Spirits from Beyond (24 page)

They all looked round in time to see Happy knock back a single fat pill, canary yellow with ice-blue stripes. He dry swallowed the bulky thing with the ease of long practice, then shook his head hard. His eyes bulged, his breathing grew steadily deeper, and he smiled broadly. He started snorting and grunting, and stamped one foot on the ground like an animal getting ready to charge.

“Oh hell,” said JC. “What’s he taken now?”

“Something he usually only takes with me in mind,” said Melody. “I’d stand well back if I were you.”

“But what does it do?” said Kim.

“Amplifies some of his more . . . basic instincts,” said Melody.

“The two of you never cease to appal me,” said JC. “Really. I mean it.”

“I can See you!” Happy said loudly, his whole body orientated on the right-hand side of the landing. “Don’t think I can’t See you!”

And he charged straight down the landing, like a bull who’d spotted a way past the matador’s cloak. JC and Melody and Kim hurried after Happy, until he slammed to a sudden halt and stood quivering like a pointing dog, facing one particular room. He grunted and growled at the closed door, his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists. Still grinning his very disturbing grin.

“This is it! I can tell . . . This is the room where if you go in, you don’t get to come out again. Except, of course, this isn’t a room and never was.”

“What are you Seeing, Happy?” said JC, moving cautiously in beside him.

“Oh, I’m Seeing all kinds of things,” said Happy, staring at the closed door with wide, unblinking eyes. “JC, you wouldn’t believe some of the things I’m Seeing. Hello, can any of you hear that? It sounds like . . . a baby, crying.”

JC looked at Melody, then at Kim, and turned reluctantly back to Happy. “I don’t hear anything,” he said carefully.

“Of course you don’t!” said Happy. Sweat was pouring down his face, but his eyes still didn’t blink. “You were born with mental blinkers on, like everyone else. Don’t worry; it’s not actually a baby. It’s something that’s learned to sound like a baby crying, to lure people in. But I know better. I know a lure when I hear one . . .”

He went suddenly quiet, glaring at the door. JC looked at Happy, at the others, then at the door. It gave every appearance of being completely safe and ordinary, but JC still couldn’t bring himself to touch it. All the hairs were standing up on the back of his neck and his arms, in ancient, instinctual warning. It felt like the door was watching him . . .

“Excuse me, everyone,” said Kim. “But what are you all looking at? I didn’t hear any baby, and I don’t see any door. You’re all staring at a perfectly unremarkable stretch of wall.”

“I told you. It’s not a room, it’s a trap!” Happy said loudly. “And since it’s a trap designed to lure in the living, you can’t see it, Kim. Being dead, as you are. The room doesn’t want you. Because you ain’t got no body, and therefore no chewy bits.”

“I think I feel left out,” said Kim. “Passed over.”

“Ghost humour,” said Happy. “Ho ho ho!”

“Calm the hell down, Happy, or I swear I will stick a nozzle up your bottom and rinse your insides out with Ritalin,” said Melody. “When this is all over, I am going to have to sit down and work out some serious checks and balances for you.”

“Fun time!” said Happy.

JC tore his gaze away from the door, walked back to the top of the stairs, and shouted down them. “Brook! Get back up here! You’re needed!”

He waited, but there was no response. JC growled under his breath and tapped one foot impatiently.

“I could ghost through this section of wall,” Kim said helpfully. “Or stick my head through and take a quick peek at what’s in there . . .”

“Really wouldn’t do that,” Happy said immediately. “Really bad idea, ghost girl.”

“But you said it isn’t interested in me,” said Kim.

“Not to eat,” said Happy. “Doesn’t mean it couldn’t do something very nasty to your ectoplasm. I suppose there must be something Out There, that eats ectoplasm . . . There are all kinds of predators, after all. Hate to think what they’d excrete, though . . .”

Melody decided she didn’t want to say anything about that and considered the door-handle before her. “Do you suppose it’s locked?”

“That door is only locked when it wants to be,” Happy said wisely.

JC gave up on the stairs and came back to join them, so he could glare at the closed door, close-up. “Come on, Happy, aren’t you picking up anything behind that door?”

