Voices From Beyond (A Ghost Finders Novel) Page 14

  JC looked at Happy and Kim and saw they were no wiser than he. Somewhat encouraged that it wasn’t just him, he cleared his throat meaningfully and fixed his attention on Melody.

  “Could you be a little more specific, please?”

  “I mean, my instruments can’t tell where any of these voices are coming from!” Melody said loudly. “They’re not coming in over the radio waves or through the phones. No microwave transmissions, no electromagnetics, nothing! I can’t even tell which direction they’re coming from or how far they had to travel to get here! Hold on; wait a minute, wait a minute . . . This can’t be right. The latest recordings of incoming voices seem to suggest they simply . . . appeared, here, in Murdock House! This place is the source inasmuch as anything is . . .”

  “I think it’s well past time we listened to some of these recordings for ourselves,” said JC. “Line them up, Melody. Start with the earliest, then bring us up to the Present. A basic sampling, touching all the bases, so we can get the flavour of what everyone else has been hearing.”

  “I’ll go get us some popcorn,” said Happy.

  “You stay right where you are,” said JC.

  Melody’s hands moved swiftly over her keyboards; and a staccato series of distorted sounds issued from the speakers built into her array. Everyone cocked their heads, frowning intently as they concentrated, trying to make sense of what they were hearing. Just sounds at first. Quick bursts of raw, brutal noise, emerging briefly from heavy, hissing static, like fierce animals appearing and disappearing in the jungle shadows. Harsh, jagged sounds that might have been words, or might not.

  “It’s like the man said,” Happy volunteered after a while. “It’s noise that our minds are trying to turn into words because that’s how we’re programmed. To see patterns in things, whether they’re really there or not. Like the shapes we see in clouds.”

  “I’m not hearing any actual words, as such,” JC said carefully. “How about you, Kim?”

  “No,” said the ghost girl, frowning prettily. “If there was anything there, I should be able to hear it. There’s nothing like being dead to help you experience the world more clearly. Fewer distractions, you see, without a body to get in the way. But . . . I’m not getting anything. Unless you count an increasing sense of unease.”

  “Oh, I do,” said Happy. “I really do. Wait . . . Are those animal noises? Grunts, growls, squeals? Like . . . gigantic hogs, being herded into a slaughter-house?”

  “Almost certainly not,” said JC.

  “Could be animals,” said Melody. “Could be human . . .”

  Kim wrinkled her nose, her mouth a flat line of distaste. “Nasty. All hunger and appetite. Things dying and feasting . . .”

  “I’m not sure we’re really hearing anything specific,” said JC. “Just our minds imposing shape and substance on raw data. Move on, Melody, to when actual words and voices start to appear.”

  Melody made the adjustment, and the raw sounds cut off as more recent recordings kicked in. The sounds issuing from the speakers became bursts of gibberish, screams and howls, interrupted by occasional sounds that almost made sense. Now and again a discernable human voice could be heard through the babble: shouted words, full of emotion and desperation. Everyone leaned in close, listening intently. Lost . . . Run . . . Help . . . God! And on and on . . . Kim shuddered, suddenly.

  “How can you be cold?” said Happy. “You don’t have a body!”

  Kim hugged herself tightly. “I’m not cold. It’s how the voices make me feel. Like someone is digging up my grave. It’s not a single voice we’re hearing; can you all hear that? It’s lots of voices . . . all of them clear and distinct.”

  “To you, maybe,” said JC.

  “You’ve got better ears than the rest of us, Kim,” said Melody. “I’ll put my computers on it, run the recordings through some more filters . . .”

  “I really can’t tell,” said JC. “Are you sure, Kim? How many voices are you hearing, exactly?”

  “Men and women,” Kim said doubtfully. “Too many to count. I don’t like the way they sound, JC.”

  “Move on, Melody,” said JC. “Give us something more recent that we can get our teeth into. Whole sentences, if you can.”

  “Way ahead of you,” said Melody. “I already had the computers sort us out some of the clearer messages, from when the voices started talking to people on the air, in the middle of programmes. Listen . . .”

