“Then what was it?” said JC. “What are you picking up, Happy?”
“There’s nothing here,” said Happy. “Nothing real, anyway. It’s like trying to grab handfuls of fog . . .”
Lights flared suddenly, all across the night sky. Fierce as lightning, vivid multi-coloured circles cart-wheeling across the dark. Sharp colours lit up the ship, and shadows danced in a dozen different directions at once. The crew looked on, entranced, until the Captain yelled at them to pay attention to their surroundings.
“Ball lightning?” said Melody, tentatively.
“Maybe,” said JC.
The lights suddenly all snapped off at once, as though someone had hit a switch, and the night sky went back to being respectably dark again.
“What was the point of that?” said JC.
Happy shrugged. “What’s the point of most dreams?”
“You know,” Melody said slowly, “I have had some really bad dreams in my time. The kind of horrors you only escape from by waking up. That’s what’s walking your ship at night, Captain Katt. Nightmares—given shape and form.”
“Okay,” said Katt. “I think I like it even less when she tells me things.”
The bathysphere reverberated loudly, a slow, solemn sound, ringing on the night like a great steel bell. Everyone turned to look as the sphere’s support cables coiled and uncoiled, writhing like snakes. And while everybody was looking at that, something grabbed hold of a crewman and hauled him right over the railings. He cried out in shock and horror, but by the time everyone had turned to look, he was already over the side and gone. No-one could even be sure who or what had taken him. Several crewmen rushed to the side and peered down into the dark waters; but there was no splash, no disturbance, no sign of what had happened to him.
“I’ve lost another man,” said Katt. He glared at Natasha Chang. “Sixteen years working for the Project, and I never lost a single member of my crew until I came here!”
“Do you want to make an official complaint?” said Chang. “Because I can tell you right now, officially no-one in the Project will give a damn. You’re here to do a job, Captain. Suck it up and get on with it, or I’ll replace you with someone who can.”
The Captain shook his head slowly. “We should never have come here. The Flesh Undying hasn’t just poisoned these waters; it’s poisoned the world.”
JC looked up and down the long deck, but nothing was moving. It was eerily quiet, the only sound in the night the gentle murmur of waves lapping against the sides of the Moonchilde. Everyone was standing very still, looking about them. Whatever was happening, it wasn’t over yet. They could all feel something bad approaching . . . drawing closer every moment. JC couldn’t help noticing that Latimer didn’t seem particularly bothered, presumably because she really had seen it all before. At least she’d shut down the glow from her eyes. Which reminded JC to put his sunglasses back on.
A shimmering human form appeared, right in the middle of the deck, screaming and howling. It staggered back and forth as though buffeted by an unseen wind, crying out with rage and horror. It seemed to be made entirely of sizzling light, spitting and sparking, like lightning imprisoned in a human shape. The figure lurched forward, its every movement packed with unbearable suffering, leaving a trail of burning footprints in its wake. Everything it touched burst into flames. Crewmen rushed forward to battle the fires, with extinguishers and heavy blankets. None of them wanted to get too close to the apparition, but it paid them no attention at all, caught up in the horror of its own condition.
Katt grabbed hold of Happy’s shoulder. “Talk to me, Mr. Palmer! Is that . . . human? Could it be one of my missing crewmen?”
“No,” said Happy. “That is not human. Never was. It’s just something trying to look like a man.”
“Why?” said Katt. “Why would it want to do that?”
“Because whatever is driving all this, it knows what scares us,” said Happy. “Sights and sounds are all very well, but nothing terrifies us more than intimations of our own mortality. Essentially, this is the darker side of the Flesh Undying talking to our darker side. Its subconscious in conversation with ours.”
Katt turned his back on the telepath and moved away. JC looked at Happy.
“Are you sure about that?”
“No,” said Happy. “I’m just talking off the top of my head. It’s not like there’s a Spotter’s Guide for the Supernatural and Uncanny. Though there really ought to be. All I can tell you for sure is that the thing before us is not and never was human.”
