“I don’t know!” said Melody.
“Whatever’s at the heart of what’s happening here,” JC said heavily, “we must be pretty close to finding it or it wouldn’t be trying so hard to stop us.”
“I don’t think so,” said Happy, slowly. “It doesn’t feel like that . . . I may be wrong, JC, but it really doesn’t feel to me like we’re in any danger from these ghosts.”
JC looked at him. “They seem desperate enough to get in and get at us. Are you sure about this, Happy?”
“Of course I’m not sure!” said Happy. “There’s so much spectral information here, it’s swamping my Sight. But look at their faces! That’s not hate, or malevolence, or even revenge. That’s . . . need, anticipation, maybe even hope. They don’t want to kill us; they want something from us. And you know what; I don’t see the blonde woman anywhere.”
“She isn’t a ghost, remember?” said Melody. “Though . . . I suppose she could be orchestrating all this, from a distance.”
“Take a good look around, Happy,” said JC. “Are you sure you can’t See her anywhere?”
Happy snarled and shook his head. “I keep telling you; the aether’s so saturated with psychic energies, it’s like trying to look through thick fog.”
“You make this stuff up as you go along, don’t you?” said JC.
Kim suddenly reappeared, right there inside the shrinking circle with them, smiling brightly. Everyone jumped. Melody glared at her.
“How can you be in here, with us—in a circle of scientific reality? Not that I’m not glad to see you, of course, but . . .”
“I can be here because I’m linked to all of you,” said Kim. “I belong with you. Your affirmation of my existence overpowers science’s need to deny me.”
“All right, now you’re making stuff up, too,” said JC. “Where have you been, Kim?”
“Searching,” Kim said cheerfully. “The ghosts didn’t want to hurt me; they wanted to point us in the right direction. There’s a power behind these ghosts that’s trying to distract you. Follow me.”
She walked right out of the circle and kept going, and the ghosts fell back on every side, opening a wide corridor for her to walk through. JC and the others moved cautiously after Kim, and the army of ghosts let them. Walking through the ghosts made JC want to shake and shudder. So many ghosts in one place projected a spiritual cold, the absolute opposite of life’s warmth and vitality. JC made himself stare straight ahead. Happy and Melody crowded in close behind him. Kim led them through the main bar and all the ranks and rows of watching ghosts, all the way to the main entrance and out the door. The ghosts stood there and watched them go.
* * *
Outside in the car park, everything had changed. To start with, the car park wasn’t there any more. The concrete base and its surrounding low stone walls had simply disappeared, replaced by a great open area of bare earth punctuated with tufting grass. Like an old clearing in a forest. The sky above was full of stars and a bright full moon. There was no rain, and no wind, but JC could still hear the storm. When he looked up, the storm was circling overhead, like a great whirlpool of disturbed air, hurtling round and round in the sky above the King’s Arms. The pub looked as it had, with friendly lights blazing from all the downstairs windows.
It took JC a moment to realise that the sound of the storm had changed. The roaring and the rage was so much clearer now. It sounded . . . like a living thing.
But what drew everyone’s attention away from the pub and the clearing and the storm was even more impressive. Standing opposite the King’s Arms, on the other side of the clearing, towering high above them, was a giant Wicker Man. A huge, roughly human shape, woven together out of dark green wicker strands, with a great barrel chest set on thick, stumpy legs. Stiff, downward-thrusting arms ended in spiky wooden fingers; and all of it was topped with a blunt, square, featureless head. A massive wicker cage to hold all the people and livestock the Druids would burn alive, in sacrifice. Their gift to their gods, for when they wanted things the gods didn’t want to give them, without tribute. Just standing there, its blunt, featureless head rising way up into the night sky, its dark green shape overpowering in the moonlight, the Wicker Man was an ugly, brutal thing.
