“She does that,” JC said calmly. “I think she spends her spare time reading the ghosts of old fashion magazines. I find it best not to ask questions on the grounds that you’re never going to receive any answer you can be comfortable with. Best to smile and nod, and move on.”
Brook poured himself a large measure of the good brandy. JC made a point of not looking at Happy and Melody, so he could study them surreptitiously in the big mirror behind the bar. His two living team members were sitting side by side, looking at their drinks. They weren’t actually talking, but their body language suggested they were a lot more comfortable around each other. JC was pleased about that. He didn’t try to draw them into conversation. He didn’t want to push things, yet.
Brook finished his brandy and put the glass down on the bar-counter with more noise and force than was strictly necessary. His face was flushed and blotchy, and his eyes were more than a little wild.
“Whatever you saw up there, or thought you saw, don’t let it get to you,” he said roughly. “The upstairs floor is its own world, with its own secrets. People have seen all kinds of things up there. .”
“Such as?” said Melody, challengingly.
“Mostly, things people don’t want to talk about,” said Brook. “Like your friend, there.” He gestured at Happy, who was still staring into his drink.
JC considered Happy for a long moment. “After all the things you’ve seen, working on the job, everything from ghosts to gods to the ghosts of gods, and this was too much?”
Happy shook his head slowly. “Too personal.”
JC turned back to Brook, who met his gaze unflinchingly. JC smiled and pushed his sunglasses down his nose, so he could peer over the top, and fix the barman with his glowing, golden gaze. Brook went pale. He looked like he wanted to look away but couldn’t.
“Tell me,” said JC, and it wasn’t a request. “Tell me what’s been going on here, at the King’s Arms.”
Brook swallowed hard. “So the stories about you are true.”
“Stories?” said JC.
“All kinds,” said Brook. “About you, and your team. That’s why I specifically asked the Institute for you people. Though I never really thought I’d get a famous A team like you.”
“Famous?” said Melody. “We’re famous?”
“I think he means infamous,” said JC.
“Who, exactly, has been telling tales out of school about us?” said Melody. She grabbed the brandy bottle and freshened her glass.
“I still keep in touch,” said Brook, almost defiantly. “With some of my old colleagues at the Carnacki Institute. They all had stories to tell, about JC Chance and his team. And there’s a hell of a lot more to be found on the Net. Most of it contradictory, of course; but that’s conspiracy sites for you. Everyone’s fascinated to see what you’ll do next.”
“You’re avoiding the point,” said JC. “And I’m afraid I decline to be distracted. Nice try, though. Now, what’s going on here?”
“When I first came back here, to my old home-town,” Brook said slowly, “I was looking for something to do, in my retirement. I saw the local pub was looking for a new owner, so I took it on. The regular drinkers immediately took pains to fill me in on all the old ghost stories, but I’d already heard most of them from when I was a kid. With my Institute experience, it didn’t take me long to recognise them as just stories. Traditional tales. I thought I knew better. So after I’d been running things here for a while, and I hadn’t seen or heard anything unusual or unearthly, I opened up the first-floor rooms for occupation again.”
“Even though bad things were supposed to have happened to people who stayed in those rooms?” said JC.
Brook shrugged sullenly. “I thought they were only stories! And running a local pub. . is harder than you think. I needed the extra money staying guests would bring in. I had all the upper rooms cleaned out and renovated. Including a few tricks I learned cleaning up after Carnacki field teams. To be on the safe side. The local press did a big story about my renting out the rooms again, something that hadn’t been done since the seventies. The publicity brought people in from all around. And at first, everything seemed fine. But then the trouble started.”
“Ghosts?” Kim said brightly.
“No,” said Brook. “Worse than ghosts. Timeslips. . Open some of the doors, and the room beyond could be from any time in the Past. A different version of the room, from some previous version of the inn. You could look in, quite safely, from the outside, and see places and people long gone. From decades, even centuries, ago. You could travel from one age to another by stepping from the landing into the room.”
