Voices From Beyond (A Ghost Finders Novel) (30 page)

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

Inside, the joined JC and Kim found a whole new reality waiting for them. Behind them—a door back into the world they knew. Ahead of them—an entrance into the Beast’s world. They were standing in a blank, featureless place, an artificial construct, a single, colourless cube. Utterly without distinguishing details, it was an abstract shape, designed only to have form and purpose. JC threw the pills at the walls around him with inhuman force, and they sank into the colourless walls like bullets. The cube soaked up the new chemicals like the machine it was.

Something changed, ahead of them. JC and Kim looked round to see the entrance ahead of them open, and the Beast walk through. Determined to protect the tunnel it had made, connecting its reality to the human world.

The Beast looked huge to begin with. But as it approached the entrance, it shrank, in sudden fits and starts, till it was barely more than human in size and scale. It had to do that to enter the tunnel. It had to change itself, to exist in the bridging place, which still embraced the rules and realities of the human world, for the moment. The Beast was still a terrible thing, but now it was hardly bigger than JC. And like the machines it had made, it shrank away from his golden glow. It didn’t look nearly as impressive, now. Its flesh slipped and slid across its bones as though it couldn’t make up its mind what it wanted to be. It still had teeth and claws, and its eyes were the same as it glared fiercely at JC.

“What have you done, little creature?” it said, in a human-sized voice.

“Sowed a few seeds,” said JC. “Sowed madness, and confusion.”

The cube was trembling all around them now as the central mass absorbed the powerful psychoactive drugs that Happy took every day and took for granted. The sides of the cube lurched this way and that, stretching and ballooning out, losing definition, as its working principles became confused. The Beast took another step forward.

“It will take more than a few poisons to destroy my wonderful bridge-head! It will last long enough to allow me entrance to your world; and I will bring the rules of my world with me. And then; oh, the fun I’ll have! Playing with you and all your kind until you break . . .”

“I know that was the plan,” said JC. “But now it’s time for a change in plans.”

“You can’t stop me!” said the Beast. “I control my world, I rule my world and everything in it!”

“But you’re not in your world any more,” said Kim, with JC’s voice. “And we’ve poisoned the tunnel you made, so you have no strength here. Come and say hello to our world.”

And, together, they grabbed hold of the Beast. It cried out as their glowing hands clamped down on its slipping flesh as they dragged the Beast across the cube and out the door, into the human world. It fought them; but together, in that place, their strength was greater by far. It should never have left the world it ruled, the world it made. They hauled the Beast through the door and threw it out into the cellar.

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

Exposed to the scientific laws of human reality, the Beast shrank in upon itself. Like a creature brought up from the depths of the ocean, it was destroyed by its own internal processes. Its power fell away from it, and what was left of the Beast crashed to the floor, struggling to hold itself together. It tried to crawl back to the central mass; but the joined JC and Kim blocked its way. All the strength went out of the Beast, crushed by the remorseless logic of the human world. It stopped moving, and the light went out of its eyes. Its flesh fell off its bones, already rotting and decaying. Because it was a thing that couldn’t exist in our sane and healthy world.

And as the Beast died, so did all the organic machines it made. Unable to continue without the driving will that fashioned them, and sustained them, and gave them form and purpose. Bulging organic shapes collapsed all across the cellar, falling in upon themselves; great dark patches of decay spreading everywhere. It all fell apart, slumping down, collapsing into the thickening mulch on the floor. Including all the layers of flesh that had been wrapped around Jonathan. They fell away, leaving him standing alone. Human, and confused. And without his overpowering signal, the rest of the radio staff woke up and were themselves again.

Kim stepped out of JC; and they grinned at each other. Happy and Melody came forward to join them; and then they all looked down at what remained of the Beast.

“Such a small thing, in the end,” said Melody.

“It was only big in the world it made for itself,” said JC. “It should never have tried to come here, after us, to such an uncompromising world.”

“So! We’re not all going to die, after all,” said Happy. “Good, good . . .” He glowered at JC. “Did you have to take all of my pills?”

“I’m sure you’ve got more stashed in the car,” said JC.

Happy smiled. “How well you know me.”

