Spirits from Beyond (6 page)

“Long-winded buggers, aren’t they?” said Happy. “I’ll bet they’ve been rehearsing that for ages.”

“Your time is over,” JC said steadily, to the dusty figures. “You must know that; or what are you still doing down here? You wouldn’t even recognise the world above, now.”

“With Lud awakened and empowered, we shall leave the Undertowen and rise up,” said the mass whispering voice. “We shall set bale-fires from one end of this island to the other, and delight in the screams of our enemies as they burn. We remember what it is to be Druid; and we will make the world remember.”

Happy moved in beside Kim. “You brought us down here. You must have a plan. How are we supposed to stop this?”

“You can’t,” said Kim.

“What?” said Happy.

“Our only chance is to make a deal with the ghost god Lud.”

“Everyone stand back,” said Happy. “I’m going to dig a way out.”

“Stand still,” said JC.

“I need another pill,” said Happy.

“I don’t think the whole of the Carnacki Institute working together has enough power to deal with the thing sitting on that throne,” said JC. “We can’t fight a god, and even if we did . . . Hold it. Hold everything. Fighting . . . is what The Flesh Undying wants. It wants us to fight because it knows we can’t win. That’s why he enfleshed the Druids—to distract us!”

“Trust me, it’s working,” said Happy. “I am feeling very definitely distracted.”

“So let’s try talking,” said JC. “Not with the dead Druids. All they have are old grievances, old hatreds, that they’d rather die than give up . . . Happy, can you make mental contact with Lud?”

“Not on the best day I ever had!” said Happy, loudly. “That may be only the ghost of a god, but they key word there is still
god
! My brains would boil in my head and leak out my ears. Unless . . .” His voice trailed off as he looked around at the others, his brows falling into a serious scowl. He took out a silver pill box. “I suppose . . .”

“No!” Melody said immediately.

“Yes,” said JC. “Sorry, Melody; but we need our team telepath firing on all cylinders.”

Happy had taken a single pill out of the box, a long yellow-and-green-striped one. He rolled it back and forth between his fingertips, studying the pill thoughtfully. “Now this . . . is the good stuff. I distilled it from some weird esoteric chemical traces I found in Chimera House, left behind by the passing of the New People.” He looked at Melody. “You never did appreciate my talents as a chemist.”

“Happy,” said Melody. “Please, don’t . . .”

“It won’t put me in the same league as Lud,” said Happy. “Not even close. But it should hold me together long enough to get his attention.”

Melody glared at JC, her voice cold and fierce. “You don’t care whether he lives or dies, as long as he gets the job done!”

“I care,” said JC. “But the job has to be done.”

“This isn’t about the job!” said Melody. “This is all about your getting Kim back! Your unnatural girl-friend!”

“Right now,” said JC, “Kim, and what she knows, is the job. Because what she knows about The Flesh Undying might be enough to save the whole Earth, and everyone on it.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Happy said cheerfully. He dropped an arm across Melody’s shoulders, ignoring the stiff rejection he felt there. “We have to do this. We can’t get out of here, we can’t win the fight, and we don’t have any kind of future . . . as long as The Flesh Undying is still out there. We have to work together to do this, all four of us. Like we did before, remember? And I have to be able to control the contact we’re about to make with the ghost of a dead god. And that’s a sentence I didn’t expect to be saying when I got up this morning. You mustn’t worry, Melody. Really. The pill will keep me sane. Or at least sane enough that you’ll still be able to shout at me afterwards.”

“If you want to help Happy,” said JC, “you need to work with us, Melody. Be his anchor; root him in the real world. Give him something to come back to.”

“There will be harsh words later,” said Melody, nodding reluctantly.

“No change there, then,” said JC. “Do it, Happy.”

Happy hesitated, then took out several more pill boxes. He spilled the contents onto his palm, rolling the multi-coloured pills back and forth, as though judging the best possible combinations, and the most bearable side effects. JC leaned in close beside Melody.

“Did you know he had that many pills on his person?”

“Of course not!” said Melody. “And he didn’t stop to load up before we left the apartment. Which means he must have been carrying them around for some time. Must have been planning to use them, for some time. Why didn’t I notice?”

