* * *
They all gathered together at the top of the stairs, looking up and down the long corridor as it stretched away to either side. The landing was presenting its best Perfectly Normal, Nothing To See Here, Move Along face; but none of them were buying it. They could all feel a cold, spiky tension on the still air, a feeling of forces lying in wait, of things waiting to happen. Bad things. The light was steady, and the shadows lay still, and all the doors were safely, sensibly shut.
But the landing still felt like one big trap, waiting to be sprung.
“All right,” said Happy. “Where do we start? I’m spoilt for choice, for things to flinch away from.”
JC ignored him, giving all his attention to Brook. “Which of these rooms contain Timeslips?”
“You have to be careful,” said Brook, looking about him uneasily. “You can’t be sure of anything, here. The rooms move around, behind closed doors. Any door you choose might open onto a different Time period.”
“And yet you let us stay in rooms up here, without warning us!” said Melody, angrily.
“I said I’m sorry!” said Brook.
“And that’s supposed to be enough?” said Melody. “Where’s my gun. .”
“Leave the man alone, Mel,” JC said firmly. “He is our native guide in treacherous territory. We need him.”
“Yeah,” growled Happy. “We can always use someone to throw into a dangerous situation, just to see what happens.”
“Don’t listen to the nasty telepath, Adrian,” said JC. “We would never do that to you. Unless it was necessary. Or funny. Now, tell me how to find a room with a Timeslip. There must be a way. .”
The barman nodded slowly, reluctantly. “You do develop a. . feel for them after a while. That’s why I thought you’d be safe in the rooms I chose for you. Be fair; whatever you experienced in those rooms, it wasn’t anything to do with Timeslips, was it?”
“Still looking for my gun. .” said Melody.
“There’s a door down here,” Brook said quickly. “It’s got the right kind of feel to it.”
He headed quickly off down the right-hand corridor, looking closely at each door he passed but not stopping until he was half-way down the landing. JC led the others after him, all of them keeping a careful eye out for anything unnatural, or even out of the ordinary. The doors they passed stayed firmly shut, apparently perfectly normal. Brook stood uneasily before his chosen door. It didn’t look any different from any of the others. He took out his keys, fumbled through them to find one particular key, then stopped. He looked miserably at JC, who nodded firmly back. Brook unlocked the door, turned the door-handle very carefully, then pushed the door open an inch. He stepped back from the door, retreating quickly until his back slammed up against the wall on the far side of the landing. JC gestured for the others to stay put and moved forward to stand beside Brook.
“What’s in this room, Adrian? What lies behind that door? Which particular part of Time Past does it hold?”
“I don’t know,” said Brook, all his attention focused on the slightly open door. “I never know. The only way to find out is to look inside. But be careful; what’s there has a way of sucking you in. .”
“We ain’t frightened of no room,” said JC. “Only. . reasonably cautious.”
He moved forward and pushed the door all the way open with one hard shove. Everyone tensed, trying to be ready for anything; but nothing emerged from the room. JC moved cautiously forward, one step at a time, until he was standing right before the open doorway. As close as he could get without actually entering the room itself. He planted both feet firmly on the threshold and placed both hands against either side of the door-frame, before looking inside the room. The room looked placidly back at him. It seemed like a perfectly ordinary, everyday room. All the usual furnishings. No-one there. JC leaned forward, studying every detail.
“Don’t go in!” Brook said loudly from the far side of the corridor. “Crossing the threshold takes you out of this Time and into the Past. And once that door slams shut, you’re lost in the Past. Like all my missing guests.”
“Are you sure this is a Timeslip?” said JC. “I can’t see anything obviously old-fashioned.”
“Well, there are two clues,” said Brook. “First, none of my rooms have furnishings like that. I had the whole place redecorated when I took over. And second, that’s bright sunlight falling through the room’s window.”
