Simon Green - Spirits from Beyond

“So who was that, outside? Really?”

“He’s Tommy Atkins,” said JC. “Or at least I have been given no reason to believe otherwise. And no-one has ever got past him that shouldn’t have. Until now.”

“What do you mean?” said Melody. “We’re the good guys!”

“That’s not the point,” said Happy. “We are not officially supposed to be here, password or no, because the Boss didn’t specifically approve it. So who else might have got in here, on equally spurious grounds?”

“Still not talking to you,” said Melody.

Happy turned to JC. “Where do we go from here? I can’t See anything, with all these protections in place.”

“Probably because you’re looking in the wrong direction,” said JC.

He pointed down at the floor, where there was a large trap-door. JC leaned over, grabbed the heavy ring set into the trap-door, and hauled it open. He let it fall back onto the floor with a loud, echoing bang; and they all looked down into the dark opening. A heavy iron staircase went winding and spiralling down into the gloom.

“Down we go!” JC said cheerfully.

“You are definitely getting on my nerves,” said Melody. “I don’t care if Kim is back; it’s not natural to be that cheerful all the time.”

“I have defeated a living god, I am close to answers that have been kept from me, and my girl-friend has returned!” JC said grandly. “If I were any happier, I’d have to be more people.”

“You say the nicest things, JC,” said Kim.

Happy shuffled uneasily beside the dark opening. “That staircase does not look safe to me, JC. And God and the Boss alone knows how far down it goes. No; I am not going down that stairway without a parachute.”

“Go!” JC said firmly. “Be a brave little Ghost Finder, and there shall be Jaffa Cakes for tea. And tea!”

“After you,” said Happy, just as firmly.

JC stepped down onto the stairway with exaggerated calm and started down the spiralling iron steps. His feet clattered loudly on the bare metal, but the stairway didn’t shake in the least under his weight. Melody went down next, and Kim drifted down after her, leaving Happy standing alone in the room. He took out a pill box, looked at it for a long moment, then put it away again. He sighed loudly and went down after the others.

* * *

A pleasant glow with no obvious source surrounded the team as they descended. The light didn’t spread far, moving along with them as they went down and down, into darkness after darkness. JC peered over the top of his sunglasses from time to time, but even his altered eyes couldn’t pierce the dark beyond the stairs. JC carefully pushed his sunglasses back into place and glanced back up at Happy.

“Can you See anything out there, Happy?”

“Yes. .” said Happy. “Enough to make me not want to See any more, so I’m going to stop looking. Trust me on this, JC; you don’t want to know. Some transitions are more distressing than others. Let’s just say. . the Secret Libraries aren’t where we thought they were. You take me to the weirdest places.”

They carried on down the spiralling staircase, all of them being very careful to stay well away from the edges, which lacked any kind of railing. Kim got bored pretending to walk down and dropped quietly down through the open space in the middle, sticking close to JC. He’d already lost all track of how far down they’d come. His leg muscles had begun to seriously ache when a light suddenly flared up, and he stepped off the bottom of the staircase and onto solid floor. He stumbled away from the stairs to give the others room to get off, and looked around him.

He was standing in a huge underground cavern, packed with row upon row of tall, sturdy bookcases. A stone floor, and a stone ceiling high above. And book-shelves, book-shelves everywhere, stretching away further than the human eye could follow, in every direction JC could think of, plus a few more.

Melody and Happy stared about them with wide, hungry eyes, making Oooh! and Aaah! noises, both of them forgetting the sour moods they were supposed to be in. Kim laughed softly, clapping her hands silently together.

“So many secret places turn out to be something of a disappointment when you finally get to see them,” said JC. “But not this! It’s like they have every book in the world here, including all the ones that no-one’s supposed to have.”

Melody took hold of herself and sniffed loudly, striking a conspicuously unimpressed pose. “Who needs all these books? Why not put them all on e-files? Then there’d be no need for so much storage space.”

“Because you can’t hack books, of course,” Happy said witheringly. “If you want to know what’s in a particular volume of forbidden lore, you have to come down here in person, check out the book, and read it. Except you can’t because that isn’t allowed. Mostly.”

“What about remote viewing?” said Melody, to be stubborn.

“With the shields they’ve got in place here? Any wandering spirit that tried to sneak in here would get its ectoplasm kicked so thoroughly it would end up in another dimension, with its arse on fire. And besides, most of the books down here are so dangerous in their own right that they would deep-fry your brains inside your skull if you tried to read them without taking the proper precautions.” Happy paused. “Or so I’ve heard. There are an awful lot of stories about the Carnacki Institute’s Secret Libraries, and every single one of them contradicts all the others. Does your password give us access to everything, JC? Or should we lurk quietly to one side and not touch anything?”

“We can look at anything we want to, now we’re in,” said JC. “Or so I was given to understand.”

“And if you’re wrong?” said Melody.

“Listen for the bang,” said JC. “Ah, here comes the Librarian.”

They all turned to look as the current Librarian came strolling forward to meet them. Everyone in the team took their time looking him over because this particular individual was in fact an empty suit of rather old-fashioned clothes, inhabited by nothing obvious or indeed visible. There was clearly something inside the clothes from the way they bulged and moved and wrinkled. But nothing protruded from the starched collar or the stiff cuffs or the bottom of the trouser legs. There were also subtle and somewhat worrying indications that whatever was inside the clothes wasn’t necessarily, entirely, human. The clothes came to a halt in front of the team and struck a sort of respectful pose.

“Well, hello there!” said a dry, dusty voice from somewhere in the vicinity of the starched white collar. “Visitors! How very unexpected and unannounced! Don’t get many visitors these days since I put down the enchanted man-traps. And the head-eating things. Never can remember what they’re called. . Anyway, nice to see you all! I’m in charge here, inasmuch as anyone is, or can be. I prefer to be called the Keeper of Secrets; but unfortunately that never caught on. Mostly, I’m called the Empty Librarian. Guess why? Never mind, never mind, moving on. . How can I be of service to you good ladies and gentlemen?”

JC looked at the others, and the others looked right back at him, making it very clear they had no idea of what to say either and were therefore leaving it to the team leader. JC gave them all a cold glare that promised exacting retribution in the near future and turned back to the Empty Librarian.

“Pardon me, sir,” he said very politely, accompanied by his most winning smile. “But are you dead or alive?”

“Almost certainly, sir,” said the Empty Librarian.

“All right,” said JC. “Absolutely definitely moving on. . I am here to inquire about whatever material you might have concerning the original Druids.”