Spirits from Beyond g-4

by Simon R. Green

  “You’re right,” said JC. “That is a good thing. Not a terribly useful piece of information, but. .”

  “I don’t do useful,” said Happy. “What do you want? Miracles?”

  “Yes, please,” said JC. “I could use one if you’ve got one about you. I swear this case is wearing me down. Every time I think I’ve got it worked out, it changes gear and speeds off in another direction.”

  “Hello,” said Melody. “This is interesting. .”

  “In the absence of a miracle, I’ll settle for interesting,” said JC. “What have you got, Mel?”

  “Look at the ghosts,” said Melody. “They’re avoiding us. According to my scanners, there’s a perfect circle around us that the ghosts aren’t entering. They actually change direction at the last moment, to avoid it.”

  “Yes!” said Kim. “I can feel it. It’s you, Melody! Or, at least, you and your lap-top. You’ve established a circle of scientific reality that the ghosts can’t enter. I’m standing right at the edge of the circle, and it is weirding me out big time. As though scientific reality itself is trying to push me away because it doesn’t believe in me. It’s like a very loud voice telling me I don’t exist. If I didn’t know better, I think I’d find that very upsetting. These ghosts all around us. . they’re simply memories, trapped in this building. Slowly disintegrating, down the centuries, into little more than sound and fury and increasingly unstable images. Not really proper ghosts at all, to my mind. .”

  She gestured dismissively at the ghosts as they came near, and a grey hand shot out of the crowd and fastened onto her wrist. Kim looked at the hand in shock, unable to believe anything could actually touch her. And then she was dragged sharply out of the scientific circle and hauled away into the crowding ghosts. If she did cry out, she couldn’t be heard above the raised voices.

  JC immediately went to go after her, but Happy and Melody grabbed him by both arms and dragged him back. He fought them for a moment, then stopped and stood still, breathing hard. Happy and Melody let go of his arms and stepped back, and watched him anxiously.

  “You have to stay in the circle, JC,” Melody said carefully. “We’re only safe from the ghosts as long as we stay inside the circle.”

  “It’s all right; really!” said Happy. “It’s not like Kim’s in any danger; she’s a ghost, right? She can’t come to any harm.”

  “You don’t know that,” said JC. “They were able to touch her. And ghosts can be hurt. I found that out down in the London Underground.”

  “That was different!” Melody said firmly. “That was Fenris Tenebrae; these are common or garden everyday ghosts. Kim’s been around; she’s not just any ghost, now. She can take care of herself. You’re the one who might be in danger out there. We don’t know what’s going on here, JC. We have to be careful.”

  JC nodded abruptly. He hadn’t actually calmed down, but he did his best to seem more in command of himself. He looked at Melody, then at her lap-top.

  “Talk to me, Mel. Explain to me what’s happening. I am prepared to accept informed guesses.”

  “It’s Time,” said Melody, her attention fixed on the information streaming across her lap-top screen. “Time is breaking down in the King’s Arms. As in: Time doesn’t seem to be as tightly nailed down at the corners as it ought to be. Linear Time is being disrupted, under direct attack from the sheer power of a storm that’s been building for centuries.”

  JC turned to Happy. “All right, you explain it to me.”

  “It’s all concerned with the terrible anger generated by the death of the blonde woman all those years ago,” said Happy. “Her sacrifice, in a local place of power, gave birth to Something the Druid priests never anticipated-a great scream of rage given shape and form and power by an unsuspected bad place. So that Something set in motion long ago is still happening. Growing, building in strength, searching for a way to break into our reality. The storm we hear. . is the smile on the face of the tiger.”

  “Could you be any more vague?” said JC.

  “If you want,” said Happy. “Look, the storm started long ago. Back in the Druid days. The rage of the sacrificed victim got mixed up in it and gave it focus. Something’s held it off, all these years, but now it’s back. And it’s mad. Tell me you’ve got it now, JC. Because all I’ve got left is mime and finger-painting.”

  “I get it,” said JC. “You’re saying that maybe we had it wrong before. The storm wasn’t the cry of the blonde woman. Just the opposite. Everything that’s happening here, from the rooms to the blonde woman to the ghosts, was really a manifestation of the storm.”

  He glared about him, into the shifting, overlapping layers of ghosts that filled the main bar from one end to the other. Rank upon rank of shimmering grey figures, some more human or more complete than others. All of them constantly moving and stirring, never still for a moment. There was a general air of. . restlessness, as though they were all lost, or searching for something they couldn’t quite remember. They walked through walls and furniture and even the far ends of the bar-counter.

