Simon Green - Spirits from Beyond

JC clung doggedly to the door-frame with his one hand, trying desperately to pull his other hand back so he could pull the pin on the grenade; but the pull of the vortex was too great. His feet shot out from under him, and he hung horizontally on the buffeting air. Only his single handhold kept him from being hauled in. Kim tried to help, but her hands went right through him.

Happy and Melody were thrown this way and that as they came sprawling and somersaulting down the landing, trying to hang on to each other while also grabbing at anything within reach to slow them down. Melody managed to grab onto the top of the stairs, while Happy shot straight past her. They cried out to each other as Happy was sucked up into the air, shooting towards the open doorway like an arrow from a bow. He slammed right through Kim’s ghostly form, and on into the doorway. He grabbed the other side of the door-frame with both hands and jerked to a sudden halt. He swore harshly at the sudden pain in his hands but hung on, his legs flailing out before him, opposite JC. The two of them flapped like flags in a howling wind.

Melody lost hold of her grip on the top of the stairs and came tumbling down the corridor again. She kept grabbing handholds of the carpeting to slow her down, but the material only tore and came away in her hands. The last stretch of carpet simply disintegrated, and she shot straight through the open doorway. Happy let go of the door-frame with one hand and grabbed onto her. He pulled her to him with all his strength, a few agonising inches at a time, until he could hug her to him with one arm. The impact had almost torn his shoulder out of its socket. Melody clung desperately to him. Happy’s one remaining hold was already weakening as the implacable force pulled both of them in. Bit by bit, his fingers were losing their grip. The air blasting past him was growing faster and thinner, and harder to breathe.

“Take her!” Happy yelled to JC.

And with the last of his strength, Happy threw Melody at JC. Immediately, he was ripped away from the door-frame, and fell and fell into the depths of the room that wasn’t a room.

JC grabbed hold of Melody with the arm holding the grenade, and pulled her to him. She wrapped her arms around him, even as she craned her neck round to look after Happy.

“JC!” yelled Happy, falling away into an unimaginable distance. “Throw the bloody grenade!”

Melody pulled the pin from the grenade JC was holding, and he threw it after Happy with all his strength. Both objects seemed to drop away in a direction that made no sense, growing smaller and smaller. Melody let out a single cry of despair. JC hugged her to him with his free arm. He’d lost one friend; he was damned if he’d lose another. His fingers locked down on the door-frame with desperate strength, and he hauled himself back, inch by inch. He could hear Kim calling out, encouragingly, but he couldn’t spare the strength to turn his head. He caught one last glimpse of Happy, a very small thing, falling away forever, and the grenade rushing ahead of him.

JC forced himself, and Melody, back through the doorway. When she got close enough, she grabbed the door-frame, too, with both hands. Until they were both back out onto the landing, and the door slammed shut behind them. The unbearable suction of the vortex and the roaring wind both cut off in a moment, and JC and Melody fell to the floor. They lay there together, clinging to each other. Both of them crying, harshly, for the good man they’d lost. Kim stood over them, crying her own silent tears.

After a while, JC and Melody sat up, still leaning on each other. Melody cried bitter tears, while JC sat there, exhausted. Kim crouched beside them, wanting to help, trying to comfort them with her presence. Melody turned her face away from both of them, refusing to be comforted.

“After all the things I said to him,” she said, “He gave his life for me without a thought, without a single hesitation.”

And then the door to the hungry room reopened, and Happy came flying back through it at speed. He shot across the corridor, slammed into the far wall, and crashed to the floor. The door slammed shut behind him; and then they all heard a massive explosion, from somewhere far and far-away. An inhuman scream seemed to issue from everywhere at once, then cut off abruptly. The door was gone, leaving behind nothing but a stretch of unremarkable wall. Happy sat up slowly. He was laughing, shakily. Melody pushed JC away from her and scrambled across the floor to take Happy into her arms. She pushed her face into his shoulder, still sobbing.

“I thought I’d lost you,” said Melody.

“I thought I’d lost me,” said Happy. “But apparently the many changes I’ve made to my basic body chemistry made me. . unacceptable. Bloody thing spat me out! Hah! These Other-dimensional entities think they’re so smart; if it had had any sense, it would have kept me and spat out the grenade!”

“Welcome back,” said JC. “I really wasn’t looking forward to finding something good to say about you at your eulogy.”

Melody stopped crying, sniffing back the last few tears. She pushed herself away from Happy and looked at him directly. “Are you saying it puked you out?”

“Well, yes,” said Happy. “Nothing like the supernatural, to make clear your true place in the scheme of things.”

* * *

It took a while before they all stopped laughing. Finally, they got to their feet again, all of them leaning on each other for support. Kim beamed on them all fondly while they got their breath back and looked around. JC stretched slowly, flexed his aching hands, then looked firmly back down the corridor in a let’s-get-back-to-business sort of way.

“One last job, then hopefully we can get the hell out of here,” said JC.

“I’ve always admired your optimism,” said Happy.

“I’m going to try to release the ghost girl Lydia,” said JC. “I can’t help feeling that she’s at the back of everything that’s happening here. Okay; I want all of you to go back down to the main bar. Too many of us at once would only upset her. Happy, find Brook and bring him back up here, to Lydia’s room. He probably won’t want to come, so feel free to be very firm.”

“I’ve still got my gun,” said Melody. “He’ll do what he’s told.”

Kim planted herself in front of JC and fixed him with her best wide-eyed stare.

“Let me come, JC. I could help. Really I could!”

“Sorry, sweetie,” said JC. “But I’m pretty sure you’d scare her. She doesn’t know she’s a ghost.”

Kim nodded, reluctantly, and followed Happy and Melody down the stairs.

* * *

JC strolled down the left-hand corridor, all the way to the last door on the left. Lydia’s room, for so many years. He knocked politely, opened the door, and went in. The young suicide was still sitting in her chair, still reading the magazine she was always reading. She looked around, and smiled easily at JC.

“Oh, hello! It’s Mr. Chance, isn’t it? Any sign of Adrian?”

“Not yet,” said JC. “But I’m sure he’ll be along soon.”

“It’s all right,” said Lydia. “I’ll wait for him as long as it takes.”

JC heard footsteps outside in the corridor even though Lydia clearly didn’t. He stepped back through the door, and there was Happy, leading a visibly reluctant Brook down the landing. JC waited for them to join him, gestured for Brook to go in the room with him, then stopped Happy with a look.

“You stay here,” JC said quietly to Happy. “And don’t get distracted or go wandering off. I’m going to need you. Adrian, let’s go in.”

“I can’t,” Brook said miserably. “I just can’t.”

“You have to,” said JC.

“You don’t understand! I can’t bear to do anything. . that might mean losing all I have left of her,” said Brook.