a

vampire - at his tomb in the Carpathian Mountains; also to Thibor's 'father', Faethor Ferenczy, who died in a World

War II bombing raid on Ploiesti.

Harry was cautious. Even when dead, vampires are the worst possible liars, devious beyond measure. But the

Necroscope had nothing to lose (literally), and the vampires had much to gain; Harry was their last contact with a world they had

once planned to rule. Thus, by trial and error, playing oh so dangerous cat-and-mouse word-games with the

Wamphyri, he pieced together the terrible truth: that in the late 1950s Thibor had 'infected' a pregnant English woman,

Georgina Bodescu, who later gave birth to a son. And Thibor's spawn, Yulian Bodescu, was the source of the

threatening red thread!

In Romania, Alec Kyle and Felix Krakovitch, current heads of their respective ESP-ionage rings, joined forces to

destroy the remains of Thibor in his Carpathian mausoleum. There they burned a monstrous remnant of the vampire,

but not before Thibor sent Yulian a dream-message and a warning. Thibor had hoped to use his English 'son' as a

vessel in which to rise up again and resume his vampire existence. But since his last physical vestiges were now

destroyed, instead he would use him to take revenge on the Necroscope, Harry Keogh.

As for killing Keogh: that should be the very simplest of things. The Necroscope was incorporeal, a bodiless id, his

own infant son's sixth sense. Only remove the child and the father would go with him . . .

Meanwhile in the USSR, Alec Kyle stood falsely accused of murder. Russian espers were using a combination of high

technology and ESP to drain him of knowledge . . . literally all knowledge! This process would leave him raped of his

mind, brain-dead, and physical death would soon follow. And in England Yulian Bodescu was on the prowl. Intent on

destroying Harry Jr, he headed for Hartlepool.

His trail was bloody and littered with dead men when finally he entered the house where Brenda Keogh lived and

climbed the stairs to her garret flat. The mother tried to protect her small child . . . she was hurled aside! . . . Harry Jr

was awake; his mind contained Harry Keogh ... the monster was upon them, powerful hands reaching!

Harry could do nothing. Trapped in the infant's whirlpool id, he knew that they were both going to die. But then:

Go, little Harry told him. Through you I've learned what I had to learn. I don't need you that way any longer. But I do need you as a father. So

go on, get out, save yourself! Harry was free; the mental attraction binding him to his son's mind had been relaxed; he

could now flee into the Mobius Continuum.

And what the father could do, the son could do in spades; he was a Necroscope of enormous power! And in the

cemetery just across the road, the dead answered Harry Jr's call. They came up out of their graves, shuffled and

flopped from the graveyard into the house and up the stairs. Bodescu the vampire attempted his first and last

metamorphosis: adopting the shape of a great bat, he flew from a window . . . and took a crossbow bolt in his spine.

And as he crashed down within the grounds of the cemetery, so the incorporeal Necroscope instructed the dead in

the methods of eradication: the stake, decapitation, the cleansing fire . . .

Harry Keogh was free, but free to do what? He was a mind without a body. Except he now felt a different force, an

attraction other than his infant son's magnet id, a vacuum seemingly eager to be filled. Exploring

8

Brian Lumley

it, Harry was sucked in irresistibly - into the aching emptiness of Alex Kyle's drained mind!

Employing ultra-high explosives to blow the Chateau Bronnitsy to hell, and his powers as a Necroscope to correct other anomalies, at last Harry could take the

Mobius route home. His work, for the moment, was at an end. It was the late autumn of 1977, and he had taken up permanent residence in another man's body.

Indeed, to all intents and purposes, and to anyone who didn't know better, he was that other man! But he was also the natural father of a most unnatural child, a

child with awesome supernatural powers.

So now Harry must face up to other, more mundane duties: those of a husband and father. But how might he perform those duties with the face and form of a

different man? What of his poor wife, Brenda, who had already suffered more than her fair share of strangeness and horror? How could he ask her to share her life

with a husband who wasn't the man she knew? Finally, what of the child . . . if Harry Jr could still be considered a child?

But perhaps the most difficult questions the Necroscope must ask himself were these: how much greater than his own talents were his son's? How different

were they? And perhaps more importantly: how did he intend to use them? Thus the world of Harry Keogh was a vastly complicated place—

—Which wasn't about to get any simpler . . .

