Voices From Beyond (A Ghost Finders Novel) Page 5

  “Might have overdone the dosage a bit there, Happy,” murmured JC.

  “Can it do that?” demanded the professor. “Can it break through? Actually appear, here, in our world?”

  “That’s what doors are all about, Prof,” said JC.

  “It wants to come here and . . . eat our souls, as well as our bodies?”

  “That’s what Beasts do,” said JC.

  “I think I’m going to be sick again,” said the professor.

  “Perfectly normal response,” said JC. “Try to keep some of it off my shoes, this time.”

  The professor swallowed hard and looked beseechingly at JC. “Can you stop it? Can you get my students back? Bring them home?”

  “We can try,” said JC. “But if we’re to successfully pull off this increasingly unlikely long shot . . . I’m going to have to bring in the fourth member of our little team. The real expert on all things ghostly. Come in, Kim.”

  The ghost girl Kim Sterling walked through the far wall to join them. She stood beside the television set, glowing, and smiling sweetly on one and all. A beautiful, pre-Raphaelite dream of a woman, with a great mane of glorious red hair tumbling down to her shoulders, framing a high-boned, sharply defined face with vivid green eyes and a wide, happy smile. She was in her twenties and had been ever since she was murdered down in the London Underground. She wore a long black dress with white piping and a neat little hat pushed well back on her head.

  Kim Sterling, the only working ghost in the Ghost Finders.

  “Hello, darlings,” she said. “Don’t I look divine? Is no-one going to applaud? It isn’t easy, you know, looking this glamorous on no budget.”

  The professor almost jumped out of his skin when she walked through the wall. He looked very much like he wanted to run again, but JC had a hand ready to clamp down should it prove necessary; so he settled for hiding behind JC and peering at the ghost girl over his shoulder.

  “Why didn’t you ride down with us, in the Land Rover?” asked Melody, entirely unmoved by Kim’s dramatic arrival.

  “She probably heard about your driving,” said Happy.

  Kim smiled easily about her. “Sorry I’m a bit late. I came by the low road, the paths the dead walk. It’s very scenic, this time of year.”

  She smiled disarmingly at the professor, who was still refusing to come out from behind JC.

  “I don’t believe in ghosts!” he said loudly. “I don’t!”

  “Really?” said Kim. “I don’t believe there are people as stupid as you, but I keep being proved wrong.”

  She hadn’t even finished speaking when suddenly everything that wasn’t actually nailed in place or bolted down went flying round the room. Heavy objects shot through the air, seeking out living targets. Porcelain figures flashed past ducking heads, to crash and shatter against the walls. Clocks exploded, sending metal fragments flying through the air like shrapnel. Every piece of furniture went tumbling end over end, in a major outbreak of poltergeist activity. The only things not to move were the coffee table and the television set. A shard of broken mirror-glass almost took the professor’s head off as he sat there gawping; but JC dragged him down at the last moment. The professor pulled away from him.

  “I have to get this on camera!” he said desperately. “No-one will ever believe me unless I can record this!”

  The camera burst into flames. The professor moaned miserably and hit the floor, hugging the carpet. Melody crouched behind her array of equipment, her fingers still darting across the keyboards, pumping out psionic chaff to fill the room and block the activity. Happy scrambled rapidly across the floor on all fours, to huddle at her feet, behind the equipment. Kim stood where she was. Large and bulky objects went hurtling through her insubstantial form without disturbing her in the least. She walked forward to stand before JC. He stood up abruptly and stepped forward, so that he occupied exactly the same space as she did.

  She seemed to disappear within him, his form overlapping and enveloping hers; but her ghostly glow now surrounded JC. And nothing in the room could touch him. Flying objects actually changed direction in mid air, to go around him. He took off his sunglasses again; and his golden eyes glowed fiercely in the gloom. JC wore his ghost girl like spiritual armour, and wherever he turned his glowing gaze, objects fell out of the air, crashed to the floor, and did not move again. The poltergeist activity stopped as suddenly as it had begun.