Melody slammed a fist down on the bar top, and everyone jumped. She was grinning broadly, actually bouncing up and down on her bar-stool in her excitement. “This is fantastic! Actual, practical, Time travel! Oh, I am so going to try this out for myself!”
“No you’re not,” Brook said immediately.
“Why not?” said Melody. “I’ll bet you had a go, didn’t you!”
“No,” said Brook. “I never dared. The risk is too great.”
“Risk?” said Happy. “What risk?”
“The Timeslips come and go without any warning,” said Brook. Beads of sweat showed on his slack, grey face. He seemed almost hunched in on himself. “They don’t last long, you see. And if you’re inside the room, in the Past, when the door slams shut. . you’re trapped in there. Lost in the Past, forever. Because when the door opens, that Past is gone.”
Melody looked sternly at JC. “This is far too good to pass up on, JC. Promise me that we will investigate this thoroughly, later.”
“If there is a later, yes,” said JC.
“Why did I know you were going to say that?” said Happy, not looking up from his drink.
“Maybe you’re psychic,” said Kim.
“Ghost humour,” said Happy. “Ho ho ho.”
“This isn’t funny!” Brook said loudly. “I lost three customers that way! Until I realised what was happening. I had to report the disappearances to the local police as guests who’d sneaked off, without paying their bills. I didn’t like to blacken their names, but what else could I do? Telling the truth wouldn’t bring them back. And who’d believe me? The missing guests’ families didn’t. They made their own inquiries when the police couldn’t help them, sent their own private investigators here to talk to me. I didn’t tell them anything. I showed them the upstairs rooms, and nothing ever happened because these people only ever showed up during daylight hours. The rooms stayed the same. Looking perfectly ordinary and innocent. As though they were protecting themselves. As soon as the investigators gave up and left, I locked all the upstairs rooms and stopped advertising them.”
“But the trouble didn’t stop there, did it?” said JC.
“No,” said Brook. “I contacted some old friends at the Institute. Told them what had happened. Hoping they’d be intrigued enough to send someone to investigate. Hoping they’d have some idea what to do about the rooms or how to bring the missing guests back. I felt. . responsible, you see. The Institute said they’d look into it. But they never did. No-one ever came. I kept calling the Institute, trying different people and different departments, calling in every old favour I had, or thought I had. . Until, finally, they sent you.”
Brook stopped there, to look at the team, before looking back at JC. “Would I be right in thinking there’s a reason why they finally sent a team, the team I’d been asking for all along? And not necessarily a good one?”
“Could be,” said JC. “But these Timeslipped rooms aren’t the real reason you need help, are they?”
Brook was trapped by JC’s glowing, golden eyes again. He nodded, reluctantly.
“When one of your regulars told the story about a young woman who came to a bad end in one of these rooms, I saw something in your face,” said JC. “That story meant something to you, didn’t it? Something personal. .”
Brook licked his dry lips, and nodded
quickly, as though bracing himself. “There’s another kind of room upstairs. Even more dangerous than the Time-travelling rooms. There’s one particular room where, if you go in, you don’t come out again. No Timeslips involved; every time I’ve opened the door and looked in, it’s always appeared to be the same room. Perfectly normal, everything as it should be. I’ve never seen a ghost or anything that shouldn’t be there. But I lost four more guests in that awful room before I realised what was happening. Four good men, who went in and closed the door and were never seen again.”
“So we now have a grand total of seven people gone missing,” said Melody.
“Yes!” said Brook. “Seven! Just. . gone!”
“Then why keep letting that room to people?” said Happy, looking at Brook for the first time.
“Because the room moves around!” said Brook. “Sometimes it’s behind one door, sometimes it’s behind another. . I can’t always tell, when I approach the closed door afterwards. Once it’s too late to do anything. . I can feel that the room has changed. It’s like there’s something lying in wait, inside. Something hungry. And that’s when I know I’ve lost another guest. And I back away, not taking my eyes off the door, in case it should start to open. . and I run downstairs and hide. Until enough time has passed that I can be sure it’s safe to go back upstairs, open the door, and look inside. There’s never any trace left of the guest I put in there.”
