“I can’t believe you made me do that!”
“It was necessary,” said JC, only a little breathless. “And part of the job. We all play to our strengths. I was almost sure it couldn’t hurt you.”
“Almost?” Kim’s glare was very cold. “We will have words about this later, JC.”
She turned her back on him, and moved quickly back down the long floor. The others followed after her. Oversized organs lay everywhere, dead and already rotting . . Those stuck to the walls and the ceiling were falling off, in ones and twos, to splatter and fall apart on the cold, hard floor. The smell was appalling.
“You know,” said JC. “I could really go for a good fry-up, right now.”
“Animal,” said Kim, not looking back.
SIX
GHOSTLIGHT
“I am getting really fed up with climbing stairs,” said Happy, in a more than usually fed-up voice. “It’s not like they ever take us anywhere nice. And it still feels like we’re going down, rather than up. Like we’re descending into Hell, step by step by step . . .”
“If you were any gloomier, you’d walk around under your own personal thunderstorm,” said Melody.
“If the New People really are superhumans, or perhaps more properly posthuman,” said JC, “it should feel like we’re ascending towards Heaven. Or at the very least towards Olympus, to commune with the gods.”
“And yet it doesn’t,” said Happy. “Funny, that . . .”
“Not talking to you, when you’re in this kind of mood,” said JC. “Melody, you’re the one with all the information at her fingertips. What’s supposed to be next?”
“Could be anything,” said Melody. “There was nothing at all about this floor on any of the computers. Could be empty.”
“We’re not that lucky,” said Happy.
“Not listening to Mr. Moody,” said JC. “Hardly seems likely, does it? A whole floor left empty, in such a highrent area?”
“Nothing about this building makes sense,” said Melody. “I don’t think MSI knew half of what was really going on here. Someone’s been playing games, and we’re the latest contestants.”
“You mean, whoever it was that supplied the extra funding for ReSet?” said Happy, to show he wasn’t being left out of anything.
“Who can say?” said JC. “Upwards and onwards, my children . . .”
“Oh God, he’s getting enthusiastic again,” said Happy. “That’s always dangerous.”
“Shut up, Happy,” said Melody.
They stopped at the swing doors, listened briefly, then walked right in, on the grounds that being cautious hadn’t got them anywhere before. JC stopped the others with an upraised hand the moment they were inside. The whole of the floor was full of thick, curling mists, a pearlescent grey fog that stretched away for as far as the eye could see. Like a great grey ocean, greater than any building could hope to contain. There was a definite sense of being outside, and that the fog stretched away forever. Strange lights came and went in the pearl grey reaches of the fog, which moved constantly, slowly, as though troubled by some unfelt gusting breeze. The mists curled and roiled, churning in slow vortices, and the lights came and went, came and went . . .
“Okay,” said JC. “This is new. You don’t normally get fog inside a building.”
“Unless something’s gone seriously wrong with reality,” said Melody. “Which is always possible, given everything that’s happened here recently.”
“I like fog,” said Happy. “Fog is nice. Fog is not dangerous, or threatening, or liable to jump on you without warning. I can live with fog.”
“I’m more worried about what might be hiding in the fog,” said JC.
“You see.” said Happy. “You had to go and spoil it, didn’t you?”
“Everyone stay right where you are,” said JC. “Don’t get out of sight of each other, or of the doors. Lose track of where you are, and you might never get out of here.”
“Life was so much easier when I was paranoid,” Happy said wistfully. “When I was delusional, and the world really wasn’t out to get me.”
“It’s not simply fog,” said Kim. They all looked at her, but she had nothing else to say.
