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brothers were present; it wasn’t work for lesser, more easily influenced or corrupted minds. But then, how might one corrupt the Francezcis?
    The cavern containing the pit was a natural place, made unnatural only by its grotesque inhabitant. Rocky ledges swept back into darkness, but the pit itself was illuminated: a bank of powerful spotlights shone down on it from the nitre-streaked dripstone walls. Where the shadows crept, stone steps had been cut back into a shaft that climbed in a spiral to the Manse - the aerie - high overhead. At the foot of the steps an electrified pneumatic ‘door,’ a grille of two-inch steel bars, guarded the exit. The door’s control panel was set well back within the brightly lit shaft. Like the cover over the old well, this door to the exit shaft wasn’t designed to keep anyone or thing out.
    Yet the place wasn’t specifically a prison but more properly a refuge, a sanctuary … an asylum. And just this once, perhaps the Francezcis were of a single mind where they stood at the rim of the well and Francesco quietly commented:
    ‘It’s as if the “Mad”-in Madonie were deliberate …’
    Tony at once cautioned him: ‘Always remember, brother: he can hear you. Even when you’re sleeping - or lost in your lust with some slut - he can be there. And he’s here even now.’
    And the other knew it was true. Down here their father’s presence was everywhere. It was in the echoes of their voices; and despite the glaring lights - or because of them - it was in the movement of the blackest shadows back there where there should be no movement. It permeated the very atmosphere, as if the place were haunted. But the Old Ferenczy was no ghost. Nor would he ever be, so long as he was their oracle.
    Francesco looked at his brother. ‘Well, are you ready?’
    Tony licked his fleshy lips, and nodded. He wouldn’t ever be ‘ready,’ not really, but what must be must be. He had always been the Old One’s favourite, ‘spoiled’ by a father who had had time for him. As for Francesco: he had been too precocious; his father had never had time for him! Knowing something of the future - indeed, of most things -perhaps the pit-dweller had foreseen the time when Francesco would relish his … incapacity.
    The electricity was off, the grille safe. ‘Father,’ Tony leaned over the rim of the old well and gazed down through the mesh on a receding funnel of massive blocks of masonry. ‘We’ve brought you something. A small tribute, a gift - a girl!’
    A girl… a girl… a girl, the well repeated, an echo carried on the miasma. But a miasma, here? A wisp of mist, anyway, rising from the pit. The heat of the spotlights vaporized it, turning it to stench. The thing below might not be especially active, but it was there. It was breathing, and …
    ‘… Listening!’ said Francesco, who was sensitive to such things. ‘Oh, he hears you, all right!’
    ‘Father,’ Tony leaned out more yet. ‘We’ve brought a gift for you, but we have our needs, too. There are things we need to know …’ For a moment there was nothing, and then the well seemed to sigh! It was physical - in that a gust of foulness rushed up from below - but it was also mental: the Old Ferenczy’s telepathy, which in the brothers’ case had skipped a generation. And despite that they were not mentalists, still their father’s power was such that finally they
    ‘heard’ him:
    Only ask, my son … after you have sent me my tribute.
    But if the message was simple, its delivery was dramatic. It reverberated in their heads like a shout, and was accompanied by a
    Necroscope: The Lost Years - Vol. I
    Brian Lumley
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    tumult of tittering, crazed background ‘voices’ that were all their father’s. He had concentrated part of his mind on his answer, but the rest of it was engaged in its own activity … the way a madman might often seem calm on the outside, while in fact he seethes within. And the many personalities of the thing