“Hold everything!” said Melody, glaring at Brook. “You noticed something was wrong but not your other guests?”
“Apparently not,” said Brook. “Most of my guests had a perfectly good time. Some even congratulated me, on how pleasant it was to stay here. That made it worse, somehow. And you have to understand-I didn’t know what was happening, at first. But after a while, the room let me know. I think it wanted to gloat.”
“So this hungry room is still up there?” said JC.
“Somewhere,” said Brook. “Hiding behind some apparently innocent door.”
“We’re going to have to look into that,” said Kim.
“You never used to be this funny before you went on your travels,” said Happy.
“Travel broadens the mind,” Kim said brightly.
“I had to explain the new missing guests to the police as more mysterious disappearances,” said Brook. “They really weren’t happy about that. Missing people are bad for the tourist trade. So the police got a warrant and searched my premises from top to bottom. Never found a thing. Because, of course, they were careful to carry out their search during daylight hours. So they were never going to find anything. They knew that. They were all local men. They knew the old, old stories, like everyone else.
“What a very interesting story,” said JC. “Be sure, we will investigate it most thoroughly. Now stop wasting my time and tell me the real reason why you need our help. Or I will get up and lead my people out of here; and you can deal with it on your own.”
Brook nodded, slowly. He looked tired, beaten.
“The real reason I came back here, to the town where I was born, and grew up, was a girl. Lydia Woods. I used to walk out with her, back when we were both teenagers. All those years ago. Her father ran this pub, back in the seventies. But, there was a long-standing, really nasty feud going on back then, between Lydia’s family and mine. The kind that goes back generations. . You know what small communities can be like. They clutch their grudges to their bosoms, so they have something to warm their cold hearts in the night.
“Lydia and I, we didn’t care. We were young; and we really did believe love conquers all. We even thought, in our naivety, that we might be the ones to bring our warring families back together. But somehow both our families found out before we were ready to tell them. Bad words were said, on both sides. Scary words. And all kinds of threats; by people we had no doubt were ready to carry them out. Lydia and I were forbidden to see each other, ever again.
“While I was still working out what to do, Lydia hanged herself. Right here in this pub. Upstairs, in her father’s room. My father told me and said it was probably for the best. I hit him, for the first time in my life, left this town, and went to London. Ended up working for the Carnacki Institute. And that was my life for so many years. I never came back here, never once talked to anyone from my family. Or hers. They’re all gone now, one way or another.
“Finally, when I was getting ready to take early retirement, I got a call from an old friend I hadn’t even thought of in years. And he told me there were stories circulating, about Lydia’s ghost manifesting in the King’s Arms. The poor soul who owned the place then was scared out of his wits because everything had been quiet since the seventies. That’s why he was so ready to sell.
“That’s why I came back here, to take over the pub. Wasn’t like I had a choice. I had to see for myself. And take care of Lydia.”
“Is she. . appearing, here?” said JC, as kindly as he could.
“Yes,” said Brook. “Not like the old story, of the wronged servant girl who hanged herself. No hanging body, no creaking of the noose. I look into the room where she. . did it, and there she is. Looking exactly the way I remember her, from all those years ago. I thought at first it was a Timeslip, but I only had to look at her to know she was dead. I’ve watched her several times, from the doorway, never finding the courage to go in and talk to her. Because I got old; and she didn’t.
“Lydia is why I can’t just walk away from this horrible place. No matter how scary or dangerous it gets, I have to be here, for her. I can’t let her down again.”
“All right,” said JC. “I’m sure there’s a lot more you haven’t told us, but I think we’ve got the basics now. Tell me. . exactly what have you seen, and experienced here, yourself? Tell us what you see here after all the regulars have run off home.”