“I think the creation of the New People damaged the state of reality itself, inside this building,” said JC. “Or at least, I hope the changes are confined to this building . . . Either way, their arrival has placed an unnatural strain upon the local environment. You’ve heard of sick building syndrome, where the building itself can affect people’s health in unfortunate ways? That’s low-level genius loci at work. But there is also haunted building syndrome, a building that’s gone bad, that either creates ghosts or calls ghosts to it. The whole of Chimera House has been adversely affected, psychically stained, by recent events, an imprinting that will take decades, maybe even centuries, to clean up and make right. Things that would normally be improbable, or wildly unlikely, become more possible in places like this. Even inevitable . . .”
“Like the Bio Reactor’s mobile organs?” said Kim.
“Exactly,” said Melody. “You don’t normally get to see things like that outside of a Cronenberg film.”
“They Came from Within!” said Happy. “Oh, that’s a classic! I had to sleep with the lights on for days, and I never felt the same about swimming pools.”
“Strange little man,” said Kim. “I’ve never cared much for horror movies.”
“Did you join the wrong team!” said Happy.
“Shut up, Happy,” said JC. He stared thoughtfully at the curling fog. “When this is all over, we may have to destroy the entire building. Blow it up, tear it down, crush the rubble, and scatter it at sea.”
“Chimera House has become a strange attractor,” said Melody. “Attracting, pulling ghosts to it.”
“Like moths to a candle,” said Happy.
“Oh dear,” said Kim. “You mean proper ghosts? People ghosts? I’ve always found them rather unnerving.”
“But you are one!” said Happy.
“But I still think I’m human,” said Kim. “I still feel human. Even though I do sometimes see or hear things that only the dead can know.”
“Like what?” said Happy.
She stared at him very seriously. “You really don’t want to know, Happy.”
“I’m a Class Eleven Telepath!” said Happy. “I see things every day that would make grown men rip their own heads off!”
“But I’m dead,” said Kim.
“You’re right,” said Happy. “That does trump a hell of a lot of things.”
“I don’t know much about ghosts,” said Kim. “Despite being one. It’s one of the reasons I joined this team. I don’t understand ghosts. They scare me as much as they do you.”
“I am going to change the subject,” said Happy. “Because this one is creeping the hell out of me. Given that the computers didn’t have anything to say about this floor, and so therefore it couldn’t possibly contain anything important or significant, why don’t we skip it and move on up?”
“Doesn’t the fog fascinate you?” said JC.
“Let me think about that for a moment no not at all,” said Happy. “I have officially decided I can take it or leave it.”
“We are staying,” JC said firmly. “Because we need all the information we can gather as to what went down here before we have to meet the New People. In a situation like this, information is ammunition. And . . . we really don’t want to overlook anything that might come sneaking after us and creep up on us from behind. Do we?”
“Very good point there,” said Happy. “God, it’s coming to something when you’re the paranoid one on this team.”
They all went back to staring into the great grey expanse before them. JC stepped cautiously forward and swept one hand through the fog. It felt cold and damp, as though it had blown in off some ancient unknown ocean. He shuddered suddenly, not from the cold. Whichever way he looked, endless shades of grey filled his sight, with no trace of the floor t
hey were supposed to be on anywhere. Lights flickered and flared, glowing and fading in the grey deeps, like taunting will-o’-the-wisps. JC squinted. The fog was hard on the eye, the featureless grey almost painful to look at for too long. He strained his altered eyes against the fog. He couldn’t shake off a very definite feeling that somewhere deep in the fog, something was staring back at him.
JC turned to Happy. “Time to do your thing, team telepath. What do you sense about this fog?”
“Nothing specific,” said Happy, scowling in concentration. “No thoughts, no intent, no emotions . . . Just this diffused sense of presence.”
Kim nodded immediately, looking nervously this way and that. Melody stuck both thumbs in her belt and tapped one foot ominously on the floor. She felt frustrated and left out, with nothing to contribute. She felt naked without her equipment. With all her usual toys at her disposal, she could have analysed the hell out of the fog by then, broken it down into its various components, and come up with half a dozen different solutions to the problem. But there wasn’t even a computer she could use in the room. She said as much, and JC nodded soberly.
