Praise for the Ghost Finders novels
GHOST OF A DREAM
“Green once again mixes and matches genres with gleeful abandon . . . Readers who enjoy a roller-coaster ride through a haunted house (well, theater, but I’m mixing metaphors here) will love this novel . . . A terrific continuation of the Ghost Finders’ adventures, with loads of horrors, thrills, and shocks.”
—SFRevu
GHOST OF A SMILE
“Ghost of a Smile is a lovely blend of popcorn adventure and atmospheric thriller, and good for a few hours of distraction and entertainment. That’s one of the reasons why Green’s books always leap right to the top of my reading list.”
—The Green Man Review
GHOST OF A CHANCE
“If future novels in Green’s new Ghost Finders series are as engaging as this one, they will hold up admirably against his previous work . . . Readers will appreciate the camaraderie and snappy dialogue.”
—Publishers Weekly
Ghost Finders Novels
GHOST OF A CHANCE
GHOST OF A SMILE
GHOST OF A DREAM
SPIRITS FROM BEYOND
Novels of the Nightside
SOMETHING FROM THE NIGHTSIDE
AGENTS OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS
NIGHTINGALE’S LAMENT
HEX AND THE CITY
PATHS NOT TAKEN
SHARPER THAN A SERPENT’S TOOTH
HELL TO PAY
THE UNNATURAL INQUIRER
JUST ANOTHER JUDGEMENT DAY
THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UNCANNY
A HARD DAY’S KNIGHT
THE BRIDE WORE BLACK LEATHER
Secret Histories Novels
THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN TORC
DAEMONS ARE FOREVER
THE SPY WHO HAUNTED ME
FROM HELL WITH LOVE
FOR HEAVEN’S EYES ONLY
LIVE AND LET DROOD
CASINO INFERNALE
Deathstalker Novels
DEATHSTALKER
DEATHSTALKER REBELLION
DEATHSTALKER WAR
DEATHSTALKER HONOR
DEATHSTALKER DESTINY
DEATHSTALKER LEGACY
DEATHSTALKER RETURN
DEATHSTALKER CODA
Hawk and Fisher Novels
SWORDS OF HAVEN
GUARDS OF HAVEN
Also by Simon R. Green
BLUE MOON RISING
BEYOND THE BLUE MOON
DRINKING MIDNIGHT WINE
Omnibus
A WALK ON THE NIGHTSIDE
SPIRITS FROM BEYOND
SIMON R. GREEN
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
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SPIRITS FROM BEYOND
An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author
Copyright © 2013 by Simon R. Green.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
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eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-62515-6
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Ace mass-market edition / September 2013
Cover art by Don Sipley.
Cover design by Judith Lagerman.
Interior text design by Laura K. Corless.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Contents
Praise
Also by Simon R. Green
Title Page
Copyright
Previously, in the Ghost Finders
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
Life is complicated.
Why should death be any different?
Ghosts are real, whether we want them to be or not. People have reported seeing ghosts throughout the whole history of human civilisation. We may argue over how to interpret the phenomenon, but the phenomenon remains a real thing.
How the living cope with the dead defines who we are.
PREVIOUSLY, IN THE GHOST FINDERS
The secret organisation known as the Carnacki Institute exists to Do Something about ghosts. Hunt them down, sort out their problems, and if need be, send them packing with existential prejudice. The Institute’s most experienced and successful team of field agents currently consists of JC Chance, team leader and positive thinker; Melody Chambers, girl science geek; and Happy Jack Palmer, team telepath and heavily medicated depressive.
On a mission to solve a mass haunting in Oxford Circus Tube Station, JC met and fell in love with the ghost of a murdered young woman, Kim Sterling. He almost died fighting to save her from a demonic presence on a tube train, when Something from Outside reached into our world and gave him new strength. His eyes glow golden now.
The living and the dead aren’t supposed to fall in love, for any number of really good reasons.
On their next assignment, the team went up against Robert Patterson, a trusted high-up executive in the Carnacki Institute who turned out to be a traitor and the servant of an Outside force called The Flesh Undying . . . a powerful Being that fell into our world from another dimension, exiled by its own kind. The Flesh Undying sees our world as a trap and is ready to blow it apart if that is what it takes to escape.
JC and his team killed Robert Patterson, only to see him rise again, possessed by another traitor within the Institute. Ghost girl Kim drove that mind out by possessing the body herself, but when the time came for her to emerge again, she was gone.
JC nearly lost his mind.
They saw Kim again, briefly, during the Case of the Phantom of the Theatre. She told them they couldn’t trust anyone in the Carnacki Institute. And then she silently vanished away again.
It’s been six months since then. But everyone knows time means nothing to the dead.
