“I’ve got all my sensors cracked wide open. All systems are green, all readings coming in sharp and clear. Ghost Finders are Go!”
JC picked up one of the plastic cups the students had been drinking their wine from. He emptied out the last of the contents onto the carpet, turned the cup upside down, and placed it carefully in the middle of the Ouija board. The professor frowned.
“Doesn’t it have to be . . .”
“No it doesn’t have to be,” JC said firmly. “The board and everything else are symbols, to put people in the right frame of mind. It’s the participants who do the hard work, the psychic heavy lifting, and make things happen.”
He placed a forefinger on the upturned plastic cup, then stared firmly at Happy and the professor until they did, too. The professor’s touch was so unsteady, the cup rattled back and forth for a moment until he settled down. They all sat and looked at the cup. It didn’t move.
“Come on,” JC said encouragingly to the cup. “Let’s see a little action, hmm? Move it! We haven’t got all night . . .”
Happy’s head came up sharply, and he looked quickly round the lounge. “We’re not alone here, JC. There’s a definite presence, right here in the room with us. Can’t quite . . . pin it down . . .”
“Friendly?” said JC.
“What do you think?” Happy winced. “Ooh, this feels bad. Really bad.”
The professor snatched his hand back from the plastic cup and scrambled to his feet. JC grabbed him by an arm and hauled him back down again.
“Don’t draw attention to yourself, Prof,” he murmured. “Might not be healthy. Melody? You getting anything?”
“Nothing useful,” said Melody, her gaze jumping from one display to the next. “Nothing’s showing up on the motion trackers . . . Or the short-range sensors. But the temperature in here has dropped another seven degrees. Could be an energy sink—draining power out of the world to fuel some kind of manifestation . . .”
“It’s here,” said Happy. His face was pale, and wet with sweat. His eyes were very bright. “I can feel it, moving around us. Watching us.”
“Could it be one of the students, trying to get home?” said JC.
“It’s not human,” said Happy.
The professor yanked his arm free of JC’s grasp and tried to get to his feet again. He was breathing hard, his gaze fixed on the exit. JC grabbed him again, his fingers sinking deep into the professor’s arm muscle, until Volke cried out. JC pulled him back down again.
“Let me go!” said the professor, struggling to break free. He was breathing so fast now, he was almost panting, borderline hysterical. “I have to get out of here!”
“You are not running out on your students,” said JC. “You got them into this; you are going to help bring them back.”
“I’m leaving! You can’t stop me!”
“Bet I can,” said JC.
He let go of the professor, smiled briefly, and took off his sunglasses. Bright golden light shone fiercely from his eyes. The professor stared at him: fascinated and horrified, all at once.
“Dear God, man; what happened to you?”
“I was touched inappropriately by forces from Outside,” JC said calmly.
“What are you . . . ?” whispered the professor.
“Professional,” said JC. “So sit tight and don’t be a distraction, so the rest of us can clean up the mess you’ve made.”
The professor subsided. JC looked at him with his glowing eyes until he placed his finger back on the upturned cup; and then JC put his sunglasses back on.
The single bulb lighting the room began to dim, steadily losing its light, until the room was full of gloom and shadows. Melody kicked in the spotlights built into her equipment array. The harsh lights illuminated the group sitting around the coffee table, as the light bulb gave up the ghost and shut down completely. Drifting shadows moved slowly round the lounge, large and shapeless, twisting and coiling like fog, unconnected to anything that might have cast them. The professor made a low, whimpering sound but didn’t move. JC ignored the shadows with magnificent disdain. He kept his gaze fixed on the upturned plastic cup and his finger firmly in place, along with Happy’s and the professor’s. They sat almost as still as the four students mixed in with them—breathing slowly and steadily, concentrating on the cup.
And, slowly, it began to move. Edging forward a few inches at a time, in sudden jerks and rushes, dragging the three arms after it. The cup moved faster and faster, shooting round and round the Ouija board, not even trying to spell out a message. JC had a sudden strong feeling there was someone standing right behind him. He didn’t turn to look. He knew there wouldn’t be anything there he could see. He looked across the table at Happy, who nodded quickly.
“We’ve definitely got Something’s attention, JC.”
“I’ve locked onto the spatial coordinates of the dimensional door,” Melody said quietly. “It’s there at the table, with you.”
“Department of no surprises,” said JC.
“Oh God,” whispered the professor. “Please. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to do this. Please let me go!”
“Don’t move your finger, Prof,” said JC. “It wouldn’t be safe.”
“I’m picking up new information from the room,” Happy said suddenly. “Old impressions, rising to the surface. Something to do with . . . a family that used to live here, some years back. Could be the family you were talking about, Professor; back in the eighties.”
“On it,” said Melody. “My computers are tapping into all the local-history sources . . . Yes. Here we go. I’ve got an old local television news report, from 1983. All about this house and the supposedly supernatural troubles the family had been having, ever since they moved in. Probably the same report you saw as a kid, Professor Volke.”
“How did you find it so quickly?” said the professor.
