The Source by Brian Lumley

Brenda and her months-old infant son Harry Jnr were living in a garret flat in Hartlepool on the north-east coast of England when matters finally came to a head. Leaving a trail of bloodshed and destruction behind him, Bodescu evaded E-Branch’s attempts at entrapment, fled his home in Devon and travelled north. Having inherited his mentor’s expertise in hideous necromancy, he could ‘examine’ the desecrated corpses of his victims and read in their brains and blood and guts all of their innermost secrets. This was his intention in respect of the two Harrys, father and son: to murder them and steal the secrets of the Necroscope, and so discover the nature and properties of the metaphysical Mobius Continuum.

E-Branch, closing on the Devon house to destroy it, missed their main quarry but discovered unthinkable horror there. Bodescu’s aunt, uncle and cousin had been tortured and vampirized; his huge black dog was something more than a mere dog; a semi-plastic thing inhabited the earth under the extensive cellars, and Bodescu’s mother was quite out of her mind from the unbearable knowledge of what Yulian had become. The house and all who dwelled in it were put to the torch.

E-Branch had men in Hartlepool, psychically talented people who were keeping a low profile in and around the Edwardian building which housed Brenda’s flat. The local police and Special Branch had also been informed (however guardedly, so as not to panic the populace) that the woman and child in the garret rooms were possible targets for an ‘escaped lunatic’. Their presence hardly deterred the vampire; he invaded the building, killed all who stood before him mercilessly and with dreadful efficiency, and finally reached his objective. But where the incorporeal Harry Keogh himself had been impotent, his infant son was anything but. His father’s freakish powers had come down to him; he could talk to the dead, could even call them up from their graves in the cemetery across the road from the house.

Harry Snr had considered himself ‘trapped’ in the baby’s psyche, but this had not been the case. The infant had held him there for one reason only: to explore Harry’s mind and learn from it. Physically he was a baby, apparently helpless, but mentally –

Harry Jnr’s talents were already vaster far than anything his father possessed or ever dreamed of achieving. And his potential was enormous. All the theory was there in the child’s mind and only practical application, experience, was missing. But not for long.

Brenda, attempting to protect her infant son from the incredible nightmare which was Yulian Bodescu, had been tossed aside by the vampire. Unconscious, she had not seen the final confrontation. Thinking back on that scene in the flat now, Harry remembered it as vividly as if it were yesterday:

The two Harrys had looked out through the infant’s eyes into the face of terror itself, the face of Yulian Bodescu. Crouched over the baby’s cot, the leering malignancy of his eyes spoke all too clearly of his intentions.

Finished! Harry had thought. All done, and it ends like this.

No, another voice, not his own, had spoken in his mind.

No, it doesn’t. Through you I’ve learned what I had to learn. I don’t need you that way any more. But I do still need you as a father. So go, save yourself.

It could only have been one person speaking to him, doing it now, for the first time, when there was no longer any time to question the hows and whys of it. Then . . . Harry had felt the child’s restraints falling from him like broken chains, leaving him free again. Free to will his incorporeal mind into the safety of the Mobious Continuum. He could have gone, right there and then, leaving his son to face whatever was coming. He could have gone – but he couldn’t!

Bodescu’s jaws had yawned open like a pit, revealing a snake’s tongue flickering behind gleaming dagger teeth.

Go! little Harry had said again, with more urgency.

You’re my son! Harry had cried. Damn you, I can’t go! I can’t leave you to this!

Leave me to this? It had been as if the infant couldn’t follow his reasoning. But then he had, and said: But did you think I was going to stay here?

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