Free Necroscope: Harry and the Pirates: and Other Tales from the Lost Years by Brian Lumley

notepaper bearing Greg Miller’s untidy but mainly legible scrawl, and it was at once apparent that the man hadn’t confined his research to just one library. Indeed, only half-way down the first page of spidery script, the note that first attracted Harry’s attention referred to a visit Miller had paid to the British Museum’s rare books departmentto seek out a translation of Lollius Urbicus’
Frontier Garrison,
an obscure manuscript circa A.D. 138.
    This was not the first time Harry had come across Urbicus’ name; he recognized it from that time when his disgruntled history teacher had punished some minor misdemeanour by requiring him to write an essay on Hadrian’s Wall. On that occasion Harry had borrowed certain of his essay’s contents from an Historical Society pamphlet published in 1911, entitled
North-East England Under the Romans: A.D. 100–A.D. 300,
by Alan Henbury. And Henbury had written of Urbicus as being an educated Roman nobleman who, having fallen foul of Rome’s civilian government, had in effect been banished west where he became a governor in what was then the farthest of Rome’s many far-flung provinces: in fact in the north-east of England. His
Frontier Garrison
was looked upon as being the fictional and indeed highly fanciful story of a roughneck centurion’s adventures in and around one of the many forts strung out along the length of Hadrian’s Wall.
    And as Harry cleared off an area of the table in order to spread the remaining contents of the documents case more evenly across its surface, so he once again came across Henbury’s very pamphlet. Brittle and yellow, still its thin pages seemed in no worse condition than when he’d last pored over them as a schoolboy; which, it suddenly struck him, must have been at about the same time as Janet Symonds’ disappearance! And while the Necroscope was sure that this was nothing more than a classic example of synchronicity, he nevertheless found it oddly disturbing. . . .
    Referring to Miller’s notes again, Harry quickly saw how, until now, he had been following the man’s trail in the reverse order. For it now appeared that Miller, too, had read Henbury’s pamphlet here in the museum
before
journeying to London; indeed it must have been the pamphlet which inspired him to search out the Urbicus translation. And Harry now believed he knew why.
    The answer, despite that Henbury had mentioned it briefly, and then only in passing, lay right here in his treatise.
    Henbury, not unlike several turn-of-the-century contemporarieswhose works had been known to him, had considered Lollius Urbicus little more than a fabulist; but it now seemed possible the Roman governor had been nothing of the sort! And the Necroscope was suddenly certain in his own mind why he—why Harry Keogh himself—had returned today to this drab old museum.
    Not simply or merely to research occurrences in or around Hazeldene Forest, as Greg Miller had done—no, though that was certainly a large part of it—but also because lodged deep in his subconscious mind, having lain dormant there from that time in his pre-teen years, a vague memory had finally resurfaced in respect of something very important that he had stumbled across in Henbury’s pamphlet . . . only to disregard it! But no longer.
    For while those paragraphs that Harry had skipped over so blithely all those years ago had nothing to do with what he had been researching
at that time,
he now felt a genuine thrill of excitement in turning the fragile pages once again.
    And there they were: Henbury’s brief references to certain inexplicable, weird or occult occurrences—called “witcheries” by Lollius Urbicus in his novel—which the Roman governor and fantasist had used as plot elements with which to send his fictitious centurion hero, the “narrator” of various chapters, off on his adventures:
Of these fantastic “witcheries” in Urbicus, there were several; most notably when: “A coven of Pictish