Ghost of a Chance Read online

  “Children, children,” murmured JC. “Let us not discuss our personal failings while the enemy is listening.”

  They all looked across at the Boss’s secretary, Heather. She smiled sweetly upon them without slowing her typing for a moment. Heather (if she had a last name no-one knew it, for all sorts of security reasons) was the perfect secretary. Knew everything, said nothing; or at least, nothing that mattered. Calm, professional, and pleasantly pretty, in a blonde curly-haired round-faced sort of way, Heather dressed neatly rather than fashionably; and as the Boss’s last line of defence, she was probably the most-heavily-armed person in Buck House. Supposedly, Heather was equipped to take down a whole army of terrorists, if necessary, and certainly no-one felt like testing the rumour. You had to get past Heather to get to the Boss, and unless you had exactly the right kind of paperwork, signed and countersigned in all the right places, that wasn’t going to happen. JC once saw Heather kick an overpresumptuous Parliamentary UnderSecretary so hard in the balls that half the faces in the portraits winced.

  That JC was still prepared to try to charm and wheedle information out of her showed how nervous he really was.

  “Heather, my darling . . . looking ravishing as always, of course; might I inquire . . . ?”

  “No, JC, my darling, you might not,” said Heather, kindly but immovably. “The Boss will see you when she is ready to see you and not one moment before. All I can tell you . . . is that the Boss is really not a happy bunny this morning.”

  JC raised an eyebrow. “Is she ever?”

  “Sorry,” said Heather. “That falls under Classified Information.”

  “Come on, Heather,” said Happy, giving his best shot at an ingratiating smile. “Can’t you at least tell us what we’ve done wrong this time? I mean, how deep in it are we?”

  Heather smiled sweetly at him. “Do you possess a pair of waders? Or perhaps scuba gear?”

  “Situation normal, then,” said Melody, going back to her game.

  “Oh God,” said Happy, burying his face in his hands.

  “Told you not to shoot that albatross,” said JC. “Now brace up, man. We’ve been here before and made it out the other side. If we were in serious trouble, Heather would have shot us the moment we walked through the door.”

  “You might think that;” Heather murmured, “I couldn’t possibly comment.”

  Happy moaned briefly, then produced half a dozen bottles of pills from various pockets. He rolled them back and forth in his hands, considering the multi-coloured contents, and squinting at the handwritten labels.

  “Now . . . These yellow ones are to remind me to take these red ones . . . And the blue ones are only for use in cases of possession. These stripey ones are for radiation exposure, the hundreds and thousands are for my mood swings, and these chequered ones . . . are to give me a better outlook on life.”

  “Trust me, those aren’t working,” said Melody. She glared at him sharply. “I thought we were weaning you off those things. So many pills can’t be good for you. It’s a wonder to me you don’t rattle when you cough.”

  “I need a little something, now and again, to help keep me stable,” Happy said defensively. “I’ve got to do something to keep the voices quiet.”

  Melody sniffed loudly. “If this is stable, I’d hate to see you when you weren’t. Forget stable, Happy, that horse bolted long ago. Why not settle for coherent?”

  “You’re being mean now,” said Happy. “I wonder what these violet ones are for . . . ?”

  “You have no idea what half that stuff will do to you, in the long term,” insisted Melody. “Have you even considered the side effects, or the cumulative effects?”

  “I read all the little leaflets that come with the pills, very thoroughly,” said Happy.

  “Yeah,” said JC. “Looking for loopholes.”

  Happy knocked back a yellow and two reds. JC took a purple, just to keep him company.

  The intercom on Heather’s desk buzzed officiously. Heather stopped typing to listen to something only she could hear, then nodded briskly to JC, Happy, and Melody.

  “In you go, 007, 8, and 9. The Boss is ready to see you now.”

  “How come no-one ever asks if we’re ready to see her?” growled Happy. He hiccuped, then smiled suddenly. “Oooh . . . They’re kicking in fast today . . .”

  JC and Melody took a firm hold on his arms and headed him towards the heavily reinforced steel door that led to the Boss.

