Voices From Beyond (A Ghost Finders Novel) (27 page)

“How is he, Melody?” said JC. “How is Happy?”

“Out cold,” said Melody. She checked Happy’s pulse, then sat him up in his chair as best she could. “His breathing is uneven, his pulse is thready; he’s got a really bad colour, and he’s cold to the touch. God alone knows what that experience did to him, never mind all those pills we made him take. He said he might not come back from this, JC . . . So we’ll have to wait and see.” She looked grimly at JC. “Well? Was it worth it?”

“Too soon to say,” said JC. “But it was . . . interesting. We learned some useful things.”

“He’s a tough little fellow,” Melody said fondly, brushing the hair back out of Happy’s face with a gentle hand. “A dosage like that would have killed anyone else outright.”

“Let him rest,” said JC. “He’s earned it.”

Felicity lurched forward to face him, her expression almost feral. “Do something! Think of something! We can’t let that nightmare happen!”

Jonathan came and took her by the arm and led her away, making soothing noises. She had no strength left to resist him.

“There has to be a way to prevent this,” said JC, as much to himself as anyone else. “Or the Beast wouldn’t have been so determined to stop us, there at the end.”

“We closed the door on the Beast, back in the students’ flat,” said Melody. “I know we did. All my instruments confirmed it.”

“Maybe it found another door,” said JC. “Or made one. It had all the time in its world . . . to work out how . . .”

He stood there—frowning, concentrating, thinking hard. While all around him people stared numbly at each other, horrified and traumatised. JC knew he should be doing something to help them, comfort them. That was his job. But all he could really do for them now was think. Jonathan and Felicity clung together, like survivors of some terrible shipwreck. Tom stumbled round and round in circles, muttering to himself. Captain Sunshine led a trembling Sally to a chair and sat her down. She grabbed his hand in both of hers and wouldn’t let go.

“Don’t leave me alone. Please, don’t leave me alone . . .”

“It’s all right, girl,” the Captain said gently. “I’m right here.”

Melody went back to her instrument array but couldn’t seem to concentrate on it. She looked at JC.

“Still think the Boss just happened to send us here?”

“There was no briefing, no case file,” said JC. “If she’d known, she would have told us . . . something. Prepared us, so we could fight better. No, she was preoccupied with the Flesh Undying and all its agents. I think the Beast slipped this one past her. Past all of us . . .”

Jonathan left Felicity, for the moment. He approached JC in a determined way. “What just happened? What did it all mean?”

All the radio staff looked to JC; and he did his best to talk them through it; but he could tell from their faces that they were no wiser and no happier when he’d finished. Perhaps fortunately, he was interrupted then by Kim, who came walking urgently through the left-hand wall to join them. All the radio staff jumped, and Felicity actually produced a small scream. Kim looked down her nose at them all.

“Yes! I’m a ghost! I’m the only ghost in the Ghost Finders. Get over it. We have more important things to talk about.”

“Where have you been, Kim?” said JC. “And why didn’t I notice that you weren’t with us, in the future?”

“How many times, JC?” said Kim. “No-one notices me unless I want them to. I could feel the Beast approaching, so I hid myself away and watched it all, unobserved. Do you remember how the two of us stopped it the first time, together?”

JC nodded and looked at the radio staff to explain what they were talking about. And then he decided not to. They didn’t look in any condition to cope with more explanations.

“She’s a ghost, but she’s on our side!” he said loudly. “And she’s come up with a really good idea. Something we can do . . .”

Felicity lunged forward and thrust her hand through Kim’s unsubstantial back. She waggled her hand about, then snatched it away again.

Kim turned and fixed her with a hard stare. “If you ever do that again, I will haunt your mirror for the rest of your life.”

Felicity retreated so quickly, she almost fell over her own feet. Jonathan put an arm around her, and she let him. Kim drifted over to the reception desk, to stand beside Melody and look sadly at Happy. He wasn’t moving, barely breathing.

“He’s dying, isn’t he?” said Melody.

“He was so very brave,” said the ghost girl. “But even his system couldn’t handle that kind of overdose. Nothing human could.”

“I know,” said Melody. “And I helped him do it. Encouraged him to do it. Because I thought it was necessary. Maybe he’ll get some rest, now. He’s earned it.”

“Not if he doesn’t help us stop the Beast, he won’t,” said Kim. “You saw what will happen to him, in the future.”

Melody’s head snapped round suddenly, to meet her gaze. “Wait a minute. Is that it? Is that the paradox we need, to break the chain of events between here and there? If Happy dies now, the Beast can’t make him die later. Without his psychic suicide, none of this could happen! His death, here and now, could save us all. He’d like that.”

“No he wouldn’t,” said Kim. “He’d much rather go on living, with you. Trust me on that. All Happy’s death would do is rob us of a weapon we could use against the Beast! JC, come here. We’re needed.”

