Necroscope IV: Deadspeak

3. The Source

In 1983 in the Urals, there occurs the Perchorsk Incident: an 'industrial accident' according to the Soviets, but an accident of some magnitude. In fact the Russians, seeking an answer to the USA's proposed 'Star Wars', have built and tested a laser-type weapon to create a shield against incoming missiles. The experiment is a failure; there is a blowback in the weapon; in the deeps of the Perchorsk Pass havoc is wreaked as the fabric of space-time itself receives a terrible wrenching. The world's intelligence agencies, including INTESP, are interested to discover what Moscow is hiding up there under the snow and ice and mountains — curious to know what, exactly, the Perchorsk Projekt really is or was.

A year later, and something (a UFO?) is tracked from Novaya Zemlya on a course which takes it west of Franz Josef Land and on a beeline for Ellesmere Island. Mig interceptors have been sent up from Kirovsk, south of Murmansk. The 'object' is two miles higher than the Migs when they catch up with it, but it sees them, descends and destroys them. Their debris is lost in snow and ice some six hundred miles from the Pole and a like distance short of Ellesmere. A USAF AWACS reports the Migs lost from its screens, presumed down, but hotline Moscow is curiously cautious, even ambiguous: 'What Migs? What intruder?'

The Americans, angrily: This thing is coming out of your airspace; if it sticks to its present course it will be intercepted, forced to land. If it fails to comply or acts hostile, it may even be shot down.'

And unexpectedly: 'Good!' from the Russians. 'We renounce it utterly. Do with it as you see fit.'

Two USAF fighters have meanwhile been scrambled up from a strip near Port Fairfield, Maine. The AWACS guides them to their target; at close to Mach 2 they've crossed the Hudson Bay from the Belcher Islands to a point two hundred miles north of Churchill. The AWACS is left behind a little, but their target is dead ahead at 10,000 feet. They spot it…

… And take it out — no questions asked — one look at it is enough reason to fire on the Thing! Equipped with experimental air-to-air Firedevils, the USAF planes succeed where the Migs paid the price. The thing burns, blows apart over the Hudson Bay, crashes to earth. The AWACS has caught up, gets the whole thing on film. Eventually British E-Branch is invited (a) to a picture show, and (b) to offer an educated opinion… a guess… anything will be appreciated.

E-Branch keeps its expert opinion to itself — for the sanity of the world! Reason: the thing from Perchorsk was obviously similar — very similar — to the monstrosity that Yulian Bodescu bred in his cellars, also to the Thibor Ferenczy remnant burned on the cruciform hills of Romania. Except that by comparison they were pigmies and this one was a giant — and armoured! In a nutshell, it was a thing of vampire protoflesh, and E-Branch suspects that the Russians at Perchorsk made it: an incredible biological experiment which perhaps broke free of its controlled or test environment! This is one theory, at least. But not the only one. E-Branch contrives to put a contact inside the Perchorsk Projekt to act as a spy and telepathic transmitter. Before he is discovered they learn enough to convince them of the world-threatening evil of the place, even enough to cause them to re-establish their old contact with Harry Keogh.

It is 1985. Eight years since Yulian Bodescu died and Harry wrecked the Chateau Bronnitsy, eight long years since his half-deranged wife and her necroscopic child fled, apparently right out of this world. And ever since then he's been looking for them. They are not dead, for if they were the teeming dead would know it and likewise Harry Keogh. But if they're alive… then Harry no longer knows where to search. He has exhausted every bolthole, searched everywhere.

Darcy Clarke, head of INTESP, goes to see Harry at his Edinburgh home. He starts to tell him about Perchorsk but Harry isn't interested. As Clarke fills in the details, however, Harry's interest picks up. His old enemies the Soviet mindspies have established a cell at Perchorsk to block metaphysical prying. They're obviously hiding something big, something very unpleasant. They have a regiment of troops up there in the mountains, equipped with real firepower — for what? Who is likely to attack the Urals? Who do the Russians think they're keeping out?… What are they keeping in?

'We think they're doing something with genetics,' Clarke tells Harry. 'We think they're breeding warrior vampires!'

