Necroscope: Harry and the Pirates: and Other Tales from the Lost Years (7 page)

And for a fact certain leaked reports of gratuitous police brutality, presumably the work of Miller’s counsel, had quickly found their way into print in the local press—and had just as quickly been refuted. Not that they would have greatly improved the suspect’s chances; having presented or attempted to present his “ridiculous alibi,” the tide of public and judicial opinion had now very definitely turned against Greg Miller . . . .

Eventually, following the deterioration of Miller’s mental condition into emotional chaos, various psychiatric reports had been prepared. According to one such, Miller was suffering from “a morbid degenerative psychosexual schizophrenia,” a statement which the Necroscope believed must have played a part in saving the man from a life sentence. For with the exception of extreme and
dangerous cases, society in general is opposed to the long-term incarceration of the mentally ill, by far preferring hospitalisation and psychiatric care; in which respect it appeared Jimmy Collins was correct to assume that Greg Miller “had been cured or done his time or something. . . .”

As for Constable Forester’s press statement following Sgt. Symonds’ suicide: there was more to that than at first met the eye. In its way a eulogy, still Jack Forester’s bitterness was evident; he seemingly mourned the loss of Janet Symonds as much if not more than that of his friend and mentor, her father! And having met Forester—having witnessed at first hand his raging hatred of Miller—so now, reading between the lines, the Necroscope began to believe that he knew who Sgt. Symonds would have preferred as a life companion for his daughter Janet, and moreover that the man in question had in all probability desired to be just such a companion. It could only have been Jack Forester himself: Arnold Symonds’ police protégé, and the author of this very statement.

More curious than ever, and determined to fathom the Miller/Forester story in its entirety—and even more determined to solve the mystery of those trapped and terrified phantom voices from beyond life—Harry concluded his research at the offices of the
Northern Echo
and rode the midday bus back to Harden. . . .

During the half-hour ride, however, seated on the upper deck of the bus, with occasional glimpses of the North Sea on his right and mainly open countryside on his left, except where the route cut through once-proud colliery villages which now looked sadly neglected, the Necroscope found that his thoughts kept drifting back to something Greg Miller had said towards the end of their all too brief conversation at Bellingham’s Farm. Miller’s oddly cryptic comment, that “eventually ‘it’ (would) happen again,” kept repeating like an echo in his mind. Or perhaps not like an echo, for instead of fading Miller’s words seemed to be getting clearer and ever more insistent.

“Eventually it will happen again,” the man had said, without specifying an “it” that had since become self-evident. “And when it does, they’ll all . . .
huh
!” Which was where he’d paused abruptly when he—and in fact the Necroscope, too—had sensed that weird oppressiveness of spirit and its attendant darkening of the psychic atmosphere.

Following which, as if lured hypnotically or magnetically, Greg Miller had set off determinedly, however unsteadily, towards Hazeldene; towards that great brooding forest, yes, in the same direction as the currently undiscovered source of those massed, smothered voices from the darkness beyond life, or close enough to that source that it made little or no difference.

As for Miller’s “it”: assuming that the man wasn’t still psychotic—if he ever had been—and that he hadn’t in fact murdered Janet Symonds himself, it had to refer to whatever he thought had happened to her. His assertion, however, that this fatal attack by a maniacal forest elemental would recur seemed to Harry to indicate a possible familiarity with a recent history of such assaults. Which could mean that the man was indeed a killer and was hinting—perhaps even warning, however unwittingly or subconsciously—that he might soon be ready to kill again! Or, on the other hand . . .

. . . Was it possible, the Necroscope wondered, that what had happened to Janet Symonds
had
happened before but long ago, and that somehow Greg Miller knew about it? If so, how often had it happened, and how had Miller learned of it?

Perhaps there was a way that Harry could find out. . . .

Jimmy Collins had given Harry a spare key to the house. Letting himself in, the Necroscope found his host’s note in the kitchen. A small factory in an older part of the village was urgently in need of a rewiring job; Jimmy’s services had been called upon; he calculated he would probably have to work on it for the rest of the day, and maybe tomorrow, too. But not to worry: there was food
in the pantry and Harry should just go ahead and use whatever he needed.

