“What a very interesting story,” said JC. “Be sure, we will investigate it most thoroughly. Now stop wasting my time and tell me the real reason why you need our help. Or I will get up and lead my people out of here; and you can deal with it on your own.”
Brook nodded, slowly. He looked tired, beaten.
“The real reason I came back here, to the town where I was born, and grew up, was a girl. Lydia Woods. I used to walk out with her, back when we were both teenagers. All those years ago. Her father ran this pub, back in the seventies. But, there was a long-standing, really nasty feud going on back then, between Lydia’s family and mine. The kind that goes back generations . . . You know what small communities can be like. They clutch their grudges to their bosoms, so they have something to warm their cold hearts in the night.
“Lydia and I, we didn’t care. We were young; and we really did believe love conquers all. We even thought, in our naïvety, that we might be the ones to bring our warring families back together. But somehow both our families found out before we were ready to tell them. Bad words were said, on both sides. Scary words. And all kinds of threats; by people we had no doubt were ready to carry them out. Lydia and I were forbidden to see each other, ever again.
“While I was still working out what to do, Lydia hanged herself. Right here in this pub. Upstairs, in her father’s room. My father told me and said it was probably for the best. I hit him, for the first time in my life, left this town, and went to London. Ended up working for the Carnacki Institute. And that was my life for so many years. I never came back here, never once talked to anyone from my family. Or hers. They’re all gone now, one way or another.
“Finally, when I was getting ready to take early retirement, I got a call from an old friend I hadn’t even thought of in years. And he told me there were stories circulating, about Lydia’s ghost manifesting in the King’s Arms. The poor soul who owned the place then was scared out of his wits because everything had been quiet since the seventies. That’s why he was so ready to sell.
“That’s why I came back here, to take over the pub. Wasn’t like I had a choice. I had to see for myself. And take care of Lydia.”
“Is she . . . appearing, here?” said JC, as kindly as he could.
“Yes,” said Brook. “Not like the old story, of the wronged servant girl who hanged herself. No hanging body, no creaking of the noose. I look into the room where she . . . did it, and there she is. Looking exactly the way I remember her, from all those years ago. I thought at first it was a Timeslip, but I only had to look at her to know she was dead. I’ve watched her several times, from the doorway, never finding the courage to go in and talk to her. Because I got old; and she didn’t.
“Lydia is why I can’t just walk away from this horrible place. No matter how scary or dangerous it gets, I have to be here, for her. I can’t let her down again.”
“All right,” said JC. “I’m sure there’s a lot more you haven’t told us, but I think we’ve got the basics now. Tell me . . . exactly what have you seen, and experienced here, yourself? Tell us what you see here after all the regulars have run off home.”
Brook nodded reluctantly. “Nothing ever happens during the day. While it’s light. But once it starts to get dark . . . the ghosts come out to play. They’re everywhere. First, I hear them upstairs. Footsteps, moving around. Walking up and down the landing and in and out of the rooms. Lots of them, overlapping each other, like there’s a whole crowd of people up there. Then I hear voices. Men and women, young and old, but never anyone I recognise. I go to the foot of the stairs, and look up, to the dark at the top of the stairs . . . but I never go up, to see what’s happening. Because the one time I did . . .” He stopped abruptly, and looked at Happy. “You know. You understand. They show you things. Unbearable things.”
Brook stopped, his eyes far away. JC cleared his throat meaningfully. He wasn’t unfeeling; but he couldn’t make a start until he knew everything he needed to know. Information is ammunition in the hidden world.
“Sometimes, it gets physical,” said Brook. “I’ve had things thrown at me. Even been picked up and thrown around. Once I heard a child screaming up on the landing. And I wouldn’t stand for that. I thought perhaps some local kid had wandered up the stairs; and they’d got her. So I went up. And the moment I stepped out onto the first floor, the screaming stopped. And something laughed at me.
