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croaked, as Francesco reversed the gears. The platform came up empty. But down below:
    Suddenly the mental emanations - the blasts of raw, terrible emotion - were like a gale blowing in their heads! The brothers reeled, recovered, quickly closed and activated the grile. While in their minds, despite that they were scarcely gifted in the art, and that for once they were glad of it: Flesh, bone, and bloood! The openingsss of her body, her face! The entrancesss to heaven, to hell! Oh, I am a monster! Yesss, for a man could never do thisss! But I am not a man! I am Wamphyri! Wamphyyyrrriii!
    And above it all, a scream, just one - but a shriek to end all shrieks -as the girl came awake and felt… what? Her cry of shock, outrage, disbelief, was a sound to grate on the nerve endings forever. It came and went, as her mouth, ears, nostrils and head entire were crammed full of the thing, filled to brimming with him, as was her body.
    And not only the hammerblows of the Old One’s thought processes,
    Brian Lumley
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    but pictures to accompany them: of a creeping, flowing, foaming something, never a human being, but with hands - oh, a great many -and mouths, and eyes, all converging on, soaking into, and expanding within, the girl.
    Then the bloating, the stretching, the rending!
    And the mist over the pit gradualy turning pink, stinking where its molecules came in contact with the grile …
    A while later the Francezcis were surprised to find themselves close, touching, trembling, and slowly disengaged. Minutes had ticked by; the cavern was quiet again, or unquiet, and the pit… was just a pit, an old wel.
    Francesco looked at his brother quizzicaly, but Tony shook his head. ‘I won’t, couldn’t, talk to him right now. So let him rest. Later, maybe … ”
    But as they made to pass out through the steel-barred door into the exit shaft:
    HE’LL BE UP! HE WILL BE UP! HE WILL BE UP! It was almost a cry of triumph, but quickly turning to sick terror. H-h-he wil be up, yes - in just a few years, three, or four at most - and then … then he’ll seek me out… seek us out… seek us all out!
    ‘Who will?’ Tony tried to ask. But dazed as he was from the mental blast, his voice was a croak. It made no difference, for he already knew, and his father had heard him anyway.
    Who? came a fading, awed, even frightened whisper in their minds. Who else butRadu? Who but Radu Lykan, eh?!
    And then a ringing cry like a soul in torment, or one lost forever in outer immensities: Raaaddduuu!
    And once again a whisper: Raaaddduuuuuu! … that shivered into a shuddering silence.

PART ONE
THE NECROSCOPE . . HARRY KEOGH?

A DEVIOUS THING

    Geting up in the mornings was the worst of it, when he was obliged to leave his dreams behind. For in his dreams he was usualy himself, while in his real life the Necroscope Harry Keogh had become someone else entirely. Or not entirely, for on the inside he was still him. But on the outside …
    … It was confusing, dizzying, frightening, maddening … especialy maddening. And not only for Harry but for his wife, too. Indeed, more so for Brenda, for she could not and did not want to understand it; she only wanted things back as they had been. As for her baby son, Harry Jr: wel, who could say about that one?
    Who knew what he was thinking, planning, working on? But then again, who but a fool or a lunatic would believe that an infant of eighteen or so tender months was capable of working on anything?
     
    Oh, he worked on geting fed or changed or atended to the same as any baby: by screaming for it. And he worked on colecting his audience of admirers the same way, too: by burping and farting and smiling in that gormless-innocent way that defenceless infants have, with their fat little faces seeming to slide off to one side, and their eyes geting crossed, and the drool dripping down off their wobbly little chins. Completely disarming, and uterly charming, of course. At a year and a half most of that was over