Spirits from Beyond (25 page)

JC forced himself, and Melody, back through the doorway. When she got close enough, she grabbed the door-frame, too, with both hands. Until they were both back out onto the landing, and the door slammed shut behind them. The unbearable suction of the vortex and the roaring wind both cut off in a moment, and JC and Melody fell to the floor. They lay there together, clinging to each other. Both of them crying, harshly, for the good man they’d lost. Kim stood over them, crying her own silent tears.

After a while, JC and Melody sat up, still leaning on each other. Melody cried bitter tears, while JC sat there, exhausted. Kim crouched beside them, wanting to help, trying to comfort them with her presence. Melody turned her face away from both of them, refusing to be comforted.

“After all the things I said to him,” she said, “He gave his life for me without a thought, without a single hesitation.”

And then the door to the hungry room reopened, and Happy came flying back through it at speed. He shot across the corridor, slammed into the far wall, and crashed to the floor. The door slammed shut behind him; and then they all heard a massive explosion, from somewhere far and far-away. An inhuman scream seemed to issue from everywhere at once, then cut off abruptly. The door was gone, leaving behind nothing but a stretch of unremarkable wall. Happy sat up slowly. He was laughing, shakily. Melody pushed JC away from her and scrambled across the floor to take Happy into her arms. She pushed her face into his shoulder, still sobbing.

“I thought I’d lost you,” said Melody.

“I thought I’d lost me,” said Happy. “But apparently the many changes I’ve made to my basic body chemistry made me . . . unacceptable. Bloody thing spat me out! Hah! These Other-dimensional entities think they’re so smart; if it had had any sense, it would have kept me and spat out the grenade!”

“Welcome back,” said JC. “I really wasn’t looking forward to finding something good to say about you at your eulogy.”

Melody stopped crying, sniffing back the last few tears. She pushed herself away from Happy and looked at him directly. “Are you saying it puked you out?”

“Well, yes,” said Happy. “Nothing like the supernatural, to make clear your true place in the scheme of things.”

* * *

It took a while before they all stopped laughing. Finally, they got to their feet again, all of them leaning on each other for support. Kim beamed on them all fondly while they got their breath back and looked around. JC stretched slowly, flexed his aching hands, then looked firmly back down the corridor in a let’s-get-back-to-business sort of way.

“One last job, then hopefully we can get the hell out of here,” said JC.

“I’ve always admired your optimism,” said Happy.

“I’m going to try to release the ghost girl Lydia,” said JC. “I can’t help feeling that she’s at the back of everything that’s happening here. Okay; I want all of you to go back down to the main bar. Too many of us at once would only upset her. Happy, find Brook and bring him back up here, to Lydia’s room. He probably won’t want to come, so feel free to be very firm.”

“I’ve still got my gun,” said Melody. “He’ll do what he’s told.”

Kim planted herself in front of JC and fixed him with her best wide-eyed stare.

“Let me come, JC. I could help. Really I could!”

“Sorry, sweetie,” said JC. “But I’m pretty sure you’d scare her. She doesn’t know she’s a ghost.”

Kim nodded, reluctantly, and followed Happy and Melody down the stairs.

* * *

JC strolled down the left-hand corridor, all the way to the last door on the left. Lydia’s room, for so many years. He knocked politely, opened the door, and went in. The young suicide was still sitting in her chair, still reading the magazine she was always reading. She looked around, and smiled easily at JC.

“Oh, hello! It’s Mr. Chance, isn’t it? Any sign of Adrian?”

“Not yet,” said JC. “But I’m sure he’ll be along soon.”

“It’s all right,” said Lydia. “I’ll wait for him as long as it takes.”

JC heard footsteps outside in the corridor even though Lydia clearly didn’t. He stepped back through the door, and there was Happy, leading a visibly reluctant Brook down the landing. JC waited for them to join him, gestured for Brook to go in the room with him, then stopped Happy with a look.

“You stay here,” JC said quietly to Happy. “And don’t get distracted or go wandering off. I’m going to need you. Adrian, let’s go in.”

“I can’t,” Brook said miserably. “I just can’t.”

“You have to,” said JC.