“We have been relying on the building’s computers, rather a lot. And I’m starting to wonder if we can trust what they’ve been telling us. You said yourself someone was making it too easy for you to access information. Maybe they only meant for us to know what they wanted us to know.”
“Someone was definitely sending messages through the computers,” said Melody. “And they’ve all been spot on useful, so far.”
“Quite,” said JC. “Convenient, that. Perhaps a little too convenient.”
“Then why not tell us what’s going on here?” said Happy.
“Maybe they don’t know,” said JC. “A sign, perhaps, that our mysterious benefactor isn’t all-knowing.”
He took off his sunglasses and unleashed his brightly glowing eyes on the fog. Happy and Melody turned their heads away, unable to look at him directly. It wasn’t that they were afraid of what they might see if they were to look directly into JC’s golden eyes, it was that they found the light too fierce, too unrelenting, for human eyes.
“What does it look like, JC?” said Happy. “When you see the world through those eyes?”
“Everything seems so clear, so simple,” said JC. “As though . . . everything finally makes sense.”
“I don’t know why you two keep looking away,” said Kim. “It doesn’t bother me. They look like eyes to me. Nice colour, too.”
JC took another step forward, concentrating on the fog. He couldn’t see anything new, but wherever he turned his gaze, the fog reacted. It seemed to recoil from him, churning and roiling violently, as though disturbed or agitated. When he swept his hand through it, there was no reaction, but he got the sense that the fog didn’t like his golden gaze at all. That perhaps . . . the fog was frightened of it.
“The fog!” Kim said suddenly. “It’s the presence!”
JC nodded slowly. “Yes. It is. I’ve heard of this phenomenon though I’ve never encountered it before. Don’t know anyone who has. But I know what this is, what it has to be. It’s rare, very rare. Takes a lot of energy to produce and maintain, to make it even possible . . . This is ghostlight. Undifferentiated ghosts. This is what will become ghosts, in time. As the building calls the dead to it, they will form out of this fog, taking on shape and nature and purpose.”
“Okay,” said Melody. “That’s all very fine and groovy, but what is it exactly? Are we talking ectoplasm of some kind?”
“Spookier than that,” said JC. “What we’re looking at isn’t really water droplets suspended in the air. Our eyes interpret this as fog because that’s as close as our minds can get to understanding it. This . . . is pure potential, the raw chaos from which order unfolds itself.”
“Oh crap,” said Melody.
Dim dark shapes began to form in the grey depths of the fog. Row upon row of them, standing unnaturally still, stretching out wider and further back than the building should have been able to accommodate. Most of the shapes were human, or at least humanish. Others were larger, bulkier, distorted. And some were only abstract shapes, impressions of people, like nightmares given shape and form in the waking world. JC looked back and forth, trying to get some sense of numbers, and failing. So many ghosts, drawn there by the birth of the New People, and what had been done to Chimera House. Standing in ranks, as though waiting for something. For some voice, perhaps, to tell them what to do.
“Have you noticed?” Happy said quietly. “They all seem to be looking at you, JC. They’re not even glancing at the rest of us. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, of course, but it is interesting, and possibly even significant.”
“The eyes have it,” said Melody. “They’re attracted to the light.”
“No,” said Kim. “It’s more than that. I think it’s because JC has been touched by the Outside, the afterworlds. They recognise that and respond to it.”
“Yes . . .” said Happy. “I’m picking up all kinds of things now. Fear, and fascination, and . . . a whole bunch of other things I don’t even recognise, let alone understand. These ghosts might once have been human, but they don’t feel like people. I’m not picking up even the most fundamental sense of identity, or individuality. It’s almost like . . . looking at them from far, far away. And it’s almost as though they think of JC . . . as one of them, only more so.”
JC looked at Happy, who flinched away from the golden gaze in spite of himself. “How can they be ghosts and not people?” said JC. “What are ghosts, except memories of people?”
