Ghost of a Chance

  But once he was down in the tunnels, moving in scurrying little runs through the fiercely bright light, from shadow to shadow and hiding-place to hiding-place, things happened that destroyed what little confidence he had. Bad things. Billy saw bad things. He saw ghosts and monsters and horrible, impossible things, nightmares broken loose and running wild in the world; and he ran and ran until finally he saw the worst thing of all. The ghost of the beautiful woman he’d killed the day before. She looked just as beautiful, dressed in white like an angel, her hair the same colour as the blood that had spilled down her back when he pulled out the knife.

  He crouched, in the deepest and darkest of the shadows, watching her with wide, confused eyes, scared out of his mind. He didn’t feel guilty, and he didn’t feel sorry; he knew now he’d only done what he’d done in the service of his Protector. But he was terrified that these big and important people, with their big and important voices, would tell the authorities what he’d done, then everyone would know. He’d be caught and punished and locked up in a cage, forever and ever. Billy had gone through most of his life afraid of being punished.

  First, he spied on JC and his team, then he spied on Natasha and Erik, trying to figure out who they all were and what they were doing. Trying to figure out what he should do. He saw them do amazing and awful things, then he saw them fight each other, and he saw them working together. None of it made any sense to Billy. The ghost was there, too, acting like she was still alive; and once she turned her head and looked right at Billy. He shot off immediately, running and running and not looking back, and when he finally stopped to glance fearfully around him, he was on a platform he didn’t recognise.

  He moved slowly, diffidently, down the platform. He was meant to be there. He could feel it. His unseen Protector had brought him there, for some important purpose. A train pulled into the station, moving smoothly and silently—a dream of train, come just for him. Billy made ooh and aah noises. The train was painted in bright colours, from end to end, all the fresh and vivid shades of childhood. A great big toy train, just for him. Bright and cheerful and not threatening at all. (So why were all the hairs standing up on his arms and the back of his neck?) The Protector had sent this train, the Protector who had hidden him from the authorities, who loved him and cared for him and looked after him. Who now called to Billy in the sweetest of voices, calling him . . . to come and meet his Protector, and get his reward for killing the beautiful woman.

  (Except . . . Billy hadn’t wanted to hurt her. Not really. He never wanted to hurt anyone. At the last moment he had hesitated; and some other force had moved his hand. Hadn’t it?)

  Billy stared in wonder at the candy-coloured train and was sure it was there to take him to a wonderful place, where he would find all the answers to all the questions that had ever troubled him. And in that place he would be made safe and happy and know pleasures he had only ever dreamed of before. Wriggling with excitement, little Billy Hartman walked confidently forward, and the brightly coloured car doors opened before him. He stepped on board and sat down, the doors closed silently, and the train took him away.

  He passed through station after station, and many strange and wondrous sights revealed themselves to him through the car windows. Platforms made out of interlocked bones, the great curving station like a massive rib cage . . . huge plunging waterfalls of glistening solid crystal . . . rioting gardens full of huge flowers with thick pulpy petals and gasping pink mouths that sang sweet songs to him in high-pitched voices, like a choir of mice. Billy sighed and laughed and beat his hands together, almost drunk on the sheer splendour of it all.

  The train slowed as it approached its final destination, and Billy cried out in joy, pressing his face right up against the window to better view the shining city spread out before him. Ethereal spires and massive golden domes, spiralling fairy towers connected by elegant walkways . . . and beautiful women everywhere, smiling at him. At him! Angels floated down shimmering paths and bowed their haloed heads to him. Billy was so happy he could hardly breathe. He had left the plain, hurtful, ordinary world behind him, at last. His Protector had rescued him and brought him there, to where he should have lived all along.

  The train halted abruptly. The doors slammed open, and Billy hurried out onto the waiting platform, almost dancing in his eagerness to meet his Protector, and thank him, and start his new life. And then he stopped suddenly, and looked around him, confused. Something was wrong. Something was horribly wrong. The marvellous city was gone, the beautiful towers and the beautiful women were gone, and he was standing alone on a bare and empty platform. No name, no destinations, not even any posters on the walls. Billy looked back, and the brightly coloured train was gone, too. There weren’t even any rails. He’d been left here, alone, abandoned in an empty place. Billy started to cry.