The story that follows concerns itself mainly with certain episodes of the Necroscope's life, between the previously chronicled Wamphyri! and The Source. But it

is not alone Harry Keogh's story. For without that the Wamphyri were there before him (and despite the paradox of their springing from him), it could even be said

that Harry himself would not have been necessary: without a disease there's no need for a cure. In short, this story is also theirs: part of the lost history of the

Wamphyri. . .

PROLOGUE

T

he powerful, silver-grey stretch limo, familiar in itself however unusual - but less than unique - on an island of ancient

Fiats and sputtering Lambrettas, bumped carefully over shifting cobbles under a baroque stone archway into the

courtyard of Julio's Cafe and Restaurant in the eastern quarter of Palermo. The lone survivor of a World War II

bombing raid, the walled enclosure was once the smallest of four gardens containing a middling villa. The other three

gardens were rubble-strewn craters; only their outer walls had been repaired, to create something of an acceptable

fagade in the district of the Via Delia Magione.

The courtyard was set out like a fan-shaped checker-board: square tables decked with white covers, standing on

black flags of volcanic stone; the whole split down the middle by a 'hinge' of vehicles parked herringbone-fashion on

what was once a broad carriageway. A palm-fringed gap in the wall at the point of the quadrant marked the vehicular

exit into the dusky evening.

Some three dozen patrons sat eating, drinking, chattering, though not too energetically; a pair of sweating,

white-aproned waiters ran to and fro between the tables, the bar and kitchens, each serving his own triangle of

customers. Even for the third week in May the weather was unseasonably warm; at eight-thirty in the evening the

temperature was up in the high seventies.

The east-facing wall of the courtyard contained what was left of the old villa: a two-storeyed wing three rooms wide

and three deep, with a balcony supported by Doric columns that more than hinted of better times. The central,

ground-floor room was fronted by a marble bar which spanned the gap between the pillars; kitchens to the left of the

bar stood open to the inspection of patrons. Amazingly, in this bombed-out relic of a place, wide arches in the wall to

the right displayed the sweep of the original grand marble staircase winding to

12

Brian Lumley

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Necroscope: The Lost Years - Vol. I

the upper rooms and balcony. Better times indeed!

On the balcony - whose tables were reserved for 'persons of quality' - Julio Sclafani himself leaned out as far as his

belly would allow to observe the arrival of these latest, most elevated of all his customers: Anthony and Francesco

Francezci, come down from the high Madonie especially to eat at Julio's.

It was wonderful that they came here, these men of power, ignoring the so-called 'class' restaurants to dine on

Julio's simple but worthy fare. And they'd been doing it for six weeks now, ever since the first signs of improvement in

the weather. Or ... perhaps it was that one of them, or even both of them, had noticed Julio's Julietta? For Sclafani's

youngest, still unmarried daughter was a stunner after all. And the Brothers Francezci were eminently eligible men ...

But what a shame that she wasn't at her best! It must be the pollution of Palermo's air. The fumes of all the cars and

mopeds, the stagnation of all the derelict places, the breathing of dead air and the winter damp that came drifting in off

the Tyrrhenian Sea. But spring was here and summer on its way; Julietta would bloom again, just as the island was

blooming.

Except... it was worrying, the way she'd come down with - well, with whatever it was - just four or five weeks ago;

since when all of the colour had seemed to go out of her, all the joy and vitality, everything that had made her the light of

Julio's life. To be back there on her couch, all exhausted, with an old biddy of a sick-nurse sitting beside her - 'in attendance,'

as it were - as at someone's deathbed! What, Julietta? Perish the thought! As fof the old crow: Julio supposed he

should consider himself lucky to have obtained her services so reasonably. All thanks to the Francezcis, for she was

one of theirs.

But here they came even now, smiling up at him - at him! - as they mounted the marble staircase. Such elegant . . .

such eligible men! Julio hastened to greet them at the head of the stairs, and usher them to their table on the balcony .

. .

Almost exactly one hour earlier, Tony and Francesco Francezci had departed Le Manse Madonie in the mountain

heights over Cefalu en-route for Julio's and the supposed gourmet pleasures of the cafe's 'cuisine.' The quality of Julio

Sclafani's food was, ostensibly, the sole reason for the Francezcis' weekly visit to the crumbling, by no means

decadent but decidedly decayed city. Ostensibly, yes.

