Simon Green - Spirits from Beyond

He leaned into the room, took hold of the door’s handle, and pulled the door closed again. He stood and looked at his hand for a long moment, half-expecting it to look or feel different from having entered the Past. And then he turned back to Happy and Melody and Kim, all of whom were watching him carefully from a respectable distance.

“Why have Timeslips at all?” said JC. “I mean, ghosts and monsters I can understand, but. . traps to drag people back in Time? What purpose does that serve?”

“I think it all comes down to the local power source and the unnatural force contained in the storm,” said Melody. “With such sheer power involved, it’s putting an unbearable strain on local reality. Like Happy said, the rage driving the storm is the rage of the sacrificed victim. I hate to theorise without proper equipment around to back me up, but. . I think the storm’s been building for centuries, becoming so powerful in its own right that it’s. . broken Time. Or at least, local Time. You might say, Time is out of joint, in this vicinity.”

“Time. .” Happy said thoughtfully. “Always tricky. . I’ve never felt the same about Time since the Travelling Doctor explained it to me. Anyway, if the storm currently raging round this inn really was born in the days of the Druids, then what we have here is the Past directly affecting the Present. Which is never good. If the storm is powering the Timeslips, that means there’s a direct connection between what’s inside the inn and what’s outside it. So whatever we can do to weaken, disrupt, or even destroy the Timeslips. . should have a direct effect on the storm.”

“I don’t know which particular pills you’re on right now,” said JC. “But I’d stick with them if I were you.”

Melody shot JC a hard look but said nothing.

JC looked at Brook. “Have you ever noticed any pattern to the Timeslips? Do they appear in any order? Does any one room seem to prefer a particular Time or period?”

“No,” said Brook. “None of this has ever made any sense to me. It’s always seemed. . entirely random. And there’s never any warning! The bad doors come and go; and so do the poor people who get trapped inside them.”

JC turned to Melody. “Come on, you’re the girl science geek expert on this team! Think of something we can try as an experiment. Something to give us more information to work with. And don’t tell me all the things you could do if only you had your proper equipment! I need something we can do right now. So think! Improvise!”

“Okay,” said Melody, frostily. “What if we sent someone into that room, on the end of a length of rope, tied around his waist? The rope would link him to the Present corridor even when he was in the room’s Past; so even if the door did try to close, we could always yank the volunteer back out again.”

“She’s not looking at me, but she’s talking about me,” said Happy.

“The rope could snap,” said JC. “Or be broken by the forces inside the room.”

“And besides,” said Kim. “We haven’t got a rope.”

“Imagine my relief,” said Happy.

“All right, one of you think of something!” said Melody.

“Keep the noise down, children,” said JC. “Daddy’s thinking. .”

“Oh, I feel so much safer,” said Happy.

“The doors open onto Past Time,” JC said slowly. “People walk into the room, into the Past, the door shuts, and the visitor is trapped in that Past moment. But! If we could persuade the doors to open onto the exact Time and moment when the doors last closed, and the person was taken, those people should still be there! Time wouldn’t have changed or moved on, for them! Which means, if we could persuade those doors to open. . we could rescue all the lost people! Yes!”

“Love the theory,” said Happy. “But how would we do that?”

“Trust you to shoot down a perfectly good theory with a practical question,” said JC.

“No! Wait!” Melody said excitedly. “How does each room choose a Time? Each room holds or perhaps generates a different moment of Past Time; so someone or something in the background must be making a decision as to which room holds which Time. And so far, the only thing we’ve encountered in this inn that even seems like a conscious entity, capable of making such decisions. . is the blonde woman!”

“I’m not going to like where this is going; am I?” said Happy.

“The blonde woman does seem to like you,” said JC.

“It’s not mutual!” said Happy.

“She does seem. . attracted to you, Happy,” said Melody.

“I am not volunteering for anything,” Happy said firmly. “With or without a rope.”

“You first encountered the woman in your room,” said JC. “I say we go back there and see if we can summon her. So we can talk to her.”

“No!” said Happy. “This is a really bad idea! You don’t want to talk to her. You don’t know. . You don’t know what she’s like, what she’s capable of. .”

“You won’t be alone, this time,” said Melody.

“We’ll be right there with you,” said JC. “We won’t let anything bad happen to you. I promise.”

“What do you plan to do if she does turn up again?” said Happy.

“Improvise!” said JC, grinning broadly. “Suddenly and violently and all over the place! You said it yourself, Happy; she’s not a ghost, or any kind of surviving personality. Just a mass of emotions that’s somehow hung on for centuries, manifesting as the storm outside, and a blonde woman. If we can’t see off a bundle of retained memories, we don’t deserve to call ourselves Ghost Finders. Come on, my children, we can do this! We summon her up, then either force or trick her into opening the doors into the Past. And then we rescue all the people trapped inside them!”

“But how are we going to do that?” said Happy.

“Don’t spoil another good theory with your voice of reason!” said JC. “I’m working on it!”

“Maybe we should join together again, and glow at her,” said Kim, “Like we did in the bar.”

Everyone looked at her, and they all thought many things, but no-one actually said anything.

“Just a thought,” said Kim.

* * *

Brook led the way, back to the room he’d given Happy. The door was still closed, and Brook looked it over carefully before nodding that everything was all right. Kim strode forward and stared firmly at the closed door.

“Don’t See anything. Don’t hear anything. Can’t feel a damned thing.”

She walked right through the door, and disappeared. Everyone jumped a little. There was a short pause, then Kim ghosted back through the door and smiled brilliantly at everyone.

“All clear! No ghosties, no ghoulies, and very definitely no long-leggity anythings. Open her up, Brookie, and let’s get this show on the road.”

Happy stood at the back of the group as Brook opened the door, pushed it open a few inches, and stepped quickly to one side. JC slammed the door all the way open and strode into the room, turning the lights on with a quick flick of his hand. Kim swept in after him, peering about with great interest. Melody took Happy’s hand in hers, held it tightly, and led him into the room. Happy swallowed hard. If Melody hadn’t been holding on to his hand so firmly, he would have turned and bolted. Brook came in last, stopping inside the doorway.

“Happy?” Melody said quietly. “What happened to you in here? What did that blonde bitch do to you?”

“It wasn’t so much what she did,” said Happy. “It was what she said, what she showed me. .”

“What was that?” said Melody.

“I’m not sure, now,” said Happy. “Maybe. . the true nature of my own mortality.”

They all looked around the room, taking their time, and the room looked back at them, seeming entirely normal. Blocky furniture, too-small bed, dull wallpaper, and unwavering electric light.