Read Online Necroscope: The Mobius Murders by Brian Lumley - Free Book Online

right-angled sides are three and four such units? There is no explanation, it’s simply so. Or perhaps not so simply.”
    “But—”
    “Let me continue,” Hemmings had insisted. “I spoke of time. If time is but a fourth dimension of our universe, perhaps the answers to all such questions may be found in a fifth or even a sixth; and many of our supposedly finest theoretical physicists have been at least considering the possibility of just such external or ulterior dimensions for many decades—and right there you have a very strong connection at least with metaphysics, if not the other, er, perhaps less acceptable doctrines.”
    To which Calloway had replied: “All of which comes close to sophistry!”
    “Not so, and I will tell you why. I believe that unless my students become completely immersed in such mysteries—unless I seed in them an absolute fascination with numbers—how then may they aspire to mastery of the subject?”
    More sophistry? And for several long moments the vice-chancellor had remained silent, a hand stroking his chin under thin lips and frowning eyes. Until finally he said: “This is not the first time we have heard complaints. We know that you have most recently suffered a bereavement, but since returning from Edinburgh your entire demeanour would seem to have changed. In fact it has even been suggested that you do not so much teach or try to inform your students as convince yourself! That you have become something of a doctrinaire; that you are inclined to carry unorthodox principals to impractical, unworkable extremes! Well if so it simply isn’t good enough, Professor Hemmings.”
    Unabashed and on the contrary angered, Hemmings had replied “And as to your own personal opinion?”
    “I shall hold that in reserve—for the moment. Suffice it to say that as of now we shall watch how you go, and very carefully.”
    Hemmings had taken that not only as his dismissal, but also as an insult and a threat. “We shall watch how you go,” indeed! Well, he would tell them where they could go, and how quickly!
    And sneering scornfully he’d stalked from the vice-chancellor’s chambers, collected his personal effects—plus a handful of books from certain shelves in the library—and returned at once to Edinburgh.
    A brief notice on the university’s information boards a few days later had acknowledged his resignation…
     

     
    Calloway, that apathetic cretin!…Hemmings now thought as he walked the Kirkaldy esplanade. Ah but then, he had paid for his insouciance in the end! For Professor Emeritus Latimer Calloway had become…what, Hemmings’ second? Well, his true third, if he included his mother. He had yet to make up his mind decisively on that one.
    And as for now: now he was seeking his ninth.
    Yesterday had been the eighth, and a barely adequate tidbit at that. It concerned the great leech that he felt so hungry so soon. Obviously that limping, down-and-out drug addict had been on his “last legs,” literally! His life-force, or his soul—as the Pythagoreans would doubtless have had it—had already been ebbing when Hemmings took him. He had sufficed, if only for the moment; but now on this desolate strand that moment had passed, and the need inside Hemmings was once again gnawing at him. Oh, he knew he could manage for a while longer, but still he didn’t want to.
    On the other hand, perhaps he didn’t have to. For as he was about to turn back and head for the railway station, finally he had found what might well be that ninth victim he was searching for.
    Here, midway along the esplanade, in the lee of a sea wall, an open-ended shelter containing a wooden bench provided refuge from inclement weather and a place to rest or simply to sit and gaze out across the sea. Right now it was occupied by a man and his scrawny dog, a young German Shepherd by its looks. Glancing all about and seeing no one else in the vicinity, Hemmings drew closer and stepped into the comparative privacy of