Ghost of a Dream Read online

  Praise for the Ghost Finders novels

  GHOST OF A SMILE

  “Packed with creepy thrills, Ghost of a Smile is a mighty strong follow-up in this brand-new series. Ghost hunting has never been quite this exciting. Recommended.”

  —SFRevu

  “[With] plenty of action and chills, this book keeps pages turning even as a feeling of dread builds. The dialogue between the three characters is snappy and humorous, as is the chemistry between them.”

  —NewsandSentinel.com

  “Ghost of a Smile is a lovely blend of popcorn adventure and atmospheric thriller, and good for a few hours of distraction and entertainment. That’s one of the reasons why Green’s books always leap right to the top of my reading list.”

  —The Green Man Review

  “[Green] gleefully tweaks the natural fear of experimentation (and the inscrutable motivations of the men behind it), bringing some real-world paranoia into his fantasy-laden playground. It’s a gamble that pays off nicely…With his Nightside series ending soon, the Ghost Finders books are quickly proving to be worthy replacements.”

  —Sacramento Book Review

  GHOST OF A CHANCE

  “If future novels in Green’s new Ghost Finders series are as engaging as this one, they will hold up admirably against his previous work…Readers will appreciate the camaraderie and snappy dialogue.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Terrific.”

  —SFRevu

  “Thoroughly entertaining.”

  —Jim Butcher, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Dresden Files

  “It’s fast-paced, filled with nifty concepts and memorable characters, and quite enjoyable.”

  —The Green Man Review

  “I’m a huge fan of Simon R. Green’s Nightside novels, and he continues to impress with Ghost of a Chance. He continues to put out great stories and gives readers deeply flawed characters that you still want to root for. This book is a great start to a new series that I will keep reading.”

  —Bitten by Books

  Ghost Finders Novels

  GHOST OF A CHANCE

  GHOST OF A SMILE

  GHOST OF A DREAM

  Novels of the Nightside

  SOMETHING FROM THE NIGHTSIDE

  AGENTS OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS

  NIGHTINGALE’S LAMENT

  HEX AND THE CITY

  PATHS NOT TAKEN

  SHARPER THAN A SERPENT’S TOOTH

  HELL TO PAY

  THE UNNATURAL INQUIRER

  JUST ANOTHER JUDGEMENT DAY

  THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UNCANNY

  A HARD DAY’S KNIGHT

  THE BRIDE WORE BLACK LEATHER

  Secret Histories Novels

  THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN TORC

  DAEMONS ARE FOREVER

  THE SPY WHO HAUNTED ME

  FROM HELL WITH LOVE

  FOR HEAVEN’S EYES ONLY

  LIVE AND LET DROOD

  Deathstalker Novels

  DEATHSTALKER

  DEATHSTALKER REBELLION

  DEATHSTALKER WAR

  DEATHSTALKER HONOR

  DEATHSTALKER DESTINY

  DEATHSTALKER LEGACY

  DEATHSTALKER RETURN

  DEATHSTALKER CODA

  Hawk and Fisher Novels

  SWORDS OF HAVEN

  GUARDS OF HAVEN

  Also by Simon R. Green

  BLUE MOON RISING

  BEYOND THE BLUE MOON

  DRINKING MIDNIGHT WINE

  Omnibus

  A WALK ON THE NIGHTSIDE

  GHOST OF A

  DREAM

  SIMON R. GREEN

  ACE BOOKS, NEW YORK

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) • Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  GHOST OF A DREAM

  An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Ace mass-market edition / September 2012

  Copyright © 2012 by Simon R. Green.

  Cover art by Don Sipley.

  Cover design by Judith Lagerman.

  Interior text design by Laura K. Corless.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-58950-2

  ACE

  Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ACE and the “A” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  ALWAYS LEARNING

  PEARSON

  What ghosts really are…

  is unfinished business.

  Table of Contents

  One: One of Our Trains is Missing

  Two: Last Call for The Dead

  Three: Hanging About in the Lobby, Waiting for the Show to Start

  Four: Stage Business

  Five: Stardusty Memories

  Six: Lobby Display

  Seven: Offensive Clothing

  Eight: In the Flesh

  Nine: Old Truths, Come Home to Roost

  Ten: You’ve Got to get Into the Spirit of Things

  The Carnacki Institute exists to Do Something about ghosts. Track them down, identify what’s really going on, put lost souls to rest, and kick supernatural arse, where necessary. The Institute’s been around for a long time and knows pretty much all there is to know about ghosts, monsters, other-dimensional incursions…and anything else that won’t lie down and play dead like it’s supposed to.

