Voices From Beyond (A Ghost Finders Novel) (20 page)

Felicity clapped her hands over her ears. “Stop it! Stop it!”

Stop it stop it stop it,
said the voice, rising over the massed animal sounds. It sounded like Felicity’s voice, driven quite mad. And then the animal sounds cut off abruptly, and a blessed peace and quiet fell across the studio.

“There’s nothing you can do to stop me,” said the voice. A completely neutral thing, lacking any trace of human personality. “I’m so close, now. So close you could almost reach out and touch me. Prepare yourselves; after all this Time, I shall have my revenge upon you.”

“Finally,” said JC, “we’re getting to something I can understand. Revenge is familiar ground to me. But revenge for what, exactly?”

“You know . . .” said the voice.

“Oh dear God,” said Melody. “Are you . . . the Flesh Undying?”

“What?” Felicity said feebly. “What’s that?”

“Hush, Felicity,” said JC, not unkindly. “Grown-ups talking.”

“The Flesh Undying?” said the voice. “I don’t know what that is. Must be part of your world. I am nothing you know or could hope to understand, with your limited human minds.”

“Why are you here?” said JC. “Why come to this radio station?”

“Because I knew you would be here,” said the voice. “Time looks very different, when seen from the other side. For me, the future is another direction to look in.”

“Are you saying, all of this, everything that’s happened at Radio Free Albion, was to get us here?” said JC.

“Cause and effect are of your world, not mine,” said the voice.

“But, the warnings . . .” said Melody.

“That isn’t me,” said the voice. “That . . . is my victims.”

“I don’t understand any of this,” said Felicity. “I feel bad. I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Dear Felicity,” said the voice. “You sound so pretty. I could eat you up. And I will!”

“Stick to the subject!” said JC. “Why us? Why is it so important to you that we’re here?”

“You shouldn’t have left the door open, JC,” said the voice. “Be seeing you . . .”

They all waited, looking quickly around the cramped studio; but it seemed the voice had said all it had to say. Melody turned to Happy.

“Is it gone?”

“I’m not sure it was ever really here,” Happy said thoughtfully. “Or at least, not as such . . . It was superimposing its presence on our world, from outside. But . . . I think it can still see and hear us, from wherever it is.”

“Or maybe, whenever it is,” said JC. “I don’t think Time and Space mean the same things to it as they do to us. Given that we’ve already decided the warning voices are coming back in Time, from the future . . . Maybe that’s where our enemy is, too. Or will be.”

“What are you all talking about?”
Felicity said hysterically. Her face was stark white and beaded with sweat, her eyes bulging half out of their sockets.

“Easy, Felicity,” said JC. “Breathe deeply. Concentrate on what’s right in front of you. Don’t upset the listeners if anyone out there is still listening . . . Hello, audience! Don’t worry! This is all . . . weird phenomena. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Leave it all to us; and we’ll clear everything up, so you can have your nice radio shows back again. Felicity Legrand is fine; she doesn’t feel like saying anything for the moment. So now the show is going to close. This is JC Chance, Ghost Finder supreme, saying,
Good night! And may the spiritual provider of your choice go with you.
”

Melody found one of the Captain’s old singles, and put it on. The Doors, “People Are Strange.” Melody looked at JC.

“By the time that record’s finished, Jonathan should have taken the hint and shut down the broadcast. He did say he wanted to close the station down early . . .”

Felicity stood up abruptly, staring defiantly at all of them. “I don’t believe this!” she said flatly.

“Don’t believe what?” JC said politely.

“Any of it!” said Felicity. “I don’t believe in the supernatural, or ghosts, or voices out of nowhere, or . . . or whatever that voice was pretending to be! You . . . You fixed that! You set it all up in advance, somehow! To distract me from all the legitimate questions I was going to put to you!”

“Sorry,” said JC. “But no, we didn’t.”

“I don’t believe you!” Felicity said viciously. “I’ll never believe you!”

“Whatever helps you through the night,” said Happy.

