Voices From Beyond (A Ghost Finders Novel) (9 page)

“Why were the new owners so keen to buy?” said JC.

“I may have . . . slightly exaggerated the financial possibilities,” said Jonathan, smiling slightly. “They’re not local, so they don’t know about . . . I was desperate to find someone, to keep the station going! I liked the old owners. They ran us as a tax loss and left us alone.” He looked almost pleadingly at each of the Ghost Finders in turn. “You have to find an answer to this . . . mess. Before the new owners find out!”

“Who are these new owners?” said Happy. “Anyone we might have heard of?”

Jonathan winced and looked away. He couldn’t have seemed any more embarrassed if his trousers had suddenly dropped down around his ankles. When he finally spoke, his voice was barely audible. “Seriously Substitute Sausages.”

“What?” said Melody.

“Seriously Substitute Sausages!” Jonathan said loudly. “All right? They’re made of soya! And, other things. They’re very big in their field. So I’m told.”

“Taste good, do they?” JC said innocently.

“Like chewing on a towel,” said Jonathan. “And the new owners can’t be doing that well, or they wouldn’t need us as a cash cow.”

“Excuse me for pointing out the obvious,” said Happy. “But why isn’t there a receptionist, behind the reception desk?”

“She’s on a break,” said Jonathan. “She takes a lot of breaks. Sally Walsh; only temporary. Because we can’t get anyone to stay. Not since . . . You know, we used to broadcast right around the clock, twenty-four hours a day. Our coverage was exemplary. Advertisers were fighting each other for space. Now it’s all we can do to manage eight hours. Most of the announcers and technical staff are gone. We’re struggling to keep the station going with a skeleton staff.”

“How many, exactly?” said JC.

Jonathan met JC’s gaze almost defiantly. “There are four of us left, now. The ones with nowhere else to go.”

“All right,” said JC. “Let’s get down to what matters. What is the problem here?”

Jonathan looked around the reception area, as though afraid someone else might be listening. He hesitated, searching for the right words.

“Officially,” he said finally, “as far as the staff are concerned, you’re here as guests. To be interviewed on air, as experts in the supernatural. You have my authority to ask the others anything you like, but
please
. . . tread carefully. We’re all a bit . . . on edge after everything that’s happened. We’ve all been through a lot. So please don’t do anything to upset anyone. I can’t afford to lose more people.”

JC stepped forward and thrust his face right into Hardy’s. “Enough!
What is the problem?
”

Jonathan took a deep breath, swallowed hard, and braced himself. All at once he looked older. Tired, and beaten down by circumstances beyond his control. But at the same time, he looked almost relieved. As though he could finally put down a weight he’d been carrying for far too long. He looked carefully at each Ghost Finder in turn, willing them to understand.

“Over the last few months, we’ve been having problems with . . . voices. Voices from outside, from nowhere. At first it was the odd sound, breaking into our transmissions. We didn’t know what it was. The sounds became words, and the words began to form sentences. To begin with, they only appeared during unanticipated moments of radio silence. When for one reason or another, there was no music, no chat, what’s known in the business as dead air. Then these . . . voices started to appear more often. Harsh, raw; shouting and screaming. Desperate to be heard. Some sounded barely human . . . unnatural. Hearing them was enough to make your blood run cold.

“At first, the engineering staff tried to explain it away as Electronic Voice Phenomena. The radio equivalent of Rorschach ink-blots. The brain imposing patterns on random sounds. Hearing things that weren’t actually there. But what started out as gibberish became increasingly clear. Complete sentences, making more and more sense. Human voices, shouting and pleading, trying desperately to warn us about . . . something. Like the voices we hear in nightmares, full of dreadful significance.

“They weren’t limited to dead air, any more. They started appearing in the middle of broadcasts, breaking into shows, overriding on-air voices. All across the schedule, at every hour of the day and night. No pattern to it, no obvious scheme or agenda . . .