  If the Carnacki Institute had a motto it would probably be: “We don’t take any shit from the Hereafter.”

  PREVIOUSLY, IN THE GHOST FINDERS

  One of the Institute’s leading investigative teams consists of JC Chance (team l
eader and positive thinker), Melody Chambers (team scientist and girl geek), and Happy Jack Palmer (team telepath and general miserable pain in the arse). JC fell in love with a ghost girl called Kim. Love between the living and the dead is almost universally forbidden, for many good reasons. At the end of the team’s last mission, Kim was stolen away from JC by unknown forces. He doesn’t know why or if he’ll ever find her again.

  The team also discovered, on their previous mission, that the long-established and much-trusted Carnacki Institute had in fact been infiltrated and compromised by the Bad Guys. Secret people in secret positions who serve something called The Flesh Undying—a terrible creature that fell, or was pushed, from a higher reality into our world. The Flesh Undying sees this world as a prison, a trap, and is ready to destroy our whole reality in order that it might break free and go home again.

  JC, Melody, and Happy are on their own. They don’t know what to do or whom they can trust. Or where to look for their missing ghost girl. So for the time being, they’re following their orders and doing their job, finding ghosts and Doing Something about them. And all the time looking…for a chance to get even.

  ONE

  ONE OF OUR TRAINS IS MISSING

  The Past is only as dead and gone as we allow it to be. It has a tendency to cling, to hang on—like lovers who can’t bring themselves to accept it’s over. There will always be some who find the Past more comforting than the Present, people who look back on the way things used to be and make everything make sense with the benefit of hindsight. So it really shouldn’t come as any surprise that there are always going to be people who prefer to give all their spare time, their personal time, to looking backwards instead of forward, investing all their happiness in re-creating some one special part of the Past.

  Once upon a time, in the grand days of Old England, there were wonderful things called steam trains: huge steel beasts thundering across the great green countryside, connecting even the smallest of communities, one to the other. They roared like dragons, breathed fire and smoke, and the ground shook at their passing. But time passed, as it will, and steam reluctantly gave way to electricity. Less romantic, perhaps, but undeniably faster and more efficient. And then there came an infamous man called Beeching, in that far-off time called the sixties, and he shut down all the smaller stations, all the lesser-used branch lines, in the name of progress and efficiency. Sacrificing the needs of the smaller communities and the smaller people to better serve the needs of larger communities and more important people. And so the Age of Steam passed, and no-one realised what they’d lost until it was gone. The small railway stations were abandoned, left to rot and ruin in a slow, sullen silence. Ghosts…of an old way of life.

  But wherever the Past is remembered, and sometimes even worshipped, it is never really gone.

  The Ghost Finders came to Bradleigh Halt, in Yorkshire, on a cool autumn evening. Once a small but thriving railway station, in the very north of England, Bradleigh Halt was left behind when the map changed, and its trains were sent somewhere else. Now it was a few abandoned buildings, full of dust and shadows and rusting rails covered in weeds. Set in the bottom of a deep, dark valley between two tall, grassy walls, with wide mountainous slopes stretching away on the one side and great stony inclines on the other; a cold wind blew fitfully through the station gap and sighed mournfully in the single tunnel-mouth.

  You could drive right past and never know Bradleigh Halt was still there; and for many years, most people did.

  An old-fashioned black taxi-cab delivered the Ghost Finders to the top of one grassy slope, after a lengthy journey down many winding roads, from the main-line railway station at Leeds. The taxi-cabby slammed his vehicle to a halt a more-than-comfortable distance away from the top of the valley and sat grimly in his seat, refusing to emerge, even to help his passengers with their luggage. He stared straight ahead, as though concerned with what he might see, dourly still and determinedly silent, as JC Chance, Melody Chambers, and Happy Jack Palmer clambered out the back of his cab, stretching slowly and massaging aching back muscles. Melody dragged her scientific equipment out of the boot while JC paid the driver, and Happy took in the new surroundings with his usual miserable and put-upon expression. The taxi-cabby snatched his fare the moment it was offered and departed at speed, not even bothering to check if JC had added a tip. The three Ghost Finders watched the taxi depart, then looked at each other. JC smiled vaguely, Happy sniffed loudly, and Melody turned away and gave all her attention to her precious scientific instruments. It was a late evening in early September, under slate grey skies. The light was beginning to drop out of the day, and there was already a definite chill in the air.

  Not far-away stood the original station sign: old lettering on old wood, much reduced by long exposure to wind and weather and many years of neglect. The sign should have read Welcome to Bradleigh Halt, but someone had recently put a painted slash through the word Halt, and replaced it with Hell.

