Ghost of a Smile Read online

  “So,” he said brightly. “You and Melody are an item now. How’s that working out?”

  “I don’t know whether we’re an item, or friends with benefits, or ships that have crashed into each other in the night,” said Happy. “We’re having lots and lots of sex, if that means anything. I used to take all kinds of useful little pills, to help make sure the only voice inside my head was mine, and to give me a more positive outlook on things, but these days I seem to be living mostly on bathtub speed and multi-vitamins, just to keep up with her. God, that woman’s got an appetite.”

  “Are you still scared of her?” said JC.

  “Hell yes,” said Happy.

  Melody had almost reached the yellow police tapes when JC called out sharply for her to stop. She did so immediately, looking quickly about her, while JC and Happy hurried to catch up. The three of them stood together, the huge open doors of the factory holding secrets within. Looking into the gloom inside was like looking into a bottomless pit, where the dark fell away forever and ever. JC abruptly turned his back on the dark and looked back over the empty car park.

  “Notice anything, oh my children?” he said. “Listen. Listen to the quiet . . . No birds singing, or even flying anywhere near. No insects buzzing, even in this dying dog day of summer. The air is heavy, like a storm that’s right on the edge of breaking but never does. This . . . is an unnatural quiet because Nature has withdrawn from this place. This bad place. And what do we know about bad places, my esteemed colleagues?”

  “Bad places make ghosts,” said Melody. “Hauntings are as much an expression of places as people.”

  “Genius loci,” said Happy. “The spirit of the place because some places are more alive than some people. Did I pass? Please tell me I didn’t, and I can go home.”

  “Gold stars for everyone!” said JC. “And honey for tea. It’s quiet here because all the natural things are afraid of the factory.”

  “If they’ve got the good sense to stay out of there, maybe we should, too,” said Happy. “No? I’m sure I used to have survival instincts, before I joined this team. Can’t we start a nice accidental fire and burn the whole building down?”

  JC ignored Happy, launched himself at the police tapes, and broke through them with a series of ostentatious karate chops. He strode into the factory, and the others followed him. The temperature plummeted the moment they stepped out of the sunlight and into the gloom. JC shuddered briefly. Walking into the factory felt like diving into a cool dark sea. The only light fell in through the high windows, illuminating the long, dark interior with a series of bright shafts of sunlight, stabbing down from on high. JC and Happy and Melody moved slowly forward, trying to look everywhere at once, their footsteps echoing strangely hollow on the concrete floor. The trolley’s wheels creaked loudly. The huge interior of the factory seemed to swallow up the sounds immediately, making them seem small and insignificant.

  The long interior stretched away before them, a massive open space, like a museum wing with no exhibits. Everything of value, everything that mattered, had been removed long ago, and the factory was an empty shell. JC looked interestedly about him. Despite the heavy gloom, he still hadn’t taken off his sunglasses. Melody stopped abruptly, slamming to a halt, and Happy jumped despite himself. He glared about him while JC looked at Melody and raised a single elegant eyebrow.

  “This is where the body was found,” said Melody.

  They all looked down. There was a dark stain on the rough grey floor that might have been human-shaped if seriously horrid things had been done to a human body. Melody set about assembling her own specially designed workstation, supporting various usual items of scientific equipment. Some of it so up-to-date that so far no-one had even realised she’d stolen it from the Institute’s research laboratories. JC and Happy didn’t have a clue what half of it was, or what it was for, but they trusted Melody’s high tech to come up with answers to questions they wouldn’t even have considered. Melody ran through the details of the murder as she worked, confident that, as usual, she’d been the only one to pay proper attention during the original briefing.

  JC always said details got in the way of seeing the Big Picture, and Happy’s attention tended to wander a lot.