“Ah. Yes,” said JC. “Look at that daylight when it’s night here. Bit of a giveaway, that. Well spotted, Adrian! So the room appearing so normal was part of the trap, to lure me in. Interesting. .”
He leaned into the room, took hold of the door’s handle, and pulled the door closed again. He stood and looked at his hand for a long moment, half-expecting it to look or feel different from having entered the Past. And then he turned back to Happy and Melody and Kim, all of whom were watching him carefully from a respectable distance.
“Why have Timeslips at all?” said JC. “I mean, ghosts and monsters I can understand, but. . traps to drag people back in Time? What purpose does that serve?”
“I think it all comes down to the local power source and the unnatural force contained in the storm,” said Melody. “With such sheer power involved, it’s putting an unbearable strain on local reality. Like Happy said, the rage driving the storm is the rage of the sacrificed victim. I hate to theorise without proper equipment around to back me up, but. . I think the storm’s been building for centuries, becoming so powerful in its own right that it’s. . broken Time. Or at least, local Time. You might say, Time is out of joint, in this vicinity.”
“Time. .” Happy said thoughtfully. “Always tricky. . I’ve never felt the same about Time since the Travelling Doctor explained it to me. Anyway, if the storm currently raging round this inn really was born in the days of the Druids, then what we have here is the Past directly affecting the Present. Which is never good. If the storm is powering the Timeslips, that means there’s a direct connection between what’s inside the inn and what’s outside it. So whatever we can do to weaken, disrupt, or even destroy the Timeslips. . should have a direct effect on the storm.”
“I don’t know which particular pills you’re on right now,” said JC. “But I’d stick with them if I were you.”
Melody shot JC a hard look but said nothing.
JC looked at Brook. “Have you ever noticed any pattern to the Timeslips? Do they appear in any order? Does any one room seem to prefer a particular Time or period?”
“No,” said Brook. “None of this has ever made any sense to me. It’s always seemed. . entirely random. And there’s never any warning! The bad doors come and go; and so do the poor people who get trapped inside them.”
JC turned to Melody. “Come on, you’re the girl science geek expert on this team! Think of something we can try as an experiment. Something to give us more information to work with. And don’t tell me all the things you could do if only you had your proper equipment! I need something we can do right now. So think! Improvise!”
“Okay,” said Melody, frostily. “What if we sent someone into that room, on the end of a length of rope, tied around his waist? The rope would link him to the Present corridor even when he was in the room’s Past; so even if the door did try to close, we could always yank the volunteer back out again.”
“She’s not looking at me, but she’s talking about me,” said Happy.
“The rope could snap,” said JC. “Or be broken by the forces inside the room.”
“And besides,” said Kim. “We haven’t got a rope.”
“Imagine my relief,” said Happy.
“All right, one of you think of something!” said Melody.
“Keep the noise down, children,” said JC. “Daddy’s thinking. .”
“Oh, I feel so much safer,” said Happy.
“The doors open onto Past Time,” JC said slowly. “People walk into the room, into the Past, the door shuts, and the visitor is trapped in
that Past moment. But! If we could persuade the doors to open onto the exact Time and moment when the doors last closed, and the person was taken, those people should still be there! Time wouldn’t have changed or moved on, for them! Which means, if we could persuade those doors to open. . we could rescue all the lost people! Yes!”
“Love the theory,” said Happy. “But how would we do that?”
“Trust you to shoot down a perfectly good theory with a practical question,” said JC.
“No! Wait!” Melody said excitedly. “How does each room choose a Time? Each room holds or perhaps generates a different moment of Past Time; so someone or something in the background must be making a decision as to which room holds which Time. And so far, the only thing we’ve encountered in this inn that even seems like a conscious entity, capable of making such decisions. . is the blonde woman!”
“I’m not going to like where this is going; am I?” said Happy.
“The blonde woman does seem to like you,” said JC.
“It’s not mutual!” said Happy.
“She does seem. . attracted to you, Happy,” said Melody.