  The speakers fell silent for a moment. Even the heavy static stopped. And then voices burst out of the speakers—shouting, howling, desperate to be heard. Can you hear me? Can anyone hear me? It’s taken everything we have to force a door open, to send this message back. You have to listen, while there’s still time. You have to stop it . . . Kill it before it kills us all! There is flesh, and there is blood; there is horror, and there is death . . . It’s awful here! It’s coming; across all the worlds there are it’s coming, following the trail you left, and, oh, it’s so hungry! There was a pause, then a single voice was heard. JC? Can you hear me, JC?

  The speakers went silent. Melody cursed and stabbed at her keyboards with stiff fingers. JC glared at her.

  “Get that back!”

  “I’m trying!” said Melody, her hands flying from one keyboard to another. “I can’t find the recordings! Something’s hiding them from me! Work, you bastards!”

  “It knew your name already,” said Happy, looking at JC with wide, unblinking eyes. “How could it know your name, JC? How could it know you’d be here? We didn’t know we’d be here until this morning!”

  “It’s all starting to make sense,” said Kim. “It’s like the message starts out unclear because it’s coming from so far away. It gets clearer, more understandable, the closer it gets. Or the closer we get to it. From sounds to words to sentences.”

  “But where are these messages coming from?” said Happy, almost angrily. “You heard Melody; they appeared out of nowhere, here in the house!”

  “What is it they want?” said JC. “What is it they’re trying to warn us about?”

  “Something from . . . Out There, is desperately trying to make contact with people here,” said Melody, giving up on her computers for the moment. “Someone is trying to . . . prepare us for something awful that’s heading our way.”

  “Sometimes . . . different people in the listening audience heard different things, from the same voices,” Happy said slowly. “But that doesn’t seem to be happening here, with us. Perhaps because . . . these messages, these warnings, are meant for us.”

  “But what does it mean?” said Kim. “I don’t understand! What’s the point of all this?”

  “Find the rest of those recordings, Melody!” said JC. “We need more information, more data. Where are the rest of the voices?”

  “I don’t know! My computers can’t find them . . .” Melody slammed both hands down hard on her keyboard in sheer frustration. “The recordings are definitely still in here, but . . . Something is preventing me from getting at them.”

  “Something, or Someone,” said Kim.

  “Perhaps. Maybe! I can’t tell!”

  “Maybe . . .” said Happy, “Something doesn’t want us to hear the warnings. Something is suppressing the voices, like it suppressed your instruments’ readings and my E.S.P. because it doesn’t want us to know. Can’t afford for us to know. Which does seem to suggest that this Something . . . is either responsible, or is going to be responsible for, all the bad shit those voices are trying to warn us about!”

  “Can’t you sense anything, See anything?” said JC. “Now you’ve got a whole medicine cabinet running through your veins?”

  Happy thought for a while, looking off into the distance, at something only he could see. “I’m getting . . . something. It’s all messed up. Give me a while.”

  “I don’t think we have a while, Happy,” JC said steadily. “Talk to me. What did you See upstairs?”

  Happy stared coldly back at him. “What did you see, J
C, out in the car park? Why is there blood on your jacket?”

  The two men looked at each other, unflinchingly. Neither of them wanting to talk about what they’d experienced but knowing they had to. Kim looked from one to the other, confused.

  “I’ve missed something, haven’t I? Something important happened before I got here. What could have been so bad that you can’t tell me about it? After everything we’ve seen and been through together, what could possibly be that bad?”

  Melody said. “Why can’t you tell us where the blood on your jacket came from, JC?”

  “You’re not hurt,” said Kim. “So whose blood is that, JC?”

  “Talk to us!” said Melody. “We’re a team! We don’t keep important information from each other!”

  “Since when?” said JC.

  Happy turned suddenly to look at Melody. “It was you, Mel. I saw you, at the top of the stairs. It was you, and you were dead, and worse than dead. Something killed you and changed you horribly; but it was still you . . . From the future.”