Giving it a moment’s thought, the Necroscope decided that a ploughman’s lunch—cheese and pickle, a wedge of crusty bread, and a pint of beer in a friendly pub; not necessarily a village pub, rather a town pub in Sunderland some twenty miles north of Harden—would do very nicely. Not that he had anything against Harden’s pubs, but Sunderland had something that Harden didn’t: an old museum, with a small reference library devoted specifically to these north-easterly regions. . . .

In his pre-teens Harry had visited the museum frequently; the contents of its echoing, dusty rooms had never failed to fascinate him. But in those formative years when his weird talents had been immature, undeveloped, the museum’s relics—its many dead things, the fossils, stuffed birds and animals—had exerted little or no influence over him. Now, however, when the Necroscope could sense, hear, and occasionally even feel their incorporeal emanations, it was very different. But now too, he had learned to exclude such deadspeak babble from his metaphysical mind, much as he had with the plaintive insect murmurings in Jimmy Collins’ garden. He knew instinctively which thoughts were from active—albeit dead—intelligences that had become aware of his warm presence and were attempting to communicate, as opposed to the abstract echoes and amorphous images of once-living creatures whose cognitive skills were even more limited in death than they’d been in life, and either responded or refrained from responding accordingly.

Not too far from the museum was a disused underpass whose shallow, arched-over recesses were a godsend for young couples on Friday and Saturday nights when the local dancehall turned out. In his middle to late teens Harry had frequented the spot himself, with Brenda, as they walked from the dance to the bus stop to catch the late-night bus to Harden, and he still remembered the co-ordinates. The tunnel-like subway wasn’t the most hygienic
trysting-place for lovers, not at all, but apart from the odd tramp, or some down-and-out sleeping off a drunk there, it would normally be deserted during daylight hours and so was ideally suited to Harry’s purpose.

And indeed it was deserted on that early afternoon as the Necroscope left the Continuum and the shadows of the underpass, stepped out into sunlight, and made his way to a nearby public house. One ploughman’s lunch later and he was all set to visit the museum, whose afternoon open hours were two till six. A few minutes before opening time he climbed marble steps to the massive oak doors of the place, where he saw a tall, thin, forward-leaning old man—who with his dust-dry, cadaverous looks could only be one of two things: either the curator or a local undertaker—using heavy brass keys to open the place up.

The last time Harry was here the place had been closed . . . but not to him with his esoteric skills. Remembering that visit now, and meeting the curator for the first time, he felt just a little guilty. This feeling, however, very quickly passed. . . .

Seeing that Harry was the museum’s only customer, the only person waiting to be let in, the old gentleman sighed and said, “Well, at least
you
seem keen for knowledge, or you wouldn’t be so eager . . . you wouldn’t be here dead on time.” Rambling on as much to himself as to Harry, finally he fumbled the great doors open and continued, “Ah, well—there you are—now we can go on in.” And:

Isn’t it just amazing
(the Necroscope thought),
how often the word “dead” comes up in everyday conversation? Dead centre, dead cert, dead on time, and so forth? And right now, as far as I’m concerned, we really shouldn’t forget dead-and-alive: as in “dead-and-alive hole!”
He meant the museum, which was beginning to look rather dilapidated. But then on an afterthought and far more cruelly:
Or perhaps it’s not so much the place as its attendant—who seems far more dead-and-alive than his museum!

But out loud, already regretting his silent sarcasm, Harry only said, “I came here quite regularly as a boy, but even then there didn’t seem to be too many people using the place.”

“Using it?” The curator repeated him, nodding thoughtfully as
they went inside. “How interesting. Of course, the museum is here to be
used,
but in the main its contents are merely
viewed
. . . it is a curiosity as opposed to a resource. You see, microcomputers are doing away with small museums, just as television has done away with the radio.”

So that was the old fellow’s problem, was it? He felt that the museum was no longer needed—and possibly himself with it—and very likely correctly.

“I can see how you’re probably right,” said Harry. “But at least nothing has yet come along to replace books.”

