Simon Green - Spirits from Beyond

“I think he means infamous,” said JC.

“Who, exactly, has been telling tales out of school about us?” said Melody. She grabbed the brandy bottle and freshened her glass.

“I still keep in touch,” said Brook, almost defiantly. “With some of my old colleagues at the Carnacki Institute. They all had stories to tell, about JC Chance and his team. And there’s a hell of a lot more to be found on the Net. Most of it contradictory, of course; but that’s conspiracy sites for you. Everyone’s fascinated to see what you’ll do next.”

“You’re avoiding the point,” said JC. “And I’m afraid I decline to be distracted. Nice try, though. Now, what’s going on here?”

“When I first came back here, to my old home-town,” Brook said slowly, “I was looking for something to do, in my retirement. I saw the local pub was looking for a new owner, so I took it on. The regular drinkers immediately took pains to fill me in on all the old ghost stories, but I’d already heard most of them from when I was a kid. With my Institute experience, it didn’t take me long to recognise them as just stories. Traditional tales. I thought I knew better. So after I’d been running things here for a while, and I hadn’t seen or heard anything unusual or unearthly, I opened up the first-floor rooms for occupation again.”

“Even though bad things were supposed to have happened to people who stayed in those rooms?” said JC.

Brook shrugged sullenly. “I thought they were only stories! And running a local pub. . is harder than you think. I needed the extra money staying guests would bring in. I had all the upper rooms cleaned out and renovated. Including a few tricks I learned cleaning up after Carnacki field teams. To be on the safe side. The local press did a big story about my renting out the rooms again, something that hadn’t been done since the seventies. The publicity brought people in from all around. And at first, everything seemed fine. But then the trouble started.”

“Ghosts?” Kim said brightly.

“No,” said Brook. “Worse than ghosts. Timeslips. . Open some of the doors, and the room beyond could be from any time in the Past. A different version of the room, from some previous version of the inn. You could look in, quite safely, from the outside, and see places and people long gone. From decades, even centuries, ago. You could travel from one age to another by stepping from the landing into the room.”

Melody slammed a fist down on the bar top, and everyone jumped. She was grinning broadly, actually bouncing up and down on her bar-stool in her excitement. “This is fantastic! Actual, practical, Time travel! Oh, I am so going to try this out for myself!”

“No you’re not,” Brook said immediately.

“Why not?” said Melody. “I’ll bet you had a go, didn’t you!”

“No,” said Brook. “I never dared. The risk is too great.”

“Risk?” said Happy. “What risk?”

“The Timeslips come and go without any warning,” said Brook. Beads of sweat showed on his slack, grey face. He seemed almost hunched in on himself. “They don’t last long, you see. And if you’re inside the room, in the Past, when the door slams shut. . you’re trapped in there. Lost in the Past, forever. Because when the door opens, that Past is gone.”

Melody looked sternly at JC. “This is far too good to pass up on, JC. Promise me that we will investigate this thoroughly, later.”

“If there is a later, yes,” said JC.

“Why did I know you were going to say that?” said Happy, not looking up from his drink.

“Maybe you’re psychic,” said Kim.

“Ghost humour,” said Happy. “Ho ho ho.”

“This isn’t funny!” Brook said loudly. “I lost three customers that way! Until I realised what was happening. I had to report the disappearances to the local police as guests who’d sneaked off, without paying their bills. I didn’t like to blacken their names, but what else could I do? Telling the truth wouldn’t bring them back. And who’d believe me? The missing guests’ families didn’t. They made their own inquiries when the police couldn’t help them, sent their own private investigators here to talk to me. I didn’t tell them anything. I showed them the upstairs rooms, and nothing ever happened because these people only ever showed up during daylight hours. The rooms stayed the same. Looking perfectly ordinary and innocent. As though they were protecting themselves. As soon as the investigators gave up and left, I locked all the upstairs rooms and stopped advertising them.”

“But the trouble didn’t stop there, did it?” said JC.

“No,” said Brook. “I contacted some old friends at the Institute. Told them what had happened. Hoping they’d be intrigued enough to send someone to investigate. Hoping they’d have some idea what to do about the rooms or how to bring the missing guests back. I felt. . responsible, you see. The Institute said they’d look into it. But they never did. No-one ever came. I kept calling the Institute, trying different people and different departments, calling in every old favour I had, or thought I had. . Until, finally, they sent you.”

Brook stopped there, to look at the team, before looking back at JC. “Would I be right in thinking there’s a reason why they finally sent a team, the team I’d been asking for all along? And not necessarily a good one?”

“Could be,” said JC. “But these Timeslipped rooms aren’t the real reason you need help, are they?”

Brook was trapped by JC’s glowing, golden eyes again. He nodded, reluctantly.

“When one of your regulars told the story about a young woman who came to a bad end in one of these rooms, I saw something in your face,” said JC. “That story meant something to you, didn’t it? Something personal. .”

Brook licked his dry lips, and nodded quickly, as though bracing himself. “There’s another kind of room upstairs. Even more dangerous than the Time-travelling rooms. There’s one particular room where, if you go in, you don’t come out again. No Timeslips involved; every time I’ve opened the door and looked in, it’s always appeared to be the same room. Perfectly normal, everything as it should be. I’ve never seen a ghost or anything that shouldn’t be there. But I lost four more guests in that awful room before I realised what was happening. Four good men, who went in and closed the door and were never seen again.”

“So we now have a grand total of seven people gone missing,” said Melody.

“Yes!” said Brook. “Seven! Just. . gone!”

“Then why keep letting that room to people?” said Happy, looking at Brook for the first time.

“Because the room moves around!” said Brook. “Sometimes it’s behind one door, sometimes it’s behind another. . I can’t always tell, when I approach the closed door afterwards. Once it’s too late to do anything. . I can feel that the room has changed. It’s like there’s something lying in wait, inside. Something hungry. And that’s when I know I’ve lost another guest. And I back away, not taking my eyes off the door, in case it should start to open. . and I run downstairs and hide. Until enough time has passed that I can be sure it’s safe to go back upstairs, open the door, and look inside. There’s never any trace left of the guest I put in there.”

“Hold everything!” said Melody, glaring at Brook. “You noticed something was wrong but not your other guests?”

“Apparently not,” said Brook. “Most of my guests had a perfectly good time. Some even congratulated me, on how pleasant it was to stay here. That made it worse, somehow. And you have to understand-I didn’t know what was happening, at first. But after a while, the room let me know. I think it wanted to gloat.”