Voices From Beyond (A Ghost Finders Novel) (24 page)

“But why is it here?” asked Captain Sunshine. “Why is any of this stuff here? It makes no sense.”

“These are clues from the future,” said Melody. “Warnings about what’s going to happen. Presumably they’ll start to make more sense as we draw closer to the conditions that will produce them.”

JC picked up a pair of cracked and broken sunglasses. He knew them, immediately. They were exactly like the ones he was wearing; only these very dark lenses were covered with a web of cracks and splashed with blood.

What happened to your eyes?
he’d said.
They took them back,
his future self had said.

He closed the shattered sunglasses carefully and slipped them into an inside pocket of his jacket. Right next to the bloody handprint.

“I’ve got it!” said Melody.

She scrambled back onto her feet and hurried over to her equipment array. Everyone watched interestedly as she worked her keyboards, glancing from one monitor screen to another. She spoke to the others without glancing up from what she was doing. “The tachyons are the clue! It’s all about Time . . . My computers have been running tests on the various voice recordings, all this time, using the best filters and sophisticated comparisons . . . All the good stuff.” She stopped suddenly to look at Captain Sunshine. “It occurred to me: if you could have two different versions of the same object, why not two different versions of the same voice? No wonder you thought you recognised the voice that phoned you, on the air. It was your own voice, Captain.”

She fiddled with her controls and played the recording through her array’s speakers. And without the distortion built into the incoming voice, everyone recognised both voices immediately. Now they knew what to listen for. Captain Sunshine stood very still. For the first time, he looked genuinely shocked, and shaken, as he listened to two versions of his voice talking to each other.

Take it easy, man, said the Captain. Be cool. The Captain is right here. And then his own voice answered him. Get out of there! Oh God, please listen to me . . .

“It is you,” said Felicity, fascinated almost in spite of herself. “That was your voice, both times. Remember that old woman, who phoned into my show, earlier? She said she recognised the voice . . .”

“This is seriously weirding me out,” said the Captain, barely hanging on to his cool. “What do you think it means?”

“Something really bad is going to happen,” said Melody. “Something so bad, it’s sending ripples back through Time. From the future to the Present. Like a haunting in reverse.”

“Can this future be stopped?” said Sally. “Or at least avoided?”

“If we did stop it,” said Felicity, “there wouldn’t be any really bad thing happening, to impress itself upon Time and send its ripples back into the Past. Our Present. The very fact that we’re experiencing these warnings means the future is inevitable.”

“We’re all going to die!” said Sally. “I’m not ready to die!”

“Time doesn’t work like that,” said Melody. “Tell her, JC.”

“There are an infinite number of time-streams,” JC said confidently, “and, therefore, an infinite number of potential futures.”

“Are you sure about that?” said Jonathan.

“Not as sure as I’d like to be,” said JC, looking at the pile of future apports. “We could run, I suppose. But if the future that’s coming is as bad as it seems, there might not be anywhere to run to . . .”

“The world will end tomorrow,” said Happy.

“Stop saying that!” said Felicity. “You can’t be sure of that!”

“Yes I can,” said Happy. “I’ve seen the world that’s coming. And I think it’s fair to say that if I weren’t already heavily medicated, I would be very upset. I don’t think I want to be around when it happens . . .”

“We can still stop this,” JC said firmly. “We can work together, to understand the warnings and figure out what we need to do.”

“Are you sure about that?” said Jonathan.

“Of course,” said JC. “I have to be. Because all the other alternatives are unacceptable.”

| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

SEE WHAT’S COMING

In the end, JC had to shout everyone else down to get them to pay attention to what he was saying. When they finally settled into a rebellious silence, he glared round at them all impartially.

“Do you understand what I’ve been saying?” he said, loudly. “Because it is really important that you do! All those voices you’ve been hearing are your own voices. Your voices, from your future selves. You are the ghosts who’ve been haunting Radio Free Albion.”

Felicity glared right back at him, openly challenging everything he said and his authority to say it. “So you keep saying, Mr. Expert! In the face of all reason and sanity. But even if that is the case . . . what do you propose to do about it?”

JC sighed, quietly and inwardly. He’d known someone was going to say that. Like somehow this was all his fault and therefore his responsibility to fix it. He took a deep breath and considered his words carefully.

“Think about it: all these voices from the future, reaching back through Time, trying desperately to warn us. But it still isn’t clear about what. Or what they want us to do. So I say, why not ask them? Let’s make contact with these people in the future, these older versions of ourselves, and get them to spell it out. Tell us exactly what it is that’s coming, and what we need to do to prevent it.”

“How do we do that?” said Jonathan, sounding like someone trying very hard to be reasonable in the face of extreme provocation.

“Some of us have already encountered future versions of ourselves,” JC said carefully. “Happy, Melody, and I have all seen what’s in store for us.”

“Here?” said Tom. “At Murdock House? Why didn’t you say something?”

“Because all of these encounters were . . . disturbing,” said Melody. “Not the kind of thing you want to talk about.”