  The current Boss of the Carnacki Institute was Catherine Latimer. She sat commandingly behind her Hepplewhite desk, while the three field agents arranged themselves untidily before her. She gestured sharply at the three chairs set out in front of the desk, and the trio immediately sat down, like school pupils called before their headmistress, for crimes not yet made clear. JC and Melody did their best to look contrite; Happy didn’t have the knack.

  Catherine Latimer had to be in her late seventies but was still almost unnaturally strong and vital. Medium height, stocky, grey hair cropped short in a bowl cut, her face was all hard edges and cold eyes. She wore a smartly tailored grey suit, without a flash of colour anywhere, and smoked black Turkish cigarettes in a long, ivory holder; an affectation from her student days in Cam-bridge. (There were long-standing rumours that she’d made some kind of Deal with Someone, in her college days, but no-one had ever been able to prove anything.)

  Every day she sent agents out on missions that could lead to their deaths, or worse. If it bothered her, she hid it really well. But every agent knew that if they fell in the field, she would move heaven and earth to avenge them.

  JC always thought of her as the last of the Bulldog Breed. But only to himself, and never in her presence. He didn’t think she could actually read minds, but he didn’t feel like taking the chance.

  Rather than meet the Boss’s unnerving gaze directly, JC looked around her office. It was not without interest. The Boss had been a field agent herself, back in the day, and she still kept souvenirs of that time around to brighten up her otherwise-coldly-efficient office. So, apart from the expected shelves crammed with books and files, and the necessary modern technology, there was also a large goldfish bowl, half-full of murky ectoplasm, in which the ghost of a goldfish swam calmly back and forth, flickering on and off like a faulty light bulb. An old Victrola wind-up gramophone, complete with curving brass horn, waited patiently in one corner. It played the memories of old 78 rpm recordings that didn’t physically exist any more. JC had once heard it play a 1908 recording of the last English castrato, David Tennich. A beautiful, eerie, subtly inhuman sound. The Haunted Glove of Haversham, which had strangled seventeen young women in 1953, until the Boss figured out what was going on, and captured it, now resided under a glass display case. Very firmly nailed to its wooden stand, just in case. It looked like a very ordinary glove.

  And, finally, there was a portrait of Her Majesty the Queen, taking pride of place behind the Boss’s desk. The whole face seemed to follow you around the room.

  Having run out of excuses not to meet the Boss’s gaze, JC decided to get his retaliation in first. He arranged his crossed legs so casually it was practically an insult, leaned back in his chair, and looked down his long nose at the Boss.

  “What is so important that we had to be summoned here, like peasants to the Great Hall, so soon after our last case?” he demanded. “We are entitled to sufficient downtime between cases. It would say so in our contracts if we were allowed contracts, which we aren’t, and is another matter I’d like to discuss. Hold everything; don’t tell me one of the Royal corgis has got possessed again . . . I keep telling you, they’re too inbred these days. The corgis, not the . . . Look; we do all have lives, you know, outside the Institute . . .”

  “I know all about your lives,” said the Boss, in her usual calm, thoughtful tone. “I know everything there is to know about you and your team, Mr. Chance. Including all the things you think I don’t know. You, for example, run a bookshop in Charing Cross R
oad; ostensibly antiquarian, but actually specialising in rare and dangerous volumes of forgotten lore, forbidden knowledge, and forsaken arts. The erudite scholar’s equivalent of the back-pack nuke. Merely opening some of those books was enough to set off alarms in organisations like this all over the world.

  “You recently acquired a folio copy of that damned and utterly poisonous play The King in Yellow. Reading it is enough to drive most men mad. On its one and only performance in Paris in 1898, the audience stormed the stage and killed and ate the entire cast. And I am here to tell you that those specially enchanted blast goggles you purchased on eBay will not be enough to protect you if you try to read it.”

  She switched her thoughtful gaze to Happy, who jumped in his chair and giggled nervously.

  “You, Mr. Palmer, are an accountant. Because there’s always good money in accounting, and because you find numbers soothing. You can make numbers make sense, unlike people. You work for us because I know what else you do with numbers . . . And as long as you continue to work for us, no-one else will ever have to know.”