Its feet stood in a huge pool of recently spilled blood. JC almost choked on the thick copper smell of it. Dark oils dripped from the spike-fingered hands, old-time accelerants to help it burn better. The Wicker Man looked disturbingly real and solid, but it was full of ghosts. All that remained of all the people and animals that had been sacrificed in Wicker Men in the past. They glowed faintly, like ghostly candles, and did not move or speak. They were burned, blackened bodies, faces still stretched in their last, agonised, dying screams. They stared past the wicker bars of their prison with dark, eyeless faces, looking down at the Ghost Finders, begging silently for help. Or revenge. Or—perhaps—their freedom, at last.
Standing before the Wicker Man, smiling calmly and utterly composed, was the blonde woman. She wore a simple white sacrificial shift stained with a great splash of blood across her lower abdomen. Her death wound, still dripping steadily after all the years. She saw JC looking at it and nodded briefly.
“Oh yes,” she said. “Nailed my guts to the old oak tree. They really did. Two of them held my arms, while the third rammed an iron spike right through me, pinning me to the trunk of the tree. It took me a long time to die.”
“Where are we?” said JC. “Or should that be when are we?”
“We’re outside the King’s Arms,” said the blonde woman. “Outside of Time and Space. For the moment. The inn has been here for centuries, under many names and identities, built to help hold off the awful thing the Druid priests created here, in this clearing. They used the power my sacrifice gave them to perform a great magical working, and it all went horribly wrong. I wasn’t killed so they could summon the storm; my death gave them the power to stop it. Except my dying here, in this bad place, gave me power. My dying curse linked me to the storm and this place, which is at least partly why Time and Space are so messed up here.”
“You know,” said Happy, “I have to say, you speak very good modern English for someone who lived and died fifteen hundred years ago.”
“I’ve been hanging around the inn for ages,” said the blonde woman. “Watching, and listening. I paid attention. And it’s not like I have human limitations any longer. You’ve all done remarkably well, dealing with the individual horrors of the King’s Arms, breaking the many chains that held me down. So I am free enough now to tell you the truth of what happened in this awful place. Whether you’ll be able to do anything about it remains to be seen. But I have hope. At last.
“Before there was ever a building of any kind here, this was a place of worship and sacrifice. The Druid priests practiced their nasty arts here, to help them protect and control their people. And in this place, they performed a great and terrible magic, to put an end to a storm that seemed like it would never end. It rained for months, without pause. Flooding the roads and saturating the fields, washing away the good topsoil. Rivers burst their banks and carried away the bridges. Rising waters washed away the crops, flooded the local habitations, and destroyed settlements for miles around. The livestock drowned, and the people were forced to flee the area.
“The Druid priests couldn’t have that. You can’t control people when there aren’t any people. Those who did remain were turning against the priests, who were clearly not in favour with the gods any more. So the priests raised the power they needed, with one of the oldest forms of magic. Necromancy, the magic of murder. They couldn’t stop the storm, or dissipate it, so they did the next best thing and forced it outside our reality. Made a crack in Space and Time and forced the storm through. They sacrificed a lot of people to gain that power. But then, as far as the Druid priests were concerned, that was what people were for. They used Wicker Men, at first. Ranks and ranks of them, stretched out across the land, burning like beacons in the night. And th
en, when that wasn’t enough, they picked out certain significant people and sacrificed them in the local places of power.
“They murdered me here, in a clearing that everyone else had the good sense to stay well clear of. It was a bad place, even then. My sacrifice, in such a place, gave the priests the last piece of power they needed to drive the storm away. And that was that. They thought.”
“Hold everything,” said Happy. “Rain, rain, go away; come again another day? Really? That’s what this is all about?”
“They forced the storm outside the world, but they couldn’t destroy it,” said the blonde woman. “And all this time it’s been trying to get back. Growing bigger, and stronger, and more determined. Looking for a weak spot to force its way back in. Because it wasn’t just a storm, any more. My dying rage, amplified by the bad place, mixed with the storm. Gave it a purpose. The storm . . . is my dying curse.
“Even after I died, some of me still remained here, linking the storm to this place. So the Druids had a house built, to hold me here, to hold me down. Which, of course, made the bad place even worse. No wonder the King’s Arms has always been lousy with ghosts.”