“You’ve actually spoken to your future selves?” said Sally. “Did they tell you anything?”

“Wasn’t that kind of encounter,” said Happy. “Everything we saw was horrible. We don’t die well, any of us. I always suspected that came as standard, once you signed up with the Carnacki Institute. But it still comes as a shock, and a kick to the heart, to see yourself dead and know for a fact you’re not going to rest in peace.”

“We still have a chance to change that,” said JC as firmly as he could manage.

“But how can we make contact with the future?” said Sally. Her voice was wavering, but she was still hanging on to her self-control, if only by her fingertips. “How is that even possible? I mean, unless you’ve got some kind of time machine tucked away in that array of yours, Melody . . .”

“Not as such, no,” said Melody. “I have enough problems dealing with the Present and all its troubles without dragging in other options. I think we need to keep this simple. They’ve been talking to us, so maybe they’re listening. Waiting for a response, a reply. We need someone capable of shouting loudly enough to attract their attention.”

She looked at Happy; and after a moment or two, so did everyone else. Happy straightened up and scowled back at them.

“I’m really not going to like this, am I?”

“Do you ever?” said JC. “What do you have in mind, Melody?”

“We need what’s in his mind,” said Melody. “Sufficiently refocused and boosted . . . My scanners have been picking up tachyon emissions for some time. Yes, I know, they’re not really, but let’s all pretend they are . . . They’re still here, along with the unnatural energies that produced them. I am pretty sure I can get my machines to lock on to these energies and reproduce the conditions that made contact with the future possible. Establish a sort of bridge, or tunnel, between Here and Now and whatever lies ahead. And then you, Happy, will blast a tightly focused telepathic bellow along this bridge to whoever’s listening in the future.”

“I can see a problem already,” said Happy. “Even if I could shout that loudly, without all my little grey cells leaking out my ears, I won’t only be attracting the attention of our future selves. That kind of telepathic volume would be heard by all kinds of nasty things from Outside. The kinds of things we really don’t want to notice us.”

“That’s why I said
tightly focused
,” said Melody.

“You really believe I can generate a telepathic voice loud enough to reach the future?” said Happy. “I’d be hard-pressed to reach London from here. On a good day! And good days seem to be in increasingly short supply as I get older.”

“We can boost your signal,” Melody said carefully. “With the right chemical support and inducements.”

“The drugs do work,” said Happy. “It’s the after-effects . . .”

The radio staff looked at each other. It was clear they weren’t following any of this. The Ghost Finders ignored them, intent on their own business.

“I don’t want to do this,” said Happy. “I really don’t, JC. I’m already so full of pills that different parts of my brain are beating each other up. There’s a limit to what even my system will put up with. I haven’t found it yet, but logic says there has to be one.”

JC frowned thoughtfully. “Do you think this is a good idea, Melody?”

“I think it’s necessary,” said Melody. “It’s dangerous, yes. We have no idea what kind of dosage Happy will need. I’ll help work it out, but . . .”

“But the world is going to end,” said JC. “Tomorrow.”

“All right!” said Happy. “I get it . . .”

“No you don’t,” said Melody. “You can’t properly appreciate all the risks involved because you’ve never tried anything like this before. JC . . . I need time to work this through. To calculate the proper dosages and the best combinations . . . Put in some safeguards! To give him the best possible chance of surviving this.”

“We don’t have time,” said JC.

“I won’t let you force him into this!” said Melody.

“It was your idea,” said JC.

Melody glared at him. “We can’t . . . mess with his head without taking proper precautions!”

“Yes we can,” said Happy. “Remember; I saw what the future did to you. I swore I would put my life on the line, put my death on the line, to make sure that future you would never happen. And I meant it. I will do anything, risk anything, to save you from that. So, no more talk, Mel. Let’s do it.”

Melody came forward and stood before him, staring into his eyes. And then she took him in her arms and held him. Happy let her do it. He patted her back comfortingly. Melody hadn’t realised how much he was shaking until she held him. After a while, she let him go and stepped back. They shared a small smile, then she took him by the hand and led him over to the reception desk. Once again, they sat down together, and Happy took out all his pill boxes and bottles. He set them out before him, and Melody began sorting through them.

“What the hell is going on there?” Felicity said loudly. “Are those drugs?”

“Far too small a word, for what these little beauties can do,” said Happy, not looking up from what he was doing. “Call them medicines, if that helps you feel more comfortable.”

“I get it,” said Captain Sunshine. “I have been here before . . . Feed your head, expand you consciousness, right? Like injecting rocket fuel into the motor of your mind. What my generation used to call the mind’s true liberation.”

He wandered over to the reception desk and watched, fascinated, as a massive collection of pills slowly assembled in front of Happy. The Captain leaned right over the table for a better look at the discarded empty boxes and bottles, his lips moving slowly as he worked out the handwritten labels. And then he straightened up again and looked doubtfully at Happy.