“What does it look like, to you?” said JC. “You always see things differently from the rest of us, even when you’re not blasted out of your skull.”
Happy considered the ghost carefully. “Rage, hatred, and a need to destroy.”
Some of the crewmen must have got the same feeling because they opened fire on the shimmering figure. Their bullets passed harmlessly through it and chewed up the ship’s woodwork. Until Captain Katt yelled at them to stop firing, before they accidentally hit each other. Most did, but some continued, desperate to feel they were doing something. They only stopped when they ran out of bullets. Katt glared at the Ghost Finders.
“Do something!”
“Does panicking count?” said Happy.
“You’re not panicking,” said Melody.
“I’m not?” said Happy. “Oh, that is a relief.”
“What do you think, Happy?” said JC. “Is it Flesh?”
“No . . .” The telepath frowned thoughtfully. “I can’t feel any physical presence. It’s not really here.”
“Are you sure?” said Melody. “Given how much of this ship is currently on fire, because of it . . . If it’s not what it looks like, what is it?”
“A distraction,” said Latimer. She looked coldly around her. “It’s big and bright and destructive, and it’s here to hold our attention while something else is happening. Something important that we’re not supposed to notice . . . until it’s too late.”
“Fine,” said JC. “You keep an eye out for that, while the rest of us do something about the threat in front of us. If that thing isn’t Flesh, it’s just some kind of apparition. A ghost. And we know how to deal with ghosts.”
“Damn right,” said Natasha Chang. Everyone jumped despite themselves as she stepped out of the shadows. In all the excitement, they’d lost track of her. Chang smiled at the ghost, completely unimpressed or intimidated. She strode down the deck and stepped deliberately into its path, blocking its way. The shimmering figure stopped, as though surprised. The howling and crying broke off as it looked at Chang. The deck beneath it scorched black and caught fire.
“Step right up, Casper,” said Chang. “You’re just what I need. Momma’s feeling peckish.”
She reached out to the ghost with both hands, so she could rip its soul out and feed on it . . . and then she snatched her hands back again. She couldn’t find anything there—nothing to grab hold of. Nothing she could even recognise as human. Just a terrible, aching void that put her spiritual teeth on edge.
The ghost lashed out at her with a brightly shining arm. Chang dropped to the deck and the arm swept past, just missing her. The back of her pink leather outfit scorched and smoked, burned black in a moment from sheer proximity. Chang must have felt it, but she didn’t make a sound. She rolled away to one side, putting some piled-up equipment between her and the ghost, before beating at her smouldering hair with both hands. She yanked off her burned pillbox hat and threw it away, cursing loudly. She produced her gold-plated pistol and fired several shots at the ghost. But even her specially treated ammunition couldn’t touch it.
“Stay under cover!” JC yelled to her. “Let us deal with it!”
“He’s all yours!” Chang yelled back.
“Do we have a plan?” Happy said to JC. “I’d feel so much happier if I thought we had a plan.
”
“Stop it, contain it, deal with it,” said JC.
“Good plan,” said Melody. “I feel so much safer.”
The three of them moved forward, and the shining ghost spun around to face them. It was hunched and bent over now, seeming somehow twisted and deformed but still burning everything it touched. The Ghost Finders stopped well short of it. JC took off his sunglasses and fixed the ghost with his golden gaze. It shifted uncertainly, disturbed by the light, but that was all. It took a step towards them.
“Don’t let it touch you,” JC said to Happy and Melody.
“You think?” said Happy.
“Get me a length of steel cable, and I might be able to ground it,” said Melody. “Drain off its energy . . .”
“No,” Happy said immediately. “Nice idea, but this isn’t a natural phenomenon, Mel. It won’t follow natural rules.”
“When in doubt,” said JC. “Go with what’s worked before. I don’t believe I believe in this thing. Do you believe in it, Mel?”