“Because he didn’t want you to,” said JC. “He didn’t want you to worry. And I think he’s been waiting for the right moment, or the right excuse, to start using them again. Being a junkie comes as much from the soul as the body.”

He moved over to stand before Happy, who was bouncing lightly up and down on his toes, in a thoughtful sort of way. He put away all the pills but one, the original striped pill. And then he smiled easily at JC.

“This can only go well,” he said, and swallowed the pill. All the colour dropped out of his face at once, and beads of sweat popped out on his forehead.

“Damn . . .” he said. “The dosage in that one is so strong it starts working almost before you take it.”

“How do you feel?” said JC.

“Good, good, good . . .”

“What’s in that pill?”

“A bit of this, a lot of that, all of it entirely illegal, unethical, and unnatural,” Happy said rapidly. “Does you good on a spiritual level, with only the slightest chance that my liver will dissolve.”

“Are you sure you can link us all, to make contact with Lud?”

“Of course! Piece of cake. Don’t worry, JC. Over-confidence is all part of the ride. I couldn’t Do Something this dangerous and this scary if I were in my right mind; and neither would you. I’m not enough, you see, on my own. Never was. I need something to lean on. For a while that was Melody; but I always knew that wouldn’t last.”

“She didn’t know that,” said JC.

“Yes, she did,” said Happy. “I’m a telepath, remember?”

He reached out and pulled them all together. Four minds, not merged, but working in tandem. All their eyes burned golden in the gloom, then their whole bodies blazed with light. The Druids fell back, slowly and reluctantly, retreating into the protecting shadows of the stone forest. The four Ghost Finders, the living and the dead, turned to face the throne; and the dead god slowly lowered his head to look down on them. The Druids cried out, to see their old god move, for the first time in centuries. When Lud spoke, his voice reverberated in the heads and in the souls of all who heard him.

“At last,” said Lud. “A voice calls out to me. A human voice . . . I remember the way things used to be, when all of Britain bowed down to me and burned for me. Life and death at my command, and at my whim. Worship to sustain me and purpose to give me a reason to go on. But all that passed, and I fell away, to become so much less than I was. Now . . . I see the world above, and I see a world with no room in it for such as me. And there is nothing down here that I would wish to be a part of. So let me go. Break the chains that hold me to this city, this London, that I no longer recognise nor understand. Let me go wherever gods go when they die.”

“Fair enough,” said JC. He gathered up all the strength generated by the binding of the four Ghost Finders, locked in harness with him, and reached out in a direction he could sense, if not understand. A great Door appeared in the amphitheatre, beside the great throne. A Door into the Hereafter. And Lud stood up. He reached out a huge grey hand and ripped all the flesh off the Druids watching from the stone forest. The given flesh flew away from the old bones, burned in mid air, and was consumed long before it ever reached Lud. The new flesh that The Flesh Undying had provided . . . gone in a moment, leaving nothing behind but old bones, lying scattered on the forest floor. Lud had taken the flesh of his worshippers and burned it in sacrifice to himself, to raise the power he needed, to do the thing he needed to do.

He opened the Door. It swung smoothly open before him, and a great light spilled out, forcing back the darkness. Lud shrunk suddenly, falling in on himself in fits and starts, until he was of a proper size to walk through the Door. The light was so bright that JC and Kim, Happy and Melody, had to turn their heads aside, unable to face it. The old god paused, on the very threshold of the Door, and looked back at them.

“I see the touch of Outside upon you all. Something reached into your world, from my homelands, and altered you according to its purposes. Something like me. That is what has made this moment possible. Like calls to like . . . and pays its debts. I owe you a debt; so call on me, one last time, when you have need . . . But beware gods bearing gifts; none of you were ever meant to burn this brightly. Be careful of what such a light attracts . . .”

Lud strode through the Door, and it closed behind him, and was gone. The Ghost Finders fell apart and fell back into their own heads.

When they finally got their thoughts straight again, and looked, Lud was still sitting on his throne. Or at least his body was. The shape he’d made, so he could be worshipped and adored by the little human creatures. It looked a lot more like a statue now: grey and dusty, with cracks all over it.

