Free Necroscope: The Mobius Murders by Brian Lumley Page A

It’s almost as if the aching loneliness of their estate is acknowledged and answered; well, perhaps depending upon how they’ve lived their lives. For it’s an accepted fact among the teeming dead that the vile ones seem to be kept waiting for a long, long time. And they usually suffer their term in silence, for we are reluctant to have anything to do with them. It isn’t cruelty, Harry; we simply avoid their contamination.
    The Necroscope was disappointed. “So you’ve got nothing for me?”
    Oh, we do have something, but as you said it’s very difficult to explain—like echoes in a mental void, you said. But I think we can do better than that, if not very much better.
    “Then by all means let’s hear it,” said Harry. “Whatever it is, it has to be better than nothing.”
    Well , she responded, as you yourself have said, there seem to be deadspeak whispers—but the very faintest, most distant and undecipherable whispers. Just exactly what one might expect of long-drowned persons whose remains have been dispersed, cast abroad—which, as I pointed out, is in itself a curious thing; for usually the souls of the drowned move on quite quickly to a better place or places. Or so the teeming dead are given to believe. My own case to the contrary, naturally, but only because I chose to stay behind…for now at least.
    Harry frowned as his frustration mounted to match his Ma’s, then said: “But apart from the fact that you seem to be suggesting more than one whisperer, how does that help me? Especially if they’ve become so dispersed—so scattered—as to make them unintelligible? I mean, if that’s the case then even if I could go to them, which I can’t, still I couldn’t, er, ‘fathom’ them; no pun intended. But if you and the Great Majority can’t find a way to read them, what point is there in my trying?”
    But that’s just it! his Ma answered. They don’t seem to be at all widely scattered. Faint and plaintive as they are, still all of these ethereal whispers appear to have just one point of origin—one and the same location—or very nearly so!
    Hearing that the Necroscope’s attention, which had begun to wander as he considered other avenues of investigation, was immediately reanimated. Several deadspeak whispers or echoes, but only one point of origin, one location ! And without as yet fully understanding why, Harry was at once reminded of that anomalous formula with which the unknown Möbius murderer had conjured and abused the Continuum. Not only reminded of it, he believed that with his intuitive grasp of exotic and extramundane mathematics he could recall it more fully to mind and perhaps even recreate it. But for the moment, where he stood on the rim of the river, Harry wasn’t at all best situated to concentrate upon the formula’s alien elements and study them more closely.
    The Necroscope’s unshielded thoughts were, of course, deadspeak and entirely “audible” to his Ma, who told him: I have no knowledge of numbers, Harry—especially not your numbers—but I know how important they are you. We’ll have plenty of time for talking later, so now you should go and do what you do best. And meanwhile I shall urge the teeming dead to work harder. You know that if it’s for you they’ll do all they possibly can, but…before you go, let me for a change ask you a question.
    “Go right ahead,” said Harry.
    Son, didn’t we not so long ago have dealings with something very similar to this?
    Harry knew exactly what she meant. “That thing in the woods that had been eating people, imprisoning their souls for untold ages? Yes, it was similar in its way, but that was an alien being, and probably the last of its kind. This time we’re talking about a man, a human being—however in human—who I think feeds on his victims’ life-forces like a loathsome leech; not so much incarcerating their souls as, far worse, reconstituting them as sustenance until deadspeak whispers are all that