“And then they began appearing on the phone lines. On the phone-in shows. The engineers thought they sounded like genuine callers, and let them through. These . . . voices started having actual conversations with the show hosts. Spooked the hell out of them and their audiences. The conversations didn’t make much sense, but the intent was clearly there. We did everything we could to track down where the voices were coming from. Whether they were signals from some other station, some more powerful signal overriding our own. Or some independent operator, with illegally powerful equipment . . . But the engineers couldn’t identify the sources or keep the voices out. They shut everything down; and the voices still kept coming in . . .

“It was one of our listeners, calling in, who first suggested . . . that what we were all hearing were the voices of the dead. She said she thought she recognised one of the voices as her uncle Paul. Who’d been dead for seventeen years. After that, the floodgates opened. More and more people phoning in, saying they were hearing familiar voices, from their dear departed. They pleaded with us to stop them because they didn’t want to hear what the voices were saying. Some even accused us of perpetrating a vicious hoax . . . Professional psychics and would-be mediums started turning up here, at reception. Offering their services. And I was so desperate by then, I tried some of the more plausible ones. But they ran like hell once they were exposed to the actual voices. Our engineering staff ran off, too. You can’t blame them . . .”

“You said, these voices were trying to warn you,” JC said carefully. “Warn you about what, exactly?”

“It’s never clear!” said Jonathan. “The voices are clear enough, but what they’re saying makes no sense at all. Whoever they are, they sound genuinely desperate. Desperate to warn us about something that’s coming.”

The front door slammed shut behind them, and they all spun round. Something about Jonathan, and his story, had got to all of them. Even the very professional Ghost Finders. Standing in front of the closed front door was a sturdy young woman with a scowling face, spiky crimson hair, extremely distressed jeans, and a T-shirt bearing the message
DON’T WASTE MY TIME.
One of her grubby white sneakers was held together with a lot of black duct tape. Her round, sulky face held enough metal piercings to make her dangerous to stand near during thunderstorms, along with enough garish make-up to stun an Avon Lady at twenty paces. She glared at them all, impartially.

“I don’t care who you are, the answer’s no!” she said loudly. “And feel free to throw in a few
Go to hells
and
Over my dead bodies
while you’re about it. Now go away and stop bothering me or I’ll drop-kick you through the nearest window.”

“Our receptionist, Sally Walsh,” said Jonathan, resignedly. “Welcome back, Sally. How was your break?”

Sally growled, loudly, and studied each of the Ghost Finders carefully, in turn, paying particular attention to the bloody handprint on the front of JC’s jacket.

“You’re not reporters? Good. I have had a gut load of local hacks, coming here to poke fun. You’re the ghost experts, aren’t you? About bloody time you got here. You’ve got to do something! Sort this mess out! I do not want it on my résumé that I had to quit my last position because the bloody place was haunted! Things like that do not go down well at interviews.”

“You’ve seen a ghost?” said Melody, entirely unmoved by all the sound and fury.

Sally started to say something, then shook her head, almost reluctantly. She glowered at Jonathan, as though daring him to say something, then looked back at the Ghost Finders.

“No,” she said. “Not actually seen anything. But I’ve heard them. Everyone here has. And most of our audience, the poor bastards. Half of them have stopped listening, and the other half are scared not to. In case they miss something vital . . . A lot of them have been turning up here at reception, barging in like they own the place, cursing and complaining and shouting at me, convinced it’s all some new publicity stunt. You wouldn’t believe some of the things I’ve been called . . . Heartless. That one comes up a lot. Taking advantage of the bereaved . . . that comes a close second. Cruel, vicious, playing with people’s emotions . . . The ones who think it’s real are even worse. They’re really upset. And the phones never stop ringing! Some people ring up just to cry down the phone at me . . .”

She broke off and scowled meaningfully at Jonathan. “Why don’t you shut down the phones? Give me a few moments’ peace?”

“Because it’s against regulations,” Jonathan said tiredly.

