warm. I can feeljyowr warmth!
But the others in this ... place, they're cold! So tell me, tell me, tell me ... you've got to tell me they're lying! I have to know that I... that I'm ... aliiiive! Right at the end it turned to a wail, a sobbing shriek that sank down as if into the earth from which it issued.
'I'm alive, yes,' Harry spoke out loud, however quietly now, which was easier for him and made no difference at al to the Great Majority. 'But this ... isn't a hospital, Derek. I'm Harry Keogh, the one they cal the Necroscope, and sometimes I wish I wasn't. This is one of those times.' There was no other way to do it. His words spoke volumes, told far more than he'd said, but even in his ears they sounded like a betrayal.
Nooooo! The dead man's wail denied it. My parents, wife, family, friends. My whole wooooorld!. . . Gone? But this time the final word was a whisper.
'Not gone,' Harry's face was wet with his own tears, and his voice rang with his own agony. They're still there, Derek, everything, everyone. They have accepted what you can't accept. Because they saw, felt, touched you, and knew that they had to give you up. Their living senses made them to know that yours ... don't work any more.'
The sobbing had stopped now, and for long moments there was only a stunned, breathless silence. It was as if the dead held their breath, waiting for Derek Stevens to gather his, a renewal of his crazed raving. The Necroscope sensed it coming, and stopped it short:
'I can tell them you're okay now,' he said. 'Your family, your friends, Jim Banks and George Jakes. I'm the only one who can tell them. I can make it easy for them, reassure them, give them strength to carry on. Even those last two, who like yourself can't carry on, and have accepted it. Or I can say nothing at all. Or ... I can tell them you're like this. But I'd really hate to do that, and leave them in the same sort of hell, going mad with worry over you ... "
There couldn't be a 'same sort of hell,' not remotely! The dead man answered at last. But now there was that in his incorporeal voice that hadn't been there before, so that Harry felt like an inquisitor, as if he'd issued a threat or attempted to coerce the other. But you did! Stevens told him, with something of a sneer. You threatened a dead man!
So much for the 'mercy' of the Necroscope! And if that was a lie, what about the rest of the bullshit they've been feeding me?
At which Harry relaxed a little, and perhaps^even smiled to himself through his tears. The word-game he was playing was going his way at last. And: 'You're not crazy, Derek,' he told the other. 'Not if you can still reason as well as all that!'
Crazy? The other seemed surprised. Was I supposed to be? His voice was still bitter, but Harry sensed that he had definitely turned back from the brink. Mad with grief, sure, (just as the preacher had said). Tortured by frustration, naturally. But I wasn't crazy. Bull-headed, that's all: a bad loser, and unwilling to give up on a lost cause or argument. Well, hell, I've always been that way!
Of course. And how he'd always been in life was how he'd be in death. But even the worst loser must accept the verdict when he's finally down and out.
Harry felt the soft sighing of the dead, for this was an argument that was definitely going his way now. Except, as the Necroscope was well aware, it wouldn't go down well if he stuck the boot into an underdog. One should always leave a bolthole, so that the gallant loser may retire with grace. And so:
'Well, and you'll win this one, too, in the end,' he said, however casually.
Eh? How's that? (Stevens was 'back on his feet' again, the sob gone from his voice forever. It was the prospect of winning when all had seemed lost. But how could everything be lost when he was still here, still fighting?) What? I can still win?
'Can and will,' Harry assured him. 'Because in the end ... why, we'll all be in the same hole! Everyone, eventually.'
What? (Wonderingly).
'Death is a hell of a long time,' Harry explained. 'You've lost nothing, Derek. Or at worst, your situation is