And then . . . Happy looked at the thing in the case before him and felt his strength drop away. He tried to examine it with his Sight, to make sure it was what it claimed to be, but the layers of protection laid down around the display case defeated him. So he stepped back and raised his voice, calling the others to him in an increasingly loud and hysterical tone. The Empty Librarian arrived first, running into the Acquisitions Suite, waving its empty sleeves.
“Please, sir, remember where you are!”
“Go to Hell!” said Happy. “How long have you had this? You had this here; and you didn’t think to tell us?”
Kim appeared out of nowhere to stand next to Happy, calming him with her proximity. JC and Melody came running through the stacks to join them. The Empty Librarian fell back, as Happy gestured wildly at the thing in the display case.
“That, right there, is supposed to be an actual part of The Flesh Undying!” he said loudly.
They all gathered together before the display case, maintaining a safe and respectful distance. Beyond the reinforced glass was a small, pulsating blob of . . . something. Something that didn’t belong in this world. It was no colour they could name, no consistency that made any sense, and it never stayed one shape for long. It rose and fell, turning itself inside out, throwing itself back and forth against the sides of the steel-and-glass case that contained it. Like a caged animal, desperate to be free.
“Someone put a bit of The Flesh Undying inside a box?” said JC.
“That is not a box, sir,” said the Empty Librarian. “That is a display case. Though I am forced to admit, it is one of our more secure display cases.”
“How was it brought here?” said Melody, staring fascinated at the writhing, pulsating thing.
“I’m not exactly sure, miss. It appeared here, a few weeks ago, already contained within its case. Along with an account of its acquisition.”
With the end of an empty sleeve, he indicated a heavy note-book set beneath the display case. JC and the rest of his team looked at the note-book, each of them quietly wondering why they hadn’t noticed it before. JC finally picked up the note-book, very carefully and very gingerly, and opened it, holding it out so they could all see. The handwritten pages contained a brief account of how this particular piece of The Flesh Undying had come into the possession of the Carnacki Institute.
They all recognised the handwriting. It was Catherine Latimer’s.
Apparently, a large communications company had been laying a new section of transatlantic cable. The machinery hit something, on the very bottom of the ocean, and the ship laying the cable was mysteriously lost, with all hands. Other ships went to investigate; and as a result the cable was redirected to another section of the ocean, many miles away. And to hell with the extra expense. Somewhere along the way, a small piece of what the original cable-laying ship had encountered had been acquired, then gifted to the Institute. No names, no details. And there the record ended.
JC put the note-book back under the display case and looked at the others. And then they all looked at the raging thing in its case.
“I’ve been trying to examine it through my Sight,” said Happy. “But forcing my mind through the defensive shields takes so much out of me . . . What I can See makes no sense at all. There’s so much of it, I can’t get a grip on it. As though it’s denser, realer, than everything else.”
“I wish I had my equipment with me,” said Melody. “I’d make this thing talk. Hell, I’d make it sing and dance and give up all its secrets.”
“It’s been tried,” said the Empty Librarian.
Melody bristled and glared at him. “You don’t even know what I have in mind!”
“I don’t need to, miss,” said the Empty Librarian. “It’s been tried. It’s all been tried. Long before it got here. It’s all in the back of the note-book.”
Kim drifted forward and stuck her face right up against the glass side, so she could look directly at the blob. It became increasingly agitated under her steady gaze, throwing itself back and forth and flailing at the glass sides. It suddenly expanded, growing greatly in size, pushing outwards until it filled the entire display case, pressed flat against each of the glass walls. And the heavily reinforced glass began to crack. Jagged lines shot across the sides of the case, splintering the glass. Everyone fell back sharply, including the Empty Librarian.
“It’s a trap!” shouted Happy. “It’s another bloody trap! The Flesh Undying gave up part of itself so it could be brought here! I can hear it now; its thoughts are as loud as a thunderstorm, powerful as an earthquake . . . That blobby thing may be separated from the main body, but it’s still connected, still part of The Flesh Undying!”
“But what does it want?” said JC. He grabbed Happy by the shoulders and held him in place. “Concentrate, Happy. Why did it want to be brought here?”
“Because it knew we’d come to look at it!” said Happy. “It wants us dead, JC. The whole team! It wants us destroyed because . . . we’re dangerous to it! Damn. I didn’t know that. Kind of heartening, really . . . JC, you’ve got to Do Something! It’s getting out! The glass is cracking and the shields are failing and once that thing has escaped from its cage, there’s nothing here that can stop its growing big enough to . . . Oh. Oh no . . . You really don’t want to know what it wants to do to us . . .”
The blob had filled every square inch of its container now, not a gap or bubble anywhere, seething and straining against the glass sides of the display case. Strange lights sparked and flared inside it, multi-coloured threads of energy snapping back and forth like illuminated blood-vessels. Melody pointed her machine-pistol at the case, then lowered it again, uncertainly. Happy stepped forward and put himself bodily between her and the thing in the case. Melody smiled briefly and stepped forward to stand beside him. She put an arm across his shoulders, and he put an arm around her waist.