  She turned to Melody, who glared right back at her. Melody was only ever impressed by technology.

  “Miss Chambers, I believe you like to say you’re Something in Publishing. In fact, you publish specialised erotica for the fetish community. Some of it so specialised I’m frankly hard-pressed to see where the erotica comes in.”

  “People have always liked to play dress-up,” said Melody. “I just take it a bit further than most.”

  “How shall I love thee, let me count the ways,” murmured JC. “I should come here more often; I learn the most intriguing things . . .”

  “For once, the three of you are not here to be judged on your many and various misdeeds,” said the Boss. She stopped to fit a new cigarette into her holder and lit it with a monogrammed gold Zippo. “Annoying though they frequently are. I have told you before, Mr. Chance; travel expenses do not extend to first class.”

  “Only way to get a little peace and quiet, these days,” said JC.

  The Boss glared at Happy. “Nor am I happy with your continuing demands for new medications. When you finally die, we’ll have to bury you in a coffin with a child-proof lid.”

  Happy sniffed. “I only stay with the Institute for the free prescriptions and access to unstable chemicals. I am a medical miracle. Universities have been bidding against each other for years, for the rights to my body for scientific research. Some don’t even want to wait till I’m dead.”

  “And I’m only here for the tech,” Melody said firmly. “Can’t do the job without the right equipment.”

  The Boss’s nostrils flared slightly. “You just like to play with the latest toys. And break them.”

  JC realised, with something like wonder, that the Boss was only saying these things in order to avoid saying something else. She was distracting herself with familiar complaints so she could put off having to tell them about the new case. Which meant it had to be something really bad . . . He watched, impressed despite himself, as the Boss squared her shoulders and got down to business.

  “All of this . . . is irrelevant. You are not here to receive the various dressing downs you so thoroughly deserve; you are here because the Institute is faced with a major emergency. Something bad has happened, down in the London Underground. Oxford Circus Tube Station is haunted. A Code One Haunting.”

  JC sat up sharply. “A Code One, right here in the heart of London? That’s supposed to be impossible! The whole city’s covered with overlapping layers of pacts and protections, laid down ever since Roman times.”

  “The unprecedented nature of the haunting is what makes this such an emergency,” said the Boss. “If what we suspect is true, all hell is about to break loose in the Underground.”

  “What’s happened?” said JC. “Tell us everything.”

  “It started slowly, sneaking in around the edges, almost unnoticed,” said the Boss, leaning back in her chair and watching the shapes her cigarette smoke made in the air. “Stories of odd-looking people on overcrowded platforms, who never seemed to get on any train. Uneasy presences, felt rather than seen, on deserted platforms late at night. Lights that flickered on and off, or changed in intensity, for no reason anyone could explain. Strange announcements, by unauthorised voices, saying awful, disturbing things. People travelling up the escalators who never arrived at the top. Horrid laughter in the tunnels, and never anybody there.

  “Then things got worse in a hurry. Indistinct figures were seen throwing themselves in front of approaching trains; but after each train had been stopped and the tracks inspected, no body was ever found. Men and women claimed to have been pushed violently from behind, just as a train was coming in, but when they turned and looked, no-one was anywhere near them. More and more travellers were reported missing—seen going down into the Underground system, then never heard from again.

  “And people came and went . . . who didn’t look entirely like people.

  “It all came to a head at Oxford Circus Station, at eight thirty-five this morning. We’ve had to stop all the trains going in and out and shut the whole place down; no-one in or out, until further notice. I have a few witness statements, recordings, for you to take a look at. No comments, please, until you’ve seen them all.”

  She spun her desk-computer screen around so they could all see it and stabbed at her keyboard with two fingers, her cigarette-holder jutting grimly from one corner of her mouth. The first witness was a man in his late forties, neat City suit, respectable. You’d have believed anything he said in a court of law. But his face was grey and shocked, and his mouth was slack, as though he’d just been hit. His eyes were frightened, desperate.