“That’s it?” said Happy, rubbing at his aching forehead in a bemused kind of way. “No more trap? We’re all safe now?”

“Yes,” said Kim. “For now.”

* * *

They retraced their steps, back through the stone trees, kicking bones aside as they went. Back through the stone catacombs, heading for the surface. Back through London Undertowen to the world above. JC and Kim stuck close together, or as close as they could get without touching. They talked happily together, half-intoxicated with each other’s presence. Melody made a point of walking alone, swinging her machine-pistol moodily at her side, staring straight ahead. Happy didn’t even notice, tripping lightly along, sorting through the contents of his head.

“If you love me, JC,” said Kim. “If you really love me, don’t ask me where I’ve been, or what I’ve done. What I had to do, to get back to you. I will tell you, someday. When I’m ready. When you’re ready.”

“You can tell me anything, Kim,” said JC. “You know that.”

“Yes,” said the ghost girl. “But not yet.”

TWO

THE UNOFFICIAL RECORD

Everyone else wanted to go home and get some rest. But JC was the man behind the wheel, and he insisted on driving them all the way across London, to the Carnacki Institute’s Secret Libraries. So Happy and Melody slumped down in the back seat and sulked, while Kim hovered serenely an inch or so above the seat next to JC. She had to concentrate, to keep her spirit self moving along at the same speed as the car because the physical world no longer had any hold over her. She could have teleported straight to the Secret Libraries and waited for the rest of them to catch up; but being only recently reunited with JC, she was loath to leave him even for a moment. JC stared straight ahead, lost in his own roiling thoughts. It was one thing to feel under threat from so many directions at once when it was just him, or his team; they’d always been able to look after themselves. But now that Kim was back, he felt an added responsibility. He needed information on how best to defend himself and on exactly who or what he was defending himself against. And for that, he needed the Secret Libraries.

Often called the Unofficial Record, because the books in the Secret Libraries covered everything in the world that didn’t officially exist, or shouldn’t exist but unfortunately did.

JC’s Boss, the redoubtable Catherine Latimer herself, had given him password access to the Libraries sometime back; and he wasn’t prepared to wait for an official security upgrade any longer. He was fed up guessing and theorising; he wanted to know. So he aimed his car like a bullet through the empty streets of early-morning London, heading for the south-east of the city and the Woolwich Arsenal. The Secret Libraries were located directly below the Arsenal itself, presumably so that if they ever came under direct attack, the Army would already be there to defend them.

The streets didn’t stay empty for long. In fact, JC barely had Chimera House in his rear-view mirror before vehicles came pouring in from every side street at once, and the road filled up with regular early-hours traffic. Buses and taxis, newspaper deliveries and food trucks, and people coming and going as shifts ended and started. Almost immediately, JC was forced down to a merely legal speed and method of driving. There wasn’t enough room on the roads for anything else. JC scowled fiercely. Clearly someone had gone to great lengths to keep the traffic away from Chimera House and its environs, to make sure that what happened there would remain private, unobserved, and uninterrupted. But who had enough power, or influence, to shut down a whole section of London? Presumably someone inside the Carnacki Institute itself . . . JC made the mistake of musing on that one aloud and was immediately hit with loud reactions from the rest of his team.

“I don’t care!” Happy said flatly. “I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. Don’t want to go to the Secret Libraries, either. Want to go home. My system’s crashing, I feel awful, and I am currently sweating chemicals so corrosive they will almost certainly eat holes in your leather upholstery. And I’m getting car-sick. Please can we go home? Pretty please? Can’t the Libraries wait?”

“You used to say you would sacrifice a whole bus load of blind orphans for one peek inside the Institute’s Secret Libraries,” JC said calmly. “All those years of rabid paranoia, and saying the truth is out there . . . Well, the truth is out there, out in Woolwich Arsenal, and I’m taking you right to it. You always said They were out to get you; here’s your chance to get Their home address and personal-contact details. So you can sneak up on them and do appalling things in revenge.”

“Let Them finish me off,” said Happy. “The way I feel now, it would be a mercy killing.”

