But for how long, son? I mean, will she age? Will she die? What will she be? What will she be, Harry?!
He had no answer. ‘Just a girl. I don’t know.’
And her children? What will they be?
‘Ma, I don’t know! I only know she’s too much alive to be dead.’
Are you doing it for . . . yourself?
‘No, just for her, and for all of you.’
He sensed her shaking her head. I don’t know, son. I just don’t know.
Trust me, Ma.’
Well, I suppose I’ll have to. So how can I help?
Harry was eager now, except: ‘Ma, I don’t want to weaken you. You said you were all used up.’
So I am, but if you can fight so can I. If the dead won’t talk to you, maybe they’ll still talk to me. While they can.
He nodded his gratitude and in a little while said: ‘There were others before Penny Sanderson. I know their names from the newspapers, but I have to know where they were laid to rest and I need an introduction. See, they were badly hurt and probably won’t trust someone like me, who can touch them from this side. I mean, the one who killed them, he could do that, too. While I do need to talk to them, I don’t want to frighten them more than they already are. So you see, without you it would be just too difficult.’
So you want to know which graveyards they’re in, right?
‘Right. It probably wouldn’t be too hard to find out for myself, but there are so many things on my mind that keep getting in the way. And so time goes by.’
All right, Harry, I’ll do what I can. But I don’t want to have to track you down any more, so it would be better if you came to see me. That way I . . . She paused, cut off abruptly.
‘Ma?’
Didn’t you feel that, son? I always feel it, when they’re close by like that.
‘What was it?’
Someone joining us, she answered, sadly. Someone dying. Some thing, anyway.
A medium in life, in death Mary Keogh’s contact with death was that much sharper. But what had she meant? It wasn’t clear, and Harry felt the short hairs prickle on the back of his neck. ‘Some . . . thing?’ he repeated her.
A pet, a puppy, an accident, she sighed. And some poor child’s heart broken. In Bonnyrig. Just this minute.
The Necroscope felt his own heart give a start; he’d lost so much during his life that the thought of another’s loss, however small, stung him with its poignancy. Or maybe it was just the way his mother had reported the occurrence, so soulfully. Or there again it could be an effect of his heightened emotional awareness. Maybe there was someone he could comfort.
‘Bonnyrig, did you say? Ma, I’ll be going now. I’ll come and see you tomorrow. Maybe you’ll know something by then.’
Take care, son.
Harry stood up, looked up and down the river and across it to the other side. The bright sun had passed behind fluffy, drifting clouds, which was a relief.
He climbed a tottering fence and entered a small copse, and in the dappled heart of the greenery conjured a Möbius door. A moment later and he emerged in a back alley close to the high street in Bonnyrig. And letting his deadspeak sensitivity spread out around him like a fan or cobweb, he searched for a newcomer among the ranks of the dead.
And there it was, close by: a whining yelp in memory of the panic and pain of a few moments ago, and a certain astonishment that the pain was no longer here, and disbelief that the bright day could so quickly turn black and blacker than night. A dumb animal’s perception of sudden death.
Harry understood it very well, for it wasn’t too dissimilar to the reaction of a human being. The only difference being that dogs have neither foreknowledge of nor preoccupation with death, so that their surprise is that much greater. But strike or kick a dog unjustly or cruelly and it will draw back with just the same astonishment, the same disbelief.