  “Trains were running when none were scheduled,” he said, in a voice that sounded on the edge of tears. “Bad trains. They didn’t stop, only slowed down as they passed by, so everyone on the platform could get a good look. Strange trains with strange markings, in the kinds of writing you see in dreams. The metal of the cars steamed, blazing with unbearable heat, and inside . . . there were things, terrible things . . . awful shapes, not human . . . beating fiercely against the closed doors and windows, fighting to get out, to get at everyone waiting on the platform. We all screamed. Some turned and ran. The things in the cars laughed at us and beat on the windows with their fists. They would have killed us all if they could. I won’t go back into the Underground again. It’s not ours any more.”

  The next witness was a woman in her mid thirties. Her face was calm and relaxed, and her voice was quite steady, and entirely reasonable. But blood had dried all down one side of her face from where she’d yanked out a chunk of her own hair. She played with the bloody mess while she talked.

  “I was on the northbound platform when the train came in. It was pretending to be an ordinary train, but it wasn’t. There were people trapped inside. As the cars rolled to a halt, we could see men and women, screaming soundlessly, as they tried desperately to escape; but the cars wouldn’t let them out. Some of us tried to help, but the doors wouldn’t budge. Up close, we could see the bloody trails left on the windows by broken fingers and torn-away nails. The train moved off again and took them all away. And I know . . . it would have taken us, too, if it could. It wanted to, but it was already full. That downbound train, bearing them off to Hell . . .”

  The third witness was a child. Maybe eight or nine years old, in a pretty party dress. She laughed at the camera, but it was an adult’s laugh, not a child’s. And all she would say was Look who’s come to see you! over and over again.

  The Boss turned off her screen and fixed the three field agents with a steady stare. “So far, we’ve studied three hundred and seventeen witness statements. Those were the most . . . representative. We’ve had to section many of them under the Mental Health Act, for everyone’s safety. Hopefully, we’ll be able to do something for them once this nasty business has been dealt with. For the moment, the official version is that the Underground has been the subject o
f a terrorist attack, involving a new nerve gas that induces nightmare hallucinations. That should keep the press out, for a while. Understand me; this has to be cleared up fast.”

  “And that’s why you called us in,” JC said happily. “Because we’re the best you’ve got.”

  “No,” said the Boss. “You’re just the best available. Everyone else is busy, or too far away to be called in quickly enough. So you get the case. Don’t drop the ball on this one, people, or I will have yours off with a blunt spoon. I want this dealt with, whatever it takes.”

  “You always do,” said JC. “Do we get any backup?”

  “No,” said the Boss. “Too risky. You’re on your own.”

  “Oh joy,” said Happy.

  “Deep joy,” said JC.

  “Happy happy joy joy,” said Melody, unexpectedly.

  “Get out,” said the Boss. “Shut this down hard, and fast, and all your many sins will be forgiven, if not forgotten. And try not to get yourselves killed. It’s expensive replacing good field agents.”

  “Would this be a good time to talk about a raise?” said Happy.

  THREE

  GOING UNDERGROUND

  In the old days, in the really old days, when people had to go in search of the dead, they went underground. They left the sunlight behind them and went down, all the way down, into the Underworld, there to parlay with gods and demons for the right to talk with the departed. Never an easy journey, and always a price to be paid, for a chance to talk to the dead. Gods come and go, civilisations rise and fall, belief systems prosper and fail; but still, even in this day and age, if you have business with the dead, you often have no choice but to go down, all the way down, into the dark places under the world.

  JC Chance, Melody Chambers, and Happy Jack Palmer went down into the London Underground, into Oxford Circus Tube Station; and the police locked them in, then retreated swiftly to what they had been told were safe positions. The three ghost finders stood close together in the entrance lobby, instinctively drawing together for strength and comfort. The lobby was brightly lit and completely deserted. The ticket barriers were firmly closed, along with all the narrow enquiry windows; and nothing moved anywhere. The white-tiled walls, the brightly coloured posters, the sane and sensible lists of destinations . . . everything was as it should be. Except that nothing and nobody moved anywhere in all that sharp, merciless light.