“You don’t understand! I can’t bear to do anything . . . that might mean losing all I have left of her,” said Brook.

“She’s only here because of you,” said JC. “You’re holding on to her.”

“Please. Don’t say that.”

“If you love her, let her go,” said JC.

He took Brook firmly by the arm and took him into the end room. Lydia looked round again, her face lighting up as she expected to see her Adrian. Only to recoil a little at the sight of the old man with JC. It was clear she didn’t recognise Brook. Didn’t know him at all.

“Don’t be frightened, Lydia,” said JC.

“I’ve seen that man before,” said Lydia. “Is he a ghost? Why does he keep looking in at me?”

“I can’t stand this,” said Brook.

He tried to leave, but JC held on to him.

“Let me go!” said Brook.

“Happy!” said JC. “Get in here!”

The telepath slouched through the open doorway and smiled at Lydia. She nodded back, uncertainly.

“This is a friend of mine, Lydia,” said JC. “Don’t worry; he always looks like that. Happy, it’s time to do the linking thing again. This time, I need you to forge a mental connection between Lydia and Adrian. Mind to mind, heart to heart, soul to soul, so that they can See each other clearly and know who they are.”

“You don’t want much, do you?” growled Happy. “I’m still recovering from suddenly not being dead after all. I swear, there aren’t enough pills in the world to make working with you worth it.”

He frowned hard, concentrating; and Lydia’s and Brook’s heads snapped round. They looked into each other’s eyes . . . and knew each other. After all the years apart, they were finally together again. JC could see it in their faces—a simple, wondering look of recognition. Two lost loves, separated by all the world and Time, brought together again at last. Lydia rose out of her chair and went to Adrian, and they looked at each other.

“I didn’t know you!” said Lydia. “You got old, Adrian . . .”

“You didn’t,” said Brook.

“How long have I been here?” said Lydia. “How long have I been waiting for you, Adrian?”

“Too long,” said Brook. “Do you remember . . .”

“What I did?” said Lydia. “Yes. I do now. Such a stupid, selfish thing to do. ‘This will show them; this will make them all sorry,’ I thought. All those years we could have enjoyed, together . . .”

“You can have all the Time there is, now,” said JC. “No more waiting. It’s time for you to leave this room, Lydia.”

“I won’t go anywhere without you, Adrian,” said Lydia. “I won’t be separated from you any longer.”

“Of course not,” said Brook. “You’re going, and I’m going with you.”

“I can’t ask that of you!” said Lydia.

“There’s nothing left to hold me here,” said Brook. “No family, no friends; all I ever really had were my memories of you. If I can’t be here with you . . . then I don’t want to be here.” He looked at JC. “I mean it.”

“Yes,” said JC. “I think you do.”

He nodded to Happy, who nodded slowly.

“The things we do, for love,” said Happy.

He reached out, through the link he’d made between a dead girl and a living man, and gave them both a little of his Sight. Brook and Lydia turned their heads, to stare in a direction beyond the sight of the living. And it was over. The Past disappeared and the original room reasserted itself. It looked much the same: old-fashioned, but with dust everywhere. Lydia was gone, and Brook lay dead on the floor. JC knelt beside the body and checked for a pulse. Not because he had any doubts but because that was what you did. He got to his feet and nodded to Happy.

“Good work. This isn’t quite the ending I had in mind, but I suppose it will have to do. It’s over. And that’s all that matters, really.”

“It doesn’t feel over,” said Happy. He rubbed wearily at his eyes. “Dear Lord, I am so tired . . . This has taken a lot out of me, you know.”

“Yes,” said JC. “I know. It’s taken a lot out of all of us.”

* * *

They left the room, and JC closed the door firmly behind them. They walked back down the landing, past perfectly ordinary doors, all of them closed, and went down the stairs to the main bar.

“How does the upper floor feel to you now, Happy?” said JC.

“Empty,” said Happy.

“That’s all?”

“Afraid so.”

“Damn,” said JC. “I was hoping for more than that. Oh. What happened to the people we rescued from the Timeslipped rooms?”

