‘I reckon we can manage that, Harry.’ Hamish nodded.
‘Only one thing,’ said the Necroscope, ‘be careful how you gather him up. I mean, the young lad wants to know he has all of him, right?’
‘Just as you say.’ Another nod. And Harry waited for five hours until the job was done, but stayed calm and patient and controlled throughout. For now he was the old Harry who, while he had little enough time left of his own, nevertheless had all the time in the world for this.
And anyway it would serve his wider purposes too, wouldn’t it? A little preview of what was to come? A chance to observe any possible . . . discrepancies? For Trevor Jordan’s brain had also been shattered, and Penny’s flesh had been torn.
At 10:00 p.m. Harry was down in the spacious, dusty cellar of his old house a mile or so out of Bonnyrig. He’d cleaned the place out as best he could and scrubbed an area in the centre of the stone floor until it was smooth as glass. Old Hamish had told him the weight of the dead pup’s body before calcination, so that even if Harry’s grasp of maths had been meagre it wouldn’t be too difficult to calculate pound for pound the various amounts of chemicals required. His knowledge was anything but meagre and he’d calculated it down into grams.
Finally ashes and chemicals were poured together, making a very small mound in the scrubbed floor space, and Harry was ready. And this time there was no pausing to check if his own personal mind-flea was up and jumping, for this time he wasn’t worried for himself but for a little kid who wouldn’t be sleeping easy tonight.
Except now that he was ready it all seemed so ridiculously easy. Was this all there was to it? Had he perhaps forgotten something? Had those weirdly esoteric words he’d uttered down in the bowels of Janos Ferenczy’s ruined castle – that formula out of hideous aeons – really sufficed to bring about . . . resurrection? And if so, had it been an act of blasphemy? On the other hand, where was the profit in worrying about that now? If the Necroscope was to be damned for his works then he was already damned. And purgatory has to be something like infinity: if you’re to suffer for all eternity, there’s no way you can be made to suffer twice as long. Is there?
As always his arguments went in a circle, making his head spin. But suddenly he ‘knew’ that it was the vampire in him, working to confuse him, and in that same moment he acted and so broke the thread. Directing a rigid finger and his thoughts at the pile of ingredients, he spoke the words of evocation:
‘Y’ai ‘Ng’ngah,
Yog-Sothoth
H’ee-L’geb,
F’ai Throdog
– Uaaahr
It was like putting a lighted match to a pile of incendiary materials: there was phosphorescent light, coloured smoke, a not-quite-sulphur stench. And there was a yelp!
Paddy, called up from his ashes, came staggering from a mushrooming smoke-ring of rapidly dispersing gas or vapour. His ears and stump of a tail were down, trembling, and he wobbled on legs of jelly which seemed incapable of supporting him. He had returned from death and weightlessness – from incorporeity – to life and substantiality in a moment, but his pup’s legs were already unused to it.
‘Paddy,’ the Necroscope whispered, going down on one knee. ‘Paddy – here, boy!’ And the little dog fell down, stood up, shook himself so as almost to fall again, and came to him.
Black and white, short in the leg, floppy-eared, a mongrel entirely – and entirely alive!
… Was he?
Paddy, the Necroscope spoke again, this time in dead-speak. But there was no answer.
Paddy lived. Truly.
Half an hour later Harry delivered Paddy to house number seven of a row of neat terraced houses in Bonnyrig. He didn’t mean to stay, would escape immediately if he could, but there were things he needed to know. About Paddy. About Paddy’s character. Was he the same dog exactly?
And apparently he was. Certainly Peter thought so. Paddy’s master had been ready for bed for an hour, but he wouldn’t go until he’d heard from his ‘vet’. And Paddy’s return was a miracle to him, though only the Necroscope knew how much of a miracle.