“The landing . . . seemed to stretch away, growing longer and longer, carrying me along with it. I wound up at the far end of the landing, and the top of the stairs seemed impossibly far away. I ran and ran down the landing, and the stairs never seemed to get any closer. I stumbled to a halt, to get my breath back, then forced myself on. I was afraid . . . so afraid I’d never get back. That I was trapped there on the landing, with all the things that haunted it, forever and ever. But suddenly space . . . snapped back, and I was at the top of the stairs. I ran down them, crying out in shock, and relief; and I could hear hundreds of voices behind me. Laughing.”
“All of this happened up on the first floor,” said Melody. “Timeslips, and a room that ate people, and ghosts and monsters everywhere . . . And you gave us rooms up there?”
Brook’s face twitched nervously. He could hear the danger in her voice.
“I had to know . . . whether it was only me. I wanted to see what would happen when the rooms were faced with real professionals. And I needed you to experience . . . what I experienced.”
“Yeah,” said Happy. “Thanks for that.”
“What usually happens next?” said JC. “After the manifestations upstairs?”
“If I stay down here,” said Brook, “eventually they come down, looking for me.”
“Why do you stay?” said Kim, honestly curious.
“Because if I’m not here, they might leave the inn and come into town, looking for me,” said Brook. “It’s better to ride it out until it’s over; and then I can lock the place up and go into town and get some sleep. It’s my pub. I’m responsible. I have to protect the town. And then, there’s Lydia . . .”
“What happens when they come downstairs?” said JC.
“They come into the bar,” said Brook. “I don’t always see things but I can hear them, moving about, talking together . . . You’ll see.”
Kim left JC’s side and went darting off through the bar, sometimes walking on the floor and sometimes tripping happily along several inches above it. Gravity was only ever an occasional thing for her. More an option than an implacable law. She walked right through the tables and chairs, humming cheerfully but tunelessly to herself, while everyone else stayed where they were and watched. Kim rose and fell, looking into every nook and cranny, even drifting all the way up to the ceiling so she could look down on things from above. Finally, she dropped down to hover beside JC again and shook her head firmly.
“Nothing there, now. I couldn’t See anything unnatural, sweetie. Not a trace to show anything weird has ever been here. Dull, dull; boring, boring. But, I am getting a feeling . . . that there’s something going on outside the inn.”
“There’s definitely a power source here, somewhere,” said Happy. “I can’t See it, but I can feel it. Don’t ask me what it is. It’s . . . elusive. Hard to pin down, even harder to identify. It doesn’t feel like anything I’ve ever encountered before. And like I said before, it’s growing. Getting stronger, and stranger. It’s attracting Really Bad Things to it, like malevolent moths to an utterly foul flame. Your pub isn’t only haunted by ghosts, Brook; I’m picking up traces of everything from elementals to malevolent forces from Outside . . . all of them desperate to Get In.”
Kim pouted. “How come you can pick up all this stuff, and I can’t?”
“Because I’m alive,” said Happy, not unkindly.
Brook looked at Happy, then at JC. “I never heard of half the things he said. What is he talking about?”
“I don’t know,” said JC. “I think he makes half of it up as he goes along to put the rest of
us in the right frame of mind.”
“I do not!” said Happy.
“But why are all those things coming here?” said Brook. “What do they want?”
“Us,” said Melody.
“Lives, and just as often deaths, are currency to these Things,” said Happy. “Eaters of Souls, our ancestors called them. They see us as energy sources. Or snacks, if you like. We’re junk food, to Things from Higher Dimensions! And the more they consume, the more powerful they become, and the better chance they have of gaining a foothold in our world.”
“By eating real things, they become more real,” said Melody. “They want to eat us all up, body and soul.”
“Just because they can,” said JC.
“I was better off when I thought it was ghosts,” said Brook.
“Lots of people say that to us,” said Happy.
