Voices From Beyond (A Ghost Finders Novel) (5 page)

“It started playing tricks. Opening and closing doors, moving things around, hiding things . . . The kitchen got flooded, the fuses kept blowing . . . and then something tripped my husband, at the top of the stairs. He fell all the way down. Broke both his legs.

“Finally, some of next door’s children came round, to play with my kids and keep them company while I was off visiting their dad at the hospital. When I got back, my kids were crying, hysterical. There was no trace of the neighbour’s children. They’d just . . . vanished. We never did find out what happened to them. We had the police around, and everything, but it did no good. They were gone.”

She had to stop for a moment, on the verge of tears. Exhaustion, as much as horror. The reporter, who’d been nodding and smiling encouragingly all through this, waited patiently for Mrs. Perrin to continue. She finally shook her head slowly and looked straight into the camera for the first time.

“We’ve moved,” she said, almost defiantly. “Had no choice. Got out, while we still could. I burned the Ouija board before we left. Apparently, it’s been quiet in the house ever since. But I wouldn’t trust it. And God help whatever family moves in.”

She disappeared from the screen, replaced by a tight shot on Isobel Hardestry. From the change of light behind her, it was obvious some time had passed.

“I also talked to the local priest, Father Callahan.”

He turned out to be a surprisingly young man, barely into his twenties. Calm and relaxed, not obviously concerned.

“Yes,” he said. “I was called in, by the family. To examine the house and the situation. Nothing happened while I was there.”

“Did you perform an exorcism, Father Callahan?”

“No,” said the priest, a little condescendingly. “I would have to ask permission from my bishop first, before I could take on such a thing. And there really wasn’t anything I could take to him to justify such an extreme response.”

“And you didn’t . . . feel anything?” said the reporter, clearly doing her best to encourage him without leading him.

“I didn’t say that,” said the priest. “I did feel a certain . . . presence, in the house.”

“What kind of presence, Father Callahan?”

“Malignant.”

The two-shot disappeared, replaced by a close-up of the reporter’s face. She smiled bravely into the camera.

“The Perrins are gone. A new family lives in the house now, and they . . . have nothing disturbing to report. What really happened here? I don’t suppose we’ll ever know, for sure. But whatever it was, I think we can safely say, it’s over.”

The television screen went blank. Happy sniffed loudly.

“Just as well they didn’t try an exorcism. Would have been like trying to put out a raging inferno with a water-pistol.”

“Whatever came through the dimensional door must have retreated back to its own world, once the house was empty, and there was no-one left to play with,” said JC. “But the door didn’t close completely. It stayed a little ajar; perhaps merely the potential of a door . . . Until the professor’s séance blasted it wide open again. And now, I think Something that has been waiting on the other side of that door for all these years . . . has come through again.”

“What sort of Something?” asked the professor. “And why did it take my students’ . . . minds?”

He couldn’t bring himself to say the word
souls
.

“Because it could,” said JC. “Because it’s hungry. Perhaps because it likes to play. Depends on what it is we’re dealing with here.”

“Are we talking about some kind of ghost?” said the professor.

“If we’re lucky,” said JC.

“And if we’re not?”

“It’s a Beast,” said Happy.

“Something from the Outer Rim,” said Melody. “The furthest reaches of existence, the most extreme dimensions, where Life, or something like it, takes on powerful and disturbing forms. Spiritual monsters; terrible abstracts given shape and form and appalling appetites.”

The professor looked like he wanted to say something scathing but couldn’t bring himself to. The atmosphere in the room wouldn’t let him.

JC looked steadily at the upturned plastic cup, still holding resolutely still on the Ouija board. He prodded the cup carefully with one fingertip; and it scraped noisily across the wooden board, unresisting. JC raised his head, and addressed the room outside the circle of Melody’s spotlights.

“Hello!” he said loudly. “We are the pros from the Carnacki Institute! Who are you?”

The television turned itself back on. A thick grey fog filled the screen, twisting and curling; while a heavy buzzing static blasted from the speakers.

“Okay,” said Melody. “That wasn’t me. Did any of you touch the remote? Of course you didn’t. Ah, that’s interesting . . . According to my instruments, there’s no incoming signal. That television shouldn’t be showing anything.”

“Somebody wants to talk to us,” said JC.

“You say that like it’s a good thing,” said Happy. “I can’t believe there’s anything our interdimensional intruder would want to say that we would want to hear. Any sane person, with working survival instincts, would be sprinting for the horizon right now.”

The professor looked hopefully at the door; but one glance from JC was all it took to hold him in place. JC looked thoughtfully at the television screen.

“All right,” he said. “What do you want?”

The screen cleared to show shifting, disturbing images from some awful hellish place. Another world, another reality, where everything was alive. Horribly alive. Lit by a flaring, blood-red light, everything in this terrible new world seemed to be made of flesh. The ground had skin. Corpse white and blue-veined, it pulsed and heaved, sweating fiercely. Great trees rose to make a fleshy jungle, with thick meat trunks and flailing branches, lashing the air like boneless tentacles, grabbing hungrily at distorted, malformed creatures than ran and leapt and scuttled through the dark shadows between the trees. Alien shapes, moving in inhuman ways, pursuing and eating each other; every living thing attacking and feasting on every other living thing. A world of endless appetite, of ravenous hunger, without any trace of conscience or regret to hold them back from every appalling thing they did.

It rained blood. And the fleshy ground drank it up with vicious glee.

The professor vomited, noisily and messily. JC patted him absently on the shoulder, his gaze fixed on the other world.

“It’s showing us where it comes from,” he said quietly. “It’s not giving us a name, or even showing what it is, because it doesn’t want us to have any information we could use against it. I don’t recognise this . . . place. Melody?”