But in fact the brothers didn't much care for the food at Sclafani's, nor for the eating of common fare anywhere else

for that matter. They could just as easily dine at Le Manse Madonie, and do far better than at Julio's, without the

bother of having to get there. For at the Manse the brothers had their own servants, their own cooks, their own . . .

people.

And so as Mario, their chauffeur, had driven the brothers down the often precipitous, dusty hairpin track from the

Manse to the potholed 'road' that joins Petralia in the south to the spa town of Termini Imerese on the coast - where

according to legend the buried Cyclops 'pisses in the baths of men, to warm them' - so Francesco had turned his mind

and memory to the real reason for their interest in Sclafani's piddling cafe: the fat man's daughter, Julietta. Francesco's

interest, anyway . . .

It had been six weeks ago to the day. The brothers had been in Palermo to attend a meeting of the Dons: the heads of

the most powerful Families in the world, with the possible exception of certain branches of European Royalty and

nobility, and other so called 'leaders of men' or business, politicians and industrialists mainly, in the United States of

America and elsewhere. Except there's power, and there's power. That of the Francezcis was landed and gilt-edged . . .

and ancient, and evil.

It lay in the earth (in territory, or real estate); in the wealth they'd been heir to for oh-so-many, many years, plus the

additional wealth which the principal and their unique talents had accumulated and augmented; and not least in those

peculiar talents themselves.

For in fact the Francezcis were advisers. Advisers to the Mafia, still the main force and power-base in Italy and Sicily; and

through the Mafia advisers to the CIA, the KGB, and others of the same ilk; and through them advisers to those

governments which allegedly 'controlled' them. And because their advice was invariably good, invariably valuable,

they were revered as Dons of Dons, as every Francezci before them. But to actually speak of them in such a

connection . . . that would be quite unpardonable. It was understandable; their social standing . . .

As to that last: they had the reputations of the gentlest of gentlemen! Their presence had been requested - even

fought over - for every major social event on the island for the last fifteen years, ever since they came into their

inheritance and possession of Le Manse Madonie. And their bloodline: there had been Francezci Brothers for as long

as men could remember. The family was noted for its male twins, also for a line that went back into the dimmest mists of history - and

into some of the darkest. But that last was for the brothers alone to know.

Thus the immemorial and ongoing connection of the Francezcis with certain of the island's (and indeed the world's)

less savoury elements was unsuspected; or if it was it wasn't mentioned in polite circles. Yet in their role of freelance

intelligence agents for the Mob or mobs - as advisers in the field of international crime, various kinds of espionage,

and terrorism - the Francezcis were an unparalleled success story. Where or how they gained their intelligence in these

diverse yet connected fields: that, too, was for the brothers alone to know, and for others to guess at. But to the Dons

it seemed obvious that they had

Brian Lumley

14

Necroscope: The Lost Years - Vol. I

15

corrupted the incorruptible on a world-wide scale . . .

. . . Francesco's thoughts had strayed from their course. As the limo glided, or occasionally bumped, for the junction with the

A-19 motorway into Palermo, he redirected his mind to that evening six short weeks ago:

After their meeting with the Dons (whom they had advised on such problems as what or what not to do about Aldo Moro and

his kidnappers the Red Brigade, in Italy, and President Leone, who had become an embarrassment) the hour had been late. Driving

back through Palermo and turned aside by a diversion where road works were in progress, Tony had noticed Julio's Cafe and

suggested they pause a while for refreshments.

Indoors in the room of the marble staircase, the brothers had ordered Julio's 'Greek Island Specialities.' They'd picked at spicy

sausages, stuffed vine-leaves, and various dips prepared in olive oil - but no garlic - all washed down with tiny measures of

Mavrodaphne and a chaser, the brackish Vecchia Romagna, sipped from huge brandy-bowl glasses. By nine-thirty the kitchens had

closed; the brothers dined alone. Julio had excused himself - a toothache! He'd called a dentist who, even at this late hour, had

agreed to see him. His daughter, Julietta, would see the brothers off the premises when they were done.