“I am not volunteering for anything,” Happy said firmly. “With or without a rope.”
“You first encountered the woman in your room,” said JC. “I say we go back there and see if we can summon her. So we can talk to her.”
“No!” said Happy. “This is a really bad idea! You don’t want to talk to her. You don’t know. . You don’t know what she’s like, what she’s capable of. .”
“You won’t be alone, this time,” said Melody.
“We’ll be right there with you,” said JC. “We won’t let anything bad happen to you. I promise.”
“What do you plan to do if she does turn up again?” said Happy.
“Improvise!” said JC, grinning broadly. “Suddenly and violently and all over the place! You said it yourself, Happy; she’s not a ghost, or any kind of surviving personality. Just a mass of emotions that’s somehow hung on for centuries, manifesting as the storm outside, and a blonde woman. If we can’t see off a bundle of retained memories, we don’t deserve to call ourselves Ghost Finders. Come on, my children, we can do this! We summon her up, then either force or trick her into opening the doors into the Past. And then we rescue all the people trapped inside them!”
“But how are we going to do that?” said Happy.
“Don’t spoil another good theory with your voice of reason!” said JC. “I’m working on it!”
“Maybe we should join together again, and glow at her,” said Kim, “Like we did in the bar.”
Everyone looked at her, and they all thought many things, but no-one actually said anything.
“Just a thought,” said Kim.
* * *
Brook led the way, back to the room he’d given Happy. The door was still closed, and Brook looked it over carefully before nodding that everything was all right. Kim strode forward and stared firmly at the closed door.
“Don’t See anything. Don’t hear anything. Can’t feel a damned thing.”
She walked right through the door, and disappeared. Everyone jumped a little. There was a short pause, then Kim ghosted back through the door and smiled brilliantly at everyone.
“All clear! No ghosties, no ghoulies, and very definitely no long-leggity anythings. Open her up, Brookie, and let’s get this show on the road.”
Happy stood at the back of the group as Brook opened the door, pushed it open a few inches, and stepped quickly to one side. JC slammed the door all the way open and strode into the room, turning the lights on with a quick flick of his hand. Kim swept in after him, peering about with great interest. Melody took Happy’s hand in hers, held it tightly, and led him into the room. Happy swallowed hard. If Melody hadn’t been holding on to his hand so firmly, he would have turned and bolted. Brook came in last, stopping inside the doorway.
“Happy?” Melody said quietly. “What happened to you in here? What did that blonde bitch do to you?”
“It wasn’t so much what she did,” said Happy. “It was what she said, what she showed me. .”
“What was that?” said Melody.
“I’m not sure, now,” said Happy. “Maybe. . the true nature of my own mortality.”
They all looked around the room, taking their time, and the room looked back at them, seeming entirely normal. Blocky furniture, too-small bed, dull wallpaper, and unwavering electric light.
“Just as I left it,” said Happy. “Except that the door I saw in the far wall isn’t there any more.”
“Where was the door, exactly?” said JC.
Happy pointed out the spot on the far wall, with a surprisingly steady hand, but he couldn’t bring himself to go any closer. Melody was still holding on to his hand, giving him what strength and support she could. Kim went right up to the far wall and studied it closely; her nose almost touching the wallpaper. She frowned and turned back to JC.
“There’s something here, JC. Something that doesn’t belong in this room, or even this reality. This wall, this little bit of our Space and Time, has been overwritten by some force from Outside. It’s still there, in principle, waiting to be imposed on our reality again. Like this.”
She stepped back and snapped her fingers imperiously. Suddenly, the door was back in place again. Happy cried out involuntarily but held his ground. He looked at the door for a long moment and nodded quickly.
“Yes. That’s it. That’s the door I saw before.”
“You said. . there was a blood-red corridor on the other side of that door,” said JC.
“It wasn’t a real corridor,” said Happy. “It only looked like one.”
“What was it?” said Melody.
