But why?
‘Why, Keenan?’ he asked.
‘Noooo! No, keep off!’ came the answer at once, causing Harry to rock back in his chair with its force, its fear, its freezing terror. ‘Dragosani, you monster! No more – for God’s sake have pity, man!’
‘Dragosani?’ Harry reached out soothing mental fingers. ‘This isn’t Dragosani, Keenan. It’s me, Harry Keogh.’
‘What?’ the single word was a gasp in his mind. ‘Keogh? Harry?’ Then a sigh, a sob of relief. ‘Thank God! Thank God it’s you, Harry, and not. . . not him!’
‘Was this Dragosani?’ Harry gritted his teeth. ‘But why? Is he insane? He would have to be totally – ‘
‘No,’ Gormley’s vigorous denial cut him off. ‘Oh, he is crazy, of course he is – but crazy like a fox! And his talent is … hideous!’
Suddenly the answer – or what he thought was the answer – came to Keogh in a flash. He felt the blood draining from him. ‘He came to you after you died!’ he gasped. ‘He’s like me, a necroscope.’
‘No, absolutely not!’ again Gormley’s denial. ‘Not like you at all, Harry. I’m talking to you because I want to. All of … of us, talk to you. You’re the bringer of warmth, of peace. You’re contact with the dream that went before and which now has faded. You’re a chance -the one last chance – that something worthwhile might
linger over, might even be passed on. A light in the darkness, Harry, that’s what you are. But Dragosani -‘
‘What is his talent?’
‘He’s a necromancer – and that’s a different thing entirely!’
Harry opened his eyes a crack and glanced once more at the state of the room. But as the horror welled up again he closed his eyes and said: ‘But this is the work of a ghoul!’
That and worse,’ Gormley shuddered, and Harry felt it – felt the dead man’s shudder of absolute terror shaking his spirit. ‘He … he doesn’t just talk, Harry, he doesn’t ask. Doesn’t even try. He just reaches in and takes, steals. You can’t hide anything from him. He finds his answers in your blood, your guts, in the marrow of your very bones. The dead can’t feel pain, Harry, or they shouldn’t. But that’s part of his talent, too. When Boris Dragosani works, he makes us feel it. I felt his knives, his hands, his tearing nails. I knew everything he did, and all of it was hell! After one minute I would have told him everything, but that’s not his way, it’s not his art. How could he be sure I told the truth? But his way he knows it’s the truth! It’s written in skin and muscle, in ligaments and tendons and corpuscles. He can read it in brain fluid, in the mucus of the eye and ear, in the texture of the dead tissue itself!’
Harry kept his eyes closed, shook his head, felt sick and dizzy and totally disoriented, as if this were all happening to someone else. At last he said: ‘This can’t -mustn’t – happen again. He has to be stopped. I have to stop him. But I can’t do it alone.’
‘Oh, yes, he has to be stopped, Harry. Especially now. You see, he took everything. He knows it all. He knows our strengths, our weaknesses, and all of it is knowledge he can use. Him and his master, Gregor Borowitz. And you may well be the only one who can stop him.’
With another part of his awareness, Harry heard Banks on the telephone in the lobby. Time was now short, and there was so much Gormley must tell him. ‘Listen, Keenan. We have to hurry now. I’ll stay with you a little while longer, and then I’ll find a hotel in the city. But if I stay here now the police will want to talk to me. Anyway, I’ll find a place and from now until you – ‘ he realised what he had almost said and bit the words off unspoken, but not unvisioned.
‘ – Until I’m cremated, yes,’ said Gormley, and Harry could picture him nodding understandingly. ‘It was to have been soon, but now it will probably be delayed.’