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

forests. Coast to coast and from John o’ Groats to Land’s End, there were dense, fearsome woodlands almost everywhere. What? Why, fifteen hundred or more years later we were still building our fighting ‘ships of oak’ from those very forests!
Huh!
”
    The constable paused—at least until it looked like Harry was about to reply—then said: “And before you start searching your brain for more ‘dossiers,’ you should consider this:
    “Forests have
always
attracted maniacs, murderers, and rapists. I defy you to find a single wooded tract of any considerable size in the entire British countryside that hasn’t at some time or other been the scene of this sort of heinous crime. And as far as I’m concerned Greg Miller is
just
such a madman, with Hazeldene just such a forest. . . .”
    Pausing again, Forester drank a little beer to moisten his throat, and continued: “I think that’s me done. So then, have I shot you down or what?”
    The Necroscope shook his head. “No,” he very quietly said. “And I still haven’t seen any actual proof that Greg Miller is a murderer. In fact it appears to me he was convicted solely on the basis of circumstantial evidence. Oh, strong circumstantial evidence, I’ll grant you that—based mainly on what they found on the girl’s underclothes—but on the other hand, well, Greg and Janet
were
lovers, after all . . .”
    At which Forester’s involuntary groan was clearly audible; and despite that he had earlier acknowledged at least that much of the Necroscope’s obviously hurtful argument, still it seemed he might be about to reply—in anger or denial, whichever. But at that moment Jimmy Collins returned to the corner table, and his voice broke the momentarily charged lull:
    “Harry, it’s your round. But hey, if you’re busy I’ll get them in again and you can catch up later.”
    “No, it’s okay, Jimmy,” Harry replied, glancing up at him. “I’ll be right with you.” And as the other returned to the bar, so the Necroscope stood up, leaned on the table, and looked the constable straight in the eye.
    “Well?” said Forester, his voice uneven and breaking. “Are we done? We’d better be, because I’m not prepared to accept any more low, dirty blows.”
    “No more low blows.” Harry shook his head. “But one thingyou should know. However it plays out—and I will be around to see it play out—I know for a fact there’s something weird and evil as hell in Hazeldene. Miller knows it, too; he’s searching for it, as I think you’re well aware. I’ll help him to find it, if that’s at all possible, because I think it will either condemn him as the madman you believe him to be, or finally set him free . . . by which I mean
really
free, not just from some prison cell. And Jack, who knows but it might even set you free, too.”
    Reaching for his glass and gradually slumping in his seat again, the constable remained silent, sullen, as Harry straightened up and made for the bar. Glancing back at him, seeing him withdraw into the corner’s shadows, the Necroscope had to feel more than a little sorry for him. . . .
     
    Mercifully, the evening was cooler than of late, with a velvety dusk falling as the pair got back to Jimmy’s house, where Harry went directly into the garden while his friend made coffee. Out there in the garden, Harry felt the strangeness, the mysterious texture of the darkening summer air. It always felt this way to him of a summer evening, and even more so in the autumn. It was hard to explain: a feeling or emotion he’d always thought of as “an awareness of darkness as a presence,” even as a friend. But he had never been more aware of darkness than right now, if for an entirely different reason: because what he intended to throw light upon, or into, wasn’t at all friendly, welcoming, or anything in which the Necroscope might ever wish to cloak himself. No, for while the shadowy corners of this familiar garden might be