Clarke held up a hand in protest. ‘Christ, Harry – I know all that!’
The Necroscope nodded. ‘But you don’t know what it’s like to be dead, and that’s why you’re not getting it. It’s because you can’t imagine what I’m talking about. You know what I do and accept it because you know it for a fact, but deep inside yourself you still think it’s just too way out to think about. So you don’t. And I don’t blame you. Now listen.
‘I know I always protested I was different from Dragosani, but in certain ways he and I were alike. Even now I don’t like admitting it, but it’s true. I mean, you know what the bastard did to Keenan Gormley – the mess he made of him – but only I know what Gormley thought about it!’
And now Clarke got it. He snatched air in a great gasp and felt the short hairs stiffen at the back of his neck as an irrepressible shudder wracked his body. And: ‘Jesus, you’re right!’ he breathed. ‘I just don’t think about it – because I don’t want to think about it! But in fact Keenan knew! He felt everything Dragosani did to him!’
‘Right,’ Harry was relentless. ‘Torture is the necromancer’s principal tool. The dead feel the necromancer working on them just like they hear me talking to them. Except unlike the living, there’s nothing they can do about it, not even scream. Not and be heard, anyway. And Penny Sanderson?’
Clarke went pale in a moment. ‘She could feel – ?’
‘Everything,’ Harry growled. ‘And that bastard, whoever he is, knew it! So you see while rape is one thing, and bad enough when it’s done to the living, and while necrophilia is something else, an outrage carried out upon the unfeeling dead, what he does hits new lows. He tortures his victims alive, then tortures them dead – and he knows while he’s doing it that they can feel it! He uses a knife with a curved blade, like a tool for scooping earth when you’re planting bulbs. It’s razor-sharp and . . . and he doesn’t use it for scooping earth.’
It had been Clarke’s intention to stop at the guardroom and speak to the policemen there. But now, pale as a ghost, he reeled to the castle’s low wall. Clutching its masonry for support, he gulped at the gusting air and fought down the bile he felt rising from the churning of his guts.
And: ‘Jesus, Jesus!’ he choked. For he could see it all now and there was nothing he could do to cleanse the picture from his mind’s eye. Weird sex? God, what an understatement!
Harry had followed Clarke to the wall. The head of E-Branch looked at him sideways from a watery eye. ‘He … he digs holes in those poor kids, then makes love to the holes!’
‘Love?’ the Necroscope hissed. ‘His flesh ruts in blood like a pig’s snout ruts in soil, Darcy! Except the soil can’t feel! Didn’t the police tell you where he leaves his semen?’
Clarke’s eyes were swimming and his brow feverish, but he felt his nausea being replaced by a cold loathing almost as strong as the Necroscope’s own. No, the police hadn’t told him that, but now he knew. He looked out over the blurred city and asked: ‘How do you know he knows they feel it?’
‘Because he talks to them while he’s doing it,’ Harry told him, mercilessly. ‘And when they cry out in their agony and beg him to stop, he hears them. And he laughs!’
Clarke thought: Christ, I shouldn’t have asked! And you – you bastard, Harry Keogh – you shouldn’t have told me!
With fury in his eyes, he turned to face the Necroscope . . . and faced thin air. A wind blew up the esplanade and tourists leaned into it, balancing themselves. Overhead, seagulls cried where they spiralled on a rising thermal.
But Harry was no longer there . . .
Later, with Clarke’s help, Harry fixed it that Penny Sanderson would be cremated. Her parents wanted it, and it wouldn’t hurt them that it was all a show. They wouldn’t know it anyway: that Penny was already ashes when their tears fell on her empty box, before it slid away from them behind swishing curtains and became wood smoke.