  JC and Kim, melded and merged together on many levels, turned slowly to look at the television screen. It still showed the four missing students running desperately through the living jungle, pursued by Something too horrible to look at that was slowly but steadily drawing nearer. JC and Kim looked at the screen with JC’s glowing eyes, and the image suddenly grew larger, until it was the size of the room. Like looking through a window into that awful other place. JC and Kim strode forward, through the enlarged television screen, out of this world, and into the other.

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  The blood-red light was almost too fierce, even for JC’s altered eyes. The falling rain-drops hit him with the impact of bullets. The skin-covered ground heaved sickly under his feet, flushed and sweaty. The meat trees stank of carrion and the exposed guts of things. The air was full of screams and howls, of living things endlessly eating and being eaten. Nothing could touch or affect JC while he wore Kim like armour; but the terrible grinding oppression of the place was a burden on his thoughts, breaking his heart and cutting into his soul.

  Dominic ran past, not even seeing JC in his panic. JC grabbed him by an arm, and hauled him to a halt. The student tried to break free, but JC made him stand.

  “Dominic; it’s all right,” he said. “I’m the rescue party.”

  One by one he grabbed the other students as they came to him, brought them to a stop and made them listen to his calming voice. They were all half-out of their minds, clinging to each other like traumatised children, barely able to grasp where they were or that their nightmare might finally be over. But they all slowly responded to a human face, and the firmness of his voice. Rotten, revolting creatures leapt and surged and postured all around them, menacing them with teeth and claws and other things; but none of the awful things wanted to get too close to the new arrival, with his potent aura. And not one of them could face his glowing, golden gaze.

  The huge dark thing came crashing through the last few trees and halted abruptly, towering over the humans. It was a horrid mixture of a dozen different creatures, slapped haphazardly together, as though it had chosen all its favourite bits and pieces, then clapped them together. Its shape made no sense, an affront to all logic and reason. It stank of blood and guts and death. It had too many limbs, and far too many eyes, and it wore the entrails of its previous victims as clothing and trophies. It looked down on its human prey and smiled suddenly, its long face splitting open to reveal row upon row of jagged teeth.

  “Hello, JC,” it said, on a waft of breath like a charnel-house. It had a voice like screaming women and troubled children, like a blade slicing through yielding flesh. “The infamous JC Chance himself. Well, well. I am honoured. Have you come to lead me back to your world, like the good little Judas goat you are?”

  “Dream on,” said JC. “Kim, we are going!”

  The ghostly aura leapt suddenly out to surround not only him but the four students as well. And suddenly they were all back in the lounge, on the other side of a normal-sized television screen.

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  The aura shrank back to cover just JC again; and four confused and dazed spirits stumbled back to their bodies, still sitting round the coffee table. Kim stepped out of JC, to stand before him; and they smiled contentedly at each other. Dominic’s spirit stopped suddenly and looked back at JC.

  “It knew your name,” he said. “How did that thing know your name?”

  “I get around,” said JC.

  Dominic went to join his friends as they clustered confusedly roun
d the coffee table. Happy and Melody stood behind the equipment array, looking thoughtfully at JC and Kim.

  “How . . . ?” said Melody.

  “Hold everything!” said Happy. “Look at the television!”

  They all turned to look. Blood-red light was blasting out of the screen as it bulged away from the set. The screen stretched impossibly wide, pushing forward, as though being forced out by some unbearable pressure from the other side. The television screen stretched and stretched, like a soap-bubble that wouldn’t break. Something huge and dark pressed up against it from the other side, the other place.

  “It knows we’re here!” said Happy. “It’s coming through! You showed it the way, and it followed you! I can feel it . . . So hungry . . . Get out of my head!”

  Melody worked her keyboards fiercely, then glared at JC. “It’s coming through; and I haven’t anything here that can stop it!”

  “I can’t stand it!” said Happy, his eyes screwed tightly shut. “It’s inside my head, and it’s too big, too powerful. I can’t contain it . . .”