Perhaps Francesco had drunk a little too much Mavrodaphne, too large a measure of brandy. Or it could be that in the gloom and

draughty emptiness of the place, with the picked-at food gone cold on their plates, and the knowledge of lowering skies just

beyond the arches, the woman had looked more radiant, more luminous . . . more pure? Whatever, Francesco had looked at her in a

certain way, and she had looked back. And Anthony Francezci had gone down to the limo on his own, while his brother . . .

At which point the silver grey hearse of a car had swerved to avoid a dead animal in the road - a goat, Mario thought! - and again

Francesco had been shaken from his reflections where he lolled in a corner of the back seat. Perhaps it was as well. They had been

passing close to Bagheria; in a moment they'd be making a sharp right turn. Oh, yes, for Tony would surely want to park a while at

a place he was fond of: the Villa Palagonia.

'What, drawn to your monsters yet again?' Francesco's comment had been petulant, almost angry; he was irritated that his mood

and memories had been broken into.

'Our monsters!' Tony had answered immediately and sharply. For it was true enough: both of the brothers knew the inspiration

behind the lunatic array of stone beasts that adorned the walls of the villa. The carved dwarves and gargoyles, the creatures with

human hands and feet, and other Things that defied description. Some two hundred years ago the owner of the villa, Prince

Ferdinando Gravina, had insisted upon

visiting Le Manse Madonie, home to the Ferenczinis, as their name was then. Rich as Croesus, he had been interested to discover

why the equally wealthy Ferenczinis were satisfied to dwell in such an 'out-of-the-way, austere, almost inhospitable sort of place.'

And Ferdinando's mania for grotesques - or his mania in general - had later emerged as a direct result of that visit.

But in any case Francesco had shrugged, saying, 'According to Swinburne, these sculptures have their origin in Diodorus's tale of

the freakish creatures that came out of the Nile's sunbaked mud.' And before his brother could answer: 'Perhaps it's better if that

legend prevails? It was a long time ago, after all. Too long ago, for such as you and I to remember!'

At which Tony had scowled and answered, 'Ferdinando looked into the pit, brother - the pit at Le Manse Madonie - and we both

know it!' And then, sneeringly: 'Let's be discreet by all means, but in the privacy of our own car in a place like this, who is there to

eavesdrop?'

Then, as at a signal, Mario had driven on for Palermo . . .

And now they were there, at the Cafe Julio, and the fat little sod seating them at a table on his precious balcony and

detailing his odious 'cuisine,' from which list they ordered this and that: a few items to pick at, a carafe of red wine. All

a sham, a show; the brothers moved the food about their plates, waiting for Sclafani to mention Julietta. And

eventually, returning upstairs from some small duty in the kitchens:

'Gentlemen, I'm eternally in your debt!' Julio bowed and scraped, plucked nervously at the towel over his arm as he

sidled up to their table. 'Er, I mean with regard to your kindness in providing a ... a companion for my daughter. I

cannot bring myself to call the old lady a nurse - can't admit to any real sickness in my girl - but the woman is a

godsend nevertheless. She fetches and carries, sees to my daughter's needs, and I am left free to attend my business.'

'Julietta?' Francesco contrived to look concerned. 'Your daughter? Is she no better, then? We'd wondered why she

wasn't around . . .' He looked down over the balcony into the courtyard, casting here and there with his dark eyes as if

searching.

Julio turned his own eyes to the night sky and flapped his hands in an attitude of despair or supplication. 'Oh, my

lovely girl! Weak as water and pale as a cloud! Julietta will get better, I am sure. But for now . . . she reclines upon her

bed, with shadows under her eyes, and complains about the sunlight creeping in her room so that she must keep the

curtains drawn! Some strange lethargy, a malaise, a weird photophobia.'

The brothers looked at each other - perhaps quizzically - and Francesco finally nodded. And to Julio: 'Sclafani, we

have business tonight. A man of ours returns from an important trip out of the country.

Brian Lumley

Necroscope: The Lost Years - Vol. I

17

16

Meanwhile we're out for a drive, passing a little time. It's a very pleasant evening, after all. Alas, we may be called

away at any moment, which is why we didn't order more extensively from your menu. But this thing with Julietta: we

-find ourselves . . . concerned for you.'

'Indeed,' Tony nodded. 'We Francezcis are delicate that way ourselves - with regard to strong sunlight, I mean.

