Ghost of a Smile g-2

by Simon R. Green

  “But you can act as a medium, help us make contact with what’s happening here?”

  “I don’t see why not,” said JC. “Kim has a foot in both worlds, the living and the dead. What better medium could there be?”

  “You have such wonderful ideas,” said Kim. “Let me see what I can do.”

  “Hold it, hold it!” said Melody, rushing over to her equipment. “I want to record everything that happens! If only so I can clear myself of all responsibility if it all goes pear-shaped in a hurry.”

  JC nodded for Happy to go keep Melody company, and the telepath moved quickly over to join her-and watch her back. Once Melody was immersed in recording something, she often became blind to more immediate dangers. And Happy also knew that JC wanted him to observe everything telepathically, from a safe distance. Just in case. Kim drifted quietly out across the open factory floor, not even bothering to walk, as she concentrated on the matter at hand. She faded away some more as she gave less thought to her manifestation and more to what JC wanted of her.

  Everyone looked round sharply. Nothing obvious had changed, but the sense of presence, or someone or something watching from the darkness, was suddenly that much stronger. Tiley called Susan back to him, and they huddled together, holding each other’s hands. Melody bent over her instruments, rapt at what her sensors were picking up. Happy bit down hard on his lower lip, concentrating on his mental shields. All around the factory, the shadows were longer and deeper and darker. The quality of what light remained seemed subtly debased, stained, even bruised. Tension coiled on the air, gradually growing tighter. And JC… watched it all with an easy grin, like a ringmaster at his own private circus.

  “Anything, Kim?” he said.

  “Something, JC,” said the ghost. “There’s so much information in this place. Layers and levels, some recent and some old… some very old. Wait, I think I’ve made contact…”

  And the machinery returned. The whole factory floor was suddenly blazing with light and packed with huge machines, all of them working, constantly moving, deafeningly loud. Parts rose and fell, other parts slammed together, and a work-force of hundreds moved around them, operating machines, darting back and forth, picking things up and conveying them away. It was terribly loud and unmistakably present, but still, somehow… distant. As though separated from this Time by some unimaginable direction. JC moved in close beside Tiley, so he could shout in his ear.

  “This is the top layer of the stone tape, a recording, playing back. Past events soaked into their surroundings, emerging again in the Present. What you’re seeing is a vision, a portrayal of what used to be here. A true vision, of real events, but not real now. We can see it but not affect it.”

  Graham Tiley shook his head numbly. “I remember this… I know these people! Men I worked with, men I knew… Faces I haven’t thought of in years, and old friends long dead… Am I in there, somewhere? They all look so young! I want to go to them, and talk to them, warn them of things that are going to happen…”

  “But you can’t,” said JC. “Because they’re not really here. If you walked among them, they couldn’t see you… You’d be a ghost to them. An image, out of Time.”

  “Some of them are going to die young,” said Tiley. “Some are going to be maimed, and killed, stupid accidents that could so easily be prevented. And I can’t help them. The Past can be cruel, sometimes.”

  And then the huge machines, and all the work-force tending them, began to slowly fade away. The sound went first, the thunder of the machines growing steadily quieter, as though receding into the distance. Then the image itself grew thin and insubstantial and was gone. The top layer of the stone tape disappeared, as something else moved forward to take its place. New images began to form, out of the Past.

  “It’s the next layer of the stone tape,” JC said to Graham. “The level below, from deeper in the Past. Pushing aside the more recent image to make itself known.”

  “It’s rising,” said Kim. Her gaze was far away, and her voice didn’t sound entirely human. “Forcing the more recent Past aside. JC, Something’s coming…”

  “Who?” said JC, quietly but firmly. “Tell me, Kim. Who is it that’s coming?”

  “Living things, old things, summoned things,” said Kim, not even looking at him. Her gaze was fixed on something only she could see. “Power. Old power. Harnessed power… blood and death, set to unnatural purpose… Something very old was called up here, to do terrible things… and it’s still here!”

  “Summoned?” said JC. “What was summoned up, Kim? And who summoned it? Why?”

  “Retribution,” said Kim.