JC glanced at Melody in his rear-view mirror, expecting support; but she sat stiffly upright with her arms tightly folded, staring straight ahead and saying nothing. She was in a mood. She wasn’t talking to Happy, making that very clear by giving him as much space as possible on the back seat; and from the look on her face, she didn’t feel at all inclined to join in the conversation. JC sighed, quietly, and looked at Kim, who smiled sweetly back at him. She was currently manifesting as a Flapper girl, a bright young thing from the 1920s, complete with canary yellow dress, a long string of beads, and cute little cloche hat. Since Kim’s appearance was composed entirely of ectoplasm, she could change the details of her look on a whim and frequently did.

“Nothing wrong with a visit to the Library!” she said brightly. “I’m sure it will be very educational!”

“These are the Carnacki Institute’s Secret Libraries we’re talking about!” snapped Melody, unable to maintain her silence in the face of such open provocation. Melody lived for the opportunity to shove someone’s ignorance back in their face. “Nothing good or instructive is to be found there, only forbidden knowledge, all the nastier parts of the hidden history of the world, and things you’re better off not knowing. People can’t order you killed for things you don’t know about.”

“Unfortunately, that turns out not to be the case,” JC said mildly. “The Flesh Undying wants us dead just for knowing it exists even though we don’t know what it really is or who works for it. I say ignorance is not bliss and is actually dangerous to our continued good health and existence. We need to know things, and we need to know them now. Information is ammunition. Remember?”

“But, given that the Secret Libraries are in fact protected by large numbers of the British armed forces,” said Happy, “how are we going to get in?”

“Oh, they’re much better defended than that!” JC said cheerfully. “Layers upon layers of psychic protections, backed up by wholly unnatural forces of a downright malevolent nature. Plus a whole lot of guns and booby-traps and bad shit. But not to worry, team, because I have a plan!”

“This can only go well,” said Happy.

He slumped back in his seat and gave all his attention to feeling miserable. JC studied him in the rear mirror. Happy really didn’t look well. He was going through hot and cold sweats, shaking and shuddering, and his face was the colour of a fish’s belly. Every now and again, he would glance out the car window and jump briefly as his mental control slipped, and he Saw something he didn’t want to. It was obvious the pills he’d taken were wearing off and kicking the crap out of his immune system on the way out of his body. He used to be able to cope with sudden changes in his brain chemistry; but that was before JC and Melody persuaded him to stop taking the pills. The road to someone’s hell is always paved with someone else’s good intentions.

Melody deliberately didn’t look at Happy. “You did this to yourself,” she said loudly. “After you promised me you wouldn’t. So don’t look to me for sympathy.”

“I thought you weren’t talking to me,” said Happy, managing a small smile.

“I’m not! I’m merely . . . thinking aloud!” She glared at the back of JC’s head. “Why are we going to the Secret Libraries? All right, any other time I might have been . . . interested, but why do we have to go there now?”

“Lud got me thinking,” said JC, bullying a black London taxi out of his way and openly intimidating a London bus. “The Druids knew a lot of things now lost to the world, but maybe some of them are retained on file in the Unofficial Record. Lud said he recognised something on me, from where I was altered by some force from Outside. Maybe the Druids had a name for it . . .

“If not, the Faust said I actually died down there in the Underground, before the Outside brought me back. I want to know if that’s true. And if it is, I want to know a lot more about it. I want to know Who or What did it, and I very definitely want to know Why. Because there’s always a price to be paid . . .

“While I’m busy doing all that, the rest of you can search the stacks for anything they might have on The Flesh Undying and its servants’ infiltration of the Carnacki Institute. And any of the other secret subterranean organisations. Bound to be something there even if they don’t know they’ve got it . . .”

“You don’t want much, do you?” said Happy. “Pardon me if I admit noxious gasses.”

JC made a point of lowering all the windows. Bracingly fresh air rushed into the car from all sides.

“I thought Catherine Latimer was supposed to be carrying out her own investigation into potential traitors and double agents?” said Melody, drawn into the conversation in spite of herself. “Wouldn’t she have told us if her people had turned up anything? I mean, she is our Boss. In her own scary and very efficient way. She’s supposed to have our back on this.”

