Necroscope: Harry and the Pirates: and Other Tales from the Lost Years Read Free

owlishly as Jimmy Collins came from the house into the garden. Jimmy was carrying chilled fruit drinks in tall glasses, one in each hand, and as he drew closer Harry muttered, “Eh? What’s that you say?”
    Jimmy nodded, and answered: “Yep, you’re still weird! Even if I didn’t recognize the physical Harry Keogh—or rather your face, which I couldn’t, and didn’t—still I think I would have sensed the weirdness anyway and known it was you. Like who else
could
it be, knowing what you knew? And you know something? For all that you look different, still the longer you’re around and the more I see of you—even though you’ve only been here for a week—damned if you haven’t started to look more and more like . . . well, like
you
! Like Harry! I mean like the Harry you used to be!
Damn!
”
    Wide awake now, Harry knew precisely what the other meant. But grinning at his young old friend from the shade of his hat, and reaching for the welcome drink that Jimmy was offering him, still he said, “Oh yes? And after a muddled mouthful like that, you still have the nerve to call
me
weird? Was that English you were speaking just then, Jimmy?”
    “
Huh!
” said his friend, pulling a face. “Oh, you’re weird all right, Harry! But hey—is it any wonder I get my words all tangled? I mean, after all this time, showing up here, like . . . like
this
? Who else would have believed that story you told me, if not someonewho would recognise Harry Keogh’s weirdness, eh? It may have been a long time, but yours is a brand of peculiar that’s unmistakable. Well to me it is, anyway.”
    “Precisely why I came to see you!” said Harry, with a curt nod. “Because I knew you would know it was me. But also to find out if you’d heard anything of Brenda; and to check on you, see how you were doing—because I’d heard you had problems. Yes, I knew you’d accept me, Jimmy . . . and you’re right, it has been a long time since I moved from school here in Harden to the technical college in Hartlepool. After that, I don’t know, we just seemed to lose touch.”
    Nodding, Jimmy seated himself in a deck chair next to the Necroscope. “Yes, we did,” he said, “until you showed up again and asked me to be your Best Man. You and Brenda Cowell, sweethearts at first sight, or as nearly so as makes no difference.” Reaching out, he lifted the floppy brim of Harry’s hat to stare deep into the other’s eyes, and continued: “Both of us married, eh, Harry? As it happens, way too young, and both regretting it. Mine has gone—good riddance, I say—and yours has flown the coop, leaving you to wonder why and to grieve over it.”
    “No,” said Harry, “I don’t think I am grieving any longer. And I
do
know why; at least I think I do. It’s this new face of mine. My face, and my . . . my . . .” He paused for a single moment, then hurriedly went on: “And anyway, Jimmy, as you just pointed out, we were much too young. . . .” He had caught himself barely in time, having almost said, “my face
and body
!” Which could only have led to a lot more questions.
    For the body he was wearing—despite that it was a good, healthy one—wasn’t the original that he had been born inside. Neither the face, nor the body. No, for not long ago the Necroscope had undergone an astonishing, involuntary metempsychosis, until now “he,” the mind and soul of Harry Keogh, inhabited the body of someone else. Mercifully that someone had been completely brain-dead when Harry commandeered his empty shell; there’d been no arguing over possession, as it were. But there had also been preciouslittle hope that his wife would accept him in his new identity, and it was one of a number of reasons why she had fled and taken the baby with her; or more properly why the baby had caused or enabled her flight . . . which is another, and perhaps even stranger story . . . .
    As if reading Harry’s mind, Jimmy was now frowning, examinining