JC always left his car parked outside in the street because the rents the local garages charged were nothing short of extortionate. He never worried about anything happening to the car because it was, after all, a Carnacki Institute official vehicle and could look after itself.
It wasn’t particularly flashy or interesting because the Institute didn’t want its field agents driving anything that might get them noticed, but it got the job done. JC drove his car swiftly through the deserted streets of early-morning London, by the straightest if not necessarily most legal route to Happy and Melody’s apartment. There was hardly any other traffic on the roads anyway at this hour of the morning, and JC found that what there was usually got out of his way quickly enough if he hit the horn and drove straight at them. He kept his foot hard down on the accelerator, confident the traffic police wouldn’t bother him because all Carnacki Institute cars carried Corps Diplomatique plates. It saved time and helped avoid awkward conversations that weren’t going to go anywhere useful.
JC had a definite feeling there was something odd about the streets he was driving through. Not only the quiet and the lack of other traffic, which meant he could drive on whichever side of the road he felt like . . . It took him a while to realise it was all the empty parking spaces. During the day, you didn’t see a parking space unoccupied anywhere in London. Unless it was a trap.
JC turned on his music, and the gently rasping melancholia of The Smiths filled the car. JC always played The Smiths when he was feeling reflective and in the mood to kick the crap out of someone deserving. Someone had been keeping his Kim from him, all this time, and JC was quietly determined that when he found out who, he was going to make that Someone very unhappy.
* * *
He finally slammed his car to a halt in front of Melody and Happy’s place, shut off his music with a flourish, and threw open the car doors. Happy and Melody were already standing outside on the street, waiting for him; but it couldn’t be said that either of them looked particularly enthusiastic. JC decided to be charitable and put it down to their being disturbed so early in the morning.
Melody looked exactly as she always did. Pretty enough in a conventional way, short and gamine thin, and burning with enough nervous energy to scare off anyone with working survival instincts. In her thirties now, and quite openly resentful about it, Melody wore her auburn hair scraped back in a tight bun, never bothered with makeup, and wore severe glasses with old-fashioned granny frames. Along with clothes so anonymous they wouldn’t have recognised style or fashion if they’d tripped over it in the gutter. Melody was all business, all the time.
Happy Jack Palmer lurked slouching beside her, wearing his usual put-upon look. Well past thirty but resigned to that as the least of his troubles, Happy was short and stocky, prematurely balding, and might have been handsome if he ever stopped scowling. He wore grubby old jeans and knock-off sneakers, along with a T-shirt bearing the message ASK ME ABOUT MY DAY. GO ON. I DARE YOU. under a battered old black leather jacket whose occasional rip and tear had been repaired with black duct tape. Happy made a point of telling everyone that he Saw the world more clearly than anyone else and was therefore entitled to feel clinically depressed.
On their own, they both made a strong impression. Together, they looked like they could kick arse for the Olympics. And take a bronze in fighting dirty.
Happy was first off the mark and into the car, grabbing shotgun. Melody threw a bulging knapsack into the back seat, and dropped heavily in after it.
“Just a few things,” she said loudly. “Useful items. Because you never know.”
“Girls and their toys,” Happy said vaguely.
The car doors slammed shut, JC stomped hard on the accelerator, and the car jumped forward like a goosed dowager aunt. Off through the empty streets of London, on their way to rescue a ghost.
* * *
It didn’t take them long to get to Chimera House, not with Happy on board. His marvellous telepathic mind could detect short cuts, avoid obstacles, and when necessary make other people get the hell out of the way without even knowing why they were doing it. And it did help that JC drove like a demon, ignoring the occasional wails of distress from his passengers. As they entered the home-stretch, JC shot Happy a thoughtful gaze.
“I know the streets look empty. But could anyone be following us? Are we being observed, perhaps, from a distance?”
“No, and no,” said Happy, clinging to his seat belt determinedly with both hands. “Accompanied by a large side order of Not A Chance In Hell. I’d know.”
“I could check,” Melody said immediately, determined not to be left out of things. “I’ve got a down-and-dirty sensor package somewhere in my back-pack.”
“By the time you’ve got it out and adjusted the settings, we’ll be there,” Happy said witheringly.
“Someone’s looking for a short sharp visit from the Slap Fairy,” said Melody.
Chimera House was right in the middle of London’s business centre; but when JC finally brought the car screeching to a halt in front of the massive office building, the entire area was completely deserted. Not a living soul in sight. Which was a bit suspicious because there’s always someone about in every part of London, whatever the hour. Everyone from the police to the homeless, party-goers, and minor celebrities—all of them out and about doing something they shouldn’t because there was no-one around to see . . .
Melody was immediately out of the back of the car, her hand-held scanner at the ready. She waved it around, adjusting the dials and hitting the thing with the flat of her hand when it didn’t do what she wanted it to do quickly enough. Happy took his time getting out of the car, so he could get his slouch exactly right, and show everyone how unhappy he was at being more or less awake at such an uncivilised time of the morning. JC got out of the car, locked it carefully, then sat on the bonnet and looked thoughtfully about him.
