Necroscope - Plot Summary

Plot Summary

Harry Keogh (born Harry Snaith) is born with the ability to speak to the dead. As he grows up and his power manifests itself, he befriends the dead. From them he learns that death is not the end, that once the bodies die the mind goes on, and the dead continue to do in death what they did in life. From him, the once silent Great Majority learns to communicate amongst themselves, and love him for it. In turn, they offer him their knowledge. From a former maths teacher he discovers his own mathematical genius, and an ex-army sergeant teaches him self-defense.

As the years go by, he has recurring dreams about his mother, dead after an alleged ice-skating accident but in reality murdered by her husband and Harry's stepfather Victor Shukshin. Shukshin is a psychic sensitive, a defector sleeper agent planted by the Soviet E-Branch. In his self-appointed mission to avenge his mother's death, Harry is dragged into a web of espionage (actually, ESPionage) involving the British and Soviet ESP agencies.

This leads to Harry learning to use the Möbius Continuum (from its discoverer, August Ferdinand Möbius himself, at his grave in Leipzig, Germany), which allows him to instantaneously transport himself anywhere in the world, and pits him head to head against Boris Dragosani, a necromancer and fledgling vampire.

From that point on, Keogh, backed by the British E-Branch, works to rid the world of the vampire menace, a mission that will eventually lead him to a parallel world, Sunside/Starside, the vampire world connected to Earth via two grey holes, one in Romania (the original "source" of vampires on Earth) and a second, recent one in the Pechorsk Proyect in the Urals. It is there that Harry Keogh's final death eventually meets up with him, after he has lost his family, his friends, his deadspeak and his numeracy... but not his humanity.

But as Harry knows well, death is not the end. His was a success story, and such stories need to go on. In the Möbius Continuum, Harry's essence explodes in a burst of golden light, and from that explosion a myriad of golden darts, each a part of Harry, come forth.

Each of those golden darts carry a part of Keogh, and can join with a host to grant him some of the abilities of the original Necroscope. Later books in the series tell the stories of individuals touched by these darts: Nathan Kiklu, Jake Cutter and Scott St. John. The darts seek to continue their mission in life, and so bond to individuals who will come up against the Necroscope's old foes, the Wamphyri, or menaces of a similar nature.

Harry's physical remains, infected by the spores of the vampire Faethor Ferenczy, were sent back in time by the Möbius Continuum and ended up in the marshes of the vampire world, ironically making him the source of the vampire plague when his own spores infected Shaitan; the first Wamphyri lord.