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Necroscope, which won't be easy, still he'll have a bolthole into a place he
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could conceivably come back from -
bringing God-only-knows what back with him! Yes, I'm talking about the Gate at
the
Perchorsk Projekt under the Urals. We've kept tabs on that nightmare ever
since we found out about it, and we know that the Russians are managing to
contain it while they decide on a more satisfactory solution. If we make life
intolerable, hopefully impossible, for
Harry here, he might just try heading for Starside. So that's why we've
confided in the
Russians, because we daren't let him go back there. Fine if he wanted to stay
there, but monstrous if he ever decided to bring anything back here with him.
'What makes us think he might hide out in another world? A notebook we found
an hour ago at Clarke's flat, that's what. Darcy had been jotting down a few
thoughts, but that must have been before Harry got to him. It may even be why
he got to him. The notes are only a mess of scribble but they make it plain
that Darcy thought Harry would skip to Starside.
Well, now the Soviets know about Harry, as much as we could tell them, anyway,
and they'll be looking out for him. So it looks like the Perchorsk Gate is
closed to him.
'OK, so now let's consider our . . . equipment. And how to use it. Then we'll
get round to breaking you all down into balanced teams and doing a preliminary
itemization of your tasks.'
Trask removed a blanket from various pieces of equipment laid out on a stout
folding table. 'It's important you learn how to use this stuff,' he said. 'The
machetes speak for themselves. But be careful with them - they're razor-sharp!
As for this: I suppose you all recognize a crossbow when you see one? This
third item, however, might not be quite so familiar. It's a lightweight
flamethrower, a new model. So I think maybe we'll take a look at that first.
This is the fuel tank, which sits on your back like so . . .'
And so it went on. The briefing lasted another hour.
Right after sunset Harry made his way to Darlington via the Möbius Continuum.
He left
Trevor Jordan sleeping (not surprisingly exhausted; his return from Beyond was
still like the very strangest dream to him, from which he still feared he
might suddenly awaken) in a secret room under the eaves of the house on the
river. From the attic room there was a way into the deserted, crumbling old
place next door, so that if anything should happen Jordan might use this route
to effect something of an escape. But both espers had checked out the psychic
'atmosphere' of the locality and there didn't seem to be anything happening;
and in any case Jordan had been busy rationalizing his fears in that respect
and really couldn't see
E-Branch doing a Yulian Bodescu on him. And in any event, he was satisfied
that they wouldn't do anything rash.
Johnny Pound's address in Darlington was the ground-floor flat in an old,
four-storeyed, Victorian terrace house on the outer edge of the town centre.
The old red bricks had turned black from being too close to the mainline
railway; the windows were bleary; three steps led up from a path in the tiny,
overgrown front garden to a communal porch. And behind the fagade of that
porch - behind the flyspecked, dingy windows, there in those very rooms
-that was where Found lived.
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Brian Lumley - Necroscope 5 - Deadspeak
In the twilight Harry's skin tingled at the thought and he felt his eager
vampire senses intensifying as he walked the street first one way, then the
other, past this gloomy street-
corner residence of a twentieth-century necromancer. The murderer of sweet
young Penny
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Sanderson.
Simple confrontation would be the easy way, of course, but that wasn't part of
the
Necroscope's plan. No, for then the result could only be precipitate: the
accused would either 'come quietly', in the parlance of the Law, or he would
react violently. And Harry would kill him. Which would be far too easy.
Pound's way, on the other hand, his modus operandi, was cruel, creeping,
designed to terrify even before the terrible act - the monstrous crime itself
- was committed. And Harry was concerned that in his case the punishment
should fit the crime. Except . . . there should be something of a trial, too.
But trial as in ordeal, not as in examination as a precursor to judgement. For
if Johnny Found was in fact the man, then the sentence had already been
passed.
The working day was over; traffic was thinning in the darkening streets;
people wended their ways home. And some of them entered the house of the
necromancer. A middle-aged woman with a bulging plastic carrier-bag, letting
herself in fumblingly through the front door; a young woman with straggly hair
and a whining child pulling on her arm, calling out after the woman with the
bag to wait for her and hold the door; an older man in coveralls, weary and
slump-shouldered, carrying a leather bag of tools.
A light came on in a garret room under steeply sloping eaves. Another winked
into being on the second floor, and one on the third. Harry looked away for a
moment, up and down the street, then looked back -
- In time to see a fourth, much dimmer light come on in an angled corner
window in the ground-floor flat. But he hadn't seen Found go in.
The house stood on a corner; there must be a side-door; Harry waited for the
traffic to clear, then crossed to the other side of the road and turned the
corner. And there it was: a recessed doorway at the side, Johnny Pound's
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