“Then why don’t you at least put some security guards at the door, to keep the headcases out?”

“Because we haven’t got the money.”

“Getting really tired of hearing that,” said Sally.

“Not half as tired as I am of saying it,” said Jonathan.

“Why do you keep taking breaks, Sally?” said JC.

“To get away from this place,” the receptionist said immediately. She looked round the large, open room, and some of the brash confidence seemed to go out of her. “I don’t like it here. Not only this room; the whole house feels . . . tainted. Spoiled. Place used to be okay. Before all this started. But now the atmosphere’s gone bad. Rancid. Malignant. It feels like something’s watching me all the time.”

“Have you heard any of the voices . . . in here?” said Melody.

“No. Not yet. But sitting behind that desk gets on my nerves! I stand it here as long as I can, I really do . . . and then I have to get out. Go outside, walk around in the fresh air. Until I can work up enough courage to come back in. Because this is my job.”

“Why don’t you leave?” said Happy.

Sally’s scowl deepened. “Because I can’t. I’ve already quit too many jobs, for perfectly good reasons. Social Security said they’d stop my benefits if I walked out on one more job. I keep hoping Hardy will fire me. I’ve tried all kinds of things, including offering to sleep with him, but he keeps saying I’m needed here. That I’m irreplaceable. Hah! The only thing this place needs is a direct hit.”

“The station does need you, Sally,” said Jonathan. “You’re our first line of defence . . .”

“Then why did you take away my nunchucks?”

“Regulations . . .”

Sally said something very rude concerning the regulations, then strode past everyone to take up her position behind the reception desk. She dropped heavily into the waiting chair and glared at the phones, daring them to ring. Melody turned to Jonathan.

“Do you have any recordings of these unauthorised scary voices?”

“Hell yes,” said Jonathan. “Tons of the things. We record everything, here.”

“Have you listened to these recordings?” said JC. “Studied them?”

“No,” Jonathan said flatly. “They upset me too much.”

“I’ll need to listen to them,” said Melody.

“Of course,” said Jonathan. “Though I don’t know what good it’ll do you. Even when the voices are clear, they’re not exactly coherent.”

“But what kinds of things have these voices been saying?” JC said patiently. “What is it that they’re trying to warn you about?”

“I think it’s best you listen to the recordings,” said Jonathan. “I’m not trying to be evasive . . . You need to hear them yourself, to understand. I’ll see that everything is made available to you. Perhaps you can work out why whoever this is is doing it to us. And it is just us. No other radio station, local or otherwise, is hearing anything.”

“No-one else?” said Melody. “That’s not possible.”

Jonathan shrugged. “It was one of the first things our engineers checked. Before they all ran away. Only we receive these voices. Only we’ve been selected. Or targeted.”

“I’ll run the recordings through my equipment,” Melody said briskly. “There are all kinds of things I can try. Special filters, diagnostics . . .”

“Best of luck,” said Jonathan.

“You must have some idea of what it is they’re trying to warn you about,” JC insisted.

Jonathan and Sally looked at each other. Neither of them wanted to say anything. Finally, reluctantly, Jonathan nodded.

“They’re trying to warn us about the end.”

“Of what?” said JC.

“Everything,” said Jonathan.

“Listeners phone in constantly, saying they’re hearing all kinds of dreadful things,” said Sally. “But not everyone seems to hear the same voice, or the same message, at the same time. Different people hear different things, during the same broadcasts. That’s why some people claim to recognise some voices as particular dead relatives or loved ones. It’s like people hear . . . what scares them the most.”

“What do you hear, Sally?” said JC.

“We’re all going to die,” Sally said quietly.

“Sally . . .” said Jonathan.

“I’m not the only one who believes that!” Sally said fiercely. “The suicide rate in this whole area is way up! You know that!”

“That’s only a rumour!” said Jonathan. He gave JC his full attention. “You have to stop this. Before the new owners find out how bad things have got and shut us down!”