Voices From Beyond (A Ghost Finders Novel) (26 page)

“I have made contact,” said Happy. “They’re here.”

The front door slammed shut behind them. They all turned around in their chairs, surprised to find the front door still there. Standing alone, in its frame. The wall around it was gone. The door opened and slammed shut, then swung open again as the future JC came through. Standing tall and composed, in his immaculate white suit. No trace of his death wounds, not yet. Only the dark and empty eye-sockets where his glorious golden eyes should have been. Bloody tears had run down his face, leaving dark crimson trails on his cheeks. JC could feel the broken sunglasses he’d picked up, in his inside jacket pocket, pressing against his heart, under the bloody handprint. The future JC strode forward, heading straight for the group sitting around the reception desk. He stopped abruptly and turned his blind face to JC.

“Took you long enough to make contact,” said the future JC. His voice was rough and strained, as though simply standing there before them was an almost unendurable strain. “Pay attention, people. We don’t have much time. We have to get this done before the Beast realises what’s happening, and shuts this down.”

JC got up from his seat and moved cautiously forward to face his future self. He could feel his heart hammering painfully fast.

“How far?” he said. “How far into the future is this? How far have we come to meet you? Do you know?”

“Of course I know,” said the future JC. “I remember this meeting as though it was yesterday. I remember this conversation from the first time around, when I was you. This is tomorrow. The day after this meeting. Yes . . . It really did all go to hell so very quickly . . . Let me walk you through it, for all the good it will do you. The Beast found the door again, from the other side. You closed it . . . but the door, or the possibility of a door, was still there. The Beast had all the time it needed, to work out how to open it again because the years pass so differently in this place. The Beast is very old, and very powerful, and not used to being defied. It’s so hungry . . . because you made it hungry for revenge . . .”

Melody looked at the future JC but stayed put behind her machines. “What about the Flesh Undying? How did the Beast overcome that?”

“The Beast ate the Flesh Undying,” said the future JC. “That’s what the Beast does: it eats flesh. Over and over again.”

“What happened to you, JC?” said Happy. His voice was quite calm and composed.

“Happy . . .” said the future JC, turning his blind face unerringly in the telepath’s direction. “Yes, I remember your being here. When you were still alive. You made all this possible. How can I ever thank you?”

“Stop that!” said Melody. “This is the Beast’s fault!”

“No,” said the future JC. “We should never have meddled, never have got involved with the Beast. But what the hell, let’s be generous. There’s more than enough blame to go around.”

“What happened to our eyes?” said JC. He had to know.

“They took them back,” said the future JC. “Because I should have seen this coming, and I didn’t. Too full of myself, you see, and too easily distracted. The forces from Outside have withdrawn their support for this world. Given it up, as lost. Too many disappointments in their chosen agents . . . They have decided Humanity isn’t worth saving.”

“How can the Beast be this powerful?” said Melody.

“Because it’s the Beast,” said the future JC.

“What happened?” said Happy. For the first time, his voice sounded angry. “Show us what happened. Show us how we got to where you are, from where we are.”

“Visions?” said the future JC. “You ask for visions, from a blind man? Well, why not? We’ll start with Melody, shall we? Poor Mel, so convinced her precious machines would save her.”

A vision of Melody appeared, standing amidst the ruins of Murdock House. In a clearing in the meat jungle. Melody stood alone, behind her array of instruments, surrounded by a great pack of vicious creatures. She worked fiercely at her keyboards, while a shimmering force shield surrounded and protected her. The crackling energies barely held the horrid creatures back; but still they pressed forward, driven by rage and hunger and other, worse, appetites. They threw themselves against the killing energies of the force shield; and even as it destroyed them, more pressed forward to take their place. They slammed against the shield, again and again, pushing it back and edging that little bit closer. Until finally, inevitably, the shield collapsed, overwhelmed by the sheer weight of numbers.

