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

NECROSCOPE
^®

HARRY
AND
THE PIRATES

TOR BOOKS BY BRIAN LUMLEY

THE NECROSCOPE
^®
SERIES

Necroscope: Avengers

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

TALES OF THE PRIMAL LAND

The House of the Cthulhu
Tarra Khash: Hrossak!
Sorcery in Shad

THE TITUS CROW SERIES

Titus Crow, Volume One: The Burrowers Beneath & The Transition of Titus Crow
Titus Crow, Volume Two: The Clock of Dreams & Spawn of the Winds
Titus Crow, Volume Three: In the Moons of Borea & Elysia

THE PSYCHOMECH TRILOGY

Psychomech

Psychosphere

Psychamok

OTHER NOVELS

Demogorgon

The House of Doors

Maze of Worlds

Khai of Khem

SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

Fruiting Bodies and Other Fungi
The Whisperer and Other Voices
Beneath the Moors and Darker Places
Harry Keogh: Necroscope and Other Weird Heroes!

HARRY
AND
THE PIRATES

AND OTHER TALES FROM
THE LOST YEARS

BRIAN LUMLEY

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK
NEW YORK

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in these stories are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

NECROSCOPE
^®
: HARRY AND THE PIRATES

Copyright © 2009 by Brian Lumley

All rights reserved.

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor
^®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lumley, Brian.

Necroscope. Harry and the pirates and other tales from the lost years / Brian Lumley.

        p. cm.

“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

ISBN-13: 978-0-7653-2338-5

ISBN-10: 0-7653-2338-9

I. Title. II. Title: Harry and the pirates and other tales from the lost years.

PR6062.U45N45 2009

823'.914—dc22

2009012920

First Edition: July 2009

Printed in the United States of America

0    9    8    7    6    5    4    3    2    1

For
Dave the Web,
Keith and Sarah,
Sharon and Joanne,
John, and Paul, and
all the rest of
the KeoghCon
Gang

Introducing Harry Keogh: Necroscope

For the Dead Travel Slowly

Harry and the Pirates

End Piece: Old Man with a Blade

O
n the opening page
of the first 1986 British edition of
Necroscope
—the page I have always called the “blurb page,” where a juicy, or action-packed, or especially gripping paragraph has been taken from the text and reprinted as a hook for the potential reader, that fellow browsing in the bookstore—I cajoled my publisher to feature a concoction, found nowhere else in the book, which then and now I considered not only a fair description of what a Necroscope is, but also one “grabber” of a blurb. It goes like this:

DEFINITIONS:

 

Tele- (Gk.
tele:
“far”)

A telescope is an optical instrument which enlarges the images of distant objects. Example: the surface of the moon may be viewed as from a few hundred miles away.

 

Micro- (Gk.
mikros:
“small”)

A microscope is an optical instrument which makes even tiny objects visible to the human eye. Under a microscope a drop of clear water is seen to contain myriad un-suspected micro-organisms.

 

Necro- (Gk.
nekros:
“a corpse”)

A Necroscope is a human instrument with access to the minds of the dead. Harry Keogh is the Necroscope—he knows the thoughts of corpses in their graves.

 

The main differences between these instruments is this—the first two perform purely physical, one-way functions and are incapable of changing anything: the moon cannot look back through the telescope; the amoeba does not know it is under microscopic scrutiny.

 

That’s Harry Keogh’s big problem: his talent seems to work both ways.
THE DEAD KNOW—AND THEY WON’T LIE STILL FOR IT!

Well, that was my “blurb,” my hook some twenty-two years ago, and I’m still happy with it despite that it doesn’t paint the whole or even the true picture. Instead it makes it appear that the teeming dead are out for revenge! Which in the Necroscope’s case could scarcely be further from the truth; for the dead love him! (Well, let’s put it this way: the “Great Majority” of them love him.)

But between the living and the dead there are the undead, and that’s another story. In fact it’s a story that has taken most of the last two decades to write, a period covering seven bulky novels and a book of shorter stories, plus a stand-alone novel and two trilogies in which Harry Keogh plays cameo roles in the exploits of several new and very different Necroscopes.

As for the original Necroscope:

The man—and sometimes his avatar or reincarnation—has faced all kinds of mankind’s enemies: spies, vampires, zombies, werewolves, and aliens, often recruiting such to a cause which has cost Harry his life more than once! But . . . does that mean that he is dead? Or even doubly dead? No, for now as then he’s out there somewhere. . . .

Fiction has given us a whole host of Harrys. There’s been Harry Lime, as played by Orson Welles, Dirty Harry Callahan, as played by Clint Eastwood, and a certain amount of “Trouble With Harry” too! There’s been superspy Harry Palmer, played by Michael Caine; but most recently and notably there’s been the phenomenally
successful Harry Potter and his marvellous adventures at Hogwarts school for magicians, in the bestselling books and smash-hit movies that have left every other modern fiction novelist floundering, if not washed up, in J. K. Rowling’s wake.

Myself, I’m delighted with Harry Potter! Not only has he entertained millions the world over—young people mainly, for whom he was designed, but adults also—Harry has introduced many of them for the first time to the weird, wonderful worlds of fantasy fiction. And as everyone knows, children grow up and tastes change. Right now they are obsessed with this young man, with
their
Harry, and rightly so. But tomorrow and tomorrow?

Well, while the future is a devious thing, I think it only fair to say there’s a darker Harry out there and far more adult magicks waiting. Already, and ever more frequently, I’m getting letters from young readers whose elders have introduced them to
my
Harry, to Harry Keogh, Necroscope.

And so, as the end of my writing career draws ever closer, and while I know I’ll never catch up with J.K.R., still I’m far from floundering in her wake and very happy for the future. You see, I’m waiting a few more years for Harry Potter’s readers to grow up. . . .

Here in this latest volume, the sixteenth, you’ll find two long novellas and a—what, a vignette? An end piece, anyway—featuring the Necroscope in that period of his life previously designated “The Lost Years.” And for those who may be interested, if for no other reason, I’ll here append a complete listing of Necroscope titles and the dates when they were written, hopefully for your aproval.

Necroscope	March–September 1984
Necroscope II: Vamphyri!	February–August 1986
Necroscope III: The Source	April–August 1987
Necroscope IV: Deadspeak	November 1988–March 1989
Necroscope V: Deadspawn	March 1989–March 1990
Blood Brothers	May 1990–April 1991
The Last Aerie	June 1991–July 1992
Bloodwars	August 1992–August 1993
Necroscope: The Lost Years	January 1994–March 1995
Necroscope: Resurgence	May 1995–March 1996
Necroscope: Invaders	June 1997–June 1998
Necroscope: Defilers	June 1998–June 1999
Necroscope: Avengers	June 1999–June 2000
Harry Keogh: Necroscope and Other   Weird Heroes!	June–August 2002
Necroscope: The Touch	November 2003–November 2004
Harry and the Pirates	January–July 2007
	B RIAN L UMLEY Torquay, August 2007

I
n the gloom of the woods
something stirred, moving slowly and yet, for a
Thing
of its nature, paradoxically quickly and with purpose. It was an ancient Thing, and these woods had been its habitat for millennia. Upon a time centuries ago, a handful of its long-lived kind had dwelled in these selfsame woods, until all but this one had died in a vengeful fire
.

The last of its species, the Thing was as weird as can be, but then again the sweet rains and dark plasms of earth—and on occasion the salty juices and nutrients of
other
than clay-cold soil—have nurtured myriad bizarre species on the three-billion-year-old paths of evolution; while fires, usually but not always natural, have destroyed a great many more
.