“The Carnacki Institute has been studying these Things From Outside ever since it was formed,” said Melody, “Back in the days of Good Queen Bess. And we’re still no nearer understanding what they are. Science keeps advancing, in leaps and bounds, but these Things are still so far beyond us that we’re still arguing over what to call them, never mind grasping their essential nature. Aliens, demons, inhabitants of Higher or Lower dimensions . . . I don’t think we have the words, or even the concepts, to properly comprehend them. Doesn’t matter, though. We can still kick their nasty arses if we keep our wits about us.”
“You always make me nervous when you talk like that,” said Happy. “You never know Who, or What, might be listening.”
“Wimp,” said Melody.
Brook shook his head slowly. “I was never big on Theory, when I worked for Carnacki. I cleaned up the mess you guys left behind. We never needed to understand . . . All we cared about was how big a shovel we were going to need. But now I need to know. Why have they come here? What’s so important about the King’s Arms? Am I right in thinking it’s something to do with this strange power source?”
“Seems likely; doesn’t it?” said JC.
“How can you be so calm?” Brook said angrily.
“Practice,” said JC. “I’m sure this has all been a nightmare for you, but trust me. We have been here before. Now, tell me about the history of the King’s Arms.”
“Well,” said Brook, “after Lydia’s father, the inn was run by this gay couple, and the locals named the pub the Queens’ Arms. Rustic humour . . .”
“I meant,” JC said patiently, “the inn’s original history . . .”
“Oh!” said Brook. “Of course . . . Well, if you go back far enough, through the centuries . . . the inn’s had hundreds of different names and identities. I did some digging into the inn’s past, trying to understand what was happening . . . First on the Net, then down in the town, reading my way through the old church records. None of that’s ever going to turn up on the Net, not given the state those records are in . . . There was a local historian some years back who took a special interest in the stories that had accumulated around the King’s Arms. A lot of them were contradictory; but then, that’s local history for you. Never was a local historian without their own axe to grind. Politics, religion, old scores to pay off . . .
“Anyway, go back far enough, and you find all sorts of curious chronicles and proceedings. Apparently, there were several occasions when the town council called for the inn to be burned down. Usually after an exorcism had spectacularly failed to work. One priest actually walked all the way up here to curse the inn officially, with bell, book, and candle. Didn’t make a blind bit of difference. You would think . . . that with so many bad stories centring on this inn, that the locals would abandon the place and set up another pub, inside the town, and do their drinking there. But somehow, that never happened. Instead, the townspeople seemed to take a perverse pride in doing their drinking in a place outsiders were too scared to visit. And I found a suggestion in the old records that the prosperity and maybe even the safety of the town is linked to the safety and prosperity of the inn. That its continuing presence protects Bishop’s Fording.
“It is possible that the very first version of this inn was called The Oak Tree. Because there are old stories, based on even older stories, that the name derives from ancient Druid practices in this area. I have heard it suggested, or at least very strongly implied, that these old-time Druids set something in motion, long ago, that kept on happening. And that’s why no-one wants to meddle with the pub. In case its long existence is somehow linked to what the Druids did, and the King’s Arms is somehow holding off something even worse . . .”
Brook realised he’d been lecturing JC for some time, got embarrassed, and stopped talking. Happy gave JC a hard look.
“Druids? More bloody Druids? I don’t believe in coincidences, JC. Coincidences are the Universe’s way of getting you to pay attention.”
“The Boss wanted us here,” JC said thoughtfully. “But to do what exactly? And why us?”
“Why is he looking at me?” said Happy, raising his eyes dramatically to the heavens. “Do I look like I have any answers? I am famous for never having any answers! I know nothing! Lots of nothing!”
“Perhaps we’re supposed to die here,” said Melody, quite seriously. “Because of what we found out at the Secret Libraries.”
Happy looked at her approvingly. “I think some of me is rubbing off on you.”
