Simon Green: Spirits from Beyond

JC smiled at him. “You would, too, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course!” said Happy, surprised and even a little outraged that JC could think otherwise. “She might be your girl-friend, but she’s our team-mate, too.”

“Damn right,” said Melody. She draped an affectionate arm across Happy’s shoulders. “He’s very sentimental, on the quiet.”

“Of course,” said Happy. “There are limits. I’m giving Kim ten more minutes, then I’m going back to wait in the car. With the heater full on.”

“Sentimental, but practical,” said Melody. And then she stopped, grabbed Happy by the chin, and jerked his head around, so she could look him straight in the eye. “Happy, what is wrong with you? You’re shaking all over, and it isn’t from the cold. Are the psychic impressions here really that bad?”

“This whole area is saturated with weird energies,” said Happy, jerking his chin free. “And I mean, really strange stuff. It’s all information, you see, soaked into the surface of the world, radiating back and forth like emergency broadcasts from Heaven and Hell. . And it’s getting more difficult all the time to keep it outside my head.”

Melody checked the readings on her scanner again. “I’m not picking up anything I’d consider. . out of the ordinary.”

“Science is limited,” said Happy. “Science deals with the surface of the world, not what’s Below or Above.”

“Compared to your marvellous mutant mind, I suppose,” said Melody, testily.

“Yes,” said Happy.

“Oh come on,” said JC. “It can’t be that bad. I See stuff too, sometimes, but. .”

He broke off. Happy was glaring at him.

“You never get it, do you? What it’s like to See the world as it really is, all the time, to know what’s really going on, all around us. All right! See the world through my eyes, for once!”

He grabbed JC and Melody by the arms; and immediately, all three of their minds were linked tightly together by the sheer force and power of Happy’s telepathy. He couldn’t have done it with anyone else; but the three of them had linked before. They weren’t just everyday Ghost Finders, after all.

The everyday view of London in the morning disappeared, replaced, or rather overwritten, by a larger view. The world around them was suddenly packed full of life and death, Heaven and Hell, and everything in between. Overlapping layers of spiritual and spatial dimensions, interspersed with spiralling moments of Time. Past, Present, and any number of Futures, all happening at once. Ghosts coming and going, following paths that didn’t exist any longer in the physical world. Stone tapes everywhere, ghostly images imprinted on their surroundings, playing back loops of repeating Time, over and over again.

JC almost cried out, as he saw old images of the A team who died inside Chimera House. Jeremy Diego, Monica Odini, Ivar ap Owen. Legends in their field; caught by surprise and killed in a moment. Still there, held forever in a repeating moment, like insects trapped in amber. Forever going to their deaths, and not knowing it. And there was nothing JC could do to help them or even warn them.

He’d never liked them much. Somehow, that made it worse.

More images now, layer upon layer, with people from every period of history, all shouting at once. An endless din of dead voices. Unfinished bodies walking in and out of buildings as though they weren’t even there. Because they weren’t, once. Dead men and women walking in and out of each other, teeming like the unseen microscopic images that swarm in a drop of water. How many ghosts can dance on the head of a pin? Depends on the tune. .

More voices, more sounds, human and inhuman. Great booming Voices, shouting at the world from Outside. Sounds that might have been screams or laughter, or human interpretations of Voices beyond our comprehension. The dead, reaching out for answers, or comfort, or simple human contact. Crying out against the dying of the light or the rising of the dark.

Flashing images of this world and that and countless others, coming and going, superimposing themselves, turning and twisting and combining to make new things, the way two colours can mix to make a third. And always. . creatures, strange things, moving through our world from one unknowable place to another. The apparently empty open square before Chimera House was like the Grand Central Station of the supernatural. And this, JC and Melody slowly realised, was what it always looked and sounded like in Happy’s world.

The telepath jerked his hands free from JC and Melody, breaking contact, and the world was quiet and empty and sane again.

JC swayed on his feet, his heart hammering, struggling to win back his mental equilibrium. His face was wet with sweat. He looked at Melody; and she looked the same. They both looked at Happy, who stared back defiantly.

“You see?” he said. “That’s what I see and hear all the time. All the things that never go away, never shut up, never leave me alone. I have to fight with everything I’ve got to keep them out of my head. So the only thoughts in my mind are my own. So I only see and hear what everyone else does. The pressure never stops, never lets up for a moment; and I get so tired, so tired. .”

“Oh, sweetie,” said Melody. She took him in her arms and held him close; and Happy let her.

“There’s nothing we can do to help, is there?” said JC.

“No,” said Happy. “Though I am working on something.” He pushed Melody gently away from him. “We’re not here for me. We’re here for Kim. Where is she?”

“Back at the Haybarn Theatre, she said she wasn’t abducted-just missing,” said JC. “That she was busy, following leads of her own. She said she saw, or experienced, something important here while she was possessing Robert Patterson; and that she had to pursue it. So where has she been all this time? And what has she been doing?”

“Out in the world,” said the ghost girl Kim. “And walking up and down in it.”

They all looked around sharply; and there she was, standing before them. Glowing very faintly in the gloom, her bare feet hovering an inch or two above the ground, smiling happily on them all. JC rushed forward, reaching out to take her in his arms, only to remember at the last moment. He stumbled to a halt before her, and they stood face-to-face, smiling into each other’s eyes. Lost in each other but unable to touch. After a respectful moment, Happy and Melody came forward, and Kim turned away from JC to smile on them. Happy put up a hand for a high five; and Kim put up a hand that almost touched his. Melody threw the ghost girl a quick salute, and Kim nodded in return.

“Where have you been, Kim?” said JC.

“I’ve been tracking down the individual who was inside Patterson’s head, before me,” said Kim. “The servant of The Flesh Undying; the secret traitor at the heart of the Carnacki Institute.”

“Who?” said JC. “Who is it? Who are we talking about here?”

“I can’t tell you,” said Kim. “Not yet.”

“Why the hell not?” said JC.

“Don’t you raise your voice to me, Josiah Charles Chance,” said Kim. “I can’t tell you because I’m protecting you. I know the name; but they can’t read my mind.”

“They?” said Happy, his ears pricking up immediately.

“Exactly,” said Kim.

“Why didn’t you come back to us before this?” said Melody.

“Because the traitor saw me,” said Kim. “Saw and knew me. And so The Flesh Undying sent its agents after me, physical and spiritual, chasing me all across the world, and Above and Under it. The living and the dead, in hot and cold pursuit. It’s taken me a long time, travelling through the sacred and profane places of the world, to shake them all off. . and to search out what I was looking for.”