ONE
THERE IS A WORLD BELOW
Sometimes he slept right through. Sometimes he got into bed and fell asleep and didn’t wake up again until the alarm bell rang. But mostly JC couldn’t sleep. He did all the right things, went to bed at the right time, but no matter how hard he tried, something wouldn’t let him sleep.
There are few things worse than lying in bed, in the dark, waiting for the endless hours of the night to pass. Dozing off and waking up repeatedly, convinced that after so many wakings, it must be four, five o’clock in the morning . . . and then looking at the bedside clock and seeing it’s barely 2:00 A.M. The night barely begun, and all those long hours still stretching away . . . JC Chance hadn’t slept prop
erly since his ghostly girl-friend, Kim, disappeared. In all the months she’d been missing, JC couldn’t remember a single good night’s sleep.
He still got tired at the end of the day, still went through all his usual routines before retiring . . . but mostly he lay flat on his back in his bed, in his marvellous new apartment in London’s West End, dog-tired and bone-deep weary . . . and prayed for sleep that never came. Too tired to sit up and read, or even watch television, too tired to do anything but stare into the dark and wait for the night to end.
Sometimes he would get up and sit on the edge of the bed, head hanging down . . . and sometimes he would get up and walk around the room in the dark, trying to convince his body how tired it was, and how late it was . . . hoping against hope that just this once his body would give up and let him sleep. But mostly he lay there, legs crossed and hands folded neatly across his chest, as though wanting to be ready for the undertaker if he should happen to die in the night. Opening and closing his eyes though it didn’t really make much difference. Because in the end, it was another night without Kim.
Until one night a scattered aetherial glow appeared at the foot of his bed, slowly concentrating into the form of the ghost girl, Kim. She hovered at the foot of his bed, looking just as she had the first time he had seen her in the London Underground. A beautiful pre-Raphaelite dream of a woman, forever in her twenties, the age she was when she was murdered. A great mane of glorious red hair tumbled down past her shoulders, framing a high-boned, sharply defined face, with vivid green eyes and a wide, smiling mouth. She wore a long white dress that clung tightly here and there to show off her magnificent figure; and she shone and shimmered in the gloom of the bedroom like a star fallen to Earth.
How nice, thought JC. I’m finally asleep and dreaming of Kim.
“You’re not dreaming, darling,” said Kim. “I’m here. I’m back.”
JC sat bolt upright in bed. A fierce golden glow blazed from his wide-open eyes, the only outward sign of how deeply he’d been touched by forces from Outside. JC froze where he was, afraid to do anything that might disturb the vision or frighten her away.
“Hello, JC,” said Kim. “Have you missed me?”
“More than life itself,” JC said hoarsely. “Because it isn’t living if you’re not with me. Are you really back now? Tell me this isn’t only another brief encounter because I don’t think I could bear to lose you again.”
“I’m back,” said Kim. “But if you want to keep me, you’re going to have to fight for me. You have to come and get me, right now.”
“Where are you?” said JC.
“Where you lost me,” said Kim. “Outside Chimera House. I’m there now, waiting for you.”
Then she was gone; and the only light in the darkened room came from JC’s eyes as he glared desperately around him.
* * *
He grabbed up his phone from the table beside his bed and called his team-mates, Happy and Melody. He had their number on speed dial, right next to a twenty-four-hour exorcist and dentist. He was shuddering all over, clinging to every detail of what he’d just seen, fighting to convince himself it had been real and not a dream. He’d only got through to Melody and Happy’s apartment and heard Melody’s voice at the other end, when the phone went dead in his hand and the television set at the other end of his bedroom suddenly turned itself on, blasting light into the darkened room. And there on the screen were Happy and Melody, staring out at him from their bedroom all the way across the city, in North London. They were sitting together on the end of their bed, shoulder to shoulder, wearing matching towelling dressing gowns and matching furry Sasquatch slippers. JC slowly put his phone down.
“I can see you!” he said to the faces on his television. “And you can see me, can’t you . . . ?”
JC became suddenly self-conscious and pulled his bedclothes securely about him. Because he slept in the raw.
“Yes, we can see you,” said Melody. “And will you please put on your sunglasses, because you’re blinding us with the glare.”
JC picked up the very dark sunglasses from his bedside table and slipped them on. The golden glare cut off immediately though a little light still spilled around the edges. JC gathered his dignity about him and glared at his television set.
“All right,” he said steadily. “How are you doing this?”
Melody smiled briefly. “You’re not the only one who liberates useful items from the Carnacki Institute warehouse. Now and again. When no-one’s looking. After everything that’s happened to us, I thought it important we have a method of communication that no-one else could intercept and listen in on.”
“And you didn’t tell me about this before because . . . ?” said JC.
“Didn’t want to worry you,” said Happy.