  It was cold, and getting colder. Billy hugged himself tightly as his breath steamed thickly on the still air. His teeth began to chatter, and his tears froze on his cheeks. Thick patterns of hoarfrost formed on the bare walls, horrid images like staring eyes and gaping mouths. Heavy jagged icicles hung down from the ceiling, like glistening stalactites. There was a sound; and Billy turned to look.

  And when little Billy Hartman finally saw what it was that had been guiding and protecting him all this while, he screamed and screamed, until he tore out the lining of his throat, and blood sprayed from his mouth.

  TEN

  WHO’S AFRAID OF THE BIG BAD WOLF?

  Back on the southbound platform, Natasha was making herself useful. A quick spell (muttered under her breath in what sounded very like debased Coptic), and all the blood disappeared from everyone’s clothes, leaving them still battered and torn but comfortably dry and clean. And smelling not entirely unlike a country meadow. The blood basically leapt out of the clothing and ended up scattered in puddles all around them, steaming quietly. Everyone made polite, thankful sounds, while Natasha preened prettily.

  “Oh, that old thing. I’ve had that spell in my repertory for years. Never leave home without it.”

  Erik sniggered. “Now tell them what you had to do to acquire that spell. And what you did with the blood afterwards.”

  “They don’t need to know that!” snapped Natasha. “It would only upset them. Why do you always have to spoil everything?”

  Erik shrugged. “Stick to what you’re best at, that’s what I always say.”

  Melody ignored them all. She didn’t approve of magic. She busied herself with her equipment, checking the most recent displays and frowning intently at the long-range sensor readings. All her instrument panels were lit up, blazing fiercely as new information flooded in. Melody stabbed fiercely at one keyboard after another, scowling at each monitor screen in turn, reluctant to admit she didn’t understand half of what her machines were telling her. Energy readings everywhere were off the scale, spiking and changing and disappearing even as she looked at them. Some of what she was seeing made no sense at all, as though the very laws of reality were becoming slippery and unreliable under the influence of some monstrous Outside will.

  Tunnels, platforms, corridors—the whole station was crawling with unnatural manifestations. Ghosts, demons, other-dimensional creatures; some of them so strange, so alien, they barely qualified as life-forms at all. Life and Death weren’t as separate as they used to be, down in the Underground.

  “Stop frowning like that, Melody,” said JC. “You’ll give yourself wrinkles. What’s up?”

  “Do you want the bad news, the really bad news, or the Oh we are truly fucked this time news?” said Melody. “If I’m interpreting these readings correctly, and I am, we’re in enemy territory now. Something from way beyond the fields we know or even guess at, has come among us, and is reworking the most basic laws of our reality. Writing over the world, to make it more like where the Intruder originally came from.”

  “All right,” said Happy, “you’ve got my attention. Are you sure about this, Melody? The sheer power involved would . . .??
?

  “Of course I’m not sure!” snapped Melody. “I’ve never seen readings like this! I doubt anyone has. But I am definitely seeing massive displays of other-dimensional energy, more than enough to transmute matter. Something from the afterworlds has forced open a door into our reality, settled in, and established a beachhead. Part of this Intruder has manifested in our world, taken shape and form, and rooted itself here; and more is coming through all the time. Or, if you prefer, downloading its information into our material plane, and just its presence is enough to mould the world around it. The Intruder is more . . . real, than us. And it’s not hiding any more. As though it wants us to know where it is, and what it’s doing. As though it wants us to come and find it.”

  “As if we’d fall for an obvious trap like that,” said Happy. “We’re not going to fall for an obvious trap like that, are we? Oh shit, we are. I want to go home.”

  He fumbled a bottle of pills out of an inside pocket, but his hands were trembling so much he spilled most of them on the floor. He got down on his knees and scrabbled for the scattered pills. He was shaking all over, and his mouth trembled as though he might burst into tears at any moment. Natasha looked down her nose at him, and Erik giggled, embarrassed. JC got down on one knee beside Happy but made no move to help or hinder him.

