Simon Green - Spirits from Beyond

The blob had filled every square inch of its container now, not a gap or bubble anywhere, seething and straining against the glass sides of the display case. Strange lights sparked and flared inside it, multi-coloured threads of energy snapping back and forth like illuminated blood-vessels. Melody pointed her machine-pistol at the case, then lowered it again, uncertainly. Happy stepped forward and put himself bodily between her and the thing in the case. Melody smiled briefly and stepped forward to stand beside him. She put an arm across his shoulders, and he put an arm around her waist.

JC took off his sunglasses and turned the full force of his golden eyes on the thing in the case. The blob shook and shuddered but didn’t withdraw an inch.

“Rather hoped for more than that,” said JC. “Kim, this might be a good time for you to teleport out of here.”

“I won’t leave you,” said Kim. “I only just got you back. There must be something you can do.”

“I don’t have my equipment,” said Melody.

“We could still run,” said Happy. “Running’s always good. But I don’t think we’d get very far. .”

“And we can’t leave the Libraries undefended,” said JC. “We stand and fight; that’s the job. Except, we have no tech, no weapons, no magics or special Institute techniques that would do any good. I suppose we could eat it. .”

“After you,” said Happy.

“The Acquisitions!” JC said sharply. “That’s the answer! Objects of Power, right? Smash the cases, everyone, and grab anything that looks useful!”

“That really won’t be necessary,” said the Empty Librarian. Everyone stopped and looked at him. The empty suit of clothes didn’t seem at all worried.

“What?” said JC.

“Refreshing though your zeal to protect the Libraries is, before you go wild and start smashing all the exhibits, I feel I should point out that we here at the Libraries are perfectly capable of dealing with a rogue exhibit. Tommy Atkins! Your presence is required!”

The uniformed soldier appeared out of nowhere, standing before the display case. And then there was another soldier, standing on the opposite side. And then more, and more, dozens of Tommy Atkinses, surrounding the case in row after row. They didn’t raise their rifles; they simply glared at the blob in its case, concentrating their full attention on it. The blob faltered and fell back, falling in upon itself, until there was nothing left of it in the display case but a small ball of suppurating organic matter, barely moving at all.

“Of course,” said JC. “That. . thing, is just flesh. While Tommy Atkins, all of him, are pure spirit. It has no effect on them and no defences against them. They outnumbered it, and overwhelmed it, through sheer spiritual presence.”

“Yeah, more or less,” said Tommy Atkins. “I was hoping I’d get a chance to bayonet it. .”

He was the one they recognised, from outside the door. All the others had disappeared, gone in a moment. He leaned over the display case, wrinkling his nose at what remained of the blob. “You, behave yourself! Don’t make me have to come down here again. Or there will be trouble.”

He straightened up, nodded easily to the Empty Librarian; and disappeared.

Melody and Happy realised they were still holding each other. They quickly let go, stepped back; and then looked at each other. JC went for a little walk, to calm himself down. He was used to being the one who saved the day at the last moment; and he didn’t like being upstaged. And he was pretty certain his plan to use the Objects of Power would have worked, in a generally destructive kind of way. .

The Empty Librarian looked thoughtfully at the ghost girl Kim.

“You’re not the first restless spirit we’ve had down here, my dear; not by a long shot. Some field agents have difficulty letting go. . The filters keep most of them out, but you’re something different, aren’t you? I can see the mark of Strangeness on you, like your Mr. Chance. And your two other friends, of course.”

“Don’t tell them,” said Kim. “They don’t know. They don’t need to know, yet. It would only upset them.”

“As you wish, miss,” said the Empty Librarian. “Now, is there any way in which I can be of service to you?”

“Is there anything here especially suited to my. . special nature?”

“There are the Ghostly Reads, miss. The last aetheric remains, of books that no long exist on the material plane. Ghosts of lost books; perfect reading material for the not yet departed.”

“Show me,” said Kim.

But when the Empty Librarian led her to a collection of glowing, semi-transparent books on a dusty shelf, flickering like dying light bulbs, Kim found that although she could take the books off the shelf, and even open them and read them, they were all of them written in dead languages she couldn’t understand.

She went back to join the others and found JC glowering at the Empty Librarian.

“These are the Carnacki Institute Secret Libraries! One of the biggest repositories of hidden knowledge in the world! There must be something here that can help us!”

“JC. .” said Kim.

“No! I need to know this. I need to know why Outer forces brought me back from the dead!”

“Ah, sir,” said the Empty Librarian, not unkindly. “You don’t need books for that. You don’t need anything we have here. We deal only in the Past; and you are concerned with the Future. You need to get back out in the field, sir, take names, and kick bottoms, and get your answers direct from the horse’s mouth, as it were. You need to go to the source, sir.”

* * *

JC and his team sat quietly in the car, in someone else’s private parking place. Thinking, considering, what to do next. The sun was finally up, shedding a cold grey light across the Woolwich Arsenal. A few birds had started singing, in a half-hearted sort of way. People in uniforms came and went, but went nowhere near the car. Word had got around.

JC turned suddenly, to look at Melody in the back seat. “Did you bring your lap-top with you?”

“Of course,” she said. “It’s in my back-pack.”

“Get it up and running,” said JC. “Can you get a signal here?”

“This lap-top could get a signal anywhere,” said Melody. “It’s very well trained.” She soon had it open on her lap. “All right, I’m signed in. What am I looking for?”

“Catherine Latimer,” said JC. “Dear old Boss of Bosses. Her fingerprints were all over what just happened. See if there’s anything new about her in the Carnacki files. See what people are saying about her.”

“No problem,” said Melody, her fingers flying across the keyboard.

“What’s going on?” said Happy.

“Damned if I know,” said JC. “But I’m starting to get a really bad feeling. .”

“Welcome to my world,” said Happy. “We have T-shirts and decoder rings and everything. And you don’t even want to know what the and everything involves.”

“Mouth is open, should be shut,” said JC.

“Yes, boss.”

It took a while, with Melody frowning more and more severely as she jumped from site to site, looking at things she definitely wasn’t cleared to know, but finally she let out a long breath and looked at JC.

“If the Carnacki Institute was a business,” said Melody, “I would say I was looking at a hostile takeover. Someone is trying to remove Catherine Latimer from her position as Head of the Institute, and replace her with someone else. Loyal to. . someone else.”

“Is that necessarily a bad thing?” said Happy. “Would be nice to have a Boss who didn’t make me want to wet myself every time she looks at me.”

“She may be an ogre,” said JC, “but she’s our ogre. And better the ogre you know. . Who’s plotting against her, Melody?”