“And we weren’t entirely sure it would work,” said Melody.
“So we thought we’d better save it for a real emergency,” said Happy.
“Hold everything,” said JC. “All our phones have industrial-strength security scramblers already built in! The Institute installed them personally, once we were officially designated an A team. So they could discuss important mission details in confidence.”
Happy looked at him pityingly. “Don’t be naïve, JC. The people who installed the scramblers for the Institute are the very people who make sure to leave a back door open so they can eavesdrop if they want to. Given our current circumstances, with The Flesh Undying on our backs and at our throats, and God knows how many traitors inside the Institute, raging paranoia is a survival instinct. Of course, with me that comes naturally.”
“Look!” said JC. “This is important! Kim was just here—in the room, with me.”
“We know!” said Melody. “She was right here in the room with us, too.”
“She was speaking to both of us at the same time?” said JC.
“And giving us the same message,” said Happy. “The dead aren’t as limited as the living. They love to multi-task. Show-offs.” He stopped, to snigger briefly. “Good timing, too. If she’d turned up ten minutes earlier . . . someone would have blushed, and it wouldn’t have been me or Melody.”
“She said we have to fight for her, back at Chimera House,” said Melody, giving Happy a fierce dig in the ribs with her elbow. “And I have to wonder. How was she able to manifest in our apartments? Given that both our places are positively lousy with aetheric defences, specially designed to keep out spooky apparitions? One of the few real perks you get working for the Carnacki Institute is that major-league protections come as standard, in case something from the Other Side should take a fancy to one of us and follow us home.”
“Right!” said Happy. “But I still check under the bed every night. How was Kim able to appear to us?”
“Because Kim isn’t any old ghost,” said JC. “Something from the Outside touched her, down in the London Underground, just as it touched me. It changed us both.”
“I can confirm,” said Happy, a bit diffidently, “that what we all saw wasn’t any kind of trick, or illusion. It really was her. Though of course really might not be the best choice of word, given that we’re dealing with a ghost here . . .”
“Shut up, dear,” said Melody.
“Yes, dear, shutting up right now,” said Happy.
“Should we contact our revered Boss, at the Institute?” Melody said carefully. “Tell her what’s going on?”
“Best not bother her,” JC said immediately. “Given that we don’t know what’s going on, as yet. Catherine Latimer has always been big on questions. Besides, she might order us not to go, and I’d have to defy her to her face. Instead of behind her back, which is quite definitely safer for all concerned.”
“I thought the Boss was supposed to be on our side?” said Melody. “Are you saying we can’t even trust the person who runs the whole damned Institute?”
“No-one is on our side but us,” said JC.
“Now you’re taking!” said Happy. “I know; shut up, Happy.”
/> “Get yourselves ready,” said JC. “I’ll fire up the company car and come get you.”
“We’re really going back to Chimera House?” said Melody. “On the word of a ghost, and a pretty vague word, at that?”
“It’s Kim,” said JC.
There must have been something in his voice because Happy and Melody both looked away for a moment. Happy sighed loudly.
“Have I got time to update my will?”
“You’re always updating your will,” said Melody.
“I find it calming,” said Happy.
The television set turned itself off. JC waited a moment to make sure the screen stayed blank, then he threw back his bedclothes and swung out of bed. The early-morning air was pleasantly cool against his bare skin. He stretched easily. He didn’t feel tired at all.
He dressed quickly, then prowled through his apartment, snatching up things he thought might prove useful. Finally, he stopped before the full-length mirror in his hall and looked himself over. He wanted to be sure he was looking his best, for Kim.
His reflection smiled cheerfully back at him: a tall, lean, and only slightly sinister-looking fellow, perhaps a little too handsome for his own good. JC had just hit thirty and was putting a brave face on it. He had pale, striking features, dominated by the very dark sunglasses he had to wear in public and a huge mane of dark rock-star hair. He wore a rich, ice-cream white three-piece suit of quite staggering style and elegance, along with an Old School tie he wasn’t in any way entitled to but which he wore anyway because it opened doors.
JC Chance—Ghost Finder Extraordinaire.
“I’m on my way, Kim,” he said. “And God help anyone who gets in my way.”
* * *
He left his apartment block, quietly and surreptitiously, and strode down the street to where he’d parked his car. He’d commandeered it from the Carnacki Institute car pool sometime back because it was the brightest shade of red he could find. He certainly intended to return it someday. He was entitled to a company car now he’d been officially upgraded to A-team status, and he really didn’t see why he should go through all the hassle of filling out paper-work every time he wanted a car, like ordinary mortals. So he took one, and kept it. No doubt someone had noticed by now, but they couldn’t come and reclaim it until they’d filled out all the necessary paper-work. By which time he would probably have crashed it or lost it in some other dimension.