  “Happy, don’t do this. I need you sharp and focused.”

  “What if I don’t want to be sharp and focused?” said Happy, looking only at the pills in front of him. “What if I don’t want to see something that’s more real than we are?”

  “It’s the job,” said JC. “Look at you; you’re a mess from what you’ve taken so far.”

  “It’s only the come-down,” muttered Happy. “I’ll be fine. But I need a little taste. Something to put me right.”

  “No you don’t,” said JC.

  “You don’t know what I need! We can’t all be big and brave and heroic, like you! Some of us are ordinary mortals, doing the best we can!” He looked at the pills he’d collected in his hand. “If you were me, you’d be knocking back the meds, too. So you wouldn’t have to be like me.”

  “Happy . . .”

  “I can’t do the job without them, JC. I just can’t.”

  “Want to try some of mine?” said Natasha. Happy looked up, to find her standing over him offering a slim bottle of pills. Happy rose slowly to his feet, staring at the bottle as though hypnotised. JC stood up beside Happy but made no move to interfere.

  “Only the very best, for the Crowley Project’s most favoured agents,” said Natasha. “Something to make you feel like a man, or a god, or whatever else it takes to get the job done. Want a little taste?”

  “Tell you what,” said Happy, licking his dry lips.

  “You try one of mine . . . and I’ll try one of yours. No? Didn’t think so. Did you really think I’d take sweeties from a stranger? Typical Project agent. Even now, you can’t resist manoeuvring for advantage. We’re facing the end of the world, and we still can’t trust each other.”

  “Trust is fine,” said Natasha, making the slim bottle disappear about her person. “But always count your change. This . . . is only a marriage of convenience. And you can’t blame a girl for trying.”

  “You were never a girl,” said Erik. “You were born fully mature, and nasty with it. Probably shot out of the womb demanding a gin and tonic and a ciggie, and a gun that fired real bullets.”

  Natasha smiled on him. “How well you know me.”

  Erik sniffed loudly, and moved away to peer closely at Kim. He walked round and round her, studying her from all angles, careful always to maintain a safe distance. Kim let him do it, studying him coolly. Erik finally stopped in front of her, looking thoughtfully into her ghostly face, so close their noses were almost touching.

  “Boo!”

  Kim laughed delightedly as Erik fell back several steps. He pulled his dignity back about him, doing his utmost to look like a scientist again.

  “Remarkable phenomenon,” he said, in his best lecturer’s voice. “Very lifelike. Astonishing level of interaction with the living. Almost human.”

  “More human than you,” Kim said sweetly. “Nasty little man.”

  Erik flushed darkly. “Why did you destroy my computer?”

  “Because it offended me,” said Kim. “Better be careful, Erik; you offend me, too.”

  Erik actually looked a little hurt. “You don’t even know me . . .”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised,” said Kim. She drifted forward, and Erik backed away before her. Kim fixed him with a hard, critical gaze. “The dead see many things that are hidden from the living. I know why you had to leave Vienna University in such a hurry. I know why Interpol chased you across half of France. Shall I mention the dog with two heads, the monkey that aged backwards, the pig with the added human brains that could say seventeen words in Portuguese? And you really shouldn’t have surgically reworked that homeless girl’s circulatory system, to make it more efficient. Such a mess . . .”

  “Shut up!” said Erik. “Shut up! Get out of my head!”

  “Wouldn’t go in there on a bet,” said Kim. “It’s not my fault you wear your sins so openly.”

  “They weren’t all failures! I achieved things, important things! I did!” Erik was breathing hard, almost on the edge of tears. “Don’t think I can’t hurt you because you’re dead!”

  His left hand dived inside his coat, but JC was immediately there, putting himself between Kim and Erik.

  “Don’t even think about it,” said JC.

  Erik swallowed hard and looked away, unable to meet JC’s gaze, even muffled behind sunglasses. He nodded quickly to JC, and to Kim, then hurried away to hide behind Natasha, who ignored him.