“No life signs anywhere,” Melody said briskly. “No dead signs, either. We are strictly on our own here. Sorry, JC.”
“Bad vibes,” Happy said wisely. “People can sense this is a bad place, and go out of their way to avoid it, even if they couldn’t tell you why. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to be. Of all the places Kim could have chosen to show up again. I don’t like it here. I’ve got the shudders. Have you got the shudders? Even the homeless wouldn’t sleep in these doorways. This entire area is spiritually polluted, right down to the stone and concrete.”
The three Ghost Finders stuck close together, looking the area over with professionally discerning eyes. None of them had been back here since the distressing Affair of the New People. Which . . . could have gone better. Chimera House still dominated the area, a massive steel-and-glass business edifice towering over the open square before it. The square itself felt cold and empty, laid out under an open night sky full of stars, and a pale full moon. The main illumination was the unwavering flat amber light from the street-lamps.
Everything had been carefully cleared up since the great battle of Chimera House. No sign anywhere of the great cracks in the ground or the shattered windows in the surrounding buildings. All the blood and bodies gathered up and spirited away . . . Someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to make it all seem as if nothing happened.
Chimera House itself stood silent and empty. No lights on anywhere, and heavy steel chains hung from the closed front doors. No-one allowed in or out, by order; and if you were wise, you didn’t ask on whose order. JC looked the building over carefully. He couldn’t avoid an uncomfortable feeling that the building was looking back at him. And not in a good way.
“Shouldn’t there be guards outside that building?” said Happy. “I mean, armed guards, heavily armed, to make sure no-one messes with whatever’s left inside?”
“Chimera House was supposed to be pulled down,” JC said steadily. “Completely destroyed, reduced to rubble, and built over because of all the really bad things that happened inside it. More than enough to make the ent
ire building a strange attractor, drawing in nasty people, and things, from all around. So I have to ask: why is it still here?”
“You should keep up on your interdepartmental memos,” said Melody. “Somebody very high up on the food chain over-ruled the Carnacki Institute. And I mean someone with really impressive clout. They insisted on preserving the building until a full investigative study could be performed on its contents. The Boss was mad as hell. Took her argument all the way to the top. And got nowhere.”
“Are we talking political or business clout?” said Happy.
“Yes,” said Melody.
“Ah,” said Happy.
“Pretty much the same thing, at that level,” said JC. “What was the name of the big company in charge of the medical experiments that went wrong, in Chimera House?”
“Mutable Solutions Incorporated,” said Melody. “One of the biggest drug companies in the world. Where does the eight-hundred-pound drug company sit? Anywhere it wants . . .”
“But what good does it do them, keeping Chimera House intact?” said Happy. “No-one will be able to work in it for ages. It’ll take years, more likely decades, to get the psychic stains out. You’ve heard of Sick Building Syndrome; well, Chimera House is the psychic equivalent of the Ebola virus. That whole building is crazy on a stick, waiting to happen.”
JC couldn’t help noticing that Happy didn’t even want to look at Chimera House as he spoke. They could all hear the open strain in the telepath’s voice.
“Maybe what happened inside the building is what makes it valuable,” said JC. “Valuable to The Flesh Undying, or its agents . . . Maybe it wants to maintain bad places, to make weak points in the walls of the world, so it can break out and get back where it came from.”
“Don’t you start,” Melody said firmly. “It’s bad enough having to live with a paranoid depressive, without having two of them on the team.”
“I don’t like it here!” Happy said loudly. “I feel . . . vulnerable. Like a target. Like I’m standing at ground zero, right in the middle of a bloody big bull’s-eye. With a target painted on my forehead.”
“Will you please calm the hell down!” said Melody, waving her hand scanner around. “There’s no-one else here!”
“There’s always something here,” said Happy. “We’re never alone, wherever we are. The world is packed full . . . I can See things, feel things . . . I want to get out of here!”
“We’re not going anywhere until Kim turns up!” JC said firmly. “However long that takes. Get a grip on yourself, Happy. This isn’t your first time at the rodeo.”
Happy sniffed miserably and stared determinedly down at his shoes. “Still want to know why there aren’t any guards.”
“He may be paranoid, but he has a point,” said Melody. “I’m pretty sure that was a condition on the building being allowed to stand. So where are they?”
“Someone must have called them off,” said JC. “Which implies . . . someone knew we were coming here before we did.”
The three of them stood close together. It was still the early hours of morning, cold and quiet and empty. No sign of the living, or the dead. But not exactly peaceful. JC and Happy and Melody hugged themselves against the chill and stamped their feet hard on the ground to keep warm.
“This is just like last time,” said Melody.
“Bloody better not be,” said Happy. “We were lucky to come out of that mission with all our important parts still attached. Dead men walking, insane doctors with cutty things, rogue transplant organs on the loose, Gog and Magog and the New People . . . We should get danger money. We should get unionised!” He scowled about him, still carefully avoiding looking at Chimera House. “I never thought it would be like this when the time came to get Kim back. I thought we’d have to storm some kind of castle, fight some monsters, to win back our lost princess.”