Melody opened fire with her machine-pistol. Heads shattered and chests exploded, blood flying on the air; and still the awful things pressed forward, driven on by a will outside their own. The never-ending enmity of the Beast. She held them off for a while, dead things piling up before her. She stood her ground, didn’t run. Wouldn’t run. Until the creatures came scrambling up and over her array of instruments, even as the machine-pistol shot them down. And then, quite suddenly, they fell back, as Something appallingly, impossibly, huge came walking forward through the meat jungle. Too big to be seen clearly, too foul for the human mind to accept. The Beast came walking, and the ground cracked open under its terrible weight.

Melody fired her gun at the Beast; and it didn’t even notice. It towered over her and its army of creatures. It looked down on Melody, and she withered and twisted under the weight and force of its regard. Her physical presence was reworked and reshaped; and when it was done, the distorted monstrous thing that used to be Melody Chambers knelt at the feet of the Beast and worshipped it.

And somehow, everyone watching knew there was just enough consciousness left inside the creature to know what it was doing and to hate it and despair.

“Where’s Happy?” said Melody. “Why didn’t he protect me? He would have, I know he would . . . unless something happened to him. Talk to me, damn you; what happened to my Happy?”

The vision changed. Happy was standing alone in an empty clearing in the meat jungle. Looking up past the thrashing trees, at the Beast standing over him. He glared up at it, refusing to look away. Even though it must have hurt him more than anyone because he could See it more clearly. They could all feel the effort his defiance was costing him. He raised his voice, to the Beast.

“You destroyed my Mel, you bastard! I warned you! I warned you what would happen if you took away the only thing I cared about. There’s an old trick, the first thing the Institute teaches all E.S.P.ers, before they’re allowed out in the field. One last dirty trick to throw at our enemies, when all is lost. The psychic bomb. The real suicide bomb. Where you take everything you have, everything you are, and throw it at your enemy. So to hell with you, Beast.”

He concentrated, focusing his thoughts in a single, implacable way; and then he exploded, in a great blast of released psychic energies. A light that burned so brightly even the Beast had to turn its head away. Meat trees were ripped up out of the ground and thrown away. More burst into flames, cooking in the heat, blackened and charred. Every living creature watching from the shadows was blown apart or consumed by flames, all in a moment. As Happy did his best to wipe the rotten world clean with one last dying effort.

It didn’t work.

When his light finally died away, the clearing was much larger, but the meat jungle still remained. There was death and devastation all around, but the Beast was still standing. Untouched and unharmed. Because it was the master of its own world—the world it made for itself. The Beast looked slowly around, and wherever its gaze passed, the meat jungle was restored. All the trees, and all the creatures, and Happy, too. The ghost of Happy returned, made solid and held in the world against his will, held in place by the power of the Beast.

Happy’s ghost turned his head suddenly, to stare back into the Past, and speak to all the people there watching him. He could see them though it was clear the Beast couldn’t.

“The power provided by my psychic suicide allowed us to open a door in Time, so we could send our warnings back to you. To make the bridging tunnel possible. To make this meeting, this conversation, possible. I died, to give you this chance. Don’t waste it.”

“What happened to me?” whispered Felicity. “Where are the rest of us, in this future? What is the Beast going to do to us?”

“Nothing you’d want to know,” said the future JC. “And certainly nothing you’d want to see.”

“Show us!” said Tom. “We have a right to know!”

“Some people never learn,” said the future JC.

The vision changed again, to show the fate of the staff of Radio Free Albion in the burning wreckage of the reception area. Jonathan Hardy had been impaled, on a single twisting tree branch. The long, writhing thing had threaded itself through him, in one end and out the other, finally bursting out of one bloody eye-socket. Jonathan was still alive, still aware, still suffering. Tom had been nailed to a wall with a broken-off beam. He was on fire, burning and screaming forever. Felicity had been stretched out, her body spread across a whole wall. Her taut-stretched skin was constantly splitting and cracking, and repairing itself. Only her face remained recognisably the same as she sobbed endlessly.