“Something that doesn’t follow the natural laws of physics?” said Melody. “Hell no.”
“And I wouldn’t believe in anything that ugly even if I wasn’t out of my mind,” said Happy.
“Good enough,” said JC.
He reached out to them, and their hands clamped down on his. Happy reached out with his mind and locked the three of them together. They hit the shimmering figure with a concentrated blast of telepathic disbelief; and it disappeared, gone in a moment, unable to withstand the pressure of their refusal to accept its existence. The moment it disappeared, so did all its burning footprints, and the flames from all the things it had touched. No sign of any damage remained to show it had ever been there, apart from those parts of the ship the crew had shot up. The deck was perfectly empty, utterly quiet. The crewmen lowered their guns and nodded to the Ghost Finders with new respect.
“That’s it?” said Captain Katt. “That’s all there is to it? You just give it a hard look, and it goes away?”
“Sometimes,” said JC. He put his sunglasses back on.
“Say it,” said Melody. “You know you want to.”
“This ship . . .” said JC. “Is clean.”
“No it isn’t,” said Happy.
Katt looked at him. “What?”
A crewman at the opposite end of the ship called out, pointing desperately at something he’d spotted out on the ocean. Everyone hurried forward to join him, and the spotlights changed their patterns, to send more light ranging out over the dark waters. Captain Katt yelled orders, and more arc-lights blinked on, converging on the new position. Several crew members fired flares into the night sky, to add even more light. And finally, pressed up together against the brass railings, they were all able to see the new disturbance in the ocean. A great depression had opened up, a massive, circular hollow, with all the water spiralling around and around and falling away, disappearing into the depths.
“What the hell is that?” said Katt.
“The water is draining away,” said JC. “Being drawn down into some kind of . . . sink-hole?”
“More like a plug-hole,” said Happy. “The Flesh Undying has pulled the plug. It’s opened up a hole in our reality, and the ocean is draining away into it.”
“I told you we were being distracted,” said Latimer.
A terrible roaring sound filled the night, a huge and utterly unnatural sound, too powerful for human ears to bear. It was the sound of an ocean being taken away by a force too great for it to withstand. Everyone flinched back from the railings as the ship lurched suddenly, pulled towards the great depression in the waters.
“We’re heading for the sink-hole!” said JC. “Doesn’t this ship have an anchor, Captain?”
“It’s too deep here!” said Katt.
The Moonchilde was pulled remorselessly forward through the water, heading for the depression. Katt ran back to his bridge, shouting for his crew to start up the ship’s engines, and steer the Moonchilde away from the sink-hole’s pull. The engines started up almost immediately, and the ship’s movement slowed but didn’t stop. The engines strained against the heavy pull, and the ship’s superstructure groaned loudly, torn between two forces. The crew ran to their stations, to do what they could. JC and the others stood together, staring out at the disturbance in the waters. One thing JC was sure of—the size of the depression in the surface was growing steadily larger.
“How is the Flesh Undying doing that?” said Melody.
“It’s dreaming of how it first arrived in this world,” said JC. “Through a hole in reality. It’s just made another one.”
“It can do that?” said Melody.
“Apparently,” said Happy.
“We have to close it,” said Latimer.
“How?” said JC. “How could we do that?”
“The scientists!” said Melody. “We need their equipment, their data-mining techniques . . . Something to give us some idea of what might work!”
“I’ve always admired your optimism,” said JC.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
The three Ghost Finders raced down through the ship’s decks, to the lab at the bottom of the Moonchilde. Where the three scientists were darting agitatedly from one monitor screen to another, while shouting and screaming at each other. New information, new theories, and old grudges were thrown back and forth at full volume. They were so caught up in their increasingly acrimonious arguments, they didn’t even notice JC, Happy, and Melody arrive. JC looked from one scientist to another, waiting for them to pause for breath long enough for him to get a word in, but they just kept shouting at each other and not listening to the replies. Latimer finally caught up with the Ghost Finders, pushed past them, and raised her voice, demanding the scientists’ attention. They didn’t even look round, just shouted that much louder to drown her out.