JC took off his sunglasses and turned the full force of his golden eyes on the thing in the case. The blob shook and shuddered but didn’t withdraw an inch.
“Rather hoped for more than that,” said JC. “Kim, this might be a good time for you to teleport out of here.”
“I won’t leave you,” said Kim. “I only just got you back. There must be something you can do.”
“I don’t have my equipment,” said Melody.
“We could still run,” said Happy. “Running’s always good. But I don’t think we’d get very far . . .”
“And we can’t leave the Libraries undefended,” said JC. “We stand and fight; that’s the job. Except, we have no tech, no weapons, no magics or special Institute techniques that would do any good. I suppose we could eat it . . .”
“After you,” said Happy.
“The Acquisitions!” JC said sharply. “That’s the answer! Objects of Power, right? Smash the cases, everyone, and grab anything that looks useful!”
“That really won’t be necessary,” said the Empty Librarian. Everyone stopped and looked at him. The empty suit of clothes didn’t seem at all worried.
“What?” said JC.
“Refreshing though your zeal to protect the Libraries is, before you go wild and start smashing all the exhibits, I feel I should point out that we here at the Libraries are perfectly capable of dealing with a rogue exhibit. Tommy Atkins! Your presence is required!”
The uniformed soldier appeared out of nowhere, standing before the display case. And then there was another soldier, standing on the opposite side. And then more, and more, dozens of Tommy Atkinses, surrounding the case in row after row. They didn’t raise their rifles; they simply glared at the blob in its case, concentrating their full attention on it. The blob faltered and fell back, falling in upon itself, until there was nothing left of it in the display case but a small ball of suppurating organic matter, barely moving at all.
“Of course,” said JC. “That . . . thing, is just flesh. While Tommy Atkins, all of him, are pure spirit. It has no effect on them and no defences against them. They
outnumbered it, and overwhelmed it, through sheer spiritual presence.”
“Yeah, more or less,” said Tommy Atkins. “I was hoping I’d get a chance to bayonet it . . .”
He was the one they recognised, from outside the door. All the others had disappeared, gone in a moment. He leaned over the display case, wrinkling his nose at what remained of the blob. “You, behave yourself! Don’t make me have to come down here again. Or there will be trouble.”
He straightened up, nodded easily to the Empty Librarian; and disappeared.
Melody and Happy realised they were still holding each other. They quickly let go, stepped back; and then looked at each other. JC went for a little walk, to calm himself down. He was used to being the one who saved the day at the last moment; and he didn’t like being upstaged. And he was pretty certain his plan to use the Objects of Power would have worked, in a generally destructive kind of way . . .
The Empty Librarian looked thoughtfully at the ghost girl Kim.
“You’re not the first restless spirit we’ve had down here, my dear; not by a long shot. Some field agents have difficulty letting go . . . The filters keep most of them out, but you’re something different, aren’t you? I can see the mark of Strangeness on you, like your Mr. Chance. And your two other friends, of course.”
“Don’t tell them,” said Kim. “They don’t know. They don’t need to know, yet. It would only upset them.”
“As you wish, miss,” said the Empty Librarian. “Now, is there any way in which I can be of service to you?”
“Is there anything here especially suited to my . . . special nature?”
“There are the Ghostly Reads, miss. The last aetheric remains, of books that no long exist on the material plane. Ghosts of lost books; perfect reading material for the not yet departed.”
“Show me,” said Kim.
But when the Empty Librarian led her to a collection of glowing, semi-transparent books on a dusty shelf, flickering like dying light bulbs, Kim found that although she could take the books off the shelf, and even open them and read them, they were all of them written in dead languages she couldn’t understand.
She went back to join the others and found JC glowering at the Empty Librarian.
“These are the Carnacki Institute Secret Libraries! One of the biggest repositories of hidden knowledge in the world! There must be something here that can help us!”
“JC . . .” said Kim.
“No! I need to know this. I need to know why Outer forces brought me back from the dead!”
“Ah, sir,” said the Empty Librarian, not unkindly. “You don’t need books for that. You don’t need anything we have here. We deal only in the Past; and you are concerned with the Future. You need to get back out in the field, sir, take names, and kick bottoms, and get your answers direct from the horse’s mouth, as it were. You need to go to the source, sir.”
* * *
JC and his team sat quietly in the car, in someone else’s private parking place. Thinking, considering, what to do next. The sun was finally up, shedding a cold grey light across the Woolwich Arsenal. A few birds had started singing, in a half-hearted sort of way. People in uniforms came and went, but went nowhere near the car. Word had got around.
JC turned suddenly, to look at Melody in the back seat. “Did you bring your lap-top with you?”
“Of course,” she said. “It’s in my back-pack.”
“Get it up and running,” said JC. “Can you get a signal here?”
“This lap-top could get a signal anywhere,” said Melody. “It’s very well trained.” She soon had it open on her lap. “All right, I’m signed in. What am I looking for?”
“Catherine Latimer,” said JC. “Dear old Boss of Bosses. Her fingerprints were all over what just happened. See if there’s anything new about her in the Carnacki files. See what people are saying about her.”
