Necroscope: The Plague-Bearer Read Online Free

recognized a certain fantastic formula. At which a “door” opened in the darkness where no door had ever before existed, and the Necroscope took a single pace forward and stepped through it— through the Möbius door and likewise through that now redundant region of space-time where the door of the booth had been—into the Möbius Continuum.
    There beyond the door lay the ultimate darkness, the primal darkness, which existed always, even before the universe began. It was a place of utter, absolute negativity; not even a parallel plane of existence, because nothing existed there except in the most unusual circumstances…such as Harry’s being there. And Harry knew—he understood—that if there was ever a place where darkness lay upon the face of the deep, this was it. Yes, it might very well be that region from which God had commanded, Let There Be Light, causing the physical universe to split off from this metaphysical abstraction. For indeed the Möbius Continuum was “without form, and void.”
    Any other man would have panicked, would have felt he was falling into nowhere forever; and it might well be forever in a place with no space or time, and so no time in which there was time for change! Yet as unique and inaccessible as the Continuum was, still it was Harry’s secret place, his refuge. For the Necroscope was scarcely a stranger here, and he most assuredly was not any other man.
    He knew the coordinates he required: Only let him visit a place in the actual, physical, three-dimensioned universe once—thereafter he would always know how to return to a space-time location forever lodged in his mind. The coordinates this time were those of a small, coastal hotel room in Scarborough, Yorkshire. He and Brenda had stayed there just once, teenage lovers in an age when fresh young couples had been viewed with suspicion by prudish hotel proprietors. That age—only four or maybe five years past—was gone now, and so was Brenda. But the coordinates remained.
    It was a sad, perhaps funny thing, but from pre-teen times to marriage Harry had known Brenda as well as his own image in a mirror. Yet now, when she had been gone less than four years, he sometimes couldn’t remember how she’d looked. And looking at her photograph didn’t help; more and more it was as if he gazed on the face of a stranger. Of course, it wasn’t Harry who she’d deserted but Alec Kyle: the fact that her Harry had become someone else, and at least in his looks was a total stranger.
    The Necroscope could understood that well enough: as yet he himself wasn’t entirely used to being—well, to put it plainly—this completely different person.
    Such were his thoughts as he stepped through a Möbius door into his room and without pause went into the bathroom. It was the mirror: Every now and then he would feel this desperate recurrent need to look at himself in a mirror. Not vanity, not by any means; perhaps even the opposite. Harry wasn’t even sure he liked the man who looked back at him! This fetch, this ghost of a man, however solid, whose body—ten years older than his own would have been—was now his.
    Frowning, he studied himself closely. Himself, yes, for he must accept that now. His hair was russet-brown, plentiful, and naturally wavy; but in the last three years a lot of the luster had gone, and strands of grey were now visible among the brown. His eyes were honey-brown, too, vastly intelligent and knowing, and (strange beyond words) incredibly innocent! Even now—for all they had seen, all that he’d experienced and learned—they were innocent. For Harry had never asked or intended to be what he had become, or to do the things he had done. But he had done them.
    His teeth were strong, not quite white, and a little uneven. They were set in a mouth that was unusually sensitive but could also be cruel, caustic. He had a high brow, a straight nose, and cheeks that seemed just a fraction sunken. Not surprising, that last: Kyle had