The woman moved, and moaned again, louder this time. Thibor withdrew from her, made his hand heavier, more solid. He struck her, a ringing slap across her pale face. She cried out, shook herself, opened her eyes. But too late to see the leprous appendage of the vampire as it was sucked down swiftly into the earth.
She cried out again, cast about with frightened eyes in the gloom, saw the still, crumpled shape of her husband. Galvanised, she drew breath, cried, ‘Oh God!’ as she flew to him. It took only a moment more to accept the unacceptable truth.
‘No!’ she cried. ‘Oh, God, no!’ Horror gave her strength. She would not faint again; indeed she loathed herself that she’d fainted the first time. Now she must act, must do … something! There was nothing she could do, not for him, though for the moment that fact hadn’t registered.
She got her arms hooked under his, dragged him a few stumbling paces under the trees, down the slope. Then she tripped on a root, flew backwards, and her husband’s corpse came tumbling after her. She was brought up short when she collided with the bole of a tree, but not him. He went sliding, lolling and flopping past her, a loose bundle of arms and legs. He hit a patch of snow crusted over with ice, and went tobogganing away out of sight, down the hill, shooting into steep shadows.
The crashing of undergrowth came back to her where she got to her feet and gaspingly drew breath. And it was all useless, her efforts all totally worthless.
As that fact dawned she filled her lungs – filled them to bursting – and stumbling blindly after him down the hill, under the trees, let it all out in a long, piercing scream of mental agony and self-reproach.
The cruciform hills echoed her scream, bouncing it to and fro until it fell to earth and was absorbed. And down below the old Thing heard it and sighed, and waited for whatever the future would bring . . .
In an office in London, on the top floor of a hotel which was rather more than a hotel, Alec Kyle glanced at his watch. It was 4.05, and the Keogh apparition wasn’t finished yet. The story it told was fascinating, however morbid, and Kyle guessed it would also be accurate – but how much more of it would there be? Time must surely be running out. Now, while the spectral thing which was Keogh paused, and while yet the image of his child host turned on its axis in and through his mid-section, Kyle said, ‘But of course we know what happened to Thibor: Dragosani put an end to him, finally beheaded and destroyed him there under the motionless trees on the cruciform hills.’
Keogh had noticed him looking at his watch. You’re right, he said, with a spectral nod. Thibor Ferenczy is dead. That’s how I was able to speak to him, there on those selfsame hills. I went there along the Mobius route. But you’re also right that time is running down. So while we have time we must use it. And I’ve more to tell you.
Kyle sat back, said nothing, waited.
I said there were other vampires, Keogh continued. And there may be. But there are certainly creatures which I call half-vampires. That is something I’ll try to explain later. I also mentioned a victim: a man who has been taken, used, destroyed by one of these half-vampires. He was dead when I spoke to him. Dead and utterly terrified. But not of being dead. And now he is undead.
Kyle shook his head, tried hard to understand. ‘You’d better get on. Tell it your way. Let it unfold. That way I’ll understand it better. Just tell me one thing: when did you . . . speak … to this dead man?’
Just a few days ago, as you measure time, Keogh answered without hesitation. / was on my way back from the past, travelling in the Möbius continuum, when I saw a blue life-line crossed, and terminated, by a line more red than blue. I knew a life had been taken, and so I stopped and spoke to the victim. Incidentally, my discovery wasn’t an accident: I had been looking for just such an occurrence. In a way I even needed this killing, horrible as that may seem. But it’s how I gain knowledge. You see, it’s much easier for me to talk to the dead than to the living. And in any case, I couldn’t have saved him. But through him I might be able to save others.