Which is why we're not often out and about when the sun is up.'

'And,' Francesco went on, thoughtfully, '—who can say - perhaps we find ourselves in a position to be of further

service?' Qulio could have fainted! What, the Francezci Brothers, of service to him and his? Of further service?)

'You see,' said Tony, 'in three days a man will fly from Rome. A doctor, a specialist. You are right: there is a certain

malaise or anaemia abroad. Servants of ours in Le Manse Madonie are laid low by it; we ourselves feel a definite

lethargy. Our blood seems . . . weak? But at least in the heights we have the benefit of clean air! While here in the city .

. .' He shrugged.

Open-mouthed, Julio looked from one brother to the other. 'But what do you propose? I mean, I scarcely dare

presume—'

'—That our doctor friend should take a look at Julietta, and perhaps keep her under observation a while?' Francesco

cut him short. 'But why not? He's our own private doctor and comes with the very highest recommendation!

Moreover, he's been paid in advance. In such an arrangement, surely there are no losers! So, it's settled.' He nodded

his head as in final confirmation.

'Settled?'

'We shall send our car for Julietta three evenings from now -Saturday, yes. And the old woman shall stay with her at

all times, of course. But that is to look on the gloomy side, for in the event that she should recover between now and

then, which naturally we hope she will. . .'

'I... am stunned!'Julio choked out the words.

'No need to be,' said Tony, delicately dabbing at his mouth. Take our card. If your Julietta shows signs of recovery,

call us. Otherwise look for our car Saturday night. After that, you may inquire after her at your convenience. But

remember: we're private men. Our telephone number is restricted. And rest assured, Julietta will be attended to in every

circumstance.'

It was done. Hardly believing his stroke of good fortune, the fat man went about the night's business in a daze; the

brothers, apparently unmoved, continued to pick at their food . . . until Julio was observed busying himself at the

tables in the courtyard below. Then: 'Watch the stairs,' Francesco said. 'If he comes up, issue a warning or distract

him.' But as he stood up and moved back a pace from the balcony:

'Now who is being indiscreet?' Tony smiled up at him with eye-teeth

that were white and needle-sharp in a too-wide mouth.

Francesco leaned towards his brother - leaned at a peculiar angle -and answered through clenched teeth in a voice

that was suddenly as black and bubbling as tar, 'What, but can't you smell that bitch back there?' In another moment

he straightened up, coughed to clear his throat, and continued in a more normal tone of voice. 'Anyway, we need to

be certain the fat fool will accept our offer. So drink your wine . . . and watch the stairs!'

He turned away. Two paces took him across the balcony and through a curtained archway into a corridor. He

passed a gentlemen's toilet on his left, a ladies' on the right, and entered a door marked 'Private' into Julio's office.

Skirting the desk, he passed through a second door into Julietta's sick-room. And there she lay, with the old biddy

Katerin, eighty years old if she was a day, in attendance. The crone was nodding. Startled, she glanced up at Francesco through

rheumy eyes. 'Who? What?' Then, recognizing him, she smiled, nodded and made to rise.

'No, stay,' he told her. 'Best that you're here, in case that oily little fat man should look in.' Katerin nodded again and

sat still. In the dimness of the room, the grandam's eyes were yellow as a cat's watching her master.

He sat half-way up the wide couch where Julietta lay, and his sudden weight woke her. Or perhaps she'd already

been awake . . . waiting. Her eyes opened big as saucers; her jaw fell open; knowledge and horror painted themselves

with rapid strokes upon her lovely, oval, oddly pallid face. But in no way odd to Francesco. And before she could cry out, if she

would:

'Did you think I would desert you? Ah, no!' he told her. And his hand crept under her blanket, under her nightgown,

to her thigh, so that she could feel his fingers trembling there. 'No, for having loved you once, I shall love you all the

days of your life.' But he did not say 'my life.'

As his hand climbed higher on her thigh, so Julietta's mouth closed and her fluttering breathing steadied; she began

to breathe more deeply - of his breath. His essence was in it, as it was in her. And his eyes were uniformly jet, like

moist black marbles in his face and unblinking, or like the eyes of a snake before he strikes. Except he had already

struck, on that night six weeks ago. And the poison had taken.