JC hurried over to join her, and at the last moment she stepped forward to meet him and move inside him. The two of them joined together on so many levels; and a gentle golden glow surrounded JC. The radio staff cried out again, this time in quiet awe and wonder. Something wonderful had come into the room, and they could all feel it. JC, with Kim contained within him, removed his sunglasses and looked on Happy with his fierce golden glare. And Happy took a deep breath and sat bolt upright, his eyes wide with surprise.

“I feel good!” he said loudly. “Really good! Wow, what a rush . . . What the hell was
that
? It was like I was finally getting a good night’s sleep and going down for the third time; and then someone called my name! Like God, spotting me in the middle of a crowd. So I came back. Oh, hello, Mel. How are you? Why are you crying?”

Melody whooped with joy, grabbed both his hands, pulled him up out of his chair, and danced him round the room, stamping her feet and grinning wildly. Happy went along, laughing breathlessly.

“I’m back! I’m fine!” he said. “I can feel it. What happened?”

“We happened,” said Kim, stepping out of JC. The glow disappeared from around him. JC winked a glowing eye at Happy and put his sunglasses back on.

Happy stopped dancing and looked steadily at Melody. “I remembered something . . . Something the Beast said, about how the radio station made his triumph possible.” He looked across at Jonathan. “Have there been any changes made here, recently? Any new equipment installed?”

“Well, yes,” said Jonathan. “There’s a whole bunch of new equipment down in the cellar. The new owners insisted on it when they took over. It’s supposed to increase the strength of our broadcast signal, so we can cover a larger area, reach more people.”

“Talk about hiding in plain sight,” said Melody. “And you didn’t think to mention this to us before, because . . .?”

Jonathan shrugged uncomfortably. “Didn’t seem relevant, with all the weird shit going on.”

“I need to take a close look at this new equipment,” Melody said firmly. “See what it’s really doing. Would I be right in saying, Jonathan, that all your problems here started after this new equipment was installed?”

“Well, yes. But . . .” said Jonathan.

“I think your new owners are almost certainly a front for Something Else,” said JC. “That’s if they even exist as such. The Beast has had a lot of time to move things around behind the scenes.”

“The radio signal must have been altered, to broadcast on unnatural frequencies,” said Melody. “That’s what brought the Beast here. Like a beacon; something it could home in on. I think that’s what the warnings were really all about. When the signal reaches a certain strength, or perhaps even a certain frequency, it will open a door for the Beast, make it possible for it to come through. We did lock the door, JC, so it had to make another! Everything that has been happening here, the voices, the visions, have all been distractions. To keep us away from what really mattered—the equipment in the cellar! JC, I think we should go down there and do something seriously annoying.”

“It’s about time,” said JC.

| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

SOMETHING BEASTLY IN THE CELLAR

“A cellar?” said Captain Sunshine. “There’s a cellar, here under Murdock House?”

“All these years, and you never noticed we have a cellar,” said Jonathan. “Why am I not surprised?”

“You can talk,” said Tom. “How many times have you ever been down there since we moved in?”

“I’m the general manager,” Jonathan said loftily. “I leave such menial things to the members of my staff.”

“I notice we’re not getting any closer to going down there,” said JC. “Is there a problem?”

Jonathan shot a quick glance at the far end of the reception area. “I don’t know why, but thinking about going down into the cellar is giving me the creeps, big time. Anybody else feel that?”

“No,” said Felicity immediately.

“I don’t even like it up here,” said Sally. “Look, you don’t need me down in the cellar. Someone should stay up here to keep an eye on things.”

“Good idea,” said Happy. “I’ll keep you company. We can hide behind each other.”

“Everyone goes down,” JC said firmly. “I don’t think it would be safe for anyone to be left on their own here once we start making trouble down below.”

“What kind of trouble did you have in mind?” said Melody.

JC grinned at her. “Oh, the usual. Violent and destructive and seriously upsetting to the Bad Guys.”

“Ah,” said Melody. “The usual.”

“I’ll lead the way, then,” said Jonathan. But he didn’t seem at all happy about it.

They all followed him to the door at the back of the reception area. JC and Happy and Melody stuck close behind Jonathan, to make sure he couldn’t change his mind, while the others brought up the rear. With varying levels of confidence. Felicity looked fascinated, Tom looked resigned. Sally and Captain Sunshine stuck close together for mutual support. Kim was in there, too, somewhere; but no-one noticed exactly where. There was at least a general sense of purpose in the group now they’d committed themselves to a course of action.

Jonathan pushed the door open, took a sharp turn to the left, and led everyone down a narrow, dimly lit stairway. Dull metal steps sounded loudly under their descending tread, as though to warn whatever lay in wait that company was coming.