“What made you so . . . special?” said JC. “That you could be responsible for all this?”
The blonde woman shrugged. “Perhaps I had magics and abilities of my own, unsuspected. Perhaps the bad place, and my awful death, brought them out of me. Because it is my rage that still drives the storm.”
“But all the Druid priests, and the people responsible for your death . . . they’re all long gone,” said Melody.
The blonde woman shrugged again. “It’s a lot easier to start something than it is to stop it. Revenge, like love, is blind. It wants what it wants.”
“What’s your name?” said JC, as kindly as he could.
“I don’t remember,” said the blonde woman. “That woman is gone, long gone. It doesn’t matter. It’s not as if I’m real. I’m only a small part of something much bigger. I’ve been here so long, held in this place, that I had to give up most of my memories to survive.”
“Are you a part of the storm, or is it the other way around?” said Happy. “It sounds like a living thing.”
“We’re . . . connected,” said the blonde woman. “I’m the rage that drives the storm on; but it isn’t just a storm any longer. Hasn’t been for centuries. It took what it needed from me, to keep it strong. But . . . I have no control over it. I’m only a part of this . . . the part that has watched over this inn, and these people, and this town for so long . . . that I have formed a fondness for them. This small part doesn’t want to see them all die. But that’s me speaking. Only a very small part of what’s happening.”
“What do you want with us?” Melody said bluntly.
“I would have thought that was obvious,” said the woman. “I want you to stop me. Stop the storm from returning and destroying everything. The storm is so big now, I think it could drown the whole world without getting tired. By removing the layers of ghosts and traps and Things from Outside from the King’s Arms, you’ve managed to remove some of the barriers that kept the storm out.”
“How do we stop it?” said JC.
“You don’t understand,” said the blonde woman. “I’m only the small rational part that’s left. My rage has taken on a power of its own. It drives the storm on. It is the storm. I have no control over it. That’s why I need you. I can speak to you, warn you, but that’s all. The greater part of me still wants its revenge, denied for centuries. All I can say to you is: remember what Brook told you, about the oldest part of the inn. Remember its significance.”
She’d barely finished speaking when a great bolt of lightning slammed down from the circling storm overhead. It grounded itself through the blonde woman, pinning her in place, like an iron spike to a tree-trunk. She faded away, becoming a ghost image of herself. The lightning bolt snapped off, and the faintly glowing human shape rose into the air and was pulled away backwards, faster and faster. The last expression JC could make out on her face was a terrible resignation. The figure flew across the clearing, still rising into the air, until it slammed into the massive curving chest of the Wicker Man and was absorbed.
They could all see her for a moment, looking out through the wicker bars of her cage, a prisoner in the Wicker Man along with all the other dead sacrificial victims. And then she faded slowly away, lost among all the other ghost candles.
The huge Wicker Man creaked loudly as its great blocky head slowly turned to look down on the Ghost Finders. Its whole enormous structure stretched and groaned, as the Wicker Man raised its great green arm, wooden fingers slowly clenching into a jagged fist. The Wicker Man was alive.
“Look on the bright side,” said Happy. “At least it isn’t on fire.”
Two dark yellow flames appeared, burning fiercely in the blank face—fiery eyes for the Wicker Man to see them with.
JC glared at Happy. “You had to say it, didn’t you?”
They all scattered, as the giant Wicker Man surged forward, its huge bulk moving with impossible speed. The massive wooden fist came sweeping down and hammered onto the bare ground with such force that the earth split open from one end of the clearing to the other. All of the Ghost Finders were sent sprawling. They heaved themselves back onto their feet again, and JC yelled for everyone to run in different directions, so the Wicker Man would find it harder to target them. But Kim stuck by his side, refusing to leave him, and Happy and Melody wouldn’t be separated. They did move quickly away from JC and Kim, as the Wicker Man raised its terrible hand again, glaring down with its flaming eyes. And then it stepped forward on its great stocky legs, making the ground jump and dance as it strode forward to stand between the Ghost Finders and the King’s Arms.