He smiled with his handsome, devil's face, and the horror went out of her as she lifted her arms to embrace him. But

that could not be. 'Soon,' he told her. 'Soon - at Le Manse Madonie! Can't you wait? A day or two, my Julietta. Just a

day or two, I promise.' Her sigh, and her breathing suddenly quickening; the long lashes over her dark eyes fluttering,

as Francesco's cool hand discovered the inside of her hot thigh. Then her nod, and a gasp of weird ecstasy as her

head flopped to one side in sudden shame, or defeat, or surrender, and her thighs lolled open.

18 Brian Lumley

He held her lips open with his thumb and smallest finger, and let the middle three elongate into her. His hand was

quite still, but the three central fingers stretched with a caterpillar's expansion, throbbing with the effort of

metamorphosis like a trio of sentient penises, with pouting lips opening in their tips. And into her body they crept,

while his thumb and smallest finger closed on her bud, to gentle it like a nipple.

And with the old crone watching and knowing everything - laughing silently through a gap-toothed mouth whose

eye-teeth at least were still sharp and white - so Francesco found the artery he sought and used his fingers to pierce

and sip at the soft centre of Julietta's sex where the marks, if he left any, would never be found, and the blood, if any

continued to flow, would have its own explanation.

Then, in a few seconds, a minute - as the girl went, 'Ah! Ah! Ah!' and turned her head this way and that, until her

eyes rolled up - slowly Francesco's jaws cracked open in a grin or a grimace, allowing a trickle of saliva to slop from a

corner of his writhing lips. In that same moment his own eyes turned to flame, and then to blood! Julietta's blood. But:

Brother! It was Anthony; not a call as such (for the brothers were not gifted with the true art), but a warning

definitely. A tingling of nerves, a premonition. Julio was coming!

A moment to withdraw from Julietta, and another to lean forward and kiss her clammy brow. Then he was out of the

room, flowing from Sclafani's office into the corridor, and the door marked 'Men' closing softly behind him. And his

penis steaming as he plied it in the privacy of a cubicle, once, twice, three times, before it spurted into the bowl. And

even his sperm was red where Francesco pulled the chain on it ...

In the corridor, Sclafani was waiting for him. 'Ah! Forgive me! I supposed you would be in there. Your brother asked

me to tell you . . . Your man has returned from England . . . And your driver, Mario? . . . A radio message?' He fluttered

his hands, as if that were explanation enough. Which in fact it was.

Francesco was cool now. He smiled his gratitude, and made for the balcony with Julio hard on his heels. 'It's been

such a pleasure to have you,' the fat man was babbling. 'I can't possibly bill you. What? But I'm already too deeply in

your debt!'

At the table, Mario stood by in his uniform and cap while Tony spoke into a portable radio-telephone. Francesco wheeled on

Julio and almost knocked him over. 'My friend,' he said hurriedly. This is a private conversation. You understand? As

for the bill: the pleasure was all ours.' He pressed a wad of notes into the proprietor's hand, more than enough to cover

what they had not eaten. As Julio waddled off, Tony was standing up.

'ETA in forty-five minutes,' he said. 'Even if we go right now, still the

Necroscope: The Lost Years - Vol. I 19

chopper will beat us to the Manse.' He shrugged. Francesco nodded and said, Til speak to Luigi en route.'

In the limo Francesco sat up front beside Mario. Outside Palermo the

static cleared up and he was able to make himself understood on the

car's communication system. 'Your patient?' 'Sedated,' came back a tinny, almost casual voice. Threw up a

little . . . doesn't seem to travel too well. The sedative, I suppose.' From the back of the limo Tony said: 'Well, purging can't hurt.

They'll

be seeing to that anyway, at Le Manse.' Francesco glanced back at him. 'I left instruction, yes.' And into the

radio: 'Any problems at the other end?'

'None. Smooth as silk. Everything should be that easy!' 'Good,' Francesco was pleased. 'And this end? Control?'

They've cleared me on to Le Manse Madonie. No problem.' (Of course not. The Francezcis' man in Air Traffic

Control at Catania

had picked up more than a year's wages for this!) 'Our people at the Manse will see to your patient,' Francesco

finished. 'We'll be along later. Oh, and well done.' Thanks, and out,' the unseen pilot answered. There were no frills,

not on the air ...

