Harry and the Pirates by Brian Lumley

Author:Brian Lumley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780765323385
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

Muffled by the crackle and whoosh! of the fire, Constable Jack Forester’s arrival had gone unheard, until a voice from behind the group of four snapped: “Greg Miller, you bloody crazy man! And Harry Keogh?” Then, as they turned to face him, the policeman also recognised the scratched and bloodied couple in their rags. “And you two?” he said. “Gloria Stafford and Alex Munroe, isn’t it? Now what the hell . . . !?”

Behind the four the blaze was spreading. Wide-eyed, shaking his head in disbelief, the constable went on: “Miller, you mad bastard! Did you do this? What, are you trying to burn Hazeldene to the ground or something?” His voice hardened. “Or are you simply destroying evidence? Is that what it’s all about?”

For to Forester it seemed that this part of the woods had been set on fire deliberately—which it had been, if not for the reason he’d proposed. But still it seemed that way to him—at least until a crippled, smouldering tendril came snaking out of the blaze, hooked itself onto his lower right leg and almost yanked his feet out from under him! Even as the constable cried out in shock and astonishment, however, trying instinctively to pull away, so the writhing tendril released him and shrivelled back into the inferno.

Shaken and staggering, completely off balance until Miller grabbed and steadied him, Forester looked again at the fire and saw blackened branches humping and vibrating where they burned: the involuntary, mindless activity of the ancient Thing’s melting nervous system, or perhaps the expansion of internal fluids in the vicious heat. For the thing itself—or the central nest of ganglia that was or had been its alien brain—was most definitely dead.

The constable’s lower jaw had fallen open. Closing it, he started to ask: “What in God’s name . . . ?” But as his mouth dried up he shook his head and left the obvious question hanging—

—Until Greg Miller finished it for him. “Nothing in God’s name!” he snarled, drawing Forester closer. “Nothing whatsoever to do with God, Jack. But now that you’ve seen it for yourself, surely you must see what it’s got—and what it’s had—to do with me? Or with both of us?”

Forester again shook his head . . . in denial, perhaps? But the Necroscope would have none of that. He showed the constable one of the severed “branches” which he’d dragged from the fire, the one with Gar Unkh’s primitive wolf’s head “tattoo” outlined in woad and the wartlike blemishes of self-mutilation, and kept as a trophy down through the ages by the ancient Thing. “So now you tell me, Jack,” he said. “What do you make of this?”

As Forester’s jaw fell open again, so Miller staggered and moaned, then stooped to take up into his trembling hands one of the other limbs that Harry had saved. And:

“Look!” he gasped, showing what he’d noticed to the constable. The Necroscope looked also, and at first saw nothing that meant anything to him—until the looks

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.