  The three Ghost Finders stood together at the top of the steep, grassy slope, looking down into the valley below, taking in the sights, such as they were. Battered stone-and-wood buildings stood slumped together on either side of the sunken railway lines, the long platforms hidden under accumulated junk and rubbish and lengthening shadows. To the east, the railway tracks disappeared into the gloom of the tunnel-mouth, and into the long-disused tunnel that passed through and under the great, sprawling slopes known locally as the Grey Fells. The lines reappeared on the other side, many miles away, in another abandoned station halt, that no-one cared about any more. To the west, the weed-choked rails stretched away far and far, disappearing into the distance, between two sets of stony grey slopes. Going nowhere and taking their own sweet time about it. The whole scene had a quiet, wistful air, though adding the word peaceful would probably have been stretching it. Even without knowing what the Ghost Finders already knew, Bradleigh Halt didn’t even try to look inviting.

  Birds sang on the evening air, insects buzzed industriously, and the gusting wind murmured querulously to itself. The sun was sinking slowly in the sky, in a warning sort of way. There was a pervading sense of the world’s having moved on, leaving Bradleigh Halt behind.

  JC Chance stood at the very edge of the high slope, smiling thoughtfully, hands thrust deep into his jacket pockets. It had to be said, he lacked a lot of his usual cocky bravado. Recent events in the secret hidden world had conspired to knock a lot of his usual over-confidence out of him. And the stealing away of the love of his life, the ghost girl Kim, had punched the heart right out of him. But he persevered. Because he was a Ghost Finder, because it was his job and his calling. And because he had nothing else to do.

  JC was tall and lean and perhaps a little too handsome for his own good, or anyone else’s, for that matter. He was well into his late twenties, with pale, striking features under a rock star’s great mane of long, wavy, black hair. He had a proud nose, a grim smile, and he wore very dark sunglasses all the time, for very dark reasons. He also wore a rich cream white suit, of quite extraordinary style and elegance, along with an Old School tie that he might or might not have been entitled to. JC never let little things like authenticity get in the way of looking good. He also had a tendency to strike a pose, whether anyone was watching or not. Though, to his credit, he would knock it off at once if it was pointed out to him.

  On any case, on any mission, under any circumstances, JC could always be relied on to be the first to charge into danger, looking around eagerly for some new trouble to get into. Losing his one true love had slowed him down, some. He wanted to be out looking for her; but since he didn’t have a single clue where to start, he insisted on taking any case the Carnacki Institute could provide…On the grounds that it was better to be doing something than to be doing nothing.

  Melody Chambers stood a little way behind him, studying JC carefully but saying nothing. Melody was the big-brain scientist of the team and proud of it. Fast approaching thirty with the brakes off and loud
ly not giving a damn, Melody was conventionally good-looking in a threatening sort of way. Short and gamine thin, she burned constantly with enough raw nervous energy to run a small city for several weeks. Melody was a great one for getting things done and walking right over anyone and anything that threatened to get in her way or slow her down. She wore her auburn hair scraped back in a severe bun, glared at the world through serious glasses with dull functional frames, and wore clothes so anonymous they actually by-passed style and fashion without noticing them.

  She gave up worrying over JC as a bad job, returned her full attention to the assorted technical apparatus she’d hauled out the boot of the taxi, and piled it all onto a small self-assembly trolley of her own design. Without anyone else’s help. Admittedly, mostly because Melody had a tendency to strike people viciously about the head and shoulders if they touched her things. She preferred machines to people, on the unanswerable grounds that when machines decided not to do what they were supposed to do, you could fix them or hit them until they did. People were more complicated. Melody had a first-class mind, more balls than a tennis court, and a sex drive that would have frightened Casanova into early retirement. It’s always the quiet ones you have to keep an eye on…

  Happy Jack Palmer stood alone, glowering at the world in general. Happy was the team telepath, observer of the hidden realms, and full-time grumpy bugger. He’d only recently hit thirty, and thirty was hitting back. He was short, stocky, and prematurely balding, all of which he took as proof positive that God hated him personally. He might have been attractive enough if he’d ever stopped scowling, slouching, and saying inappropriate things in a loud and carrying voice. He wore grubby jeans, a staggeringly offensive T-shirt, and a battered leather jacket that had probably looked better when it was still on the cow. Happy’s marvellous mutant mind allowed him to see and hear things no-one else could detect, and even have long conversations with them, and, as he was fond of saying, If you could see the world as clearly as I do, you’d be clinically depressed, too. Neither of his fellow team members knew who had originally named him Happy. They could only assume his school days must have been an absolute hot-bed of irony.