  Melody looked at him. It never even occurred to her to doubt or challenge what he was saying. She could see the truth, and the pain, in his face.

  “What . . . What did I look like?”

  “You already know,” Happy said miserably. “It was the awful thing we saw outside, in the car park. The thing I thought I was protecting you from.”

  They all looked at him. Trying to come to terms with this new information.

  “It was me,” said JC. “I saw myself, out in the car park. My future self. He came stumbling out of the front door—horribly wounded, blinded, dying. I held him in my arms as he collapsed. He couldn’t see me, but he knew it was me because he remembered its happening from the first time around. When he was me. He died in my arms, clutching at the front of my jacket.”

  They all looked at the bloody handprint on the front of his white suit. Kim moved in close beside him, trying to comfort him with her presence. Happy and JC nodded slowly to each other and even managed a small smile.

  “The shit we go through in the Ghost Finders,” said JC.

  “I keep telling you, we need to unionise,” said Happy.

  “That’s it!” said Melody. “I get it now! I know where the voices are coming from! They’re messages from the future . . . That’s why I kept picking up tachyon radiations! That’s why the voices seem to appear here, out of nowhere. That’s why they started out so hard to hear and understand because they were so far off in the future. As they moved closer, or we drew closer to the Time they come from, the messages became more distinct. Dear God, what’s going to happen, so that bad warnings had to be sent back through Time to prepare us?”

  “There is no single future,” JC said stubbornly. “Nothing we do is fixed, inevitable.”

  “Yes, well; you would say that, wouldn’t you?” said Happy.

  “There are multiple timelines,” JC said. “Which future we end up in is determined by the choices we make now. We can still avoid the things we’ve seen! That’s the whole point of what’s happening here!”

  “You really believe that?” said Melody.

  “I have to,” said JC.

  They all stood very still for a while, looking at each other. Wondering what to do, what to say, for the best.

  “The future can’t be fixed, or there wouldn’t be any point in warning us,” JC said finally. “So there’s some hope right there. Whoever it is that’s sending us these warnings, they’re trying to change things that are happening now, or are going to happen, to prevent their future from coming into existence. So we must be able to do something!”

  “But what do these voices want us to do?” said Kim. “The messages don’t make any sense!”

  “Maybe because we’re not close enough to the actual events, yet,” said JC. “Or possibly we’re not getting the whole message . . . I assume it will all become clear. In Time.”

  “Something is trying to stop us from doing anything,” said Happy. “That’s why it’s been interfering with my E.S.P. and Melody’s machines. It must be afraid of something we can do . . .”

  “Is this Something here, in the room with us now?” said Melody. “If it is, maybe my scanners can find it. Come on, babies, work for Mommy.”

  She set to work.

  “Happy,” said JC. “Can you See anything here, in this room?”

  He looked around, turning slowly. “No . . . My E.S.P. is coming back, now I’ve supercharged my system, but I’m not running on all cylinders yet.”

  “I can’t see anything,” said Kim. “But this room hasn’t felt right since I got here.”

  “Damn right,” said Happy.

  They all jumped and looked round sharply, as the door at the back of the reception area slammed open, and Jonathan came hurrying in. He started to say something, then stopped to look at Kim. She gave him her best dazzling smile.

  “A colleague of ours,” JC said smoothly. “Kim Sterling. She knows more about ghosts than any of us.”

  “Hi!” said Kim.

  Jonathan smiled at her, bowled over by her charm, like everyone else. He started towards her, extending a hand for her to shake.

  “She doesn’t like to be touched,” JC said quickly.

  “Ah, of course,” said Jonathan, dropping his hand. “Listen! I came back down here because something has happened! Tom was taken short and had to nip out for an urgent bathroom break, so Captain Sunshine went back on the air to cover for him until Felicity appeared for her show. He was chatting away, minding the store, when the phone started ringing. He answered; and it was one of the voices! He’s talking to it right now!”

  “Melody!” said JC.

  “On it!” She linked her speakers with the station’s broadcast again, so they could all hear what was happening. Captain Sunshine’s voice floated out into the reception area, calm and steady and reassuring.