Felicity turned her back on them all and went to storm out the studio. Only to stop suddenly, as she discovered the door was gone. The only entrance and exit to the main studio had silently disappeared, and where it should have been there was nothing but an unbroken stretch of bare, plastered wall. Felicity looked at it for a long moment, then slammed both hands flat against the wall, as though she thought she could push through it. She cried out, in a loud, harsh voice, and beat her fists against the wall; and her wordless cries sounded like someone driven past their mental limits. JC nodded to Melody, and she went over to Felicity, put a hand on her shoulder, and pulled her gently away from the wall. JC moved forward to take her place. He studied the featureless wall, then ran his hands slowly over the bare plaster. It felt very smooth and perfectly ordinary. As though it belonged there and always had. Happy came forward to stand beside JC.

“It’s not an illusion, JC,” he said quietly. “Not a vision, or any kind of telepathic broadcast. Someone has interfered with the physical reality of our world. It would seem our unknown enemy is still here, messing with us. Moving around behind the scenes of the world, rearranging things for its own amusement. Which would suggest . . . it’s getting stronger as it draws nearer.”

“From the future?” said JC.

Happy shrugged. “Or from some other place, some other dimension. The Outer Reaches? The Shoals? The voice said, you left a door open, JC. Does that suggest anything to you?”

JC scowled at the blank wall. “Nothing specific. Could be something left over from any number of old cases. You know as well as I do, this world is riddled with weak spots. Where the dimensional barriers have grown thin, from different worlds rubbing up against each other.”

“Or because someone poked a hole right through them,” said Happy. “I first raised that point back during the Fenris Tenebrae case, down in the London Underground. You didn’t want to believe me then.”

“I didn’t know about the Flesh Undying and its agents, then,” said JC. “It all seems so long ago now . . .”

“Could that case have anything to do with this case?” said Melody. She’d settled Felicity quietly into a chair and now came forward to join the discussion.

“Who knows?” said JC. “That kind of serious shit is way above our pay grade. Usually. For all we know, the voice is messing with us. Trying to make us look in the wrong direction. It’s not like we have any shortage of old enemies, after all.”

“But most of our old enemies are dead,” said Happy. “Or worse than dead. This is either something we didn’t kill or something we couldn’t kill.”

“You’re sounding very lucid, Happy,” said JC.

“Make the most of it,” said Happy. “It won’t last.”

“What are we dealing with here?” Melody said impatiently. “What could be this powerful?”

“Only one thing it could be,” said Happy. “It’s a Beast.”

They all looked at each other for a long moment, then JC shook his head.

“Let’s be practical. If we can’t leave through the door, there’s still the window separating us from the outer studio. Smash the glass, and we can . . .”

He broke off, as Felicity cried out suddenly from behind them. When they looked back at her, she was pointing a quivering finger at the separating window. And when the Ghost Finders turned back to look, the window was still there, it hadn’t disappeared like the door had . . . but the view beyond the glass had changed. The outer studio was gone, replaced by something else entirely.

Where it should have been, a great open wasteland stretched away forever. An ugly, blasted place, with no life at all, the ground cracked and broken apart. The sky was the colour of dust, and there was no sun and no obvious horizon. The air was dark yellow, burned orange, rippling slowly and heavily like heat haze. The look of this new place was oppressive to the eye, as though the light had curdled in this spoiled world. It was raining an endless stream of maggots, tumbling slowly out of nowhere, falling down to writhe and twist on the dry, dead ground. There was no sound, anywhere.

“What is that?” JC said quietly to Happy.

“Still not an illusion,” said Happy. “Another place, another world. What you get when two different realities slam up against each other. Not a good place, JC. Looking at it is giving me a headache.”

“Why is our enemy showing us this?” said Melody.

“I’m not sure this comes from our enemy,” said Happy. “It feels more like . . . another warning. From the future. I have a horrible feeling we’re being given a glimpse of what our world could be like if we don’t do something . . .”