The first thing that struck JC was the smell. It hit him hard the moment he started down the steps, a thick, nasty, and corrupt smell . . . that reminded him irresistibly of dead things piled up and left to go off. He wrinkled his nose and pulled a face despite himself. Other people began to make loud noises of disgust and distress as the stench got to them.

“I told you we needed to get someone in, to see about the plumbing,” Tom said to Jonathan. “It smells like something is seriously backed up down there.”

“Easy for you to say,” said Jonathan. He peered ahead into the dim light, being very careful about where he put his feet. “Do you have any idea how much a plumber charges by the hour? All right, I should have listened to you; I didn’t realise things had got this bad. But as long as the smell stayed down here and didn’t come upstairs to bother the rest of us, I had more important things to worry about.”

“This isn’t plumbing,” said JC. “It smells like . . . game meat, like carrion left to hang and decay.”

Happy took a deep breath. “I’m getting . . . organic materials, I’m getting phosphates and nitrates, noble rot and weird shit,” he declaimed, in his best wine-taster’s delivery. “What I’m not getting . . . is anything remotely like radio-station equipment.”

“I have to admit, I’ll be interested to see what this new machinery looks like,” said Jonathan.

“You’ve never seen it?” said Melody.

“None of us have,” said Tom. “The new owners sent in their own installation team, and they did all the work. Wouldn’t even let me help unload the stuff from their trucks. Or go down and watch them work—in case we got in the way. Delicate instruments, they said. Very temperamental. Hell, I can take a hint.”

“And that didn’t seem in any way suspicious?” said JC. “That they wouldn’t even let you supervise the connections? In your own radio station?”

“They seemed to know what they were doing,” said Tom, defensively.

“As long as the cost of the installation wasn’t coming out of my budget, I didn’t want to know,” said Jonathan.

“Did you notice any difference, afterwards?” said Melody. “Any improvement in the range or quality of your transmissions?”

“No . . .” said Tom. “But it really wasn’t my business to say anything . . .”

“I kept meaning to ask,” said Jonathan. “But . . .”

“You didn’t want to say anything that might attract the new owners’ attention,” said Felicity. “Or do anything that might get them mad at you.”

“Exactly,” said Jonathan. “And as long as you were left alone to run your show, you didn’t care about anything else. Did you?”

“No,” said Felicity. “Nothing else mattered.”

They’d almost reached the bottom of the stairs when they all slammed to a halt, stopped right where they were, as though they’d hit an invisible wall. None of them cried out, or protested, or asked questions. They were afraid; and they didn’t know why.

A nameless fear had them all by the throat, a sudden conviction that to descend any further was to put their lives in danger. That something was waiting for them down below, something with bad intent. They didn’t know what or why; but they knew, beyond any shadow of doubt. Some of the radio staff started to turn around in the narrow space, to go back upstairs; but JC stopped them and held them in place with his loud, implacable voice.

“It’s all right! Don’t panic! I know what this is. The threat isn’t real, there is no immediate danger; it’s all in your head. This is what’s called an aversion field. The psychic equivalent of a barbed-wire fence and a
KEEP OUT!
sign. It can’t affect you if you don’t let it!”

One by one, they all calmed down. Once they thought about it, and realised there was nothing actually threatening anywhere near them, the feeling didn’t seem nearly as bad. But it was still there. A lot of looking back and forth took place as everyone waited for someone else to take the plunge.

“Do you want me to go back upstairs and fetch some of my equipment?” Melody said to JC. “I’m sure I could whip up something to disrupt whatever’s generating the aversion field.”

“I don’t feel anything,” said Kim. And most people jumped as they realised she was with them.

“Of course you don’t,” JC said kindly. “This kind of thing only affects the living. And you stay right where you are, Melody. I don’t want the group splitting up. Happy, I think this is more in your line. Can you do something about this field?”

“From the feel of it, it’s not being generated by any machine,” said Happy. “This has the flavour of something produced by a living mind. A telepathic broadcast. Definitely my line of work. And from somewhere really close, too.”

“From the cellar?” said JC.

“Wouldn’t surprise me at all,” said Happy. He frowned, concentrating. “It’s so . . . diffuse, it’s hard to pinpoint. But since this all comes from a living mind, I can hit it with my mind.”

He lashed out with a blunt and brutal psychic attack. The aversion field shuddered enough for everyone to feel the difference. And then it surged forward again, recovering its strength, falling upon them like an angry attack dog. They all cried out as the weight of the field closed in on them, clinging to them and holding them in place, like falling layers of invisible cobwebs. Everyone cried out in shock and disgust, struggled against the unseen force that held them. Happy closed his eyes and struck again, putting all his strength into it, pushing the field back and back. Until it stretched, and snapped, and disappeared, blown apart by the force of his mind.