  “The victim,” said Melody, “was one Albert Winter, main shareholder of the very successful and influential Winter Group of companies. Interestingly, no-one seems to know what he was doing here; though given that this factory was once a part of Winter Industries, we could probably take that as a clue. If you like that sort of thing. Anyway, the rest of the Winter Group’s board were not at all happy with the results of the original police investigation. Mainly because there weren’t any. They couldn’t explain why Albert Winter had come here, or how he died, or what killed him. Except that it must have been a really nasty death. The state of the body was so bad, even hardened policemen had to run outside to puke up things they hadn’t even eaten yet. Anyway, the Winter Group made its displeasure known and put the pressure on, which eventually filtered down to us. The Carnacki Institute does so love a mystery. Particularly when there’s a chance to get in the good books of a rich and powerful company. I did mention this is a Budget Review Year, didn’t I?”

  “Your cynicism wounds me,” murmured JC, kneeling down beside the large dark stain. “All that matters is that this is our first case since we were officially declared an A team, after our proud and glorious success against Fenris Tenebrae, down in Oxford Circus Tube Station. Nothing like saving the world to up your pay grade. But it is incumbent on us to do well on this very important case, or we will be busted back down to a B team so fast it will make our heads spin.”

  “Or, we could all be horribly killed,” said Happy, blinking miserably about him. “By evil forces as yet undetected. Just thought I’d remind you since that part is always mysteriously overlooked in the briefings. I don’t like it here. If it were up to me, I’d say we nuke the whole place from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”

  “Danger comes with the job,” JC said happily. “And the territory. It’s what gives our calling its spice! I love the smell of ectoplasm in the evening!”

  “You’re weird,” said Happy.

  “Why don’t you boys go take a look around this dump,” said Melody. “On the grounds that you’re getting on my nerves big-time. I have to calibrate my equipment and do a whole bunch of other technical things that you wouldn’t understand even if I did explain them to you.”

  JC and Happy set off in different directions, wandering across the great open expanse of concrete. A thick layer of dust covered the floor, marked here and there with overlapping footprints. Some attempt had been made to keep them away from where the body fell, but it was clear a great many people had taken a keen interest in the murder. There were cobwebs, thick and dusty, but no sign of mice or rats, not even a dropping. The air was deathly cool, without even a breath of movement, despite the many broken windows. Dust motes swirled lazily in the long shafts of sunlight, dropping down from the high windows like so many dimming spotlights. The only sounds in the great open factory were their footsteps, and the occasional electronic chirps from Melody’s station. Small sounds, quickly swallowed up and smothered by the heavy quiet. The atmosphere was tense and still, as though something was waiting to happen. As though something had been waiting to happen for some time . . .

  JC stopped abruptly and looked thoughtfully about him. He pursed his lips, as though considering an idea he didn’t like. “Melody, who is authorised to come in here these days?”

  “A couple of night-watchmen, and a local security firm that takes a quick look round, twice a week,” said Melody, her hands flying across her keyboard as her various instruments woke up and came on line. “But none of them ever actually enter the building. Apparently, it disturbs them. Disturbs them so much they have it written into their contracts that they don’t have to come inside. And how do I know this? Because I’m the only member of this team that ever bothers to do their homewo
rk.”

  “You logged on to the files, on the train coming down,” said Happy. “God bless laptops for those of us who are slaves to The Man.”

  “Is he saying I’m a swot?” said Melody.

  “Teacher’s pet,” said JC, not unkindly. “From your extensive research, do you know if anyone has actually seen anything? Any named or identified thing?”

  “Not seen, as such,” said Melody. “More heard, or sensed. Everyone says this place has a bad feeling, even if they can’t agree why. One night-watchmen said he was followed by something as he made his round outside the factory. But he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say by what. But he quit his job the next day and moved to another county. They get through a lot of night-watchmen. No-one stays long.”

  JC frowned. “If things have got that bad, why hasn’t the Institute been called in before this?”

  “Because no-one’s actually seen anything,” Melody said patiently.

  “Isn’t that always how it is?” said Kim Sterling, stepping daintily out of the shadows to join JC. “It’s always hard to pin down a ghost.”