“My computers are coming up blank,” Melody said steadily. “Nothing even like this, in all the Institute’s records. This must be way out in the Outer Reaches. The Shoals, perhaps, where the material meets the immaterial.”

“It’s playing with us,” said JC. “Taunting us . . .”

“Wait,” said Happy. “What’s that?”

The image on the screen had zoomed in on the meat forest, to show four human figures running desperately through the swaying trees. They lurched and stumbled, avoiding the lashing branches and the leaping creatures. They looked worn-down and exhausted, as though they’d been running for some time. But the huge and horrible thing lunging through the forest after them, snapping at their heels, was enough to keep them moving. And though the dark presence was half-hidden among the trees, it was still stunningly repulsive and horribly powerful. The only reason it hadn’t already caught and consumed its human prey . . . was that it was having too much fun chasing them.

“I don’t understand,” the professor said plaintively, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Is that their . . . souls? If those are their souls, how can they be in any danger?”

“A world made of psychoplasm; psychogeography,” Happy said unexpectedly. “A world made physical by the thoughts and desires of those who live there. It looks like that because that’s what they want. The immaterial made real and solid by the intents of its inhabitants. Your students’ souls are real and solid, there, because that’s what the thing chasing them wants. They might not be able to die, or at least die permanently; but they can certainly be made to suffer.”

The professor looked like he wanted to vomit again. He made a high, keening sound, his eyes stretched painfully wide. JC had seen that look before—on the faces of people forced to understand and believe too much, too quickly.

“You were right, Happy,” said Melody. “It’s a Beast. And it’s hungry.”

“Shit,”
said Happy.

“Why is he looking so scared?” demanded the professor.

“That’s his normal condition,” said JC. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“Why is he taking those pills?” said the professor.

“He does that,” said JC.

Happy dry-swallowed hard and put his pill box away. “Ah! Yes! That’s the stuff to give the troops! If I were any more aware, I’d be twins. The doorway’s shifted position, JC; I can tell. It’s moved away from the coffee table, to the television set. The Beast is forcing the door all the way open, from the other side. It wants in. It wants . . . Oh dear God, it’s so hungry, JC! It wants to eat us all up, the whole damned world, body and soul.” He laughed suddenly; a sound with no real humour in it. “Let it come through! I’ll kick its head right off.”

“Might have overdone the dosage a bit there, Happy,” murmured JC.

“Can it do that?” demanded the professor. “Can it break through? Actually appear, here, in our world?”

“That’s what doors are all about, Prof,” said JC.

“It wants to come here and . . . eat our souls, as well as our bodies?”

“That’s what Beasts do,” said JC.

“I think I’m going to be sick again,” said the professor.

“Perfectly normal response,” said JC. “Try to keep some of it off my shoes, this time.”

The professor swallowed hard and looked beseechingly at JC. “Can you stop it? Can you get my students back? Bring them home?”

“We can try,” said JC. “But if we’re to successfully pull off this increasingly unlikely long shot . . . I’m going to have to bring in the fourth member of our little team. The real expert on all things ghostly. Come in, Kim.”

The ghost girl Kim Sterling walked through the far wall to join them. She stood beside the television set, glowing, and smiling sweetly on one and all. A beautiful, pre-Raphaelite dream of a woman, with a great mane of glorious red hair tumbling down to her shoulders, framing a high-boned, sharply defined face with vivid green eyes and a wide, happy smile. She was in her twenties and had been ever since she was murdered down in the London Underground. She wore a long black dress with white piping and a neat little hat pushed well back on her head.

Kim Sterling, the only working ghost in the Ghost Finders.

“Hello, darlings,” she said. “Don’t I look divine? Is no-one going to applaud? It isn’t easy, you know, looking this glamorous on no budget.”

The professor almost jumped out of his skin when she walked through the wall. He looked very much like he wanted to run again, but JC had a hand ready to clamp down should it prove necessary; so he settled for hiding behind JC and peering at the ghost girl over his shoulder.

“Why didn’t you ride down with us, in the Land Rover?” asked Melody, entirely unmoved by Kim’s dramatic arrival.

“She probably heard about your driving,” said Happy.

Kim smiled easily about her. “Sorry I’m a bit late. I came by the low road, the paths the dead walk. It’s very scenic, this time of year.”

She smiled disarmingly at the professor, who was still refusing to come out from behind JC.

“I don’t believe in ghosts!” he said loudly. “I don’t!”

“Really?” said Kim. “I don’t believe there are people as stupid as you, but I keep being proved wrong.”

She hadn’t even finished speaking when suddenly everything that wasn’t actually nailed in place or bolted down went flying round the room. Heavy objects shot through the air, seeking out living targets. Porcelain figures flashed past ducking heads, to crash and shatter against the walls. Clocks exploded, sending metal fragments flying through the air like shrapnel. Every piece of furniture went tumbling end over end, in a major outbreak of poltergeist activity. The only things not to move were the coffee table and the television set. A shard of broken mirror-glass almost took the professor’s head off as he sat there gawping; but JC dragged him down at the last moment. The professor pulled away from him.

“I have to get this on camera!” he said desperately. “No-one will ever believe me unless I can record this!”

The camera burst into flames. The professor moaned miserably and hit the floor, hugging the carpet. Melody crouched behind her array of equipment, her fingers still darting across the keyboards, pumping out psionic chaff to fill the room and block the activity. Happy scrambled rapidly across the floor on all fours, to huddle at her feet, behind the equipment. Kim stood where she was. Large and bulky objects went hurtling through her insubstantial form without disturbing her in the least. She walked forward to stand before JC. He stood up abruptly and stepped forward, so that he occupied exactly the same space as she did.