  “Take it easy, man. Be cool; the Captain is right here with you. I’m not going anywhere. Tell me what you need . . .”

  A voice broke in the moment he paused, screaming desperately. Harsh and broken, full of unbearable pain and horror.

  Get out of there! Oh God, please listen to me; get the hell out of there!

  “Why, man?” said Captain Sunshine. “What’s so important?”

  You’re all going to die . . . You’re going to see everyone you know and care for die . . . Again and again . . . You don’t want to die, Malcolm. It’s horrible, here.

  “How do you know my name?” asked the Captain. He sounded honestly shaken for the first time. “It’s been years since anyone . . . Hello? Hello? Are you still there?”

  “None of this is coming through the phones,” Melody said quietly. “Still no source.”

  “We know where it’s coming from,” said Happy. “Or rather, we know when it’s coming from.”

  “Do we have tachyons?” said JC.

  “Spiking and bursting all over the place,” said Melody. “As though a door is opening, then closing, again and again . . .”

  Jonathan looked at Kim. “Did any of that mean anything to you?”

  “Not a thing,” Kim said innocently.

  “Oh good,” said Jonathan. “I’m glad it’s not only me . . .”

  The voice started shouting incoherently, interrupted by bursts of sobbing; a heart-breaking sound. And then it cut off abruptly, leaving the Captain talking to dead air. He tried to encourage the voice to return, but there was no response. The Captain put on Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” Melody shut down the speakers.

  “Was that it?” JC said to Jonathan. “Was that the kind of thing you people have been hearing all this time?”

  “Pretty much,” said Jonathan. His face was pale. “Spooky; isn’t it? Makes my hair stand on end, every time . . . That one was actually more coherent than most. Made a kind of sense. Wanting us all to get the hell out of Dodge, before . . . Something.”

  Happy frowned. “That voice . . . sounded almost familiar. I’m sure I know it, from
somewhere . . .”

  “I thought that!” said Melody.

  “Whoever it was, they sounded so sad,” said Kim. “Wanting so much to save us . . .”

  “Sally said she heard someone sobbing in here, earlier,” said Melody. “Crying like their heart would break. I couldn’t hear it. Do you suppose . . . some of these warnings are targeted to specific listeners? Which is why JC and Happy saw . . . what they saw.”

  “Why only some of us?” said Happy. “I mean, if we’re all in danger . . . I still think Something’s playing with us.”

  “If it is, it isn’t always succeeding,” JC said quickly. “Some of the warnings are getting through. That has to be a good thing. It proves this Something isn’t as powerful as it would like us to believe. Which means it can be beaten.”

  “Bit of a stretch there, JC,” Melody said carefully.

  “I’m on a roll!” said JC. “Go with the flow . . .”

  Kim beamed at Jonathan. “Isn’t he marvellous? That’s why he’s our leader, you know. And not at all because we all voted, and he lost.”

  “Where’s Sally?” said Jonathan, looking round the reception area. “She’s not on another break already, is she?”

  “She’s outside, communing with the gardens,” said Melody. “Want me to call her back in?”

  “Oh hell,” said Jonathan. “Leave the poor girl be. She’s really quite highly strung, despite her . . . persona. She’ll come back in when she’s ready. I suppose it’s just as well she wasn’t here, to listen to . . . all that. She can get really upset when the crazy stuff starts happening.”

  “How very sensible,” said Happy.

  “The Captain didn’t sound particularly freaked-out,” observed Melody.

  “He takes it all in his stride,” said Jonathan. “Not much gets to him. It probably helps he doesn’t think any of what’s happening is real. But, then, he doesn’t think much of anything is really real—not after everything he’s put in his system down the years.”

  “I have got to get me some of what he’s on,” said Happy.

  And then he stopped short, and his head came up, like a hound that’s suddenly caught a scent. He moved away from Melody and her instruments, looking quickly around the room. Everyone else looked, too; but nothing obvious was happening. JC turned to Melody. She studied her sensors and shook her head.