“I keep telling you!” said Happy. “There is no room behind this door! A lot of what’s happening in this bloody inn is destructive energies and emotions, mixed and fused together, manifesting in physical ways . . . But what we have here is different. This is a predator from Outside that’s forced its way through some crack in the walls of the world. There’s nothing on the other side of the door, or at least nothing you or I could hope to recognise or understand. It’s out of this world. Like Kim said, there is no door there. Just something that’s learned to look like a door, for the same reason it learned to sound like a baby crying. To lure the food through and into its belly.”

“All right,” said JC. “This isn’t a haunted room, like yours. Or a receptacle for a piece of broken Time. This isn’t another side effect of the sacrificed victim, or the storm, or the local power source. This isn’t a room; it’s a Beast.”

“Finally, someone is listening to me!” said Happy. “Marvellous, wonderful; I may faint. Look! There’s Something in there, a really powerful Something. Possibly one of the Abominations from the Outer Rings. They’re always trying to get in at us.”

“But if it is some kind of Beast,” said Melody, “what’s it doing here? What does it want with us?”

“It’s hungry,” said Happy. “It’s always hungry.”

“So there’s absolutely no chance of getting any of its victims back?” said JC.

“No,” said Happy. “They’re gone. Not even any bones left . . .”

“Then there’s no need to play by the rules any longer,” said JC, rubbing his hands together. “No more Mister Nice Guy! Happy; what would happen if I were to open this door?”

“What do you think?” said Happy. “You might as well soak your arm in barbecue sauce and stick it down a lion’s throat. But you go right ahead if that’s what you want. I shall be right behind you. Way behind you, watching from the other end of the corridor.”

“Why not destroy the door?” said Melody. “Remove the Beast’s access to our world? I could shoot a whole bunch of really big holes through it.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” said JC. “Happy! Stay where you are!”

“My heart is currently brave, but my legs are still chicken,” said Happy. “Or, to put it another way—sensible. Bullets won’t do it, Mel.”

“Why not?” said Melody. “I have cursed and blessed bullets, along with ammo dipped in holy water, sacred blood, deadly nightshade, and fallen angel’s urine.”

Happy gave her a look. “Only you would have a gun with poisoned bullets. And it still wouldn’t work. The door isn’t the problem. It’s only the mask on the face of the creature.”

“If cold iron won’t do the job, what about fire?” said JC.

Happy beat a rapid tattoo on the closed door with both fists while he considered the point. “Might work,” he said finally. “Fire has . . . cleansing connotations. What did you have in mind?”

JC had already produced something from an inside pocket. He held it out, so they could all get a good look at it. Small and round, easily double the size of a cricket ball, it shone with an almost unbearable light.

“Is that . . . what I think it is?” said Happy.

“Oh yes,” said Melody. “I know my supernatural weapons. And for once, I am in complete agreement with you, Happy. Start running, and I’ll try to keep up.”

“How the hell did you get your hands on the Saint Ignatius Incendiary Grenade, JC?” said Happy.

“You didn’t get that from the Carnacki Institute warehouse, or even the armoury,” said Melody. “There’s only ever been one of those horribly nasty and destructive things; and I only ever saw it in the Boss’s office.”

“You stole that from Catherine Latimer’s very own private office?” said Kim, her eyes wide. “Good for you, JC! I am officially impressed. And a bit frightened.”

“The Boss will have a cow,” Happy said solemnly.

“Only if she ever finds out,” said JC. “And given the clutter in her office, that should take some time. As long as no-one here shouts their mouth off, we should all be perfectly safe. No point in worrying her, after all. She already has enough to worry about . . .”

“Brass,” Happy said solemnly. “Solid brass. It’s a wonder to me they don’t clang together when you walk down the street, JC.”

“Why, thank you, Happy,” said JC. “That’s got to be the nicest thing you’ve ever said about me.”

“Well, there’s a mental image I wasn’t expecting to take home with me,” said Melody.

“But what does this Saint Ignatius thingy do?” said Kim, leaning in for a closer look at the shimmering thing in JC’s hand.

“It goes bang, in a fiery and spiritually cleansing way,” said Happy. “And when JC decides to try it out, we should all be somewhere else, a very long way away from here. Or at the very least, hiding behind something heavy.”

“You should all be perfectly safe . . .” said JC.

“You see, it’s the word
should
that worries me,” said Happy.

JC looked at Kim. “Actually, you probably should back off, to the end of the corridor. Or, down the stairs. The Saint Ignatius Incendiary Grenade was designed to wipe out everything of a supernatural nature. As well as burning down the house.”