Everyone on the stairs breathed more easily and patted at themselves numbly, to make sure nothing still held them. Once the aversion had been banished, they couldn’t even remember what it had felt like or why it had such power over them. But they all felt the relief.

Happy put his shoulder against the cold, stone inner wall and leaned on it heavily, his eyes still closed. Melody moved in close beside him.

“It’s all right, Mel,” he said, without opening his eyes to look at her. “I’m tired. I’ve been through a lot today; and I don’t know how much more I’ve got left in me. I’m running on fumes.”

“Do you want some of your pills?” said Melody, carefully.

“Always,” said Happy. “But not right now.”

“Lead on, Jonathan,” said JC. “We’re almost there. Let’s go see what’s in the cellar that Something doesn’t want us to see.”

| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

They finally reached the bottom of the stairs and clustered together in the cramped little space before the closed metal door. Not much light, lots of shadows. The air was close and hot and sweaty. The smell was stronger than ever. Thick and pungent; filling their heads. It reminded JC of a zoo at feeding time.

“Smells like you’ve got an animal caged up in there,” said Melody. “And a big one, too.”

“I think we’d have noticed that,” said Jonathan.

They all looked at the door before them. A great slab of solid steel, blocking the way. Their distorted reflections stared impassively back at them. There was no handle, only a computer keypad on the wall next to the door. Jonathan gave the door a good push, just in case, but it didn’t budge. He made a surprised sound and snatched his hand away. The metal was uncomfortably warm to the touch.

“Let me try,” said Tom.

He leaned over the keypad, a little self-importantly, and tapped in his security code. The door still didn’t want to move. Tom scowled and tried again, hitting each key very firmly to make sure he’d got it right; and still nothing. He turned to Jonathan.

“They swore to me that code would open the door.”

“They lied,” said Jonathan. “Who would have thought?”

“All right,” said Tom. “Try your managerial override.”

Jonathan punched in his code; but the door didn’t want to know. Jonathan gave the door a good kick, then fell back, wincing and favouring his throbbing foot. The dull sound from the kick made the door seem even more solid and immovable.

“That code should have worked!” Jonathan protested. “I’m supposed to have full access to everything at this station!”

“Obviously no-one was supposed to have access, once the special new machinery was installed,” said JC. “If you could see what was in there, and what it was really doing, you might not approve.”

“How are we going to get in?” said Felicity. “That door looks like it could laugh off dynamite.”

“Doors,” sniffed Kim, dismissively. She strode forward and ghosted right through the solid steel. The radio staff tried not to jump this time. Kim disappeared beyond the door; and there was a long pause. JC scowled. He didn’t like Kim’s going places he couldn’t follow, to back her up. Because she was dead she thought bad things couldn’t happen to her. And then Kim came running back through the steel door, and came to a halt before JC. Her face was shocked, her eyes wide. She tried to say something, then shook her head helplessly.

“What is it?” said JC. “What did you see in there?”

“It’s bad. Really bad,” said Kim. “We have been places, JC, and we have seen things; but what’s in there . . . It’s alive. Nasty. And ugly. I mean really, horribly ugly.”

“Is it dangerous?” Happy said immediately. “Yes, I know, goes without saying.”

“We still need to get in there!” said Felicity.

“Do we?” said Sally. “I’ve heard nothing so far to convince me that we do.”

“The world is going to end tomorrow,” said Happy. “Unless we get in there and do something.”

“Well,” said JC, “we could always try being polite, I suppose. If there is something alive on the other side of that door, there’s always the chance it will respond to a reasonable approach.”

“Bets?” said Melody.

JC stepped up to the metal door and knocked smartly. Something immediately struck the other side of the door, in response—violent, vicious, thunderous blows. So hard the steel door jumped and shuddered in its frame. JC stepped carefully back from the door.

“Okay . . .” said Happy. “Not good. Not in any way, shape, or form good, or even helpful. Something is at home, and it really doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

“You’re the telepath,” said JC. “You tell us what’s in there.”

Happy smiled, briefly. “I knew you were going to say that.” He glowered at the door, in a considering sort of way. His brow furrowed, and his eyes narrowed. “It’s . . . definitely alive. Don’t ask me what it is, though. It’s hard to get my head round its true nature. Like . . . nothing I’ve ever encountered before. It’s definitely not human, JC. Not in any way human.”

“So what is it?” said Melody. “Alien? Mutant? Something from Another Place?”

“Could be,” said Happy. “I’ve never sensed anything even remotely like this; and I’ve been around. Making contact with it is creeping me out on an industrial scale. I’ll tell you this; it knows we’re out here, and it isn’t afraid of us. Not even a little bit.”

“Could it be one of the creatures from the Other Place?” asked JC. “Something from the Beast’s world?”