“Ah, books!” said the other. “But this isn’t a library, my young friend. And even if it was, I think I would be correct in answering that even books are beginning to suffer; their sales, I mean. We do have certain very old manuscripts, of course, but all of them under glass I’m afraid. What exactly were you looking for?” Without waiting for Harry’s answer, he headed for his office: a modern, aluminium-framed, glass-walled cube of a room looking completely out of place where it stood against the wall of this high-ceilinged, oak-floored anteroom.

Following close behind, the Necroscope answered the curator’s question with two of his own. “But you do have a reference library of sorts? Even if it’s mainly regional and dedicated to these northeastern parts? I seem to remember doing research on Hadrian’s Wall here; a homework project from my history teacher when I was maybe eleven or twelve years old. Actually . . . well, it wasn’t so much homework as a punishment—and I hated it!”

Half-way through the doorway into his office, the old man paused and turned to face Harry. “Your memory serves you well,” he said. “Indeed we do have a small reference library dedicated to County Durham and Northumberland; it’s located on the second floor. That, too, is under lock and key, however, because of some of the rarer manuscripts. We’ve had more than our fair share of thieves, you see. So I’m sorry, but I shall have to lock you in while you do your research . . . er, though not on Hadrian’s Wall again, surely?” Here he actually offered the ghost of a smile—but in the
next moment was sober again—and almost apologetically continued, “Just give me a second or two to find the keys, and I’ll be pleased to accompany you upstairs. . . .”

The old building lacked an elevator; as the pair climbed a wide mahogany staircase, then walked down an echoing parquet-floored corridor that ran the length of the building, they conversed. “Well then,” said the curator, “may I ask what you’re researching? Perhaps I’ll be able to offer some assistance. The section you’ll be entering isn’t the tidiest in the museum, I’m afraid. I never seem to have enough time to put things straight—and I dare not trust my cleaner to go in there without damaging something. A manuscript is just a bundle of old papers to him—and given a chance I know he would smoke in there. Oh yes, I’m sure he would! And why not, since he smokes everywhere else? Even in the toilets, where the atmosphere is sufficiently, er,
fragrant
without that we need to introduce burning tobacco into it!”

“Well, you needn’t worry about me,” said Harry. “I’ve been known to smoke on occasion but haven’t any with me. As for what I’m researching: there’s a densely forested place some miles to the south. It’s called Hazeldene. Some years ago a girl disappeared there, presumably murdered. I want to know if that was an isolated incident, or if—”

“—Or if, historically,” the curator interrupted, “there have been similar, er, ‘incidents’?” And unlocking the door of a room towards the end of the corridor, he glanced back over his shoulder at the Necroscope. “Well now! What an odd coincidence! And what’s more, it appears I really can help you!”

“A coincidence?” Harry followed him inside the room, where he saw what the old man had meant when he said that this wasn’t the tidiest place in the museum. In fact it seemed to be one of the most cluttered, with open books scattered across the top of a leather-topped table, numerous scrapbooks and albums of newsprint clippings lying four volumes deep on the seat of a chair, magazines
and pamphlets of bygone times piled up totteringly on the floor, and shelves and pigeonholes where yellowing scrolls and other seemingly fragile documents looked in imminent danger of falling into dusty ruin.

Seeing Harry’s look of dismay, the curator offered a sigh, shrugged, and said, “You see what I mean? Where would I find the time? It would take days—maybe a whole week—to put all of this back in order and get everything correctly located. Oh, the shelves are labelled clearly enough, but everything else is completely confused, a literary jigsaw puzzle where I might search for hours for just one piece! But as for
your
search . . . yes, I really do think I can help.”

“A coincidence,” the Necroscope said again. “You mentioned a coincidence? Can I take it that in fact someone else has been researching murders in Hazeldene? Was that your meaning? And if so, when? Years ago or more recently?” He already suspected the latter.

The curator dusted off a chair by the table and sat down, indicating that Harry should do the same. Harry removed a pile of books from another chair, positioned it facing the old man, seated himself, and said, “Well, then? Are you going to tell me about it?”