Melody smirked. “With these computers, I can find anything, anywhere. There isn’t a security system on this planet strong enough to keep me out.”
“Yes, yes, we’re all very impressed,” said JC. “Can you show us this old report, on the television?”
“Of course,” said Melody.
“The cup has stopped moving,” said Happy.
They all looked back at the Ouija board. The upturned cup had come to a rest, standing motionless at the NO station. JC sniffed loudly.
“We don’t take no orders from stinking boards!” he said grandly. “Play the report, Melody.”
The television set snapped on again, pumping out light to push back the general gloom. A local news report began, with a tag line at the bottom of the screen, saying it was from September 17, 1983. Fronted by a young, female reporter with a bright, enthusiastic smile, big hair, and barely restrained eighties fashion. She was standing in front of the house, beaming cheerfully into the lens.
“Hello! This is Isobel Hardestry, from Thames News, bringing you a fascinating story of things that go bump in the night, from an estate in South-East London. The house behind me looks like any other house; but strange things have been happening here. According to the family who moved in last month. I have with me Mrs. Katy Perrin, the mother of the family.”
The camera pulled back a little, to show a woman who probably wasn’t much older than the reporter but looked prematurely aged. She was dressed in rough, respectable clothes. Her face was drawn, with dark, deep-set eyes. She looked like she hadn’t been getting a lot of sleep recently. Her arms were tightly crossed, and she kept her back firmly turned on the house behind her. She barely glanced at the reporter, or the camera, as she was asked a series of quiet, respectful questions. Yes, bad things had been happening in the house. No, they hadn’t seen any ghosts. Yes, there had been . . . manifestations.
“We were so happy there, at first,” said Mrs. Perrin. Her voice was flat, almost unemotional. As though she’d given up caring whether she was believed or not. “This was the first house that was really ours. We’d only ever been re
nters, before. It took everything we had to make the deposit. But then the kids started fooling around with this Ouija board their uncle Paul found at a jumble sale. We all thought it was only a toy, something to keep them occupied. But then the kids started talking about this new friend they’d made through the board. At first, we all thought it was just another Imaginary Friend. But it wasn’t imaginary; and it wasn’t a friend.
“It started playing tricks. Opening and closing doors, moving things around, hiding things . . . The kitchen got flooded, the fuses kept blowing . . . and then something tripped my husband, at the top of the stairs. He fell all the way down. Broke both his legs.
“Finally, some of next door’s children came round, to play with my kids and keep them company while I was off visiting their dad at the hospital. When I got back, my kids were crying, hysterical. There was no trace of the neighbour’s children. They’d just . . . vanished. We never did find out what happened to them. We had the police around, and everything, but it did no good. They were gone.”
She had to stop for a moment, on the verge of tears. Exhaustion, as much as horror. The reporter, who’d been nodding and smiling encouragingly all through this, waited patiently for Mrs. Perrin to continue. She finally shook her head slowly and looked straight into the camera for the first time.
“We’ve moved,” she said, almost defiantly. “Had no choice. Got out, while we still could. I burned the Ouija board before we left. Apparently, it’s been quiet in the house ever since. But I wouldn’t trust it. And God help whatever family moves in.”
She disappeared from the screen, replaced by a tight shot on Isobel Hardestry. From the change of light behind her, it was obvious some time had passed.
“I also talked to the local priest, Father Callahan.”
He turned out to be a surprisingly young man, barely into his twenties. Calm and relaxed, not obviously concerned.
“Yes,” he said. “I was called in, by the family. To examine the house and the situation. Nothing happened while I was there.”
“Did you perform an exorcism, Father Callahan?”
“No,” said the priest, a little condescendingly. “I would have to ask permission from my bishop first, before I could take on such a thing. And there really wasn’t anything I could take to him to justify such an extreme response.”
“And you didn’t . . . feel anything?” said the reporter, clearly doing her best to encourage him without leading him.
“I didn’t say that,” said the priest. “I did feel a certain . . . presence, in the house.”
“What kind of presence, Father Callahan?”
“Malignant.”
The two-shot disappeared, replaced by a close-up of the reporter’s face. She smiled bravely into the camera.
“The Perrins are gone. A new family lives in the house now, and they . . . have nothing disturbing to report. What really happened here? I don’t suppose we’ll ever know, for sure. But whatever it was, I think we can safely say, it’s over.”
The television screen went blank. Happy sniffed loudly.
“Just as well they didn’t try an exorcism. Would have been like trying to put out a raging inferno with a water-pistol.”
“Whatever came through the dimensional door must have retreated back to its own world, once the house was empty, and there was no-one left to play with,” said JC. “But the door didn’t close completely. It stayed a little ajar; perhaps merely the potential of a door . . . Until the professor’s séance blasted it wide open again. And now, I think Something that has been waiting on the other side of that door for all these years . . . has come through again.”
“What sort of Something?” asked the professor. “And why did it take my students’ . . . minds?”
He couldn’t bring himself to say the word souls.
“Because it could,” said JC. “Because it’s hungry. Perhaps because it likes to play. Depends on what it is we’re dealing with here.”
