that day wel enough - and from his mother's point of view at that! So maybe this new 'thing' was just part of an older skill; maybe he was an 'observer of times,' like some Old Testament wizard. For if he was able to so vividly visualize a past he had never personaly known, then why not something of a future that no man had known - as yet? Perhaps these flashes of the future came to him via the Mobius Continuum and had nothing to do with Alec Kyle at al!
Thus Harry's metaphysical mind ran in contradictory, ever-decreasing circles, while he continued to get nowhere.
Home: a drab, unkempt sort of place at best. One day he'd find the time to do it up, starting with the garden that sprawled almost al the way down to the river.
Except to cal it a 'garden' was to lend it an unwarranted respectability; in fact it was an overgrown and weed-infested wilderness!
As it started to rain again, the Necroscope hurried along a crazy-paving path to the fly-specked patio doors, swearing a vow along the way that the thorny bramble creeper that whipped at his legs would be the first to go!
Leting himself in, he saw the sky darkening over again as the wind came up to bend the trees bordering the river. A great day for a nightmare, no question. But Harry didn't believe that was al it had been. Despite its surreal quality, it had seemed very real at the time. And what if he'd ignored that other warning, down at E-Branch HQ in London? That had been a hel of a mess anyway, but if he hadn't been able to use his Mobius door as 'foreseen' - it didn't bear thinking about. At least he had understood that warning. Which made this other thing, about the old castle, the place on the cliff, seem doubly suspect; it was something he didn't understand. Why, he could feel the hair on his scalp moving again at the thought of it! As for this latest warning, the telephone nightmare: whatever else he did, Harry knew he couldn't afford to ignore that one!
This time he locked the patio doors behind him and turned on the single ceiling light. And in the dusty jumble of his so-caled 'study', where a plywood packing case stood open in one corner, dribbling straw, and Harry's handful of 'worldly goods' were strewn about willy-nilly, the mere fact that an easy chair still lay on its back where he'd left it in his rush to get out of here, and that the occasional table had been overturned, and that the telephone was still purring away to itself, where he'd spiled it onto the floor ... these things would hardly seem to mater. They were just part of the general cluter, that's al. Except that wasn't al, for Harry knew that in fact they were the debris of his dream. Especialy the telephone.
He picked the 'phone and cradle up and went to replace the receiver -and paused. What if it were to ring?
But how could it ring? No one knew his number, or next to no one. He hadn't been up here long enough, and his name wasn't even in the telephone book; and in any case, he'd asked for his number to be listed, ex-directory. B.J. had it, yes (though for his life he couldn't think why he'd given it to her). But what the heck, she was just an innocent - if strong-headed, even wrong-headed? - young woman anyway. But fascinating, in a way.
And then there was E-Branch ...
Was that it? Was he scared of geting a cal from E-Branch, frightened of learning something that he realy didn't want to know? Such as the death of his wife, or his child, or both? Or maybe being caled in on something he couldn't ignore? For the fact was, that as part of the country's security services, the Branch had its own Dirty Tricks Department. And if they realy needed him ... he knew they wouldn't think twice.
Was that it? That his dream had been symbolic, coloured by his recent experiences in London? That would explain this wolf fetish he seemed to be developing, which had combined with the warning to produce his nightmare. So it still remained his best bet that this was some sort of left-over of Alec Kyle's talent. He was seeing something of the future; he had been warned about receiving a cal, most probably from E-Branch, that