  She smiled brightly on all of them, and they all smiled back, in their own ways. Kim walked a few inches above the dusty floor. She tried her best, but she still rose and fell a few inches in the air as she approached JC. Gravity has no attraction for the dead. Kim was a ghost and had a hard enough time concentrating on the important things, like looking solid and substantial when she wasn’t, without worrying about the little things. Like gravity, and consistency. She was a beautiful young woman in her late twenties, now and forever. A great mane of glorious red hair tumbled down about her shoulders, framing a high-boned, classically shaped face. Her eyes were a vivid green, her mouth a dark red dream, and she had the kind of figure that makes men’s fingers tingle. Because she was dead, her appearance was an illusion based on memory, which meant that not only did it tend to vary in the details as her attention wandered, but that she could dress in whatever fashion she chose. Today, she was a 1920s flapper, complete with cute little hat and a long string of beads round her neck. She twirled them artlessly round one finger as she stood before JC. She smiled at him, and he smiled back.

  JC and Kim were an item, the living and the dead. Everyone knew it wasn’t going to have a happy ending, including JC and Kim. But while love is blind, it is also always eternally hopeful.

  Kim was a part of the team but couldn’t join them in direct sunlight. It dispersed her ectoplasm. So she only worked with them in the dark places of the world, stepping out of the shadows to fight the forces of darkness, all for the love of a good man. Even if sometimes she was scarier than some of the things the team faced. She beamed at JC and tried to slip her arm through his. But her ghostly arm passed right through.

  “I’m sorry, JC,” said Kim. “I keep trying to intensify my presence, but no matter how hard I concentrate, I can’t become solid.”

  “I keep telling you,” said JC. “It doesn’t matter. You’re here with me. That’s all that really matters.”

  “Young love,” growled Happy, staying a cautious distance away. “The horror, the horror . . .”

  “What I want to know,” Melody said to Kim, “is how you can turn up wherever we are, whenever we need you.”

  “Because I’m not really here,” said Kim. “I impose my presence on the world through an effort of will. So basically, any place is every place because wherever I am is a matter of opinion. So I can be wherever I want to be. It’s very liberating, being dead. You should try it. The physical rules of the world aren’t nearly as binding or restrictive.”

  “Spooky . . .” said Happy.

  “Shut up, Happy,” said JC.

  “You’re as spooky as she is these days, JC,” said Melody, slapping a particularly recalcitrant piece of tech to show she was serious. “After what happened to you on that hell train . . . It isn’t your eyes that changed. I really do need to sit you down and run some serious tests on you.”

  “No you don’t,” said JC very firmly. “You just want an excuse to wire me up and poke me with the science stick.”

  “For your own good, JC,” said Melody. “I promise; there wouldn’t be that many needles involved . . .”

  “You stay away from me, Melody, and from Kim. We are not your lab rats—we are your colleagues. You don’t tie colleagues down and threaten them with internal probes . . .”

  “Actually,” said Happy, “sometimes in bed, she . . .”

  “Shut up, Happy,” said JC. “Far too much information.”

  “Ectophile!” said Happy.

  JC and Kim made a point of drifting away a little, so they could have some quality time together. JC left footprints in the dust. Kim didn’t. Happy glowered after them and went back to join Melody, who was giving all her attention to her equipment as it hissed and purred and blinked coloured lights in an important sort of way.

  “I can’t believe they’re still together,” said Happy. “The dead and the living aren’t supposed to be together, for all kinds of really good reasons.”

  “It’ll all end in tears,” Melody said vaguely, peering from one glowing display screen to another. “I mean, they can’t even touch each other. Ever.”

  “There is more to love than the physical side,” said Happy.

  “Couldn’t prove it by me,” said Melody.

  “You worry me sometimes,” said Happy. “Actually, you worry me a lot, but . . . JC and Kim worry me more. It’s like watching a train crash in slow motion, and not being able to help anyone.”

  “Sometimes, people have to sort things out for themselves,” said Melody. “Even if one of them isn’t people any more.”