“No problem,” said Melody, her fingers flying across the keyboard.
“What’s going on?” said Happy.
“Damned if I know,” said JC. “But I’m starting to get a really bad feeling . . .”
“Welcome to my world,” said Happy. “We have T-shirts and decoder rings and everything. And you don’t even want to know what the and everything involves.”
“Mouth is open, should be shut,” said JC.
“Yes, boss.”
It took a while, with Melody frowning more and more severely as she jumped from site to site, looking at things she definitely wasn’t cleared to know, but finally she let out a long breath and looked at JC.
“If the Carnacki Institute was a business,” said Melody, “I would say I was looking at a hostile takeover. Someone is trying to remove Catherine Latimer from her position as Head of the Institute, and replace her with someone else. Loyal to . . . someone else.”
“Is that necessarily a bad thing?” said Happy. “Would be nice to have a Boss who didn’t make me want to wet myself every time she looks at me.”
“She may be an ogre,” said JC, “but she’s our ogre. And better the ogre you know . . . Who’s plotting against her, Melody?”
“I can’t tell,” said Melody, scowling. “Whoever it is is hiding their tracks with great thoroughness, behind walls and walls of secrecy. There are lots of people involved in this, with a hell of a lot of the left hand not knowing what the right foot’s doing . . . but this is all very definitely being organised by someone already deep within the Carnacki Institute. And, fairly high up . . . Someone is quite definitely informing against Catherine Latimer, easing the path for whoever’s trying to oust her.”
And that was when Catherine Latimer’s grim face suddenly appeared on the lap-top screen, glaring out at them all. Melody made a loud squeak of surprise, then tried very hard to look as though she hadn’t.
“What the hell are you people doing, looking at things that are none of your business?” the Boss said loudly. “And what were you doing back at Chimera House? I didn’t authorise any return visit! Come and see me in my private office. And yes, that does include the ghost. Welcome back, Kim. It’s about time. Be in my office at 9:00 A.M. sharp! All of you! Or there will be trouble.”
Her face disappeared from the lap-top screen, and Melody quickly slammed the lid shut.
“Well,” said JC. “This should be interesting.”
“Have I got time to change my trousers?” said Happy.
THREE
INTERVIEW WITH A SCARY PERSON
Some days, it’s all hurry up and wait, JC decided. He and Happy and Melody sat together in the Boss’s outer office, on the uncomfortable visitors’ chairs provided. Deliberately designed that way, to keep visitors from feeling too important, or even welcome. It was twenty past nine in the morning, and the Boss still wasn’t ready to meet them. The three of them had of course arrived at 9:00 A.M. on the dot because it was more than their lives were worth to keep Catherine Latimer waiting one moment if she wanted to see them . . . But the Boss did like to keep people waiting, to remind them she was the Boss.
The Waiting Room was small, stuffy, and entirely windowless, tucked away in the back of Buckingham Palace. In a part of the building that didn’t officially exist. Dozens of portraits covered all four walls, without even the smallest space left for a clock or a calendar. All head-and-shoulder shots, of Carnacki Institute agents who had fallen in the field and never got up again—the Honoured Dead. The faces all looked worryingly young because few field agents ever survived long enough to reach retirement. Or even middle age. It wasn’t a job you did for the honour or the glory, and definitely not for the money; you did it because you believed it was a job worth doing. The job was its own reward because you certainly weren’t going to get any other kind.
The oldest portraits were oil paintings, moving steadily on through daguerreotypes to sepia prints, and all the way up to the latest digital photos. You posed for your official portrait the day you were accepted into the fold because you might not get another chance. The only thing all th
e portraits had in common was that none of the faces were smiling. They were all the same size, the same frame, with no names and no histories. Not even a Lest We Forget. The Carnacki Institute didn’t encourage sentimentality. Perhaps because everyone involved knew that tragedy came as standard.
JC looked around the room, from wall to wall. As far as he could make out, there was no obvious progression, from past to present. No obvious pattern or design to the layout. Except that they were always in different places every time he visited. JC was convinced the portraits changed their positions all the time, when no-one was looking. Possibly fighting out savage alpha-dominance clashes, like antlered stags butting heads, for superior position or prominence. JC decided that coming up with ideas like that was a sign he’d been sitting there far too long.
JC and Melody and Happy sat side by side, hiding their impatience as best they could because it didn’t do to show weakness in the face of the enemy. Melody was playing a game of Angry Chavs on her phone. Happy was scribbling frantically in his private note-book, trying to get down everything he’d seen and heard and read in the Secret Libraries before he forgot it. So he could go on all his favourite conspiracy sites, boast of his new knowledge, and win all the arguments. Or at the very least, start a few new ones.
JC looked thoughtfully at the heavily reinforced steel door at the back of the Waiting Room. The only entrance to Catherine Latimer’s personal and very private office. The door was tall and broad and looked solid enough to stop a tank moving at speed. Happy had studied the door once, with his Sight cranked all the way open, and had to be carried out of the Waiting Room crying, with a headache that lasted for days. The Boss’s office was protected on levels that didn’t even bear thinking about.
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