Even now Harry is only half-swayed; but at last Clarke plays his trump:

The British spy in Perchorsk, Michael J. Simmons, has vanished; the very best of E-Branch's espers can't find him; they believe he's alive (he hasn't been 'cancelled', or their telepaths would know) but they don't know where he's alive. Which precisely parallels Harry's own problem. Perhaps, by some weird freak of coincidence, Harry Jnr, Brenda Keogh and the Perchorsk spy are all in the same place. To be doubly sure that E-Branch aren't just using him to their own ends, Harry asks his myriad dead friends to look into it. Is there a recent arrival in their teeming ranks by the name of Michael J. Simmons? But:

There is not. Simmons isn't dead, he's simply not here…

Harry investigates and discovers that the accident at the Perchorsk Projekt has blown a hole in space-time, a 'grey hole' leading to a world 'parallel' with our own; also that the world on the other side is the spawning ground of vampires, indeed The Source of all vampire myth and legend.

He talks again to the long-dead August Ferdinand Möbius, to the devious mind of the extinct Faethor Ferenczy, and to more recent friends among the legions of the dead; until finally he discovers an alternate route into the vampire world. And what a monstrous world that is!

Sunside is hot, a blazing desert; Starside is the realm of the Wamphyri, where their aeries stand kilometre-high close to the mountain pinnacles which divide the planet. On Sunside the Travellers, the original Gypsies, wander in bands and tribes through the verdant foothills of the central range; active during the long days, they burrow in dark holes and caves through the short, fear-filled nights. For when the sun sets on Sunside — that's when the Wamphyri come a-hunting.

Travellers and Trogs (a primitive aboriginal race) are to the Wamphyri what the coconut is to Earth's tropical islanders. They form a large part of their diet, provide slaves, workers, women; even when they die or are disposed of there is rarely any waste. Their remains go to feed Wamphyri 'gas-beasts', 'siphoneers' and 'warriors', which are themselves fashioned of transmuted Trogs and Travellers. Their grotesquely altered, fossilized bodies decorate the vertiginous, glooming castles of the Wamphyri, are even formed into furniture or hardened into exterior sheaths, so protecting the aerie properties of their vampire masters against the elements.

As for the Lords of these rearing keeps:

The Wamphyri are monstrous, warlike, jealous of their territories and possessions, forever scheming and feuding. There is nothing a vampire hates and distrusts more than another vampire. And no one they all hate and distrust more than The Dweller in His Garden in the West.

Following a nightmare series of adventures and misadventures, a party of Travellers — including Jazz Simmons and the beautiful telepath Zek Foener — have joined forces with The Dweller. By the time Harry Keogh arrives, the Wamphyri have set aside all personal arguments and disputes to unite against their common enemy preparatory to invading the Garden, The Dweller's territory in the hills. Of all the awesome Wamphyri Lords, only the Lady Karen, a gorgeous once-Traveller whose vampire tenant has not yet reached full maturity, renegues and flees to The Dweller, warning him of the coming war.

The battle is joined: the Lords Shaithis, Menor Maim-bite, Belath, Volse Pinescu, Lesk the Glut and many others, with all their hybrid warriors and Trog minions, against The Dweller and his small party of humans.

But Harry Keogh is with The Dweller, and The Dweller is… Harry Jnr! By means of a timeslip, Harry Jnr is not the mere boy his father expected but grown to a young man in a golden mask, and this is the world to which he has transported his poor demented mother — for her safety and peace of mind! Yes, and until now he has provided amply for all her needs — and his own. For individually the Wamphyri Lords were no match for him and his 'science'. Now that they are united, however… Harry Snr has arrived just in time.

By ingenious use of the Möbius Continuum, and of the Necroscope powers of father and son, Shaithis and his vampire army are defeated, their aeries destroyed, all bar the Lady Karen's. She goes back there, and Harry Keogh visits her. He seeks to free her of her vampire, not for her sake but for his son's — for The Dweller has become infected with vampirism. Harry will use Karen to test a theory, hopefully provide a cure.

He drives Karen's vampire out and destroys it. Alas, he also destroys her. She had been Wamphyri, and now she is a shell. When one has known the magnified emotions — the freedom from guilt, timidity and remorse — the sheer lust and power of the Wamphyri, what is there after that? Nothing, and she throws herself from the aerie's battlements.

But The Dweller still has a vampire in him, and back in the Garden where his band of Travellers are rebuilding their shattered lives and homes… Harry Jnr is ever more aware of his father's hooded eyes, watching him intently…