Melody looked sharply at Happy. “What is it? What are you Seeing that we’re not?”

“I think . . . it’s my turn,” said Happy. “You saw your future self out in the car park, JC. And I saw the future Melody, out on the landing. We know what the two of you are going to become. Dead and worse than dead. Now it’s my turn. I can feel me, feel my presence, on the other side of that glass, in the other place. This is my message, my warning, from the future.”

“Could whoever’s responsible have taken away the door?” said Melody. “Trapped us in here?”

“Yes,” said Happy. “To make sure we get the message and can’t run away from it.”

“Is it really going to be that bad?” said JC.

“Look at the world that’s waiting for us!” said Happy. “You think anything good would ever come from that? We’ve already lost, in that future. Lost the game, lost our lives, maybe much more. All they can do is reach back through Time, to try to warn us . . . Come on, you bastard. I’m here. Talk to me.”

And immediately, there he was. Standing facing them, on the other side of the glass. Happy Jack Palmer. He looked normal. No obvious wounds. No monstrous distortions. The same grubby clothes and battered leather jacket. He looked steadily at the three Ghost Finders, from another place and another time. He looked . . . terribly sad. He turned his head slowly, searching one Ghost Finder face after another. Melody made a low, wounded sound; and the future Happy smiled briefly at her.

“Sweet Mel,” he said. “I never thought I’d see you again, looking like yourself. And JC, old friend. You tried so hard, fought so bravely; and died so horribly. And there I am . . . looking so angry, so determined. I remember this moment, from when I was here before, looking at me. When I was you. Maybe this time, you’ll listen.”

“How is it that you’re still alive when everyone else is dead?” said the present Happy. “I swore I’d die before I let Melody become . . . what I saw!”

“You tried,” said the future Happy. “And you died. What kind of Ghost Finder can’t recognise his own ghost? I made myself into a bomb, a psychic explosive. Sacrificed my life and all my hopes of resting peacefully; and all for nothing. This is the world where we lost. Where everyone lost . . .”

“Then tell us!” said the present Happy. “Tell us what we have to do, or avoid doing, to stop this from happening!”

“I almost got it right,” said the future Happy. “Sacrifice. That’s the key. But . . .”

And then he stopped, and looked up abruptly, as something fell towards him from out of the dusty sky. It dropped down impossibly quickly, its dark and rotting presence sending ripples through the surface of the world. The future Happy looked like he wanted to run but knew there was nowhere to run to. He looked like he wanted to cry but knew there was no point. The thing fell on him. The awful, distorted thing, that used to be Melody. Twisted like a fun-fair-mirror reflection, its exposed flesh dark with decay, its hands all claws and its mouth stuffed with teeth. The future Melody fell upon the future Happy and tore him apart. He screamed then, a terrible, lost, despairing sound. Driven on by some outside power she could not resist, the future Melody tore her Happy to pieces and scattered them across the broken ground. Where the maggots were waiting.

The present Melody cried out, in horror and fury; and the future Melody paused and looked at her. As though it had only become aware of the window into the Past just then. It looked at its previous self, and didn’t know her.

The dead world disappeared. Beyond the separating window there was only the outer room of the studio. Even the intervening door was back where it should be. Melody turned away from the window, threw her arms around Happy, and hugged him tightly to her. Holding him like she would never let him go. Happy patted her absently on the shoulder, his eyes far away.

“I would never do that to you!” said Melody, her voice choked with tears she was damned if she’d shed. “Never!”

“But he said you were a ghost, Happy,” JC said slowly. “So how could you be hurt, torn apart, like that? How is that even possible?”

“What do we know about what the dead can do in the future?” said Happy. “What do we know about what can be done to the dead in the world that’s coming?” He looked at JC over Melody’s heaving shoulder, and his face and his gaze were completely empty of emotion. “You said . . . when you encountered your future self, you were wounded, dying. Blinded . . . What happened to your eyes, JC? To your very special eyes?”