Guy Adams - The Clown Service

I might not have had real lungs there in the Ghost Universe but my breathing became shallow nonetheless. The white noise that beat down on me during an attack hit me like a wave. I saw Tamar mere feet away, not understanding why we simply stood there, the look on her face now a mixture of fear and contempt. She recognised my inaction. She knew I had frozen. Just another witness to the stupid waste of skin and bone that was Toby Greene. I held my insubstantial hands to my face feeling they had always been insubstantial. I was the Insubstantial Man. I was the eternal ghost haunting my own stupid life.

Then I thought of Shining, of the unshakable faith he had placed in me. The first person ever to have done so. To have seen something. Some potential. Some point . And here I was, with him barely cold, trying to prove him wrong.

I fucking burned.

The air filled with darkness, a wave of shadow that flooded out of me and launched skywards. The dark thing Shining and I had first seen in this plane when we had rescued Jamie. The thing that Jamie hadn’t understood. That lethal presence that had surged towards us. Towards me . That wasn’t something that lived here. Here in this plane where thought was everything, where we had fought by strength of will, it was something I brought with me. Now it took flight again. The Fear. Given form. Shed by the silly bastard that had let it hold onto him for all of his life. Who had let it control him. Damn him. Push him. Kick him. Cheapen him.

I let it go.

The Fear flooded down the street before us. Tamar fell to the ground as it rushed over her head and moved on, ice cold and endless, colliding with the creatures that had been chasing her. They winked out, one by one, swallowed by The Fear as it swallows everything. As it had once threatened to swallow me.

‘What the fuck was that?’ Jamie asked, his voice terrified and yet in awe.

‘An old friend,’ I said, ‘and our best chance of getting out of here.’ I looked to Tamar. ‘No questions. No time.’ I pointed at Krishnin on the sack truck. ‘Push him as fast as you can and follow us.’

a) Astral Plane, Another London

There was no sign of the Ghost Population as we rounded the corner and found ourselves face to face with the mirror-image of Derek’s van. It seemed that The Fear was as crippling to them as it had been to me. I wondered if either Krishnin or Jamie understood what had happened. After all, this plane was one they both knew only too well. A place where the currency of the mind was easily spent. If they did, I was long past caring. They could think whatever they liked of me.

I had handed the gun to Tamar. Tucked in the waistband of her jeans it was more secure than gripped in my unreliable hands. ‘Don’t be afraid to use it,’ I told her, ‘if he gives you even the slightest trouble.’

‘You will take her back with you,’ I said to Krishnin. ‘Or you become my hobby for the next few months, understood?’

He offered no reply but I decided I had him for now. He wanted to know what I could offer. No doubt he believed he could slip away again easily enough if it wasn’t to his liking.

I opened the van doors, startled to see another version of Jamie lying in the back.

‘That’s just the holding pattern,’ he said. ‘My bookmark, if you like.’

‘Give me a hand with this,’ I said as the three of us lifted Krishnin and the sack truck inside the van. I wanted us all as close together as possible.

The rest of us climbed in, Tamar and I stepping awkwardly around Jamie’s inert twin.

‘You are very strange people, I think,’ said Tamar. ‘You throw up darkness, keep dead talking Russians as pets and leave copies of yourselves in the back of vans. I do not know what my August sees in you. Where is my August?’

‘When we’re back,’ I said, looking at Krishnin. ‘Go. Now.’

His rigid mouth almost had an impression of a smile and he reached out to take hold of Tamar’s arm.

‘Ready?’ I said to Jamie. ‘I want us to arrive at the same time if possible.’

He nodded and lay back into the replica of himself, the two merging. I lay down next to him and took his hand.

‘I’ll tell you where Shining is, my dear,’ said Krishnin, just as I felt this world begin to fade. ‘I shot him.’

The world jumped and I heard Tamar cry out.

We reappeared to the sound of screaming and the squeal of tyres.

‘Christ!’ came the northern tones of Derek Lime as he fought to keep his van on the road even as it suddenly filled with four struggling people, one of them clearly hell-bent on killing another.

There was a sudden deafening roar as Tamar shot Krishnin. Guns should not be fired in the back of transit vans; they are far too loud.

I just about heard the sound of Derek swear once more, a distant grunt lying beneath the agonising whine in my ears, then the van screeched to a halt and we all ended up in a pile behind the seats of the driver’s cab.

‘What the hell is going on?’ Derek shouted, trying to shift his weight so he could look over his shoulder.

‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘We’re fine.’

Whether true or not, someone had to try to stop the madness before it got completely out of control. My mouth was painfully dry, my throat sore, every movement was a fight against pins and needles.

‘Tamar?’ I asked.

She was still raging against Krishnin, kicking at the broken body, his head now little more than splinters and bloody mush.

‘Tamar!’ I shouted, reaching out to her, vaguely aware that I had managed to sprain something in my wrist in the crash. ‘Enough! Not now. We need to focus.’

‘Focus?’ she sneered. ‘What do you care? You did not know him. Not like I did.’

‘I can bring him back,’ I said. ‘That’s what I’m trying to do. Bring him back. But I need you to calm down. Now .’

I was shouting. A mixture of anger, panic and the fact that my ears were still ringing.

‘I think she’s deafened me,’ said Jamie. ‘Oh Christ, I didn’t want any of this…’

‘Will someone tell me what’s going on?’ asked Derek.

Part of me wanted to tell the lot of them to shut up, to stop asking questions I didn’t have the time to answer. But I swallowed it. Tried to remain calm.

I looked at Derek and the view through the windscreen. ‘Where are we?’ I asked.

‘Trying our best to get the hell out of London,’ he said. ‘Where the hell were you all this time? You’ve been gone for over a day. You have no idea the shit we’ve all sunk into.’

That long? If the radio signal had been binding the two realities together, breaking it had severed the link; no wonder my body ached. ‘I have some idea, actually,’ I replied. ‘The man Tamar just shot is the one responsible for it.’

I looked over to where Krishnin was still writhing, despite the demolition of most of his head.

‘He’s like them!’ said Derek. ‘They’re everywhere. We’ve got to keep moving, the city’s full of them.’

‘I need your equipment,’ I said firmly. ‘It’s the only way we can dig ourselves out of this.’

‘What are you talking about man? There’s no going back now. These things are all over the country, there’s talk of airstrikes.’

‘Airstrikes?’ echoed Jamie.

‘Not ours,’ said Derek. He sighed, trying to marshal his thoughts.

‘Look. The place is overrun with these things. Dead people, only they’re not, they’re mad, running through the streets, smashing the hell out of anyone and everything. The rest of the world is panicking too. They think it’s viral. They think the only way to be sure it doesn’t spread is by making sure the outbreak is limited to the UK.’