“Death,” said Happy. “It was death.”
“Maybe I should go back out onto the landing,” said Brook.
“You stay right where you are, native guide,” said JC without looking round. He moved over to stand with Happy. “The blonde woman you saw. Was she part of the corridor?”
“I don’t know,” said Happy. “I don’t think so. . Connected to it, maybe. One of the faces on what’s happening here. The woman, the corridor, the storm. . they’re all the same thing, really. This is a bad idea, JC. You really don’t want to summon her. You remember what the dark did to us, down in the bar. She was worse. Crueller.”
“Would this woman come to you if you called?” JC said carefully.
“I don’t know,” said Happy.
JC looked to Kim. “What do we have that we could use to compel her?”
“You’re not listening to me!” Happy said desperately. “This is a really bad idea! You have no idea of the kind of Power you’re dealing with here!”
“Do you have a better idea?” said JC, quite seriously. “No? Then we go with what we have. Kim?”
“She’s not a ghost,” Kim said thoughtfully. “She’s the human face of the rage in the storm. . All that’s left of the human sacrifice who began all this. . Happy, can you remember what you were doing, what you were feeling, here in this room, when the door first appeared in the wall?”
“Yes,” said Happy. “I was sitting right there, at the writing-desk.”
“Okay,” said JC. “Go sit there again.”
Happy sat down at the desk, and looked at the pill boxes and bottles still set out before him. He didn’t touch any of them. Melody crouched down beside him. She put a gentle hand on his arm and patted it a few times. He didn’t look at her.
“What were you thinking, Happy?” Melody said quietly.
“I was thinking about dying,” said Happy, in a quiet, distant voice. “Thinking about killing myself and what a relief that would be. Not to have to carry the weight of my world on my shoulders any more.”
“Oh, Happy,” said Melody.
“And then the door showed up, in the far wall,” said Happy. “It opened on its own, to show me a corridor that led to death. It was trying to tempt me. When that didn’t work, the woman appeared. E
xcept, she didn’t try to sucker me in, like the corridor. I suppose you could say, in her own way she talked me out of it. She showed me the true face of death. She saved me. Why would she do that?”
“Perhaps because there’s enough left of the original sacrificial victim to appreciate and value life,” said Melody. “Okay; I think. . you need to remember what you were thinking, and feeling. That could draw her back. Do you need your pills?”
“No,” said Happy. “Not for that.”
He sat still, his head bowed, thinking. About the things that were never far from his thoughts because the tiredness, the bone-deep, soul-deep weariness at the bottom of it all never left him. Melody crouched, close beside him. She’d taken her hand off his arm, so as not to distract him. She could see the pain in him, clear as a wound; and it hurt her almost beyond bearing to know she couldn’t help him. Of everyone in that room, she was the only one who could even guess at what this was costing Happy.
The door in the far wall swung slowly open, folding back against the wall to reveal its blood-red corridor. Everyone in the room made some sort of noise as they took in the crimson, almost organic corridor walls, which seemed to fall away forever. To look at it was enough to disturb the thoughts and soil the spirit. It wasn’t only death; it was the end of all hope. A road you could walk out of life that promised neither Heaven nor Hell, just the end of everything.
Happy slowly turned around on his chair and looked into the blood-red corridor. He smiled; and it was a brief, savage thing. He considered the corridor’s promise, then spat once on the floor, contemptuously. Because when the time did come to end his life, he would be responsible for it. No-one else.
The blonde woman was suddenly there, appearing out of nowhere, strolling calmly down the blood-red corridor. As though she’d always been there, and they hadn’t noticed. She seemed to take a long time to reach the opening into Happy’s room, as if she was crossing some impossible distance, approaching from some unimaginable direction. She finally reached the doorway and stopped dead, right on the threshold. She looked into the room with cold, dead eyes and a disturbing smile. She looked around at the group gathered before her, dismissed them in a moment, and gave all her attention to Happy.
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