“I know that sound,” said Sally. “I’ve heard that crying before. A woman sobbing, right here in this room. Oh my God; it was you I heard. I heard you crying, Felicity.”

The vision pulled back to show a huge insect creature, with a bulging head and compound eyes, standing over the reception desk. It held Sally’s severed head out before it, so the head could see all the horrors in the room. Now and again, the creature would drag a single clawed finger down Sally’s face, leaving a long, bloody gouge behind. The severed head screamed and screamed. The sound carried on and on even though there were no longer any lungs to support it.

Melody had seen the severed head before, hanging in mid air above the reception desk. Screaming endlessly. And now she knew why.

“What about me?” said Captain Sunshine. His voice was surprisingly strong and steady. “What happened to me?”

The vision changed again, to show a red-and-purple-veined thing, lurching slowly across the floor, slick and shapeless, with all its organs on the outside. The Captain had been turned inside out and left that way.

And then the voice of the Beast was back, beating on the corrupt air, lazy and amused. You all helped to make my triumph possible! You and your precious radio station! See how I reward you all. Forever!

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Everything stopped. A moment, frozen in Time. And then the visions disappeared and the reception area went back to how it was. Everyone was struck dumb, shocked silent. Except for JC, who fixed his future self with a cold stare.

“All right,” he said. “How do we stop this?”

“You can’t,” said the future JC.

“What?” said JC. “Then . . . why are we here? Why all the warnings?”

“They didn’t come from us,” said the future JC. “The Beast owns us all; we do what it wants. And it does so love to play with us, now and then. It’s having such fun . . . Except, I don’t think it ever really believed you’d be able to do this. So learn from what you’ve seen. Go back, get the hell out of here. Run, while you still can.”

He broke off as the Beast’s voice was heard again, crashing upon them in heavy, overwhelming waves.

Little creature, this is not what I instructed you to say. All of you exist by my will, now; you speak only because I allow it.

“You know what?” said the future JC. “Screw you.” He looked straight at JC, with his empty, bloody eye-sockets. “Get back to your own time. To yesterday. I’ll hold it off, for as long as I can. And once you’re back, shut down the tunnel.” He grinned, briefly. “I’d say good luck; but we both know that’s not on the cards. But maybe you’ll think of something I didn’t and save the day at the last moment. That’s always been what we do best, after all.”

The Beast roared its displeasure—a vast, foul sound that hammered on the air. It leaned in over the roofless room. The future JC moved forward, to put himself between the Beast and the Past. And the distorted monstrous thing that had been Melody Chambers fell on him from out of the broken sky. She hit him hard and tore at him with her clawed hands. And he stood there and took it, holding the Beast’s attention, so his Past self could get away. He would not retreat, would not fall back even a single step, even as he died again and again.

JC turned to Happy, still sitting motionless in his chair. “Break contact! Shut down the bridge!”

“I can’t,” said Happy. “I’m lost . . . I can’t find the Past. I can’t find my anchor, anywhere . . .”

Melody came running out from behind her array. And the piece of tech sitting on the trolley exploded, scattering sharp pieces like shrapnel. The Beast laughed, mockingly. Melody turned away and threw her arms around Happy, in his chair. She held him tight, her face pressed against his, her mouth at his ear.

“I’m your anchor, Happy. I’m right here. Come home, to me!”

“I never left you,” said Happy.

Suddenly, the future was gone. And everything was as it had been, again.

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Happy collapsed in his chair, almost sliding out of it. Only Melody’s grip held him in place. His eyes were closed, and he was breathing harshly. Everyone else scrambled up out of their chairs and backed away from the desk, needing to distance themselves from what they’d seen. The whole reception area was back, everything as it had been. No fires, no destruction; no sign anywhere of the awful things to come. The radio staff stumbled about, not even looking at each other. Trying to come to terms with what they’d seen and learned.