“Moving hastily on,” JC said loudly. “Before someone makes a very inappropriate joke . . . We have to believe Catherine Latimer is on our side or we might as well cut off our own heads. We can’t do this without her. So we’re here because the Boss trusts us to Do Something. About whatever it is that’s really going on here. And that must be important, maybe even significant; or she wouldn’t have sent her very best A team. Would she?”
“Denial ain’t only a river in Egypt,” murmured Happy.
“Shut up, Happy,” said JC.
Melody was looking thoughtfully at Brook. “You said . . . the upstairs phenomena only started up again recently.”
“Yes,” said Brook. “And I have been wondering . . . whether all of this could be my fault. Did I wake things up again by letting out the upstairs rooms? Did I put new bait in an old trap? Throw fresh meat to the waiting Beasts? That’s why I wanted you people here. To find out the truth.”
“I say we nuke the place from orbit,” said Happy. “It’s the only way to be sure.”
“You always say that,” said Melody.
“And I’m nearly always right,” said Happy.
“Actually,” said Kim, “I’m pretty sure I’d pay good money to see that . . .”
“How much?” said Happy.
“But what if the inn is . . . containing the evil?” said Melody. “Destroy the inn, and you might let the Bad Things run loose.”
“We don’t destroy places,” JC said firmly. “We solve problems. And to do that, we need more information. Adrian, what is the oldest part of this inn? I mean, the physically oldest part of the building?”
“This inn’s been rebuilt and refurbished so many times, down the centuries,” Brook said doubtfully. “It was a tavern before it was an inn before it was a pub . . . God knows what it was, originally, back in those old Druid days . . . The outer stone walls are still original I think. It’s definitely local stone, from the quarry over the hill. But I suppose the oldest components . . . would have to be those old oak beams, in the ceiling.”
They all looked up, at the long, exposed wooden beams that stretched the length of the ceiling. No-one needed to say Oak beams . . . The Oak Tree. It was so obvious. JC took off his sunglasses to better study the ancient oak with his golden eyes; but they looked like nothing other than wood. Kim launched herself up from beside him, so she could hover directly below the ceiling, pushing her face right next to the oak beams . . . and then she drifted back down again, shaking her head.
“I will never get used to that,” said Brook.
“You are not alone,” said JC.
“You’
ll believe a ghost can fly,” Happy said solemnly.
Melody had a sudden fit of the giggles, to pretty much everyone’s surprise. Kim joined in. Happy gave the oak beams his full attention, distancing himself from such frivolity.
“I’m not picking up anything from the ceiling in general or the beams in particular. They’re not saying anything to me.”
Melody stopped laughing, took a deep breath, and almost immediately dropped into a sulk. “It’s not fair! If I had my full equipment here, I could run proper tests. I could shake this whole building by the scruff of the neck and make it tell us everything we need to know. With what I’ve got here, the best I can hope to do is poke the local phenomena with a stick and hope they feel intimidated.”
She hesitated, then before anyone could stop her, jumped down from her bar-stool and ran back up the stairs. In a moment she returned with her suitcase. She opened it and set up her lap-top and scanners on the bar-counter, working quickly and efficiently. No-one offered to help. Melody was very protective of her babies. She was soon scowling into her lap-top screen.
“Of course,” she said, to no-one in particular. “It would help if I knew what the hell I was looking for.”
“If we knew what we were looking for, we’d already be doing something about it,” said Happy.
“At least my equipment provides us with specific information!” said Melody. “Unlike certain psychic people I know who wander around pointing at things, and going Ooh!”
“I have never gone Ooh!” said Happy. “And I can See things your equipment could only ever dream of.”
JC looked fondly on his team-mates as they argued loudly with each other and shared a smile with Kim. He was glad to see Happy and Melody talking to each other again, back to the open bickering of their old relationship. It was how they communicated. Kim leaned in close, to murmur in JC’s ear.
“It’s all very sweet, but how long do you suppose that’s going to last?”