JC looked around at the shaken radio staff. Felicity was holding Jonathan tightly in her arms.

“I’ll never understand,” she said, “why you did that for me.”

“I know,” said Jonathan.

Tom clapped him on the shoulder. The Captain and Sally were holding hands.

“Just this once!” said JC. “Everybody lives!”

“What should we do, with all of . . . this?” said Jonathan.

“Bury it,” said Happy.

“Burn it!” said Sally.

“Burn it, then bury it,” said JC. “And then salt the ground afterwards; to be sure.”

“Traditionalist,” said Melody.

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

WHAT DO WE DO NOW?

Sometime later, everyone sat around in the reception area. Slumped in their chairs, getting their strength back, and their mental second wind. The room was quiet and peaceful, mostly because no-one felt like talking. The radio staff looked liked they’d been through a war, which was fair enough. The Ghost Finders were still coming to terms with having seen themselves die in a future they had just made sure would never happen. Outside the open front door, night was falling over a very ordinary world.

“Is this what your cases are like, most of the time?” said Felicity, eventually.

“Pretty much,” said JC.

“Whatever the Carnacki Institute is paying you, it’s not nearly enough,” said Tom.

“I have been known to say that,” said Happy.

“Though there are fringe benefits,” said Melody.

Happy smiled at her. “Nicest thing you’ve ever said about me.”

Jonathan stirred in his chair. “If the new owners of this station really aren’t who and what they’re supposed to be, where does that leave Radio Free Albion?”

“Dead in the water,” Tom said immediately. “Come on, Jonathan; I think I can speak for everyone here in saying that the moment we all get our breath back, we are out of here. At speed, heading for the nearest horizon, not even glancing back over our shoulder.”

“Damn right,” said Sally. “I want to put all this behind me and move on.”

“All right,” said Jonathan. “One last gift for you, Sally. In return for sticking it out at your post, for so long. You are fired. I’ll even put it in writing. That should help you with the social-services people, right?”

“Thank you, Jonathan,” said Sally. “You’re too kind.”

“I shall be hitting the road, too,” said Captain Sunshine. “Too much bad karma in this place. Time to go somewhere else, be someone else.”

“It’s all right for you,” said Jonathan. “What am I going to do? No-one’s going to want to take over Radio Free Albion. Even if we could clear all the weird shit out of the cellar with no-one’s noticing, the station’s reputation is hopelessly tarnished . . . And our audience is traumatised. The name of this place alone will be enough to give people nightmares, for years to come. No-one’s ever going to employ me in radio again; and I am too old to learn new tricks. What am I going to do?”

“Easy,” said JC. “You sell your story to the media.”

“What?” said Felicity, sitting upright in her chair. “I thought you said we wouldn’t be allowed to tell anyone the truth about what happened here?”

“Not the truth, no,” said JC. “The Carnacki Institute does tend to frown on the truth getting out. But a story—that’s different. If you want to tell some tall tales about how Radio Free Albion was haunted, with dead people phoning in to your shows . . . That would be a whole different matter. The Institute has always been quite happy with people telling stories and muddying the waters . . .”

“And,” said Melody, “if you all tell different versions of the story, so much the better. You could make a very successful living, touring the chat shows and loudly disagreeing with each other.”

“You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” said Tom.

“You have no idea,” said Happy.

“Book deals,” Felicity said dreamily. “Film deals . . .
Based on a true story
. . .”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” said Jonathan. “Of course, I’d need someone who understands these things, to talk me through it.”

“I think I might know where you could find someone like that,” said Felicity.

They smiled at each other.

One of the phones on the reception desk started ringing. Everyone sat very still and looked at it.

“I am not answering that,” said Sally. “I don’t work here any more.”

Jonathan prised himself up out of his chair and went over to the desk. He picked up the phone, listened for a moment, then turned to JC.

“It’s for you.”

“Of course,” JC said resignedly. “It would have to be.”

He got up out of his chair and went over to take the phone from Jonathan.

“Yes?” he said. “What do you want? And why can’t it wait?”

“I take it you have finished dealing with such a minor case by now?” said Catherine Latimer. “Good. Now come back to London. We’re finally ready to go after the Flesh Undying.”

“Well,” said JC. “It’s about time.”