Simon Green: Ghost of a Smile

“Your cynicism wounds me,” murmured JC, kneeling down beside the large dark stain. “All that matters is that this is our first case since we were officially declared an A team, after our proud and glorious success against Fenris Tenebrae, down in Oxford Circus Tube Station. Nothing like saving the world to up your pay grade. But it is incumbent on us to do well on this very important case, or we will be busted back down to a B team so fast it will make our heads spin.”

“Or, we could all be horribly killed,” said Happy, blinking miserably about him. “By evil forces as yet undetected. Just thought I’d remind you since that part is always mysteriously overlooked in the briefings. I don’t like it here. If it were up to me, I’d say we nuke the whole place from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”

“Danger comes with the job,” JC said happily. “And the territory. It’s what gives our calling its spice! I love the smell of ectoplasm in the evening!”

“You’re weird,” said Happy.

“Why don’t you boys go take a look around this dump,” said Melody. “On the grounds that you’re getting on my nerves big-time. I have to calibrate my equipment and do a whole bunch of other technical things that you wouldn’t understand even if I did explain them to you.”

JC and Happy set off in different directions, wandering across the great open expanse of concrete. A thick layer of dust covered the floor, marked here and there with overlapping footprints. Some attempt had been made to keep them away from where the body fell, but it was clear a great many people had taken a keen interest in the murder. There were cobwebs, thick and dusty, but no sign of mice or rats, not even a dropping. The air was deathly cool, without even a breath of movement, despite the many broken windows. Dust motes swirled lazily in the long shafts of sunlight, dropping down from the high windows like so many dimming spotlights. The only sounds in the great open factory were their footsteps, and the occasional electronic chirps from Melody’s station. Small sounds, quickly swallowed up and smothered by the heavy quiet. The atmosphere was tense and still, as though something was waiting to happen. As though something had been waiting to happen for some time…

JC stopped abruptly and looked thoughtfully about him. He pursed his lips, as though considering an idea he didn’t like. “Melody, who is authorised to come in here these days?”

“A couple of night-watchmen, and a local security firm that takes a quick look round, twice a week,” said Melody, her hands flying across her keyboard as her various instruments woke up and came on line. “But none of them ever actually enter the building. Apparently, it disturbs them. Disturbs them so much they have it written into their contracts that they don’t have to come inside. And how do I know this? Because I’m the only member of this team that ever bothers to do their homework.”

“You logged on to the files, on the train coming down,” said Happy. “God bless laptops for those of us who are slaves to The Man.”

“Is he saying I’m a swot?” said Melody.

“Teacher’s pet,” said JC, not unkindly. “From your extensive research, do you know if anyone has actually seen anything? Any named or identified thing?”

“Not seen, as such,” said Melody. “More heard, or sensed. Everyone says this place has a bad feeling, even if they can’t agree why. One night-watchmen said he was followed by something as he made his round outside the factory. But he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say by what. But he quit his job the next day and moved to another county. They get through a lot of night-watchmen. No-one stays long.”

JC frowned. “If things have got that bad, why hasn’t the Institute been called in before this?”

“Because no-one’s actually seen anything,” Melody said patiently.

“Isn’t that always how it is?” said Kim Sterling, stepping daintily out of the shadows to join JC. “It’s always hard to pin down a ghost.”

She smiled brightly on all of them, and they all smiled back, in their own ways. Kim walked a few inches above the dusty floor. She tried her best, but she still rose and fell a few inches in the air as she approached JC. Gravity has no attraction for the dead. Kim was a ghost and had a hard enough time concentrating on the important things, like looking solid and substantial when she wasn’t, without worrying about the little things. Like gravity, and consistency. She was a beautiful young woman in her late twenties, now and forever. A great mane of glorious red hair tumbled down about her shoulders, framing a high-boned, classically shaped face. Her eyes were a vivid green, her mouth a dark red dream, and she had the kind of figure that makes men’s fingers tingle. Because she was dead, her appearance was an illusion based on memory, which meant that not only did it tend to vary in the details as her attention wandered, but that she could dress in whatever fashion she chose. Today, she was a 1920s flapper, complete with cute little hat and a long string of beads round her neck. She twirled them artlessly round one finger as she stood before JC. She smiled at him, and he smiled back.

JC and Kim were an item, the living and the dead. Everyone knew it wasn’t going to have a happy ending, including JC and Kim. But while love is blind, it is also always eternally hopeful.

Kim was a part of the team but couldn’t join them in direct sunlight. It dispersed her ectoplasm. So she only worked with them in the dark places of the world, stepping out of the shadows to fight the forces of darkness, all for the love of a good man. Even if sometimes she was scarier than some of the things the team faced. She beamed at JC and tried to slip her arm through his. But her ghostly arm passed right through.

“I’m sorry, JC,” said Kim. “I keep trying to intensify my presence, but no matter how hard I concentrate, I can’t become solid.”

“I keep telling you,” said JC. “It doesn’t matter. You’re here with me. That’s all that really matters.”

“Young love,” growled Happy, staying a cautious distance away. “The horror, the horror…”

“What I want to know,” Melody said to Kim, “is how you can turn up wherever we are, whenever we need you.”

“Because I’m not really here,” said Kim. “I impose my presence on the world through an effort of will. So basically, any place is every place because wherever I am is a matter of opinion. So I can be wherever I want to be. It’s very liberating, being dead. You should try it. The physical rules of the world aren’t nearly as binding or restrictive.”

“Spooky…” said Happy.

“Shut up, Happy,” said JC.

“You’re as spooky as she is these days, JC,” said Melody, slapping a particularly recalcitrant piece of tech to show she was serious. “After what happened to you on that hell train… It isn’t your eyes that changed. I really do need to sit you down and run some serious tests on you.”

“No you don’t,” said JC very firmly. “You just want an excuse to wire me up and poke me with the science stick.”

“For your own good, JC,” said Melody. “I promise; there wouldn’t be that many needles involved…”

“You stay away from me, Melody, and from Kim. We are not your lab rats-we are your colleagues. You don’t tie colleagues down and threaten them with internal probes…”

“Actually,” said Happy, “sometimes in bed, she…”

“Shut up, Happy,” said JC. “Far too much information.”

“Ectophile!” said Happy.

JC and Kim made a point of drifting away a little, so they could have some quality time together. JC left footprints in the dust. Kim didn’t. Happy glowered after them and went back to join Melody, who was giving all her attention to her equipment as it hissed and purred and blinked coloured lights in an important sort of way.