And because the boy hadn't as yet answered his first question (as to whether or not they knew each other), Jake now felt the urge to remind and prompt him. 'Er, son?'
But he needn't have concerned himself. Obviously the other had considered Jake's earlier question, and now took his prompt into account, too.
'Son?' he finally repeated Jake, and cocked his young-old head on one side. 'And you're wondering if we know each other? Well, I've got to answer no to both questions. Uh-uh, Jake. You and I don't know each other, not yet. And I'm not too comfortable with you calling me "son". It's a case of — I don't know — what came first, the chicken or the egg?' There was no animosity in his reply.
'Eh?' Jake frowned. 'Someone else just bursting with riddles? I don't need that right now.'
'But it's a hell of an adventure,' said the boy, sounding not at all like a child, despite his child's voice. 'Er, working them out, that is. I've done my share of that, Jake.' Then, sitting back and gazing directly into Jake's eyes, studying his face and perhaps more than his face: 'So you're him. And you've been having a hard time of it, right?'
'Well, since you seem to understand what's going on here,' Jake answered, perhaps peevishly, 'why don't you tell me?' His dream might be working something out for him, resolving a problem.
And the other nodded. 'Very well, I'm telling you: you're having a hard time of it. But that's just as much your fault as mine; you have a very defensive mind. And me, I don't have much of a mind at all! Or I do, but not all in one place, not all at one time. Oh, I know — I mean, I've known — a lot of things. But what I remember and what I've forgotten are completely random. Like a kind of amnesia or a bad case of absent-mindedness. Except it's not. For you see, I'm really not all here. Or putting it more sympathetically, all of me isn't here. Which means that while I won't get things one hundred per cent wrong, I may not get them entirely right either. That's why I need a focus. But now, since you seem determined to reject me, it looks like it may be hard for us to get along, and harder still for me to get it together. So, how long do you plan to keep slamming the door in my face, Jake?'
'Who are you?' Jake asked him then, feeling a weird tingle in his scalp, an unheard-of sensation of negative deja vu: that it wasn't him but the boy who had been here —
or somewhere — before. And Jake felt he knew where he'd been.
But the other frowned and now seemed as uncertain as Jake. 'I… I'm all sorts of people and things,' he said. 'I'm Alec, Nestor, Nathan, take your pick. There's something of Faethor in me, or has been, or will be. And something of me in a whole lot of people. It all depends on the time, the date, the place. And time is relative: what will be has been, ask any precog. That's why we have to be sure it works out right, don't you see?'
'You… you're Harry Keogh!' said Jake, shivering without knowing why — until he remembered what Harry Keogh was. 'You're the ghost they've been telling me about!'
'And you're the gadget,' said Harry.
'But I don't want to be!' Jake felt himself riveted to the river bank; he wanted to leap away but couldn't move. It was the dream, the nightmare — one of those nightmares — where, try as you might, you can't escape from the thing that's chasing you.
I'm not chasing you,' the young Harry protested. 'You are chasing me. Chasing me away!' And in fact he was wavering, physically (or metaphysically) wavering, his figure a mere outline, his face and form thinning towards transparency.
'But you're after my mind, my body!' Jake cried.
The boy, the dream-Harry, the ghost (who by now was beginning to look ghostly, insubstantial as smoke) gave a desperate shake of his almost immaterial head. 'That's not me, Jake. It's the Wamphyri who want your mind, body and soul. I am the one — or rather we are the ones, and maybe the only ones — who might be able to stop them. So don't send me away, Jake. Don't fight me off!'
And suddenly Jake realized that he could, that he was actually doing it: fighting the other off, sending him away. And:
'I… I can, can't I?' he said, his fear retreating.
'You very nearly did!' said Harry, sighing as he firmed up again. 'Okay, so perhaps this is too strange for you, the wrong time and place, the wrong me. I didn't think you'd see any harm in a small boy, that's all.'
'What, in a child who talks like a man?' Jake felt himself shivering again, but less violently. 'A boy whose eyes are innocent as a baby's yet old as the ages? A boy capable of metempsychosis — who's in my mind right now — while I'm the helpless intended vessel?'
'You're by no means as helpless as you think,' said Harry, perhaps admiringly. 'That mind of yours: stubborn as hell, with good shields you've never had reason to use, nor even suspected you had them! Anyway, mind transference isn't something that I… that I have in mind? I've had my time, Jake, my lives — and I'm still having them — but I do get your point. So, very well, let's try something else…'
A moment ago it had been warm in evening sunlight that came in flickering beams, fanning through the trees on the far bank and setting the water sparkling out towards the middle of the river where the current ran fastest. Now, in a single instant, it was cold and dark; frost lay thick on the ground, and the river was a ribbon of ice, frozen and motionless. A full moon hung low in a windswept sky, and a trio of gardens fronted rich houses that reared to the right of Jake and the boy where they walked along the river path. Except Jake's companion was no longer a boy but a youth.
Jake started away from the stranger — stumbled, might have fallen into frosted brambles on the overgrown river bank — but Harry was quick to take his arm, hold him steady. 'It's okay,' he said, to still Jake's cry of alarm. 'It's a different time, that's all, an older me. But the same place, more or less. The same river. We were back there,' he thumbed the air, indicated the path behind them, 'a few hundred yards downriver, sitting on the bank. It was summer and I was talking to my mother when you came by. Now it's… oh, quite a few winters later. I'm a little closer to your own age now, so perhaps we'll be able to get along that much better.'
Closer to my own age? Jake thought. But you're a good deal firmer, too. That's a Ml of a strong grip you have on my arm, and how much stronger on my mind?
But Harry the youth only shook his head in disappointment. 'Hiding your thoughts won't help. I'm in here, remember? Well, at present I am, anyway, while you accept me.'
'Jesus!' Jake gasped. 'It's like something out of A Christmas Carol! When I wake up, I won't believe it.'
'That's what I'm afraid of,' said Harry. 'Worse still, you may not even remember it. That's why we have to get things done while we can, and hope they get fixed in your mind.'
'Things?'
'Until you trust me,' the other answered, 'until you allow me a little permanency, we'll have to move in stops and starts. We'll get nowhere until I know the whole story, and I won't be able to help you until you believe.'
'Believe in a ghost?'
'But I'm not, not really. And Jake, you wouldn't — I mean you really wouldn't — believe how often I've been through this before! Oh, I've had trouble convincing others before you.'
While Harry talked, Jake looked him over. It was the same 'boy' for sure, but he'd be nineteen or maybe twenty years old now. Wiry, he would weigh some nine and a half stone and stand seventy inches tall. His hair was an untidy sandy mop that reminded Jake of Glint Eastwood's in those old western movies of more than thirty years ago. But his face wasn't nearly so hard and his freckles were still there, lending him a naive and definitely misleading boyish innocence.