If she’d answered: ‘So what’s new?’ he would understand; it seemed he was always in a mess. But Mary Keogh loved her son as all mothers do, and death had not diminished that.
Harry? her voice seemed very faint now, very distant, as if she’d been washed away downriver along with her physical shell. Oh, Harry, I know you are, son.
Well, and that was only to be expected. He’d never been able to hide anything from his Ma, who had warned him often enough that there are some things you daren’t get too close to. This time he’d let himself get too close. ‘Do you know what I’m talking about?’
There’s only one thing you can be talking about, son, (she sounded so sad, so sorry for him). And even if you hadn’t come to speak to me, still I would know. All of us know, Harry.
He nodded. ‘They’re not so keen to talk to me any more,’ he said, maybe a little bitterly. ‘And yet I never harmed a single one of them.’
But you should try to understand, Harry, she was at pains to explain. The Great Majority were once living and now are dead. They remember what life was, and they know what death is, but they don’t understand and want nothing to do with anything that lies between. They can’t understand something which preys on the living to make them undead, which takes away true life and replaces it with soulless greed and lust and . . . and evil. The children and grandchildren of the teeming dead are still in the world of the living, and so are you. And that’s what worries them. It makes no difference how long people are dead, Harry, they still worry about their children. But you know that, son, don’t you?
Harry sighed. Her deadspeak, however faint (and possibly even chiding?) was as warm as ever. It covered the Necroscope like a blanket, kept him safe, made it easier to think and plan and even dream. It was so alien to the nightmare thing inside him that that part of Harry could neither understand nor interfere with it. Namely, it was the love of his mother, soothing as nothing else could ever be.
‘But the point is,’ he said, in a little while, ‘that I’ve one more thing to do before I … before I’m finished here. And it’s important, Ma. Important to me, and to you and the teeming dead alike. There’s a monster running loose, and I have to nail him.’
A monster, son? Her voice was very soft, but he knew what she meant. Who was he to talk about monsters?
‘Ma, I’ve done nothing wrong,’ he answered. ‘And so long as I’m me, I’m not going to.’
Harry, she said, son, I’m all used up. And she wasn’t only faint but very tired, too. We’re not inexhaustible. Left alone we’d just go on thinking our thoughts, gradually fading as all things do. We do fade in the end, be it ever so long. But torn by outside influences we go that much faster. I think that’s how it works, anyway. You were a light in our long night, son, and it was like we could see again. But now we have to let you go and suffer the darkness. Alive we used to wonder: is there anything on the other side? Well, there was, and then you came and joined us up, and there was a kind of life again. So now I wonder: what’s next? What I’m telling you is I haven’t long here. But I’d hate to leave you not knowing you were all right. What are your plans, Harry?
And for the first time he realized that he really did need a plan. As simply as that, his mother had cut through all of his confusion.
‘Well, there’s a place I can go,’ he finally answered. ‘Not much of a place, but better than dying … I think. And there’s someone there who can teach me things, if he’s willing. He had problems, too, but the last time I saw him he was coping. Maybe he still is. Maybe I can learn something from him.’