  JC and Kim walked happily along together, sticking to the factory wall. Close to each other but not touching. It was easier that way. His footsteps echoed quietly, hers didn’t, but they both pretended not to notice. Every now and again they’d walk through a falling shaft of light, and Kim would disappear for a moment.

  “I am working on refining my condition,” said Kim. “It’s not easy. Being a ghost doesn’t exactly come with an instruction manual. But I’m sure it must be possible to become solid if I can concentrate in the right way. I can become real, for you.”

  “It really doesn’t matter,” JC said patiently. “The living and the dead can love each other, but not as people do. That’s the way it is. I found you, and you found me, and I can live with that.”

  “I can’t even get into bed to sleep beside you!” said Kim. “I don’t sleep, but I do like to lie beside you. Whether you’re awake or not. I can lie down, but if my concentration wavers, I start drifting upwards, and end up bobbing by the ceiling!”

  “I don’t mind . . .” said JC.

  “Well you should!”

  They stopped and looked at each other, then they both managed a small smile.

  “I’ve had sex without love,” said JC. “Love without sex is better. Sometimes frustrating, yes, but . . . course of true love never did run smooth.” He looked at her for a long moment. “Can you feel . . . anything?”

  “Mostly, I feel cold,” said Kim. “Sometimes, when you’re asleep, I run my fingertips down your face, then I think I feel something . . . but it’s hard to be sure. I don’t have a body, only a memory of one. Mostly, I feel . . . distant. Like I’m hanging on to the world by my fingertips . . . Don’t say you’re sorry again, JC, or I’ll slap you!”

  “Like to see you try,” said JC. “Look, dead or alive, we’re both still human. Man and woman. We care for each other, in a human way. We have that in common, and that’s enough. Now, let’s get back to the others. They’re talking about us, you know.”

  “You can hear them?” said Kim. “I can’t hear them . . .”

  “No,” said JC. “But if you were them, wouldn’t you be talking about us?”

  They laughed, and returned to Happy and Melody, and the fully charged electronic equipment. They both fell silent as JC and Kim approached, and Happy did his best to look innocent but coul
dn’t pull it off. Melody didn’t even look up from calibrating her short- and long-range sensors. JC indicated to Happy that he wanted to walk and talk with him alone. Happy immediately looked worried and guilty in equal measures, his standard default position. JC laughed and led him away, so they could talk privately. Kim hovered next to Melody, pretending an interest in the high tech, some of which immediately stopped working, in protest to her very existence.

  “I’m getting a really bad feeling about this place, Happy,” said JC. “And I’m not even psychic. So what are you feeling? What are you seeing and hearing with that marvellous mutant mind of yours?”

  Happy scowled, looking around the deserted factory in a decidedly shifty manner. “To be honest, JC, I think opening up in here could be really dangerous. Even with all my mental shields battened down and welded shut, I can’t help picking up things. Really unpleasant things. We’re not alone in here. Something’s watching . . . and waiting. There’s no telling what might come jumping out of the shadows the moment I lower my shields.”

  “Man up, Happy,” said JC. “Show some balls and shake them at the shadows. You’re the team telepath, the mental marvel, so get on with it. Justify your presence here, or I won’t sign off on your expenses claims.”

  “Bully,” muttered Happy. “Can I at least take a few of my little helpers? My chemical companions in need?”

  JC sighed. “I thought we were weaning you off those?”

  Happy wouldn’t meet his gaze, fumbling in his pockets. “Most people take pills to see strange and unusual things, I take pills to keep the weird away. You’re the reason I need these things, JC, you, and the job. If you could See the things I See . . . or maybe you do, these days, with those amazing new eyes of yours . . .”

  “Stick to the subject,” said JC.

  “I am! The world isn’t what most people think it is,” Happy said sadly. “It’s a bigger world, and far more crowded. And if you could see what’s peering over our shoulders and tugging at our sleeves, you’d fry your neurons with powerful chemicals, too. If you want me to track down what’s in here with us, and look it in the eye, I need a little something to back me up!”