“I don’t know! It’s as though they’re . . . becoming people! The ghostlight is using the memories of ghosts to make forms rather than the other way round! These are . . . copies of ghosts, created by the fog, to do . . . something!”
“The ghosts of London,” said Kim. “From the Past, the Present, and maybe even the Future. Memories of the London dead, drawn to this place, to be made again out of the ghostlight. I never knew there could be so many kinds of ghosts. I don’t think some of the things rising out of the ghostlight are even human, or ever were.”
Happy moved in close beside JC though still careful not to look at him. “Come on, JC, this is where we usually rely on you to pull a rabbit out of the hat, and by that I mean produce some really nasty weapon out of your capacious pockets. Tell me you’ve got something really destructive about your person that can deal with this.”
“Well,” said JC. “I have a brass knuckle-duster, a silver dagger, and several phials of holy water to sanctify them with. I have various useful herbs and charms, in small sealed bags to keep them fresh. I’ve even got an amulet, somewhere. And I have—something else.”
“What?” said Melody. ”
“It’s not something I should have, so I’d better not tell anyone,” said JC. “And it may be a bit too much for this particular situation. It’s not exactly fine-tuned. If I use it, I’m not sure what might happen. We might end up in pieces, end up scattered all over the Moon.”
“I vote we don’t use it, then,” said Happy.
“Unless we absolutely have to,” said JC.
“Well, of course,” said Happy. “That goes without saying.”
“What?” said Kim. “Under what circumstances could having your bodily parts scattered over the craters of the Moon possibly be considered a viable option?”
“There are times when death is the kinder option,” said Melody.
“You had to say that, didn’t you?” said Happy.
“Children,” said JC, “the ghosts are becoming restless.”
Some were swaying in place, others were turning their heads to orientate on the Ghost Finders in general, and JC in particular. Some stepped slowly forward, advancing through the mists, heading towards the group. JC gave them the benefit of his best golden glare, but it didn’t seem to bother them in the least. And as they drew closer, emerging out of the fog, they began to reveal more of themselves. Some were suicides, w
ith bloody wounds at their wrists and rope marks at their throats, or sullen faces distorted by gas or poison. Some were broken and shattered, pieces of splintered bone protruding through dead white flesh—jumpers, probably. Some were murder victims, still displaying their death wounds from knives and guns. Some were only children, with cold dark eyes, abused and murdered by those they had every reason to trust.
People who die peacefully don’t make ghosts.
Not all of the figures were entirely human. Some were like animals, and some were like machines, and some . . . were simply monsters. Because you can’t hide your true nature after you’re dead. JC considered them all carefully and noticed that the dead weren’t looking just at him. Some were fixing on Kim. She’d noticed, too, and wavered uncertainly this way and that, trying to escape their gaze. When she found she couldn’t, she moved in close beside JC. He gave her his best reassuring smile. The ghosts were coming out of the fog, slowly, deliberately, more solid and more real.
“They’re just images,” Melody said loudly, though whether she was trying to convince herself or the others was open to question. “They don’t have any physical form. They can’t . . . They can’t hurt us!”
“Try saying it louder,” said Happy. “You might convince some of them. They looked solid enough to me . . .”
“They’re drawing strength from the ghostlight,” said JC. “Which, in turn . . . is drawing strength from the altered reality of the building. And, possibly, from the New People . . .”
“Don’t you have anything good to say?” demanded Happy.
“Not often,” JC admitted. “Comes with the job, and the territory.”
Happy scowled. “They feel real. More like individuals, now. Though all I’m picking up from them is . . . bad intent.”
The first rank of ghosts was almost upon them, dead hands reaching out for Kim. They smiled at her, devouring her with dark, unblinking eyes. She cried out and shrank away. JC moved forward, to stand between her and the approaching ghosts. He took out his silver dagger, and quite deliberately cut his palm with the razor-sharp edge. He closed his fist, and blood dripped thickly from it.