“This is what gives science a bad name,” said Melody.
Happy grabbed JC by the arm and pulled him close so he could shout into JC’s ear. “Something’s very wrong here, JC. One of those scientists isn’t human.”
JC looked at Goldsmith, Hedley, and Hamilton. “They all look, and sound, very human to me.”
“One of them is Flesh,” Happy insisted, “masquerading as human.”
“I heard that!” said Melody. “Just what we needed. More complications.”
JC looked at Happy. “And you didn’t notice this before, because . . . ?”
“It was shielding itself. But with everything that’s been going on, the shield has weakened. The Flesh Undying has other things on its mind.”
“All right,” said Latimer. “Which one is it?”
Happy scowled. “I can’t tell. It doesn’t know it’s not human.”
“We have to get their attention,” said JC.
“I can do that,” said Medley.
She drew one of her pistols and fired several shots into the bunker’s low ceiling. The three scientists broke off arguing and dived for cover. There was a pause, then they peered cautiously out from their hiding places with wide, startled eyes. JC stepped forward.
“Sorry about that. But it seems one of you isn’t who or even what they appear to be. One of you is an agent for the Flesh Undying.”
Interestingly, none of the scientists challenged the claim. They just started shouting again: first denying it was them, then accusing the others. Angry voices quickly gave way to pushing and shoving.
“Isn’t there some kind of test we can do?” said JC, raising his voice again to be heard over the din.
“Yes,” said Latimer. “Shoot them all and see which one is still talking afterwards.”
“Works for me,” said Melody.
She took careful aim with her pistol. JC was pretty sure she was bluffing. The three scientists stopped arguing to look at Melody. They didn’t seem
nearly as sure. And Hedley went wild. His shape slumped, his back rising and rippling as his arms and legs stretched impossibly. His face sloughed away, revealing a demonic visage underneath. Hamilton and Goldsmith dived for cover again, making loud noises of distress. Hedley, or what was left of him, moved quickly to intercept them.
“Shoot it!” Latimer said to Medley.
“I can’t!” said Melody. “I might hit one of the real scientists. Or some piece of equipment we might need.”
“Work with me, Mr. Chance,” said Latimer.
Her eyes blazed golden in the gloom of the bunker, and the thing that had been Hedley made a wounded sound and flinched back. JC whipped off his sunglasses and moved in beside Latimer. The combined golden light from their eyes filled the bunker. The Hedley thing broke down even further, barely human now . . . as though it couldn’t maintain its shape in the presence of the golden light. Elongated arms lashed out and snapped around Goldsmith and Hamilton, pinioning them in heaving coils.
“Stay back!” said the Hedley thing. It didn’t sound at all human. “I’ll kill them both if you don’t leave me alone and get out of here!”
“Please!” said Goldsmith, struggling helplessly against the dead white tentacle that held him. “Don’t let him kill me!”
“Don’t leave me here, with this thing!” said Hamilton.
JC and Latimer paused and looked at each other. JC was pretty sure they were going to need Hamilton and Goldsmith’s help to stop the sink-hole. But they couldn’t let Hedley escape. There was no telling how much it knew, or how much damage it could cause, if they didn’t take it down. Happy eased past JC and Latimer in the confined space, holding both hands up to show he didn’t have a weapon. What was left of Hedley’s face snapped forward on an elongating neck, fanged jaws opening impossibly wide. Happy tossed one of his pills into the gaping mouth, and hit Hedley with a hard, telepathic shove. The mouth snapped shut, and Hedley swallowed. And then the horrid thing just collapsed, slumping almost liquidly to the floor, as Happy’s chemicals went to work. In a few moments, there was nothing left of Hedley but a slowly spreading heap of grey, undifferentiated Flesh.
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