Simon Green - Spirits from Beyond

Sometimes he slept right through. Sometimes he got into bed and fell asleep and didn’t wake up again until the alarm bell rang. But mostly JC couldn’t sleep. He did all the right things, went to bed at the right time, but no matter how hard he tried, something wouldn’t let him sleep.

There are few things worse than lying in bed, in the dark, waiting for the endless hours of the night to pass. Dozing off and waking up repeatedly, convinced that after so many wakings, it must be four, five o’clock in the morning. . and then looking at the bedside clock and seeing it’s barely 2:00 A.M. The night barely begun, and all those long hours still stretching away. . JC Chance hadn’t slept properly since his ghostly girl-friend, Kim, disappeared. In all the months she’d been missing, JC couldn’t remember a single good night’s sleep.

He still got tired at the end of the day, still went through all his usual routines before retiring. . but mostly he lay flat on his back in his bed, in his marvellous new apartment in London’s West End, dog-tired and bone-deep weary. . and prayed for sleep that never came. Too tired to sit up and read, or even watch television, too tired to do anything but stare into the dark and wait for the night to end.

Sometimes he would get up and sit on the edge of the bed, head hanging down. . and sometimes he would get up and walk around the room in the dark, trying to convince his body how tired it was, and how late it was. . hoping against hope that just this once his body would give up and let him sleep. But mostly he lay there, legs crossed and hands folded neatly across his chest, as though wanting to be ready for the undertaker if he should happen to die in the night. Opening and closing his eyes though it didn’t really make much difference. Because in the end, it was another night without Kim.

Until one night a scattered aetherial glow appeared at the foot of his bed, slowly concentrating into the form of the ghost girl, Kim. She hovered at the foot of his bed, looking just as she had the first time he had seen her in the London Underground. A beautiful pre-Raphaelite dream of a woman, forever in her twenties, the age she was when she was murdered. A great mane of glorious red hair tumbled down past her shoulders, framing a high-boned, sharply defined face, with vivid green eyes and a wide, smiling mouth. She wore a long white dress that clung tightly here and there to show off her magnificent figure; and she shone and shimmered in the gloom of the bedroom like a star fallen to Earth.

How nice, thought JC. I’m finally asleep and dreaming of Kim.

“You’re not dreaming, darling,” said Kim. “I’m here. I’m back.”

JC sat bolt upright in bed. A fierce golden glow blazed from his wide-open eyes, the only outward sign of how deeply he’d been touched by forces from Outside. JC froze where he was, afraid to do anything that might disturb the vision or frighten her away.

“Hello, JC,” said Kim. “Have you missed me?”

“More than life itself,” JC said hoarsely. “Because it isn’t living if you’re not with me. Are you really back now? Tell me this isn’t only another brief encounter because I don’t think I could bear to lose you again.”

“I’m back,” said Kim. “But if you want to keep me, you’re going to have to fight for me. You have to come and get me, right now.”

“Where are you?” said JC.

“Where you lost me,” said Kim. “Outside Chimera House. I’m there now, waiting for you.”

Then she was gone; and the only light in the darkened room came from JC’s eyes as he glared desperately around him.

* * *

He grabbed up his phone from the table beside his bed and called his team-mates, Happy and Melody. He had their number on speed dial, right next to a twenty-four-hour exorcist and dentist. He was shuddering all over, clinging to every detail of what he’d just seen, fighting to convince himself it had been real and not a dream. He’d only got through to Melody and Happy’s apartment and heard Melody’s voice at the other end, when the phone went dead in his hand and the television set at the other end of his bedroom suddenly turned itself on, blasting light into the darkened room. And there on the screen were Happy and Melody, staring out at him from their bedroom all the way across the city, in North London. They were sitting together on the end of their bed, shoulder to shoulder, wearing matching towelling dressing gowns and matching furry Sasquatch slippers. JC slowly put his phone down.

“I can see you!” he said to the faces on his television. “And you can see me, can’t you. .?”

JC became suddenly self-conscious and pulled his bedclothes securely about him. Because he slept in the raw.

“Yes, we can see you,” said Melody. “And will you please put on your sunglasses, because you’re blinding us with the glare.”

JC picked up the very dark sunglasses from his bedside table and slipped them on. The golden glare cut off immediately though a little light still spilled around the edges. JC gathered his dignity about him and glared at his television set.

“All right,” he said steadily. “How are you doing this?”

Melody smiled briefly. “You’re not the only one who liberates useful items from the Carnacki Institute warehouse. Now and again. When no-one’s looking. After everything that’s happened to us, I thought it important we have a method of communication that no-one else could intercept and listen in on.”

“And you didn’t tell me about this before because. .?” said JC.

“Didn’t want to worry you,” said Happy.

“And we weren’t entirely sure it would work,” said Melody.

“So we thought we’d better save it for a real emergency,” said Happy.

“Hold everything,” said JC. “All our phones have industrial-strength security scramblers already built in! The Institute installed them personally, once we were officially designated an A team. So they could discuss important mission details in confidence.”

Happy looked at him pityingly. “Don’t be naive, JC. The people who installed the scramblers for the Institute are the very people who make sure to leave a back door open so they can eavesdrop if they want to. Given our current circumstances, with The Flesh Undying on our backs and at our throats, and God knows how many traitors inside the Institute, raging paranoia is a survival instinct. Of course, with me that comes naturally.”

“Look!” said JC. “This is important! Kim was just here-in the room, with me.”

“We know!” said Melody. “She was right here in the room with us, too.”

“She was speaking to both of us at the same time?” said JC.

“And giving us the same message,” said Happy. “The dead aren’t as limited as the living. They love to multi-task. Show-offs.” He stopped, to snigger briefly. “Good timing, too. If she’d turned up ten minutes earlier. . someone would have blushed, and it wouldn’t have been me or Melody.”

“She said we have to fight for her, back at Chimera House,” said Melody, giving Happy a fierce dig in the ribs with her elbow. “And I have to wonder. How was she able to manifest in our apartments? Given that both our places are positively lousy with aetheric defences, specially designed to keep out spooky apparitions? One of the few real perks you get working for the Carnacki Institute is that major-league protections come as standard, in case something from the Other Side should take a fancy to one of us and follow us home.”