“Are we talking about some kind of ghost?” said the professor.
“If we’re lucky,” said JC.
“And if we’re not?”
“It’s a Beast,” said Happy.
“Something from the Outer Rim,” said Melody. “The furthest reaches of existence, the most extreme dimensions, where Life, or something like it, takes on powerful and disturbing forms. Spiritual monsters; terrible abstracts given shape and form and appalling appetites.”
The professor looked like he wanted to say something scathing but couldn’t bring himself to. The atmosphere in the room wouldn’t let him.
JC looked steadily at the upturned plastic cup, still holding resolutely still on the Ouija board. He prodded the cup carefully with one fingertip; and it scraped noisily across the wooden board, unresisting. JC raised his head, and addressed the room outside the circle of Melody’s spotlights.
“Hello!” he said loudly. “We are the pros from the Carnacki Institute! Who are you?”
The television turned itself back on. A thick grey fog filled the screen, twisting and curling; while a heavy buzzing static blasted from the speakers.
“Okay,” said Melody. “That wasn’t me. Did any of you touch the remote? Of course you didn’t. Ah, that’s interesting . . . According to my instruments, there’s no incoming signal. That television shouldn’t be showing anything.”
“Somebody wants to talk to us,” said JC.
“You say that like it’s a good thing,” said Happy. “I can’t believe there’s anything our interdimensional intruder would want to say that we would want to hear. Any sane person, with working survival instincts, would be sprinting for the horizon right now.”
The professor looked hopefully at the door; but one glance from JC was all it took to hold him in place. JC looked thoughtfully at the television screen.
“All right,” he said. “What do you want?”
The screen cleared to show shifting, disturbing images from some awful hellish place. Another world, another reality, where everything was alive. Horribly alive. Lit by a flaring, blood-red light, everything in this terrible new world seemed to be made of flesh. The ground had skin. Corpse white and blue-veined, it pulsed and heaved, sweating fiercely. Great trees rose to make a fleshy jungle, with thick meat trunks and flailing branches, lashing the air like boneless tentacles, grabbing hungrily at distorted, malformed creatures than ran and leapt and scuttled through the dark shadows between the trees. Alien shapes, moving in inhuman ways, pursuing and eating each other; every living thing attacking and feasting on every other living thing. A world of endless appetite, of ravenous hunger, without any trace of conscience or regret to hold them back from every appalling thing they did.
It rained blood. And the fleshy ground drank it up with vicious glee.
The professor vomited, noisily and messily. JC patted him absently on the shoulder, his gaze fixed on the other world.
“It’s showing us where it comes from,” he said quietly. “It’s not giving us a name, or even showing what it is, because it doesn’t want us to have any information we could use against it. I don’t recognise this . . . place. Melody?”
“My computers are coming up blank,” Melody said steadily. “Nothing even like this, in all the Institute’s records. This must be way out in the Outer Reaches. The Shoals, perhaps, where the material meets the immaterial.”
“It’s playing with us,” said JC. “Taunting us . . .”
“Wait,” said Happy. “What’s that?”
The image on the screen had zoomed in on the meat forest, to show four human figures running desperately through the swaying trees. They lurched and stumbled, avoiding the lashing branches and the leaping creatures. They looked worn-down and exhausted, as though they’d been running for some time. But the huge and horrible thing lunging through the forest after them, snapping at their heels, was enough to keep them moving. And though the dark presence was half-hidden among the trees, it was still stunningly repulsive and horribly powerful. The only reason it hadn
’t already caught and consumed its human prey . . . was that it was having too much fun chasing them.
“I don’t understand,” the professor said plaintively, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Is that their . . . souls? If those are their souls, how can they be in any danger?”
“A world made of psychoplasm; psychogeography,” Happy said unexpectedly. “A world made physical by the thoughts and desires of those who live there. It looks like that because that’s what they want. The immaterial made real and solid by the intents of its inhabitants. Your students’ souls are real and solid, there, because that’s what the thing chasing them wants. They might not be able to die, or at least die permanently; but they can certainly be made to suffer.”
The professor looked like he wanted to vomit again. He made a high, keening sound, his eyes stretched painfully wide. JC had seen that look before—on the faces of people forced to understand and believe too much, too quickly.
“You were right, Happy,” said Melody. “It’s a Beast. And it’s hungry.”
“Shit,” said Happy.
“Why is he looking so scared?” demanded the professor.
“That’s his normal condition,” said JC. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“Why is he taking those pills?” said the professor.
“He does that,” said JC.
Happy dry-swallowed hard and put his pill box away. “Ah! Yes! That’s the stuff to give the troops! If I were any more aware, I’d be twins. The doorway’s shifted position, JC; I can tell. It’s moved away from the coffee table, to the television set. The Beast is forcing the door all the way open, from the other side. It wants in. It wants . . . Oh dear God, it’s so hungry, JC! It wants to eat us all up, the whole damned world, body and soul.” He laughed suddenly; a sound with no real humour in it. “Let it come through! I’ll kick its head right off.”