Harry brought his knee up into the maniac’s groin. Bones broke but still Shukshin hung on. He dragged Harry inexorably back, slavered into his face. For a long moment Harry thought he meant to bite him, savage him like a rabid dog! He fought Shukshin, slammed his clenched fists again and again into his ghastly face, to no avail. The madman would win. Harry was about to go under …
He reached out again for the tough roots in the river bank, but Shukshin’s hands at his throat were shutting off the air, shutting off life itself.
‘Ma!’ Harry silently cried. ‘You were right, Ma. I should have listened. I’m sorry.’
‘No!’ came her denial of defeat. ‘No!’ Shukshin had killed her, but he must not be allowed to kill her son.
And again the bitter water gurgled and churned – but more blackly yet!
Dragosani skidded to a halt not fifteen feet away, grabbed at Batu and drew him also to a standstill. Panting, their breath forming fragile feathers of snow in the air, they looked – they saw – and their jaws fell open. Two men had gone down under the ice back there, had been washed downstream to this hole, and until a moment ago two figures had fought and torn at each other here in the still water beneath the river bank. But now there were three figures there in the water, and the third one was as terrible a thing as ever Dragosani had heard of or imagined or seen in his blackest nightmares!
It was . . . not alive, and yet it had the mobility of life, the authority of life. And it had purpose. It clung to Shukshin, wrapped itself about him, put its mud-and-bones arms around him and its algae and plastered-hair skull against his. Of eyes there were none, but a putrid glow shone out from empty sockets with a semblance of sight. And where before Shukshin had only howled and gibbered and laughed like a madman, now he quite literally went mad.
Shriek after shriek pealed out from him as he fought with the awful thing, the shrillest lunatic screeching that Dragosani and Batu had ever thought to hear; and at the very end, just before the horror dragged him under, words which at last the petrified watchers could understand:
‘Not you!’ Shukshin babbled. ‘Oh God, oh no, not you!’
Then he was gone, and the thing of bones and mud and weeds and death with him …
And Harry Keogh was left to scramble out on to the river bank.
Batu might perhaps have gone blindly, numbly after him but Dragosani still clutched at his arm. He clutched it, almost for support. Batu began to adopt his killing crouch but Dragosani stopped that, too. ‘No, Max,’ he hoarsely whispered, ‘we don’t dare. We’ve seen something of what he can do, but what other talents does he possess?’
Batu understood, relaxed, drew himself upright. On the bank above them Harry Keogh became aware of their presence for the first time. He turned his face towards them, found them, stared at them. His eyes focused on them at last and he looked as though he might speak, but he said nothing. For long moments they simply stared at
each other, all three, and then Keogh glanced back at the jagged patch of black water. ‘Thanks, Ma,’ he said, simply.
Dragosani and Batu watched as he turned, staggered, stumbled and then began to run weavingly back towards Shukshin’s house. They watched him go, and made no attempt to follow. Not yet. When he was out of sight Batu hissed:
‘But that thing, Comrade Dragosani? It wasn’t -couldn’t be – human. So what was it?’
Dragosani shook his head. He believed he knew the answer but wouldn’t commit himself now. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘It had been human once, though. One thing is certain: when Keogh needed help it came to him. That’s his talent, Max: the dead answer his call.’ And he turned to the other, his eyes darker still in sunken orbits.
‘They answer his call, Max. And there are a lot more of the dead than there are of the living.’