  “If you’ve all finished butting your heads together, perhaps we could concentrate on the extremely imminent end of the bloody world!” said Melody. “We are running out of time, people. Quite possibly literally.”

  “Sorry,” said JC.

  He moved over to join Melody at her instruments and made a show of studying the displays thoughtfully, as though they meant something to him. If Melody wasn’t entirely fooled, she was kind enough to keep it to herself.

  “Any clues as to who or what our Intruder might be?” said JC, after a while.

  “Nothing definitive,” said Melody. “But it’s not just . . . something from the afterworlds. This is Big, really quite unbelievably Big. One of the Great Beasts, perhaps. The Hogge, or the Serpent . . . Bad news on every level you can think of. If I really understood what these displays are telling me, I think I’d be very upset.”

  “One of the Great Beasts?” said Happy, incredulously. “That is way out of our league!”

  “Speak for yourself,” Natasha said immediately.

  “You’re not fooling anyone,” Happy said viciously. “I can feel your fear from here.”

  “You feel me again without my permission, and I’ll slap your face off,” said Natasha.

  “Children, children . . .” JC murmured. “Play nice, or there will be spankings. Melody, could the presence of the Intruder in our world explain why I was touched by the Light? Was I granted this new strength to . . . even things out? Give us a fighting chance?”

  “Who knows why the gods do anything?” said Erik.

  “They are not gods!” Happy said immediately. “Don’t use that word. Never use that word. Just because they’re so much more than us, it doesn’t mean they’re gods.”

  “What difference does it make?” said Kim, puzzled.

  “Because you can’t fight gods,” said Happy.

  “We can fight things that think they’re gods,” JC said cheerfully. “Remember that being we encountered in the supermarket car park? Worshipped by generations of early Humanity; and we still kicked its arse and sent it home crying. Melody, could our Intruder be anything like that?”

  “No. That was a much more basic, even elemental, force. Not coherent enough even to have a name or identity. We’re faced with someth
ing far more sophisticated. A single entity, or presence, that can change our world simply by existing in it.” She looked at Happy. “Spell the word god with a lower case, and it’s a good enough term for what’s down here in the darkness with us.”

  Everyone looked at each other. No-one wanted to be the first to say anything.

  “We are not equipped to deal with a Great Beast,” Happy said finally. “Let’s be real here, people. Outer Forces like that are so far out of our league we couldn’t even see the league from where we are. We’re ghost finders, not god killers.”

  “What we need are better weapons,” said Natasha.

  “Bigger weapons. First rule of the Crowley Project: there’s nothing in supernature that can’t be taken down with a big enough stick. Maybe if we combined our resources . . .”

  “You’re seriously contemplating throwing down with a god?” said Melody.

  “We’ve been known to kill gods, at the Project,” said Erik airily. “Sometimes we eat them, too.”

  “You couldn’t even stand up to me,” said Kim. “And I’m only dead.”

  “Confidence is fun,” said JC. “Sanity is better. We need a plan.”

  “We need weapons!” said Natasha.

  “You can’t fight the Great Beasts!” said Happy. “They’re as much conceptual as anything, a horrible Idea from a higher plane, downloaded into physical form in our dimension. You can’t kill an Idea. The best we can hope for is to pry it loose from our plane and send it home with a flea in its ear.” He frowned, considering. “And we might be able to do that. So far, all the signs suggest our Intruder is following the standard pattern of any haunting, building everything from and around a single focal point.”

  “You’re talking about me,” said Kim.

  “We don’t know that for sure,” said JC.

  Happy ignored him, looking at Melody. “How far away from us is the Intruder, and please say lots.”

  “Hard to tell,” said Melody. “If I’m interpreting these readings correctly, and I’d be the first to admit that there’s a whole lot of guesswork involved . . . it seems our Intruder has added a whole new platform to this station. A half-way place, where its world butts up against ours. This new platform comes and goes, not always there, or at least, not always connected to our reality. It’s the Beast’s lair. Home for its new physical form. For whatever shape it’s taken in our world. We can only access this new station with the Intruder’s permission.”