At Le Manse Madonie, the brothers looked on while their people saw to the girl from the helicopter. Still sedated, she'd

been stripped and bathed by the time they got there. The rest of it would take most of the night. They watched for an

hour or so - the enemas, the operation of the pumps and mechanically forced voiding, the 'purification,' as it were - but

after that they lost interest. The manicuring of nails, the cleansing and polishing of teeth, application of fast-acting fungicides to

her various openings (lotions to be removed later in a final bathing), all of that would go on and on. Clinical but less than beneficial: health wasn't

the object of the exercise. Only cleanliness.

'And all wasted,' Tony Francezci shook his head in disgust as they made for their apartments about midnight. They

wouldn't sleep but merely rest; time for sleeping when it was over.

'Wasted?' his brother answered. 'Not at all. Well, the girl herself, maybe, but not the effort. He likes them clean, after

all. And she can't lie to him, can't hide anything. Outside her mind, we could merely prise for clues. Inside it ... he can

lay everything bare down to the electrons of her brain and patterns of her past, the memories in the mush of her grey

matter.'

'Poetic!' Francesco's brother seemed appreciative, but his voice almost immediately turned sour. 'Ah, but will he

divulge what he discovers? Or will he obscure and obfuscate, as he's so wont to do? He gets more difficult all the

time.'

Necroscope: The Lost Years - Vol. I

21

20

Brian Lumley

'He'll tell us something of it, at least,' the other nodded. 'It's been a while and he's hungry. He'll be grateful, and she'll make a rare

tidbit. Why, I could even fancy her myself!'

Tony gave a snort. 'What? But you could fancy old Katerin, if that's all there was!' And as they parted company at the top of a

flight of stairs and made for their own rooms: 'Oh, and on that same note: did you have Julietta, in Julio's backroom?'

'Something like that,' his brother leered back at him. 'If you're asking will we be sending for her . . . yes, we will. Why? Would

you perhaps like her for yourself?'

'Not really,' Tony told him. 'For you've been there before me.' There was no malice in it, nor in Francesco's answer:

'It never stopped you before,' he said, evenly ...

In the hour before dawn, the Francezcis met again in the secret heart of Le Manse Madonie. Beneath extensive cellars and ancient

foundations, at a place deep in the bedrock - a place known only as 'the pit' - they came together to attend personally to the final

stage of the operation: the lowering of the girl into an old, dried-out well.

The mouth of the well was maybe fourteen feet across, wall to wall; the walls were three feet high, and of massive blocks of old

hewn masonry; a 'lid' of electrified wire-mesh in a circular frame was hinged to the walls on opposite sides, covering the opening

like a grille. But the pit was silent for now, sullen and sinister even to the Francescis. Down there somewhere, at a depth of some

eighty feet, it opened into a cyst that had once contained water. Now it housed their father.

A mechanical hoist stood to one side, its gantry reaching out over the pit. Suspended by chains, a metal table slowly rotated.

The girl lay naked on the table, with her hands folded on her stomach. In her entire life she had only once been cleaner, less toxic: in

the womb, in the days preceding her birth before the first human hands were lain on her. Now mhuman hands would be lain on her.

But first the interrogation; not of the girl but the Old Ferenczy, the monstrously mutated Francezci in his pit. Only the brothers

were present; it wasn't work for lesser, more easily influenced or corrupted minds. But then, how might one corrupt the

Francezcis?

The cavern containing the pit was a natural place, made unnatural only by its grotesque inhabitant. Rocky ledges swept back

into darkness, but the pit itself was illuminated: a bank of powerful spotlights shone down on it from the nitre-streaked dripstone

walls. Where the shadows crept, stone steps had been cut back into a shaft that climbed in a spiral to the Manse - the aerie - high

overhead. At the foot of the steps an electrified pneumatic 'door,' a grille of two-inch steel bars, guarded the exit. The door's control

panel was set well back within the brightly lit shaft. Like the cover over the old well, this door to the exit

shaft wasn't designed to keep anyone or thing out.

Yet the place wasn't specifically a prison but more properly a refuge, a sanctuary ... an asylum. And just this once, perhaps

Brian Lumley- Necroscope 09 - Lost Years 01 - The Lost Years

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