“I’ll go with you,” Happy said to Kim. “Only to keep you company.”

“Me, too,” said Melody. “Since I know for a fact that no-one ever worked out the full blast range on one of these things. First rule of engineering; beware prototypes. Along with, avoid anything made by an engineer who doesn’t have all his own fingers.”

“All right, go,” said JC. “You’re making me nervous.”

Happy and Melody and Kim retreated to the furthest end of the corridor, while JC sniffed loudly and held his head up, humming a merry tune to show how unconcerned he was. He tossed the grenade gently in one hand and looked firmly at the closed door before him.

“Pay attention, door! This should light you up nicely and leave nothing behind but some consecrated ashes. Or something very like ashes. Maybe I’ll make an egg-timer out of you.”

He went to pull the pin on the grenade, and the door swung open before him, falling back to reveal something the human mind simply couldn’t cope with. JC cried out despite himself, staring into what lay beyond—a man transfixed by the Medusa’s gaze. And somehow, he couldn’t seem to let go of the grenade. Kim shot down the corridor at inhuman speed and slapped a ghostly hand over JC’s eyes, putting her supernatural self between JC’s eyes and the unearthly sight that held him.

JC fell back a step, grinned quickly at Kim, and went for the grenade’s pin again. A great sucking vortex opened up beyond the door, pulling him in. JC grabbed onto the door-frame with his one free hand, holding himself in place by brute strength. Kim stood her ground, bewildered, her ghostly form unaffected by the physical force. A howling wind shot down the long corridor as all the air was sucked into the room’s vortex. Happy and Melody were yanked off their feet and went tumbling down the floor as though it were a cliff-edge.

JC clung doggedly to the door-frame with his one hand, trying desperately to pull his other hand back so he could pull the pin on the grenade; but the pull of the vortex was too great. His feet shot out from under him, and he hung horizontally on the buffeting air. Only his single handhold kept him from being hauled in. Kim tried to help, but her hands went right through him.

Happy and Melody were thrown this way and that as they came sprawling and somersaulting down the landing, trying to hang on to each other while also grabbing at anything within reach to slow them down. Melody managed to grab onto the top of the stairs, while Happy shot straight past her. They cried out to each other as Happy was sucked up into the air, shooting towards the open doorway like an arrow from a bow. He slammed right through Kim’s ghostly form, and on into the doorway. He grabbed the other side of the door-frame with both hands and jerked to a sudden halt. He swore harshly at the sudden pain in his hands but hung on, his legs flailing out before him, opposite JC. The two of them flapped like flags in a howling wind.

Melody lost hold of her grip on the top of the stairs and came tumbling down the corridor again. She kept grabbing handholds of the carpeting to slow her down, but the material only tore and came away in her hands. The last stretch of carpet simply disintegrated, and she shot straight through the open doorway. Happy let go of the door-frame with one hand and grabbed onto her. He pulled her to him with all his strength, a few agonising inches at a time, until he could hug her to him with one arm. The impact had almost torn his shoulder out of its socket. Melody clung desperately to him. Happy’s one remaining hold was already weakening as the implacable force pulled both of them in. Bit by bit, his fingers were losing their grip. The air blasting past him was growing faster and thinner, and harder to breathe.

“Take her!” Happy yelled to JC.

And with the last of his strength, Happy threw Melody at JC. Immediately, he was ripped away from the door-frame, and fell and fell into the depths of the room that wasn’t a room.

JC grabbed hold of Melody with the arm holding the grenade, and pulled her to him. She wrapped her arms around him, even as she craned her neck round to look after Happy.

“JC!” yelled Happy, falling away into an unimaginable distance. “Throw the bloody grenade!”

Melody pulled the pin from the grenade JC was holding, and he threw it after Happy with all his strength. Both objects seemed to drop away in a direction that made no sense, growing smaller and smaller. Melody let out a single cry of despair. JC hugged her to him with his free arm. He’d lost one friend; he was damned if he’d lose another. His fingers locked down on the door-frame with desperate strength, and he hauled himself back, inch by inch. He could hear Kim calling out, encouragingly, but he couldn’t spare the strength to turn his head. He caught one last glimpse of Happy, a very small thing, falling away forever, and the grenade rushing ahead of him.