  He scrabbled desperately in his pockets, pulling out a dozen pill boxes at once. He fumbled and dropped them, and they hit the floor and burst open, spilling multi-coloured pills everywhere. Happy cried out and dropped to his knees, scrabbling for his pills with both hands.

  “You don’t need your damned pills, Happy!” said Melody. “Just stop that bloody thing coming through!”

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” said Happy. But he didn’t look up from his precious pills.

  JC looked at Kim, and she nodded quickly. She strode back into him again, and he glowed fiercely in the gloom. JC made a gun with his right hand and pointed the finger barrel at the bulging television screen.

  “Bang,” he said.

  The television exploded, throwing its insides across the carpet. The set was suddenly normal again; the screen nothing more than so many broken bits on the floor. The light fixture overhead snapped back on, filling the lounge with perfectly ordinary light. All the oppressive atmosphere was gone in a moment. Kim stepped out of JC. His glow flickered and went out, and he put his sunglasses back on.

  “According to my instruments, everything here is back to normal,” said Melody, in an only slightly brittle voice. “No dimensional door, no strange energy readings; even the temperature is climbing back to what it should be.”

  She left her array of equipment and knelt down beside Happy, to help him gather up his scattered pills. She didn’t say anything to him.

  “Is it over?” asked the professor, looking dazedly around him. “Is it finally over?”

  “For now,” said JC. “There’s a good chance the dimensional door has made a permanent weak spot here; but I’ll send you some Institute technicians to put in a patch. To be on the safe side.”

  He stopped, as he realised Melody and Happy were back on their feet again and looking at him and Kim.

  “Nice trick, the two of you working together,” said Melody. “How long have you been able to do that?”

  “Not long,” said JC.

  “We were . . . experimenting,” Kim said lightly. “And we discovered we could do all sorts of things, together. It’s the closest we can come to touching.”

  “And you didn’t tell us about this before because?” said Melody.

  “Didn’t think it was any of your business,” JC said steadily. “We weren’t sure it had any practical value. Until now.”

  “We don’t keep secrets from each other!” said Melody.

  “Since when?” said JC.

  He looked at Happy, who nodded guiltily.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Sorry about that. I sort of . . . lost it, for a moment there.”

  “You could have got us all killed,” said JC.

  “I know!” said Happy. “But, please, JC. Not now, okay?”

  “We will talk about this,” said JC. “Later.”

  And then they all looked round sharply, at a babble of raised voices from the four returned students at the coffee table. They were all up on their feet, waving their hands around and shouting excitedly at each other. It quickly became clear, from listening to the voices coming out of the faces, that something quite extraordinary had happened. The four spirits had been so dazed and confused when they returned, that somehow . . . they’d all ended up in the wrong bodies. And they really weren’t too pleased about it.

  JC turned to smile at the increasingly horrified Professor Volke. “Well, Prof,” he said. “You wanted a psychological experiment . . .”

  TWO

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  JUST A WALK IN THE PARK

  JC Chance and Catherine Latimer, field team leader and Boss of the Carnacki Institute, went walking together in the open air, in London’s Hyde Park. It was a bright, sunny day, and the venerable park was packed full of people making the most of the good weather, in a calm and easy blue-skied summer’s afternoon. Green lawns, neatly-turned-out paths, wide-branching trees . . . and happy, smiling faces everywhere. Most of whom paid little or no attention to the two very significant persons walking among them, strolling casually through the park.

  JC’s rich white suit seemed almost to glow in the bright sunlight, and his good looks, rock-star hair, and very dark sunglasses, did draw the occasional admiring glance. Catherine Latimer was well into her nineties now, but she still went striding along with almost unnatural strength and vitality. Medium height and unrepentantly stocky, her grey hair cropped in a severe bowl cut, she wore a smartly tailored grey suit with sensible shoes. Catherine’s face was all hard edges and unflinching lines, but there were still traces left of what had once been handsome, even striking, features. Her cold grey eyes regarded the sunny day with open suspicion, as though expecting it to disappear suddenly and without warning, at any moment. Catherine Latimer was not a trusting person.

