Voices From Beyond (A Ghost Finders Novel)

  “This is it, people,” Happy said suddenly. In a perfectly normal voice. “Here we go. Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a very bumpy ride, and you don’t want to be thrown off.”

  The room shuddered violently, as though the whole building had taken a direct hit. Murdock House seemed to lurch from one side to the other, then back again. The floor rose and dropped back. Everyone cried out, holding on to their chairs and each other, like passengers on a ship that had struck something unexpected. JC dropped into a chair by the reception desk and hung on grimly.

  “What was that?” yelled Felicity.

  “Timequake!” yelled Melody.

  “What does that even mean?” said Jonathan.

  “Beats the hell out of me,” said JC. “Brace yourself and hang on.”

  And then their voices were drowned out as a cacophony of horrible sounds broke out all around them. JC recognised them immediately. It was the same awful animal sounds he’d heard before, up in the studio. Grunts and howls, screams and the sound of things dying. Sounds of hunting, and killing, and feasting. A terrible appetite pulsed on the air, heavy and overpowering, so physical they all felt they could reach out and touch it. Or it could touch them.

  And oh, it’s so hungry.

  The animal sounds raced round and round them, closing in and falling back, like nocturnal creatures emerging from the jungle shadows to study their prey around a camp-fire. A great force was building, establishing itself in unnatural ways. Everyone sitting around the desk was crying out now, despite themselves—raw sounds of horror and fear. Even JC and Melody, experienced as they were. But not Happy. He sat very still in his chair, his hands resting loosely in his lap. His eyes were squeezed tightly shut: either because he didn’t want to see what was happening or because he didn’t need to. He was smiling. A wild, exultant, death’s-head grin.

  Flashing visions filled all their heads, brief glimpses of other worlds, come and gone in a moment, as a new reality fought to impose its own conditions on theirs. The future, elbowing the Present aside. Raging fires broke out all over the reception area: fierce but without heat. As yet. The flames weren’t clear enough, weren’t real enough yet. The walls of the room silently exploded, rushing away in all directions, receding into the distance. As though they could no longer contain all the space inside them. The floor and the ceiling vanished, dismissed by a new reality that didn’t need them any longer. Because they would only have got in the way of letting everyone see the new world.

  The world that was coming. The future.

  Everywhere they looked, the world was on fire. Great flames leaping up, into a sky raining blood, and shit, and streams of maggots. Great jagged cracks split the sky apart, opening it up, so that Something could peer through from the other side. Cities exploded, buildings blown away on a terrible bright wind. Whole city blocks dropped into the earth, swallowed up by crevices appearing suddenly beneath them. Roads collapsed or tied themselves in knots. And all around, things and people fell into bottomless pits or were snatched up and carried away or burned for no reason.

  It was the end of everything, the end of the world that was. A terrible future being born.

  A new set of operating conditions replaced the old. The light curdled and spoiled, becoming feverish and foul. Almost unendurable to merely human eyes. Massive trees burst up out of the cracked ground, forcing the earth apart as they exploded into the rotten air. Driving up, like nails driven down. The ground acquired a covering of flesh, of skin. Stretched taut, flushed and sweating, heaving in slow, sluggish waves. The trees were big as buildings, bigger, and made entirely of meat. Their branches thrashed violently, clutching at the air like grasping tentacles. Living things ran through the meat forest, horrible creatures, hunting and being hunted. They jumped and ran and slithered through the living jungle. Huge and small and everything in between, they fell upon each other with boundless hate and hunger. Everything feasting on everything else. Killing and being killed, eating and being eaten, over and over again.

  Because death was not an end, here.

  People, recognisably human people, were running and hiding and screaming helplessly as awful things pulled them down. Men and women were torn apart, eaten up . . . dying horribly everywhere. Because that was all that was left for them to do, in this newborn future world. They never stood a chance. They were prey, there to be played with.

  “Oh God,” said Melody. “I know this . . .”

  Her quiet voice cut clearly through the bedlam. Perhaps because she was so much closer, or realer, than anything else.

  “You know this?” said Felicity.

  “JC, we’ve seen this place before!” said Melody.

  “Of course we have,” said JC. “From the students, and their séance. This is the world of the Beast.”

  “You mean you’ve been here before?” said Jonathan, his voice rising hysterically. “How the hell . . .”

  “We get around,” said JC. “On another case, we had to break into a world like this, to rescue some kidnapped souls. We brought them safely home again; and we shut the door behind us. I know we did. But I’m starting to wonder . . . whether we should have locked it, too.”

  “Talk to us properly!” Tom said angrily, using his anger to hold his fear at bay. “Tell us what’s going on! We need to understand what’s happening!”

  “The world we entered wasn’t this world, exactly,” said JC. “It wasn’t the future, then. It was another world, another place. We defeated the Beast; and I thought that was it.”

  “It’s our future now,” said Melody. “Unless we do something. Happy? Happy! Have you made contact yet?”

  “We closed the door after us; but the door was still there,” said Happy. Not looking at her, not looking at anything. “We left a trail of bread-crumbs, and the Beast followed us home. And brought its home with it. Time means nothing to the kind of things that see it from the other side. The Beast has come, will come, through the door . . . and it brings the rules of its own reality with it. It wants revenge on us, JC; and oh, it’s so hungry . . .”

  “Concentrate, Happy!” JC said harshly. “Remember what you’re doing, and why! The bridging tunnel is in place. Yell out to our future selves! Make them hear you! Make them talk to us!”

  “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!

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

  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.”