“Good point, well made,” said JC. “But I haven’t heard a single word from our revered Boss on this subject; and I don’t feel like putting up with that one moment longer. Not while The Flesh Undying and its rotten agents are taking open pot-shots at us.”

“How are we supposed to find something useful in the Libraries if all the Boss’s people couldn’t?” said Melody.

“You are supposing someone has actually looked,” murmured Kim; and everyone in the car sat quietly for a moment, considering that.

“A fresh pair of eyes is always useful,” JC said vaguely, swerving his car in and out of the packed traffic perhaps a little more casually than was safe or desirable. “Perhaps a pair of unprejudiced eyes will turn up something new . . . Preferably something we can use as a defence. Or a weapon. Either way, I want answers. I demand answers! I need to know things for sure. Whether the Boss wants me to know them or not.”

“You’re starting to sound a bit like me,” said Happy. “Which is not necessarily a good thing. ”

“How are we going to get in?” demanded Melody. “You said it yourself: the Secret Libraries are surrounded by some of the most powerful, appalling, and openly distressing defences anywhere in the land. I’ve tried to hack their on-line presence any number of times, for the challenge, of course; and I never got anywhere.”

“The Boss provided me with password access after the events at Chimera House,” said JC. “What happened to Robert Patterson shook her.”

“You’ve had access all this time?” said Melody, her voice rising dangerously. “And you never said anything?”

“So the Boss isn’t the only one who’s been keeping things from us!” said Happy accusingly.

“Do I detect the sound of mutiny in the air?” said JC. “I’ll have any one keelhauled who dares dispute my authority! I was content to let the Boss do the hard work, digging up proof of hidden informants; but when someone aims the ghost of a dead god and his enfleshed followers at me, my patience evaporates. It is clearly time to take matters into our own hands.”

“You’re not wriggling out of it that easily,” said Melody. “Why did the Boss give you a password, and not us?”

“Because I’m team leader,” said JC.

“Only because we all voted, and you lost,” said Happy.

“Exactly,” said Melody. “Somebody had to take responsibility for our actions; and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be us.”

“I’ve missed all this jolly banter,” said Kim.

* * *

At the Woolwich Arsenal, JC parked his car in someone else’s private parking space. The car’s CD plates should ensure that no-one bothered it; and if someone was foolish enough to do so, the car was quite capable of looking after itself. In a thoroughly mean-spirited and unpleasant way. No-one messes with the Carnacki Institute. Dealing with the restless dead, the monstrous, and the demonic on a daily basis gives you a rather short temper when faced with more everyday annoyances.

The team disembarked from the car in their own various ways. Happy got out slowly and painfully, with many loud, creaking noises from his joints, and peered dubiously around him into the harsh electric light of the car park. He gave the appearance of something that had crawled out from under a rock and was seriously considering going straight back again. Melody kicked her door open, hauled herself out in one lithe movement, and glared about her in the hope that someone would come along and give her some grief. So she could cheer herself up by punching them repeatedly in the head. Kim floated through her door without opening it and drifted over to hover beside JC as he stood in front of the car and looked thoughtfully about him.

The Woolwich Arsenal was basically a collection of barracks and assorted anonymous military buildings, some more interesting to look at than others. JC gestured grandly at one particular structure, set a little away from everything else. Old brickwork, a slanting roof, and a single door with the word STORES set out in peeling paint.

“And there we are, children. The gateway to a place of wonders. Or so I’m told. I’ve never been inside the Secret Libraries, and I don’t know anyone who knows anyone who has. There’s always the chance that this is all one big con, a distraction from the real secret repository of hoarded knowledge. And all we’ll find down below is a collection of old
Reader’s Digest
s and a bunch of Dan Browns. Still, on the chance that this is the Real Deal, act confidently, like we have every right to be there, and no-one will challenge us. Kim, I hate to say this . . . but I think you’d better wait in the car. You do draw people’s attention . . .”

“No-one will see me,” said Kim.

“This is a Carnacki Institute site,” JC said patiently. “They maintain all kinds of surveillance here, to keep out uninvited spirits.”