“Damn, man, I thought I’d seen pretty much everything in my time; but I don’t recognise half this shit. Mandrake Root? St. John the Conqueror’s Elixir? Red Death, Green Wyrm, Blue Meanies. In my day, it was all brown acid and purple hearts . . .”

“I could provide you with the chemical formulae,” said Melody, not looking up.

“It would all be wasted on me,” the Captain said cheerfully. “You don’t need to know how a television set works to turn it on. I have to ask, though . . . some of those pills are seriously dangerous, right?”

“Right,” said Melody.

The Captain nodded ruefully and moved away from the desk. “If the medicine didn’t taste bad, you wouldn’t know it was doing you good . . .”

Melody pushed a few last pills forward, her lips moving quickly as she added up dosages in her head. She considered adding a few more, decided against it, then she and Happy quietly considered the huge assortment of multi-coloured pills. Happy smiled, briefly.

“I am seriously impressed! Even a few years ago, I would never have dared attempt some of these dosages, never mind all of them together. A rainbow collection, a chemical cornucopia. Boys and girls, just say,
Fuck no!
”

“You don’t have to do this,” said Melody.

“Yes I do,” said Happy.

“You don’t have to do it for me, Happy!”

“Yes I do, Mel. For you; and the world. Perhaps because I wouldn’t want to live in a world that didn’t have you in it. You as you. The future will make you into a monstrous thing, Mel. A thing, made to kill other things. I was dead in that future world; and the Beast made you kill me again and again. Can you think of a better definition of Hell, for you and for me?”

Melody shook her head slowly. “How did we come to this?”

“Comes with the job,” said Happy. “I’ve always known that.”

They both looked at the piled-up pills. Happy reached out and pushed a few pills around with a fingertip. As though he still couldn’t quite believe what he was contemplating doing.

“Think this is enough?” said Melody, trying to smile. “Think this will do it?”

“I think there’s enough chemical dynamite here to blow the Doors of Perception right off their hinges and into next door’s garden,” said Happy. “Enough medical mayhem to let me see God and make me brave enough to spit in her eye. With all this blasting through my head, I could make anyone hear me. But there’s no way I can drop this much shit into my system, and not suffer the consequences. The pills will send my mind up and out; but there’s a more than reasonable chance that I won’t be coming back, afterwards. So I need you to promise me, Mel. Don’t let me linger. In some hospital back room, with only machines to keep me going. Promise me. If you have to, you’ll do what’s necessary.”

“Don’t talk like that,” said Melody.

“I have to. Who else can I trust?”

“I promise,” said Melody. “Now take your damned pills.”

“I am going to need a really big glass of water for this,” said Happy.

“I’ll get you one.”

| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

While all that was going on, Jonathan and Felicity joined forces to interrogate JC. Not an easy task, given that they didn’t properly understand what was happening or what the proper questions were to ask. JC nodded and smiled politely, gave them as much truth as he thought they could handle, and remained properly evasive over everything else. On the grounds that even if he could make them understand all the consequences and implications of what they were about try, they almost certainly wouldn’t thank him for it.

“So this is your big idea?” Felicity said finally, after JC had walked them through it for the third time. “You’re going to feed your pet junkie mind-reader a massive overdose, so he can shout at the future?”

“Got it in one!” JC said happily. “I knew we’d get there eventually.”

“And you really think this is going to work?” said Jonathan.

“The theory seems sound,” JC said carefully. “If you have any other ideas, I am definitely willing to listen . . . No? Well, colour me surprised. Look, people, we’re going to do this because we don’t have anything else. And a really awful future is heading straight for us like a racing train with really big horns on the front. Let us hope that when we finally do place our call to the future, someone will be there at the other end of the line. Someone who can tell us whatever the hell it is we need to do.”

He broke off. They all looked round, at the sound of someone sobbing. Captain Sunshine was holding Sally in his arms and doing his best to comfort her, as she cried like a hurt child. The young receptionist had her face buried in the Captain’s chest, tears streaming down her face, cutting tracks in her make-up. She clung to Captain Sunshine like a small child hanging on to a parent because something had come out of the dark to frighten her.

“I want to go home,” she said miserably, forcing the words past her ragged sobbing. “I don’t want to be here . . . It’s horrid here.”

“Hush, hush,” said the Captain. “Hang in there, girl. It’ll all be over soon.”

He shot a look at JC, who nodded. All be over soon. Yes. One way or another.

Captain Sunshine got Sally settled onto a nearby chair and stood protectively over her. He was still holding one of her hands because she wouldn’t let go of it. She was still crying.

Jonathan and Tom moved off together, talking quietly. Felicity glared around at everyone but had run out of things to say. JC watched silently as Melody fed Happy his pills, one at a time, with a lot of water. The telepath’s throat worked convulsively, as he struggled to get some of them down. Melody held on to his free hand, doing her best to be quietly supportive. Her mouth was firm, her eyes bright with tears she refused to shed in front of Happy. She didn’t say anything. There was nothing left to say.