Melody produced her machine-pistol and opened fire. Cursed and blessed ammunition stitched long ragged rows of holes across the wide chest, blasting the green threads apart; but the Wicker Man didn’t even shudder under the impact. Melody kept on firing anyway, raking the head and chest until she ran out of bullets. She lowered her gun, breathing hard, and looked at Happy.
“I can’t reach it!” he said, his hands clenched into desperate fists. “I’m not even sure there’s anything in there to be reached! It’s not a living thing, it’s a construct! A memory of the Past given shape and form and malice by the local power source! JC! Tell me what to do!”
“To start with, keep its attention!” said JC. “I’ve got an idea.”
“Whatever this idea is, I love it!” Happy said immediately. “You have my full and total support! Go ahead and—Oh bloody hell, it’s moving again!”
The Wicker Man stooped forward, bending right over, its massive hands opening as they reached out to grab the Ghost Finders. Its huge feet stamped down hard as it moved, so that the bare earth jumped under JC’s feet as he ran for his life, Kim hovering at his side. Melody and Happy ran in the opposite direction, trying to distract the Wicker Man. The great jagged hands swept back and forth but couldn’t find anything. JC couldn’t help noticing that the Wicker Man’s movements were becoming more supple, more sure. As though it was leaning how to move, how to be alive. He stopped where he was, took a deep breath, and concentrated. Kim hovered at his side, smiling bravely, trying to be supportive. JC put his head back and addressed the heavens, trying very hard not to look at the storm circling overhead.
“Move, JC!” yelled Melody. “It’s coming your way!”
“I am calling for help!” said JC. “You said it was no coincidence that we were sent here; and I think you’re right. We’re here because of our experiences with old Druid ways, down in London Undertowen, and because we’re the only ones who can stop this. Because we have a trump card. Before the old god Lud left this reality, he said he owed us one last favour; and I’m thinking this is the time to call it in. So, Lud! Are you listening? We need your help, right now!”
“No need to shout,” said Lud. “I’m dead, not deaf. And I’ve been waiting for your call.”
He stood towering above them, facing off against the giant Wicker Man, who seemed frozen in place. If JC hadn’t known better, he’d have said it was shocked. The Wicker Man was huge; but Lud was massive. A great old god from when the land was young, Lud stood a hundred feet tall and more, looming over the Wicker Man; and he didn’t look like a fossilised statue any more. His dark, leathery skin gleamed with vitality, and his huge, horned head rose grandly into the night sky. His eyes glowed with the same golden gleam as JC’s. Lud looked down and smiled slowly, showing huge, blocky teeth.
“I knew you’d need me here, for this one last unfinished thing from my Time. Go to the inn. Do what needs to be done. And I will buy you some time.”
He strode forward and grabbed hold of the Wicker Man with his great clawed hands. The Wicker Man grabbed onto the god, and the two huge figures struggled together, staggering back and forth across the clearing, striking at each other with terrible blows that could have toppled hills. Lud was bigger and stronger, but every time he tore into the Wicker Man, its dark green body stitched itself back together again. They swayed back and forth, their great feet stamping on the bare earth with such force they cracked it apart. The old god Lud struck down the Wicker Man with savage force; but it always rose again, re-formed and remade by the power of the storm circling above it.
JC led his people back to the King’s Arms, dodging this way and that to avoid being trodden on; and then they all stopped as a grey army of ghosts came pouring out of the inn, passing through the walls. JC braced himself, but the ghosts swept right past him, their dead gaze set on the two huge fighting figures. They swarmed up and over the Wicker Man, clinging to its arms and legs, struggling to hold it back and slow it down. Because they saw at last a chance to be free from the old power that held them. Lud laughed aloud, and hit the Wicker Man’s blunt head so hard his fist buried itself deep inside.
JC gathered up his people and ran back inside the King’s Arms.
* * *
Spirits from Beyond Page 24