  JC stepped forward and took off his sunglasses. Tiley and Susan both cried out as they saw why he wore them. Something had happened to JC on a previous case. Trapped on a hell train, surrounded by demons, fighting for his life and for Kim, when all seemed lost, Something had reached down from the Higher Dimensions and touched JC briefly. Giving him the strength he needed to save them both. Much of that strength was gone now, but his eyes still shone like the sun, glowing with a strange brilliance. JC saw the world very clearly now; and when he needed to, he could See a great many things that were usually hidden from the living. All the secrets and wonders of the invisible world.

  It had taken him a long time to find sunglasses dark enough and heavy enough to hide his glowing eyes.

  JC glanced at Graham Tiley and Susan, and they both shrank back from his illuminated gaze.

  “Don’t worry,” he said easily. “Think of them as psychic searchlights.”

  “Stop fannying around being pleased with yourself, and concentrate,” snapped Melody, not looking up from her display screens. “What do you See? The readings I’m getting are all over the place, and half of them don’t make a blind bit of sense. I’m getting energy spikes, electromagnetic radiation… I’m getting Time, I’m getting Deep Time… Whatever’s heading our way is rising up from the bottom of the stone tape, recordings laid down centuries before. And the power readings are right off the scale… as though something is riding on the stone tape, using it to break out of the Past and into the Present.”

  “And that is never good,” said Happy. “I’d run if I thought it would do any good. Something’s definitely coming, JC, closing in on us, closing in…”

  Dark shapes appeared out of nowhere, imposing their existence on reality, huge and threatening. They manifested up and down the whole length of the factory, snapping into existence in ones and twos, sticking to the shadows, keeping well away from what little light was left. Tiley held out his storm lantern, holding it high to cover himself and his grand-daughter in the soft yellow light… but the dark shapes ignored him, prowling round the exterior of the factory floor. They were slowly taking on shape and form, vicious and malevolent shapes, with teeth and claws and glowing blood-red eyes.

  “Happy,” said JC, apparently entirely unconcerned by what was happening all around him, “are you by any chance picking up anything with that amazing telepathic mind of yours? Because if so, now would be a good time to share. What are these things? What are we dealing with here?”

  “I’m getting hunger, and rage, and a hell of a lot of bad attitude,” said Happy, from where he was hiding behind Melody. “But you can probably tell that from looking at them. I can’t seem to fix on what they actually are; I think whoever summoned them imposed a shape and form on them. Melody, what are these things? Elementals? Animal spirits? Something from the Outer Circles?”

  “Beats the hell out of me,” said Melody, her gaze flashing from one display screen to the next, her fingers stabbing at her keyboards. “The readings I’m getting are… confused, to say the least. All I can tell you is that whatever is behind these manifestations is old. Very old. Centuries old. Hell, they might even be Pre-human in origin!”

  “I’m picking up human traits along with the animal,” said Happy, rubbing miserably at his head. “And not in a good way.”

  “Could these be sendings, from the Gr
eat Beasts?” said JC. “The Hogge, or the Screaming Hives?”

  “Okay,” said Happy. “I just did something in my trousers. I am leaving now. Try to keep up.”

  “Stand still!” snapped JC. “You want them to notice you?”

  “Definitely not connected to the Great Beasts,” said Melody. “No trace of the subtle energies normally associated with the Outer Abominations… Whatever’s behind those shapes is of earthly origin. And the power source, the original summoner, is quite definitely human. People began this. Whatever it is.”

  “I don’t understand a single thing you people are saying,” said Graham Tiley.

  “We do, so you don’t have to,” JC said breezily. “We’re professionals.”

  “And I am only an amateur,” said Graham. “But this is my factory, and my world, and I know a thing or two.”

  He gave Susan his lantern and strode out onto the factory floor, holding his empty hands before him. The dark shapes chasing and leaping around the factory walls seemed to slow, and take notice of him. They began to close in on him, circling. Susan looked like she wanted to go to him but couldn’t move. JC went quickly over to stand beside her and make sure she didn’t do or say anything that might draw the shapes’ attention to her. Graham Tiley stood his ground as the dark shapes moved in. He held his hands out to them and spoke in a calm, reasonable voice.

