Simon Green - Spirits from Beyond

“Nothing wrong with a visit to the Library!” she said brightly. “I’m sure it will be very educational!”

“These are the Carnacki Institute’s Secret Libraries we’re talking about!” snapped Melody, unable to maintain her silence in the face of such open provocation. Melody lived for the opportunity to shove someone’s ignorance back in their face. “Nothing good or instructive is to be found there, only forbidden knowledge, all the nastier parts of the hidden history of the world, and things you’re better off not knowing. People can’t order you killed for things you don’t know about.”

“Unfortunately, that turns out not to be the case,” JC said mildly. “The Flesh Undying wants us dead just for knowing it exists even though we don’t know what it really is or who works for it. I say ignorance is not bliss and is actually dangerous to our continued good health and existence. We need to know things, and we need to know them now. Information is ammunition. Remember?”

“But, given that the Secret Libraries are in fact protected by large numbers of the British armed forces,” said Happy, “how are we going to get in?”

“Oh, they’re much better defended than that!” JC said cheerfully. “Layers upon layers of psychic protections, backed up by wholly unnatural forces of a downright malevolent nature. Plus a whole lot of guns and booby-traps and bad shit. But not to worry, team, because I have a plan!”

“This can only go well,” said Happy.

He slumped back in his seat and gave all his attention to feeling miserable. JC studied him in the rear mirror. Happy really didn’t look well. He was going through hot and cold sweats, shaking and shuddering, and his face was the colour of a fish’s belly. Every now and again, he would glance out the car window and jump briefly as his mental control slipped, and he Saw something he didn’t want to. It was obvious the pills he’d taken were wearing off and kicking the crap out of his immune system on the way out of his body. He used to be able to cope with sudden changes in his brain chemistry; but that was before JC and Melody persuaded him to stop taking the pills. The road to someone’s hell is always paved with someone else’s good intentions.

Melody deliberately didn’t look at Happy. “You did this to yourself,” she said loudly. “After you promised me you wouldn’t. So don’t look to me for sympathy.”

“I thought you weren’t talking to me,” said Happy, managing a small smile.

“I’m not! I’m merely. . thinking aloud!” She glared at the back of JC’s head. “Why are we going to the Secret Libraries? All right, any other time I might have been. . interested, but why do we have to go there now?”

“Lud got me thinking,” said JC, bullying a black London taxi out of his way and openly intimidating a London bus. “The Druids knew a lot of things now lost to the world, but maybe some of them are retained on file in the Unofficial Record. Lud said he recognised something on me, from where I was altered by some force from Outside. Maybe the Druids had a name for it. .

“If not, the Faust said I actually died down there in the Underground, before the Outside brought me back. I want to know if that’s true. And if it is, I want to know a lot more about it. I want to know Who or What did it, and I very definitely want to know Why. Because there’s always a price to be paid. .

“While I’m busy doing all that, the rest of you can search the stacks for anything they might have on The Flesh Undying and its servants’ infiltration of the Carnacki Institute. And any of the other secret subterranean organisations. Bound to be something there even if they don’t know they’ve got it. .”

“You don’t want much, do you?” said Happy. “Pardon me if I admit noxious gasses.”

JC made a point of lowering all the windows. Bracingly fresh air rushed into the car from all sides.

“I thought Catherine Latimer was supposed to be carrying out her own investigation into potential traitors and double agents?” said Melody, drawn into the conversation in spite of herself. “Wouldn’t she have told us if her people had turned up anything? I mean, she is our Boss. In her own scary and very efficient way. She’s supposed to have our back on this.”

“Good point, well made,” said JC. “But I haven’t heard a single word from our revered Boss on this subject; and I don’t feel like putting up with that one moment longer. Not while The Flesh Undying and its rotten agents are taking open pot-shots at us.”

“How are we supposed to find something useful in the Libraries if all the Boss’s people couldn’t?” said Melody.

“You are supposing someone has actually looked,” murmured Kim; and everyone in the car sat quietly for a moment, considering that.

“A fresh pair of eyes is always useful,” JC said vaguely, swerving his car in and out of the packed traffic perhaps a little more casually than was safe or desirable. “Perhaps a pair of unprejudiced eyes will turn up something new. . Preferably something we can use as a defence. Or a weapon. Either way, I want answers. I demand answers! I need to know things for sure. Whether the Boss wants me to know them or not.”

“You’re starting to sound a bit like me,” said Happy. “Which is not necessarily a good thing. ”

“How are we going to get in?” demanded Melody. “You said it yourself: the Secret Libraries are surrounded by some of the most powerful, appalling, and openly distressing defences anywhere in the land. I’ve tried to hack their on-line presence any number of times, for the challenge, of course; and I never got anywhere.”

“The Boss provided me with password access after the events at Chimera House,” said JC. “What happened to Robert Patterson shook her.”

“You’ve had access all this time?” said Melody, her voice rising dangerously. “And you never said anything?”

“So the Boss isn’t the only one who’s been keeping things from us!” said Happy accusingly.

“Do I detect the sound of mutiny in the air?” said JC. “I’ll have any one keelhauled who dares dispute my authority! I was content to let the Boss do the hard work, digging up proof of hidden informants; but when someone aims the ghost of a dead god and his enfleshed followers at me, my patience evaporates. It is clearly time to take matters into our own hands.”

“You’re not wriggling out of it that easily,” said Melody. “Why did the Boss give you a password, and not us?”

“Because I’m team leader,” said JC.

“Only because we all voted, and you lost,” said Happy.

“Exactly,” said Melody. “Somebody had to take responsibility for our actions; and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be us.”

“I’ve missed all this jolly banter,” said Kim.

* * *

At the Woolwich Arsenal, JC parked his car in someone else’s private parking space. The car’s CD plates should ensure that no-one bothered it; and if someone was foolish enough to do so, the car was quite capable of looking after itself. In a thoroughly mean-spirited and unpleasant way. No-one messes with the Carnacki Institute. Dealing with the restless dead, the monstrous, and the demonic on a daily basis gives you a rather short temper when faced with more everyday annoyances.

The team disembarked from the car in their own various ways. Happy got out slowly and painfully, with many loud, creaking noises from his joints, and peered dubiously around him into the harsh electric light of the car park. He gave the appearance of something that had crawled out from under a rock and was seriously considering going straight back again. Melody kicked her door open, hauled herself out in one lithe movement, and glared about her in the hope that someone would come along and give her some grief. So she could cheer herself up by punching them repeatedly in the head. Kim floated through her door without opening it and drifted over to hover beside JC as he stood in front of the car and looked thoughtfully about him.