“Brook sent them back to town,” said Happy. “The road was flooded by the storm, so he sent them back over the fields. Slogging through thick mud and pouring rain and heavy winds . . . They’ll be soaked to the skin by the time they reach Bishop’s Fording. But that could be a good thing. Keep them distracted enough that they won’t start asking awkward questions till later. And hopefully by then, we’ll be out of here.” He looked at JC. “Not often we get to save people’s lives. It’s a good feeling.”

“Yes,” said JC. “It is.”

When they emerged into the main bar, Melody and Kim were waiting for them. JC filled them in on what had happened. The storm outside sounded worse than ever, loud and threatening, battering at the windows, like some furious creature trying to force its way in.

“So,” said Melody. “Lydia wasn’t responsible for everything that’s going on here.”

“No,” said Happy.

“Then removing Lydia didn’t remove the source of the problem,” said Kim.

“No,” said JC. “But some things . . . just need doing.”

NINE

THERE WERE GIANTS IN THOSE DAYS

The main bar of the King’s Arms seemed reassuringly calm and normal after the extremes of the upper floor. Only the unrelenting din of the storm raging outside remained to remind them that the game wasn’t over yet. JC went behind the bar, found three unbroken glasses, and ceremoniously poured out the last of the good brandy. They all toasted each other solemnly while Kim looked on wistfully. Happy knocked his brandy back in one gulp, ignoring the disparaging looks from the other two, who knew how to treat a good brandy.

“This stuff is feeling more and more medicinal,” said Happy, slamming his glass back down on the bar and looking about him distractedly.

“You should know,” said Melody.

“Children, children,” murmured JC. “Do me a favour and slap each other round the head. I haven’t got the energy.”

“So what do we do now?” said Melody, deliberately averting her gaze from the bar’s windows, as they jumped and rattled in their frames. “I mean, we’ve dealt with all the obvious trouble, on the upper floor; but it doesn’t seem to have changed anything. Listen to that storm!”

“Not a fit night out for man or beast,” muttered Happy, looking glumly into his empty glass. “If it rains any harder, it’ll be ark-building time.”

And then his head came up suddenly, and he looked quickly about him.

“Hold everything and pass the ammunition. Something . . . is heading our way. I can feel it.”

JC put down his glass and looked steadily at Happy. “What kind of Something are we talking about here, Happy? Is it the dark, coming back again?”

“No,” said Kim. “I can feel it, too. Listen . . .”

JC came out from behind the bar to join the others, and they all stood close together. Listening. The sound of the storm outside seemed to fade away, retreating into the distance, just so they could hear what was coming. Voices . . . voices that seemed to come from every direction at once, drifting in from all around them. A slow susurrus of human voices, whispering. Rising and falling, but slowly growing in volume. Spoken conversations, shouted arguments, raucous laughter, and the sobbing of broken hearts. More and more voices, from everywhere at once, filling the whole bar from end to end. Growing steadily louder and more distinct.

Voices, voices, more and more of them, entire crowds of men and women fighting to be heard. Other sounds arose in the background: what might have been fights, with broken furniture; lovers’ quarrels; the raucous singing of disreputable songs. Everything you might expect to hear from every kind of bar.

But it seemed to JC that there was something strange, something decidedly off, about these distant and disembodied voices. Many of them were oddly accented, with the kind of extreme dialects you don’t hear any more. Harshly pitched voices, speaking the kind of English that hadn’t been spoken for centuries. And as the clamour of voices rose to an uproar, JC was sure he could hear other languages mixed into the general hubbub—Norman, Saxon, Celtic, Latin—all the old lost tongues of England. And some things JC couldn’t even recognise. England’s linguistic history had always been full of strange bedfellows.

“A whole army of dead voices,” said Melody, raising her voice to make herself heard above the din. “It’s like everyone who ever patronised this pub has come back, for an after-life reunion.”

“All human life is here,” said JC. “And all human death, apparently.”

Finally, the ghosts appeared. Grim, grey, roughly human shapes, glowing with their own unnatural light as they came walking through the walls from every side at once. Some slipped in through the main door, as naturally as you please, while others came tripping down the backstairs. More and more of them, filling up the bar with their cold, spectral presence. Some rose out of the floor, while others dropped down from the ceiling, following stairways and entrances that had existed once, long ago, in earlier incarnations of the building that eventually became the King’s Arms. When it was an inn, a tavern, a meeting-house.