  “In the name of the Clear White Light,” he said, “be at peace. Whatever you are, whoever you are, be at peace and at rest. There is nothing here to alarm you, nothing here to threaten you. We are all of us people of goodwill. We want only to help. We can help you find rest, show you the path to the better place that is waiting for all of us. Come to me. Listen to me. The Clear White Light is everywhere. You only have to open yourself to it, and it will embrace you. You don’t have to stay here. There is a better place…”

  He broke off. Several of the dark shapes were very close by then. There was power in them, and a remorseless savagery. Rage, hunger, violence beat on the air. Flashes of long, curved claws and sharp, vicious teeth. Eyes that glared with pure spite and hate. And all of them closing in on him. He tried to speak the words of help and comfort, but they wouldn’t come. He could feel his old heart hammering painfully in his chest. Not now, you old fool, he thought. This would be a really stupid way to die.

  JC moved swiftly forward, his bright white suit shining in the gloom, his eyes like spotlights. He put himself between Tiley and the nearest dark shapes, and as he glared about him, they all fell back, reluctant to face the light blazing from his eyes.

  The shapes paused briefly, then snapped suddenly into focus as their forms finally clarified. They were all big Black Dogges, dozens of them, huge and lean and muscular, their dark bodies a good five feet and more at the shoulder. They looked like dogs but moved like wolves, with supernatural speed and grace and awful power. They padded across the open factory floor, blood-red eyes glowing fiercely, heavy claws digging deep grooves in the concrete floor. When they snarled, they showed huge mouths packed with vicious teeth. These were not creatures of the wild; they were unnatural things, from some unimaginable Past, summoned forward into the Present and shaped into the Black Dogges of legend.

  “I’ve never liked dogs,” said Happy.

  “It’s the old stories, come to life,” said Tiley. “Only with more teeth and claws than I’d imagined…”

  “Big, pointy teeth,” said Happy. “Really big, pointy teeth. Anyone got a ball to throw?”

  “No-one move,” said JC, his voice carefully calm and easy. “Everyone watch everyone else’s back.”

  “The stories say, to see the Black Dogge means you’re going to die,” said Tiley.

  “Not on my watch,” said JC. “Sometimes, stories are only stories. Happy, concentrate on finding out what they want. Melody, I need more information on what these things are when they’re not being Black Dogges. And Kim… You can See things that are hidden from the living. Hidden even from my eyes. Try and find the ghost of the man who was killed here and started all this, Albert Winter.”

  “They’re definitely not dogs,” said Happy, sounding almost surprised. “Not even a little bit doggy. Whoever summoned them up imposed the shape of the Black Dogges on them, to better control them. I don’t know what they were before. Melody?”

  “Deep Time, definitely Pre-human,” said Melody. “You wouldn’t believe the tachyon discharges I’m picking up. Whatever they are, they’re from so far in the Past, I don’t think they even exist any more. I think… they’re trapped here.”

  “I’ve found the ghost of Albert Winter,” said Kim. “He just appeared, along with the Dogges. Am I to take it that the theory of death by manifesting machines has been officially overturned?”

  “It’s the Dogges,” said JC. “When in doubt, always go for the killer dogs with the huge claws and jaggedy teeth. Try and bring the ghost into focus, Kim. The rest of us will keep the Dogges occupied.”

  “You speak for yourself,” said Happy. “If anyone wants me, I’ll be right here, hiding under the machinery.”

  “You even look like touching my stuff, and I will have your balls off with a blunt spoon,” Melody said immediately.

  “I want to go home,” said Happy.

  One of the Black Dogges broke suddenly from the pack and headed straight for Melody’s workstation, racing across the concrete floor. Melody produced a machine pistol from somewhere about her person and opened up on the approaching Dogge. Graham Tiley and his grand-daughter cried out, and huddled together, while JC moved quickly to stand with them. Melody swept her gun back and forth, riddling the huge Dogge with bullets, the roar of the machine pistol shockingly loud in the quiet. The Dogge didn’t even try to dodge the bullets. They passed right through him, as though his huge shape was nothing but a shadow. The bullets flew on to blast holes in the wall behind. Melody kept firing until she ran out of bullets. The Dogge loomed up before her, and jumped right over her and her workstation, landing lightly on the floor behind. It ran on, then circled quickly round, to come at Melody and Happy again. Teeth showed in its great jaws as though it were laughing; but it hadn’t made a single sound.