JC smiled at him. “You would, too, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course!” said Happy, surprised and even a little outraged that JC could think otherwise. “She might be your girl-friend, but she’s our team-mate, too.”
“Damn right,” said Melody. She draped an affectionate arm across Happy’s shoulders. “He’s very sentimental, on the quiet.”
“Of course,” said Happy. “There are limits. I’m giving Kim ten more minutes, then I’m going back to wait in the car. With the heater full on.”
“Sentimental, but practical,” said Melody. And then she stopped, grabbed Happy by the chin, and jerked his head around, so she could look him straight in the eye. “Happy, what is wrong with you? You’re shaking all over, and it isn’t from the cold. Are the psychic impressions here really that bad?”
“This whole area is saturated with weird energies,” said Happy, jerking his chin free. “And I mean, really strange stuff. It’s all information, you see, soaked into the surface of the world, radiating back and forth like emergency broadcasts from Heaven and Hell . . . And it’s getting more difficult all the time to keep it outside my head.”
Melody checked the readings on her scanner again. “I’m not picking up anything I’d consider . . . out of the ordinary.”
“Science is limited,” said Happy. “Science deals with the surface of the world, not what’s Below or Above.”
“Compared to your marvellous mutant mind, I suppose,” said Melody, testily.
“Yes,” said Happy.
“Oh come on,” said JC. “It can’t be that bad. I See stuff too, sometimes, but . . .”
He broke off. Happy was glaring at him.
“You never get it, do you? What it’s like to See the world as it really is, all the time, to know what’s really going on, all around us. All right! See the world through my eyes, for once!”
He grabbed JC and Melody by the arms; and immediately, all three of their minds were linked tightly together by the sheer force and power of Happy’s telepathy. He couldn’t have done it with anyone else; but the three of them had linked before. They weren’t just everyday Ghost Finders, after all.
The everyday view of London in the morning disappeared, replaced, or rather overwritten, by a larger view. The world around them was suddenly packed full of life and death, Heaven and Hell, and everything in between. Overlapping layers of spiritual and spatial dimensions, interspersed with spiralling moments of Time. Past, Present, and any number of Futures, all happening at once. Ghosts coming and going, following paths that didn’t exist any longer in the physical world. Stone tapes everywhere, ghostly images imprinted on their surroundings, playing back loops of repeating Time, over and over again.
JC almost cried out, as he saw old images of the A team who died inside Chimera House. Jeremy Diego, Monica Odini, Ivar ap Owen. Legends in their field; caught by surprise and killed in a moment. Still there, held forever in a repeating moment, like insects trapped in amber. Forever going to their deaths, and not knowing it. And there was nothing JC could do to help them or even warn them.
He’d never liked them much. Somehow, that made it worse.
More images now, layer upon layer, with people from every period of history, all shouting at once. An endless din of dead voices. Unfinished bodies walking in and out of buildings as though they weren’t even there. Because they weren’t, once. Dead men and women walking in and out of each other, teeming like the unseen microscopic images that swarm in a drop of water. How many ghosts can dance on the head of a pin? Depends on the tune . . .
More voices, more sounds, human and inhuman. Great booming Voices, shouting at the world from Outside. Sounds that might have been screams or laughter, or human interpretations of Voices beyond our comprehension. The dead, reaching out for answers, or comfort, or simple human contact. Crying out against the dying of the light or the rising of the dark.
Flashing images of this world and that and countless others, coming and going, superimposing themselves, turning and twisting and combining to make new things, the way two colours can mix to make a third. And always . . . creatures, strange thing
s, moving through our world from one unknowable place to another. The apparently empty open square before Chimera House was like the Grand Central Station of the supernatural. And this, JC and Melody slowly realised, was what it always looked and sounded like in Happy’s world.
The telepath jerked his hands free from JC and Melody, breaking contact, and the world was quiet and empty and sane again.
JC swayed on his feet, his heart hammering, struggling to win back his mental equilibrium. His face was wet with sweat. He looked at Melody; and she looked the same. They both looked at Happy, who stared back defiantly.
“You see?” he said. “That’s what I see and hear all the time. All the things that never go away, never shut up, never leave me alone. I have to fight with everything I’ve got to keep them out of my head. So the only thoughts in my mind are my own. So I only see and hear what everyone else does. The pressure never stops, never lets up for a moment; and I get so tired, so tired . . .”
“Oh, sweetie,” said Melody. She took him in her arms and held him close; and Happy let her.
“There’s nothing we can do to help, is there?” said JC.
“No,” said Happy. “Though I am working on something.” He pushed Melody gently away from him. “We’re not here for me. We’re here for Kim. Where is she?”
“Back at the Haybarn Theatre, she said she wasn’t abducted—just missing,” said JC. “That she was busy, following leads of her own. She said she saw, or experienced, something important here while she was possessing Robert Patterson; and that she had to pursue it. So where has she been all this time? And what has she been doing?”
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