  She smoked black Turkish cigarettes in a long ivory holder, apparently an affectation that went all the way back to her student days in Cambridge; and she ignored the occasional disapproving glance from passersby with magnificent disdain. She walked in a straight line, from one side of the park to the other, and it was up to everyone else to get out of her way. And they did. JC had to work hard to keep up with her.

  “All right!” he said finally, feeling very strongly that he’d been quiet and courteous for as long as he could stand. “You called and said we had to meet urgently; so here I am. What are we supposed to be talking about? And why did we have to meet here, of all places?”

  “There’s a lot to be said for the great outdoors,” said Catherine, not even glancing at him or slowing her pace. “Open spaces, and lots of people. Nothing like being part of a crowd to make you safely anonymous. And, there’s nothing like a great open space to make it a lot easier to see your enemies coming for you. We are talking here, Mr. Chance, because it’s safer and more secure than anywhere in the Carnacki Institute. Very definitely including my private office. It’s harder for us to be overheard here, amidst the clamour of so many other voices and minds, by anyone or anything. Besides . . . it does people like us good, to get out among the ordinary, everyday people. In the everyday world. We spend too much time operating in the dark and in the shadowy places. This world, and these people, are what the Carnacki Institute was established to protect. They are the important ones, the ones who really matter. And we forget that at our peril, Mr. Chance.”

  “I’m in trouble, aren’t I?” said JC. “I always know it’s going to be really bad once you start lecturing me.”

  “We’re all in trouble,” said Catherine. “That’s why I can’t trust my office any more.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you outside the Institute, before this,” said JC. “It’s occurred to me, more than once, that you live in your office.”

  “Does feel like that, sometimes,” said Catherine. “I have a cot out the back, for emergencies. When there’s a real flap on, and I don’t dare leave for fear of missing something . . . But no; I d
o have a home, and a life, outside the Institute. Even if I can’t always give them as much time and attention as I would like.”

  “Do you have . . . a family?” asked JC, tentatively. Because it felt like he was dipping a toe into unfamiliar and possibly very murky waters.

  “This is an official discussion, about official Institute business,” Catherine said firmly. “Not a pleasant personal chat.”

  “You know all there is to know about my life,” said JC, defensively.

  “Which is as it should be.” Catherine allowed herself a small smile. “It is necessary that I know everything about you if I am to protect you properly.”

  JC gave her a calm and easy smile of his own. “You only think you know everything about me.”

  “Go on feeling that way,” said Catherine. “If it makes you feel better.”

  JC looked around, taking his time, considering the wide-open space and the people milling around everywhere.

  “Don’t you feel . . . vulnerable, out here on your own? Without your usual personal bodyguards and special protections?”

  “I am perfectly capable of looking after myself,” Catherine said sternly. “I am quite possibly the most dangerous person you will ever meet, Mr. Chance, and have been for most of my life. Certainly long before I joined the Carnacki Institute. And anyway, I am always guarded and protected. Even if you can’t see who’s doing it. Especially if you can’t see them. In fact, if you could spot any of my people, I would have no choice but to fire them for seriously underperforming.”

  JC fought down a suicidal urge to slap her round the back of the head, just to see what would happen. Some impulses should be suppressed immediately—as long as you still have any working self-preservation instincts.

  Catherine Latimer stopped abruptly, and JC stumbled to a halt beside her. He looked quickly about him, but they didn’t seem to have reached any particular destination, anywhere special or significant. He let his gaze drift casually over the nearest people passing by, but they all gave every appearance of being ordinary people, going about their everyday business. Men in city suits, out for a brisk walk between important meetings. Families with loud and raucous children: picnicking and sunbathing, or throwing Frisbees for dogs who clearly hoped the afternoon would never end. Young lovers reclining on towels and blankets, wearing as little as they could get away with, casually entwined. And tourists of every stamp and nationality, come to see what there was to be seen and take photos of it. JC turned back to Catherine and gave her his full attention.