  Still more ghosts came walking in, through the walls and the windows and the closed main door. Some seemed as solid as any real person while others faded in and out, wisps of human-shaped mist. Some had strange lights inside them that came and went, while others seemed oddly out of focus, as though not entirely sure who they were.

  “I’ve never seen this many ghosts in one place at once,” said Melody.

  “Call Guinness,” said Happy. “And yet. . I have to say, JC; they’re not actually frightening, as such. And I am an expert when it comes to being frightened. They don’t feel. . threatening.”

  And then he broke off and fell back a step. Some of the ghosts were starting to notice that there was one place in the bar they couldn’t get into. They’d been banging up against the perimeter of an invisible circle of reason for some time; but now more and more of them were turning their dead gaze on the one place they couldn’t go. They turned their heads to look in that direction, with their cold, unblinking eyes, and those on the perimeter crowded up against the invisible barrier. They pressed slowly forward, taking a slow, steady interest in the three living souls inside the circle. And not in a good way.

  The ghosts could see them now.

  The crash of voices shut off in a moment, replaced by an intent, watchful silence. The ghosts stopped moving. They stood still, staring into the circle. An army of ghosts, with only one thought and one interest in common. To get in.

  “Still think they’re not dangerous, Happy?” said JC.

  “Something’s changed,” said Happy. “I can feel it.”

  “Why are they looking at us?” said Melody, one hand resting protectively on her lap-top. “What do they want?”

  “What do ghosts usually want?” said JC. “The one thing they can’t have. Life. Rooms aren’t the only things with unnatural appetites.”

  “You’re not making me feel any better,” said Happy. “I really don’t like being looked at like this.”

  “But we’re protected!” said Melody, her voice rising. “We had to go through all kinds of training, at the Carnacki Institute, before they’d allow us to go out into the field. Reinforcing our auras against possession, putting in extra layers of psychic protection, so we’d be safe from. . Things like this!”

  “You might want to mention that to these ghosts,” said Happy. “Because they don’t seem to know that.”

  “It’s the bloody local power source,” said JC. “They’re drawing on it to sustain their existence. . Or, more likely, it’s using them to get at us. The local power source is the storm! Or it’s the rage that drives the storm. Or Something. I swear, this whole case makes my head hurt. . Either way, the Big Bad has tried every other way to get at us, so now it’s using the one thing the King’s Arms has more of than anything else-ghosts.”

  “Yes, but they’re still just ghosts,” said Melody. “Like you said. We can handle ghosts. They can’t reach us inside this circle
.”

  “Maybe,” said JC. “Who knows what ghosts can do when you put this many of them together? When it comes to things like scientific reality, I don’t think things are as clear-cut here, as everywhere else.”

  The ghosts were pressing really close now, right up against the edges of the circle. JC and Happy and Melody huddled close together, looking quickly back and forth to make sure nothing was sneaking up on them. The ghosts were looking right at them, with cold, empty eyes. The sheer presence of so much death in one place was almost unbearably oppressive. JC could feel his heart hammering in his chest. It was getting harder to breathe. Like he had to fight for every breath of air. Some of the ghosts put their hands against the invisible barrier of the circle and pushed. The lap-top burst into flames on the bar-counter, and the scanners exploded. The first ghostly fingertips pushed forward, through the barrier.

  Some of the ghosts were smiling.

  JC stepped forward, whipped off his sunglasses, and glared right into the faces of the ghosts nearest him. They recoiled, falling back as though thrust away by some unseen force, unable to bear the pressure of JC’s golden, glowing eyes. But others immediately pressed forward to take their place, stepping right through the retreating ghosts. None of them could actually meet JC’s altered gaze, but it affected some more than others. And he could only look in one direction at a time. The ghosts were surging forward from every side now, and the protective circle seemed to be shrinking. JC looked desperately back and forth; and the ghosts looked back at him.

  “So many ghosts. .” said Happy. “I’ve never seen so many in one place, even in the oldest parts of London.”

  “What’s calling them here?” said Melody.

  JC put his sunglasses back on. “Can’t help feeling I’m getting less and less mileage out of my gaze.”

  “Maybe the world’s getting used to it,” said Melody.

  JC looked at her. “What does that mean?”

  “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 then, when that wasn’t enough, they picked out certain significant people and sacrificed them in the local places of power.