Melody and Happy moved quickly to stand back-to-back.

“Hold your ground,” said JC, sternly. “They’re only ghosts. We can do ghosts.”

And still they came, forcing their way in, an endless flow of the dead, walking right through the tables and chairs, and even each other. Glowing figures overlapped as they tried to occupy the same limited space, dressed in clothing and outfits and even rough armour, from a hundred different periods of Time Past. All of them talking at once, the terrible clamour rising and falling . . . And yet even through the din, JC slowly became aware that he couldn’t hear any sounds of movement from the ghosts. No footsteps, no bodies jostling against each other.

And, he couldn’t fit a single voice to any particular ghost. As though the voices and the apparitions came from different places.

Melody opened her lap-top on the bar-counter and fired up. She used her scanners to pick out images from the most-recent-looking ghosts, then set them against local records, trying to put some names to the deceased faces. Hoping to work out who they were and why they’d come back. JC could tell from her face that she wasn’t having much luck.

“There’s one good thing,” said Happy.

“Really?” said Melody, without looking up from what she was doing. “Tell me. I’d love to hear it.”

“There are two faces I don’t see anywhere in this spooky crowd,” said Happy. “I don’t see Adrian Brook or his Lydia. Their spirits aren’t trapped here. They got away.”

“You’re right,” said JC. “That is a good thing. Not a terribly useful piece of information, but . . .”

“I don’t do useful,” said Happy. “What do you want? Miracles?”

“Yes, please,” said JC. “I could use one if you’ve got one about you. I swear this case is wearing me down. Every time I think I’ve got it worked out, it changes gear and speeds off in another direction.”

“Hello,” said Melody. “This is interesting . . .”

“In the absence of a miracle, I’ll settle for interesting,” said JC. “What have you got, Mel?”

“Look at the ghosts,” said Melody. “They’re avoiding us. According to my scanners, there’s a perfect circle around us that the ghosts aren’t entering. They actually change direction at the last moment, to avoid it.”

“Yes!” said Kim. “I can feel it. It’s you, Melody! Or, at least, you and your lap-top. You’ve established a circle of scientific reality that the ghosts can’t enter. I’m standing right at the edge of the circle, and it is weirding me out big time. As though scientific reality itself is trying to push me away because it doesn’t believe in me. It’s like a very loud voice telling me I don’t exist. If I didn’t know better, I think I’d find that very upsetting. These ghosts all around us . . . they’re simply memories, trapped in this building. Slowly disintegrating, down the centuries, into little more than sound and fury and increasingly unstable images. Not really proper ghosts at all, to my mind . . .”

She gestured dismissively at the ghosts as they came near, and a grey hand shot out of the crowd and fastened onto her wrist. Kim looked at the hand in shock, unable to believe anything could actually touch her. And then she was dragged sharply out of the scientific circle and hauled away into the crowding ghosts. If she did cry out, she couldn’t be heard above the raised voices.

JC immediately went to go after her, but Happy and Melody grabbed him by both arms and dragged him back. He fought them for a moment, then stopped and stood still, breathing hard. Happy and Melody let go of his arms and stepped back, and watched him anxiously.

“You have to stay in the circle, JC,” Melody said carefully. “We’re only safe from the ghosts as long as we stay inside the circle.”

“It’s all right; really!” said Happy. “It’s not like Kim’s in any danger; she’s a ghost, right? She can’t come to any harm.”

“You don’t know that,” said JC. “They were able to touch her. And ghosts can be hurt. I found that out down in the London Underground.”

“That was different!” Melody said firmly. “That was Fenris Tenebrae; these are common or garden everyday ghosts. Kim’s been around; she’s not just any ghost, now. She can take care of herself. You’re the one who might be in danger out there. We don’t know what’s going on here, JC. We have to be careful.”

JC nodded abruptly. He hadn’t actually calmed down, but he did his best to seem more in command of himself. He looked at Melody, then at her lap-top.

