Necroscope

Necroscope is the title of a series of horror novels by British author Brian Lumley.

The term necroscope, as defined in the series, describes someone who can communicate with the dead (coined Deadspeak later in the series). Unlike necromancers, who here extract the knowledge they seek by brutal eviscerations of corpses, a necroscope can communicate with them as equals: peacefully and without any physical interference. The abilities of a necroscope are defined as a type of extrasensory perception (ESP).

Harry Keogh (born Harry Snaith), the Necroscope, is born with the ability to speak to the dead. As he grows up and his power manifests itself, he befriends the dead, known as the Great Majority, and learns from them that death is not the end. He believes that although the body dies, the mind goes on and the dead continue to improve and expand in death what they loved in life. From him, they learn to communicate amongst themselves, and love Harry for it. In turn, the Great Majority offer him their knowledge. While Harry is at school, a deceased math teacher helps him with his developing mathematics talent and an ex-army sergeant teacher imparts self-defense skills.

As the years go by, he has recurring dreams about his mother, dead after an apparent ice-skating accident but in reality murdered by her husband – Harry's stepfather Victor Shukshin. Shukshin is a psychic sensitive, a defector sleeper agent planted in England by the Soviet E-Branch. In his self-appointed mission to avenge his mother's death, Harry is dragged into a web of espionage involving 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 multi-dimensional universe.

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

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 hosts to grant them 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, and menaces of diabolic nature.