  Melody lowered her empty gun and looked at Happy. “Down to you then, lover.”

  “What can I do?” said Happy.

  “Come on… You took on Fenris Tenebrae, one of the Great Beasts, down in the Underground, and laughed in his face.”

  “I was very heavily medicated at the time!”

  “Come on, do it for me,” said Melody. “And there will be treats later…”

  “Sometimes you scare me more than the ghosts,” said Happy.

  “You know you love it,” said Melody. “Heh-heh.”

  They turned to face the Black Dogge, racing silently across the concrete floor towards them. Happy stepped forward and glared right into the Dogge’s crimsoneyed face. He reached out with his mind, searching for whatever bound the Dogges to this place, so he could break it… but the sheer animal ferocity he encountered swamped him. He made a sick, pained sound, thrust the animal emotions aside, and made himself stand his ground. Melody needed him to do this. He thrust out a telepathic block, the psychic equivalent of throwing a brick wall in the creature’s way. And the Black Dogge lurched to a sudden halt as it slammed right into it. Happy advanced on the Dogge, one step at a time, and the Dogge backed away, one step at a time. Happy frowned till his forehead ached, hitting the Black Dogge with one telepathic assault after another, battering it with pure brute psychic force… and the Dogge kept retreating, until finally it broke, and turned, and fled back to its pack, still circling round the factory perimeter. Happy made a rude gesture after it and turned back to Melody, trying to hide how much he was shaking.

  “My hero,” said Melody.

  “You have no idea how close to the wire that came,” said Happy. “It feels like my brains are leaking out my ears.”

  “What makes you think you have any?” said Melody.

  Happy glared at her
. “Everyone’s got ears! I think I’d like to go home and lie down now, please!”

  “Later, lover,” said Melody. “I’m a bit busy right now.”

  The Black Dogges were still circling, still closing in relentlessly. JC turned to the old man.

  “Talk to me, Mr. Tiley. Tell me the legend of the Black Dogges. The stories everyone tells. Including the not-at-all-nice bits you don’t normally admit to in front of strangers.”

  “It goes back years,” Tiley said slowly. “Long before there ever was a factory here. On this place, back in the eighteenth century, there used to be an old manor house. The Winter family lived in that house and owned most of the land around. There was a quarrel, so they say, between the landed gentry Winters and a local working family, the Tileys. A quarrel, over a woman. A rape, they say, though most of the names and details are lost to us.”

  “I never heard any of this,” said Susan. “You never told me any of this before, Gramps. Mum and Dad never said anything…”

  “It was an old story,” said Tiley. “You didn’t need to be burdened with it. Sometimes, the past should stay in the past, so the rest of us can get on with our lives.”

  “The story,” prompted JC. “The quarrel between the Winters and the Tileys. What came of it?”

  “No justice then, for poor working folk,” said Graham. “No law, for poor black folks. So the head of the Tiley family at that time, he used the old knowledge to curse the Winters. He used the old forbidden words, and the Black Dogges came, to harass and hound the Winters to their deaths. Don’t ask me what kind of curse; that part of the story is long lost. Perhaps deliberately lost. The Dogges bedevilled the Winter family, and even people connected to the Winters. The Dogges followed people down lonely roads, late at night, speaking prophecy, always bad, always true. Other times, they chased men and women till they fell, then tore them apart. They came and went, and no-one could stand against them.

  “They travelled the whole district, making the Winters’ life a misery, until finally the family left the house, and the area, and spread themselves across the country. The Dogges couldn’t follow, they were bound to the place of their summoning. But with no Winter left to torment, they appeared less and less, and finally vanished. The story continued, as stories do, changing down the centuries till the original details were forgotten. But we remembered. We Tileys. The manor house was torn down. The factory came much later, still owned by the Winters, from a distance.