“Talk to me, Mel. Explain to me what’s happening. I am prepared to accept informed guesses.”

“It’s Time,” said Melody, her attention fixed on the information streaming across her lap-top screen. “Time is breaking down in the King’s Arms. As in: Time doesn’t seem to be as tightly nailed down at the corners as it ought to be. Linear Time is being disrupted, under direct attack from the sheer power of a storm that’s been building for centuries.”

JC turned to Happy. “All right, you explain it to me.”

“It’s all concerned with the terrible anger generated by the death of the blonde woman all those years ago,” said Happy. “Her sacrifice, in a local place of power, gave birth to Something the Druid priests never anticipated—a great scream of rage given shape and form and power by an unsuspected bad place. So that Something set in motion long ago is still happening. Growing, building in strength, searching for a way to break into our reality. The storm we hear . . . is the smile on the face of the tiger.”

“Could you be any more vague?” said JC.

“If you want,” said Happy. “Look, the storm started long ago. Back in the Druid days. The rage of the sacrificed victim got mixed up in it and gave it focus. Something’s held it off, all these years, but now it’s back. And it’s mad. Tell me you’ve got it now, JC. Because all I’ve got left is mime and finger-painting.”

“I get it,” said JC. “You’re saying that maybe we had it wrong before. The storm wasn’t the cry of the blonde woman. Just the opposite. Everything that’s happening here, from the rooms to the blonde woman to the ghosts, was really a manifestation of the storm.”

He glared about him, into the shifting, overlapping layers of ghosts that filled the main bar from one end to the other. Rank upon rank of shimmering grey figures, some more human or more complete than others. All of them constantly moving and stirring, never still for a moment. There was a general air of . . . restlessness, as though they were all lost, or searching for something they couldn’t quite remember. They walked through walls and furniture and even the far ends of the bar-counter.

Still more ghosts came walking in, through the walls and the windows and the closed main door. Some seemed as solid as any real person while others faded in and out, wisps of human-shaped mist. Some had strange lights inside them that came and went, while others seemed oddly out of focus, as though not entirely sure who they were.

“I’ve never seen this many ghosts in one place at once,” said Melody.

“Call Guinness,” said Happy. “And yet . . . I have to say, JC; they’re not actually frightening, as such. And I am an expert when it comes to being frightened. They don’t feel . . . threatening.”

And then he broke off and fell back a step. Some of the ghosts were starting to notice that there was one place in the bar they couldn’t get into. They’d been banging up against the perimeter of an invisible circle of reason for some time; but now more and more of them were turning their dead gaze on the one place they couldn’t go. They turned their heads to look in that direction, with their cold, unblinking eyes, and those on the perimeter crowded up against the invisible barrier. They pressed slowly forward, taking a slow, steady interest in the three living souls inside the circle. And not in a good way.

The ghosts could see them now.

The crash of voices shut off in a moment, replaced by an intent, watchful silence. The ghosts stopped moving. They stood still, staring into the circle. An army of ghosts, with only one thought and one interest in common. To get in.

“Still think they’re not dangerous, Happy?” said JC.

“Something’s changed,” said Happy. “I can feel it.”

“Why are they looking at us?” said Melody, one hand resting protectively on her lap-top. “What do they want?”

“What do ghosts usually want?” said JC. “The one thing they can’t have. Life. Rooms aren’t the only things with unnatural appetites.”

“You’re not making me feel any better,” said Happy. “I really don’t like being looked at like this.”

“But we’re protected!” said Melody, her voice rising. “We had to go through all kinds of training, at the Carnacki Institute, before they’d allow us to go out into the field. Reinforcing our auras against possession, putting in extra layers of psychic protection, so we’d be safe from . . . Things like this!”

“You might want to mention that to these ghosts,” said Happy. “Because they don’t seem to know that.”

“It’s the bloody local power source,” said JC. “They’re drawing on it to sustain their existence . . . Or, more likely, it’s using them to get at us. The local power source is the storm! Or it’s the rage that drives the storm. Or Something. I swear, this whole case makes my head hurt . . . Either way, the Big Bad has tried every other way to get at us, so now it’s using the one thing the King’s Arms has more of than anything else—ghosts.”