Brook nodded reluctantly. “Nothing ever happens during the day. While it’s light. But once it starts to get dark. . the ghosts come out to play. They’re everywhere. First, I hear them upstairs. Footsteps, moving around. Walking up and down the landing and in and out of the rooms. Lots of them, overlapping each other, like there’s a whole crowd of people up there. Then I hear voices. Men and women, young and old, but never anyone I recognise. I go to the foot of the stairs, and look up, to the dark at the top of the stairs. . but I never go up, to see what’s happening. Because the one time I did. .” He stopped abruptly, and looked at Happy. “You know. You understand. They show you things. Unbearable things.”
Brook stopped, his eyes far away. JC cleared his throat meaningfully. He wasn’t unfeeling; but he couldn’t make a start until he knew everything he needed to know. Information is ammunition in the hidden world.
“Sometimes, it gets physical,” said Brook. “I’ve had things thrown at me. Even been picked up and thrown around. Once I heard a child screaming up on the landing. And I wouldn’t stand for that. I thought perhaps some local kid had wandered up the stairs; and they’d got her. So I went up. And the moment I stepped out onto the first floor, the screaming stopped. And something laughed at me.
“The landing. . seemed to stretch away, growing longer and longer, carrying me along with it. I wound up at the far end of the landing, and the top of the stairs seemed impossibly far away. I ran and ran down the landing, and the stairs never seemed to get any closer. I stumbled to a halt, to get my breath back, then forced myself on. I was afraid. . so afraid I’d never get back. That I was trapped there on the landing, with all the things that haunted it, forever and ever. But suddenly space. . snapped back, and I was at the top of the stairs. I ran down them, crying out in shock, and relief; and I could hear hundreds of voices behind me. Laughing.”
“All of this happened up on the first floor,” said Melody. “Timeslips, and a room that ate people, and ghosts and monsters everywhere. . And you gave us rooms up there?”
Brook’s face twitched nervously. He could hear the danger in her voice.
“I had to know. . whether it was only me. I wanted to see what would h
appen when the rooms were faced with real professionals. And I needed you to experience. . what I experienced.”
“Yeah,” said Happy. “Thanks for that.”
“What usually happens next?” said JC. “After the manifestations upstairs?”
“If I stay down here,” said Brook, “eventually they come down, looking for me.”
“Why do you stay?” said Kim, honestly curious.
“Because if I’m not here, they might leave the inn and come into town, looking for me,” said Brook. “It’s better to ride it out until it’s over; and then I can lock the place up and go into town and get some sleep. It’s my pub. I’m responsible. I have to protect the town. And then, there’s Lydia. .”
“What happens when they come downstairs?” said JC.
“They come into the bar,” said Brook. “I don’t always see things but I can hear them, moving about, talking together. . You’ll see.”
Kim left JC’s side and went darting off through the bar, sometimes walking on the floor and sometimes tripping happily along several inches above it. Gravity was only ever an occasional thing for her. More an option than an implacable law. She walked right through the tables and chairs, humming cheerfully but tunelessly to herself, while everyone else stayed where they were and watched. Kim rose and fell, looking into every nook and cranny, even drifting all the way up to the ceiling so she could look down on things from above. Finally, she dropped down to hover beside JC again and shook her head firmly.
“Nothing there, now. I couldn’t See anything unnatural, sweetie. Not a trace to show anything weird has ever been here. Dull, dull; boring, boring. But, I am getting a feeling. . that there’s something going on outside the inn.”
“There’s definitely a power source here, somewhere,” said Happy. “I can’t See it, but I can feel it. Don’t ask me what it is. It’s. . elusive. Hard to pin down, even harder to identify. It doesn’t feel like anything I’ve ever encountered before. And like I said before, it’s growing. Getting stronger, and stranger. It’s attracting Really Bad Things to it, like malevolent moths to an utterly foul flame. Your pub isn’t only haunted by ghosts, Brook; I’m picking up traces of everything from elementals to malevolent forces from Outside. . all of them desperate to Get In.”
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