It was midnight on the cruciform hills, and for two hundred miles in every direction, most of Romania lay asleep. No requirement for Harry and his infant simulacrum to materialise here, for there was no one to see them. But knowing that he could be seen there, if there were eyes to see, gave Harry a feeling of corporeality. Even as a will-o’-the-wisp he would feel that he was somebody, not merely a telepathic voice, a ghost. He hovered in the glade of stirless trees, above the tumbled slabs and close to the tottering entrance of what had been Thibor Ferenczy’s tomb, and formed about his focus the merest nimbus of light. Then he turned his mind outwards, to the night and the darkness.
If he had had a body, Harry might have shivered a little. He would have felt a chill, but a purely physical chill and not one of the spirit. For the undead evil which had been buried here five hundred years ago was gone now, was no longer undead but truly dead. Which fact begged the question: had all of it been removed? Was it dead . . . entirely? For Harry Keogh had learned, and was learning still, of the vampire’s monstrous tenacity as it clung to life.
‘Thibor,’ said Harry, ‘I’m here. Against the advice of all the teeming dead, I’ve come again to talk to you.’
Ahhhh! Haaarrry — you are a comfort, my friend. Indeed, you are my only comfort. The dead whisper in their graves, talking of this and that, but me they shun. I alone am truly . . . alone! Without you there is only oblivion.
Truly alone? Harry doubted it. His sensitive ESP warned him that something else was here — something that held back, biding its time — something dangerous still. But he hid his suspicions from Thibor.
‘I made you a promise,’ he said. ‘You tell me the things I want to know, and I in turn will not forget you. Even if it’s only for a moment or two I’ll find time now and then to come and talk to you.’ –
Because you are good, Haaarrry. Because you are kind. While my own sort, the dead, they are unkind. They continue to hold this grudge!
Harry knew the old Thing in the ground’s wiles: how he would avoid at all cost the issue of the moment, Harry’s principal purpose in being here. For vampires are Satan’s own kith and kin; they speak with his tongue, which speaks only lies and deceptions. Thus Thibor would attempt from the outset to turn the conversation, this time to his ‘unfair’ treatment by the Great Majority. Harry would have none of it.
‘You have no complaint,’ he told him. ‘They know you, Thibor. How many lives have you cut short in order to prolong or sustain your own? They are unforgiving, the dead, for they’ve lost that which was most precious to them. In your time you were the great stealer of life; not only did you bring death with you, but even on occasion undeath. You can’t be surprised that they shun you.’
Thibor sighed. A soldier kills, he answered. But when he in turn dies, do they turn away from him? Of course not! He is welcomed into the fold. The executioner kills, also the maniac in his rage, and the cuckold when he discovers another in his bed. And are they shunned? Perhaps in life, some of them, but not after life is done. For then they move on into a new state. In my life I did what I had to do, and I paid for it in death. Must I go on paying?
‘Do you want me to plead your case for you?’ Harry wasn’t even half-serious.
But Thibor was quick-witted: I had not considered that. But now that you mention it —‘Ridiculous!’ Harry cried. ‘You’re playing with words —playing with me — and that’s not why I’m here. There are a million others who genuinely desire to talk to me, and I waste my time with you. Ah, well, I’ve learned my lesson. I’ll trouble you no more.’
Harry, wait! Panic was in Thibor Ferenczy’s voice, which came to Harry quite literally from beyond the grave. Don’t go, Harry! Who will talk to me if. . . there is no other necroscope!