Ghost of a Smile g-2

by Simon R. Green

  “Who are you? What do you want? Do you remember what happened to you here? Do you remember who you are?”

  The dead man didn’t react, as though words meant nothing to him. But his unblinking eyes were fixed on JC, and there was something in his face, a strange, alien essence that made all the hairs on the back of JC’s neck stand up.

  “Kim,” he said urgently. “Can you read them? Can you tell me anything about them?”

  “There’s nothing there to read!” said Kim.

  “I’m not picking up anything, either!” said Happy, looking desperately back and forth. “It’s like… there’s nothing there! Except there is!”

  “They’re shells,” Kim said suddenly. “Just shells! They’re dead, they’re some kind of ghost… but they’re not surviving personalities, like me. They’re what’s left, after all the life and all the energy have been sucked right out. Something really bad has happened to these people. Because they’re not people any more. Something else is watching us, JC, through their dead eyes.”

  JC nodded quickly, thinking hard. “Do they have any actual physical presence? Can they hurt us?”

  “I don’t know!” said Kim. “I’ve never seen anything like them before. They’re what’s left when you take the people out of people.”

  “Terrific,” said JC. “All right, we do it the hard way, then.”

  He strode quickly forward, leaving his team behind, walked right up to the nearest security man, and prodded him in the flak jacket with one stiff finger. And cried out in pain and shock, as his finger sank into the dead man, disappearing from view. He yanked his finger out and staggered back, clutching his injured hand to his chest.

  “It’s all right!” he said quickly. “It was just so cold… Like sticking my hand into the vacuum between the stars!”

  “A complete absence of physical presence,” said Melody. “Interesting. Not only an image but also a hole in the world…” She put her machine pistol away and flexed her empty hands uneasily.

  “Ow!” said JC, flapping his injured hand urgently. “Pins and needles! Sensation coming back! Ow ow ow!”

  “If they’re not really there, how do we stop them?” said Happy. “They are getting terribly close now, and not in a good way, and none of them look friendly! If anyone feels like doing something dramatic and violent, I wouldn’t object in the least.”

  “Don’t let any of them touch you!” Kim said abruptly.

  “What?” said Happy. “Why not?”

  “I don’t know,” said Kim. “I’m getting a strong feeling that would be… bad.”

  “Terrific,” said JC.

  “We should bring a canary in a cage, for situations like this,” said Melody.

  “We are the canary in the cage!” said Happy.

  One of the dead men surged forward, heading straight for Melody. His movements were jerky and graceless, like a puppet on unseen strings. He reached out with both hands, his unwavering gaze fixed on Melody. Happy lunged forward to stand between them. He thrust out a blocking hand, and scowled fiercely as he concentrated. The dead man exploded silently. The image flared up and was gone, as though it had never been there. All the other dead men stopped moving, frozen in their tracks, in mid movement.

  “Very impressive, Happy,” said JC. “Would you mind telling us what it was you did?”

  “A concentrated burst of telepathically projected disbelief,” said Happy, breathlessly. “My belief that he didn’t exist overwhelmed Someone else’s belief that he did.”

  “Someone else?” said JC. “What someone else?”

  “Haven’t a clue,” said Happy.

  “My brave bunny,” said Melody, dropping an arm across Happy’s shoulders. “There will be special treats, later.”

  “There are still quite a few dead men left,” JC pointed out. “Any chance you could manage that trick again?”

  “Not a hope in Hell,” said Happy. “That one effort took pretty much everything I had.”

  “You just can’t get good help these days,” said JC. “Not to worry! Now I know those things are vulnerable, I think I might have the very thing…” He fished in a jacket pocket, pulled out a grenade, primed it, and tossed it neatly into the advancing dead men. “Guard your eyes, children! Flashbang!”

  The grenade exploded in a blast of incandescent light. Even with their eyes closed and their heads instinctively turned away, JC and Happy and Melody all cried out as the brilliant light seared their eyes. The light snapped off, and when they could all see again, all the dead men were gone, and the lobby was completely empty.

  “What the hell was that?” said Melody.

  “The very latest in a long line of useful gadgets that I’m not supposed to have,” JC said easily. “An exorcism grenade.”

  Melody looked at him dangerously. “An exorcism… Are you taking the piss?”

  “The very latest improvement!” said JC. “Gets the job done in half the time! Holy light!”

  “I know I’m going to regret asking this,” said Happy. “But how.. .”

  “You make water holy by saying the right religious words over it,” said JC. “Why should light be any different?”

  “It’s thinking things like that that make my head hurt,” said Happy.

  “Wait a moment,” said Kim, who hadn’t been dazzled by the light at all, “How did you know that grenade wouldn’t affect me?”

  “Because you’re with us,” said JC. “One of the good guys.”

  “Have you ever tested that thing in the field before?” said Melody.

  “Guess,” said JC.

  “I’m not picking up any remaining traces of the shells,” said Happy. “Any chance that light destroyed them completely?”

  “Not really,” said JC. “More likely, the light only chased them away.”

  “Oh joy,” said Happy.

  “Deep joy,” said Melody.

  “Happy happy joy joy!” said Kim, pogoing up and down in mid air.

  “Come along, children,” said JC. “We need to get up to the next floor. We need information.”

  “And weapons,” said Happy. “Really big weapons.”

  THREE

  WE SHOULDN’T BE HERE

  They went up the stairs to the next floor because none of them trusted the elevator. They didn’t particularly trust the stairs, either, but as Happy pointed out, at least stairs don’t get you half-way there and then plummet to the basement. Or turn into something nasty and swallow you up. Happy had a lot of other reasons why he didn’t trust elevators in general and this one in particular, but the others were already half-way up the stairs and not listening to him. JC went bounding up the stairs two at a time, with all his usual energy and enthusiasm, Kim floating along beside him. Melody followed behind, still grumbling under her breath over what had happened to her precious equipment. Happy sighed deeply and brought up the rear, very reluctantly.

  The stairs were only stairs, with no graces or comforts. The walls were bare, the single railing was as basic as health and safety regulations would allow, and the light was sharp and bright, with no shadows anywhere. Even so, there was still something distinctly uneasy about the narrow stairway, something… not quite right.

  “I know we’re going up,” said Happy, after a while. “But I swear it feels like we’re going down…”

  “Steady in the ranks,” said JC. “Don’t let the place get to you. All right, this building has proved to be entirely spooky and mysterious, in a malevolent sort of way, full of uncanny things that we haven’t encountered before, but is that any reason to be downhearted?”

  “Well, yes!” said Happy.

  “It makes the job that much more interesting,” JC said firmly. “You’re never too old to learn something new. And make a serious profit from it.”

  He slammed through the swinging doors at the next floor and led his team into a brightly lit corridor. He stopped abruptly to take a good look. Melody nearly ran into him. A seriously long corridor stretched away before t
hem, barely wide enough for two people to walk down abreast. To JC’s left, a series of rooms lined the corridor. All the doors were standing open. To his right was a blank wall, painted industrial off-white. With all the doors open, there was only room to walk down the corridor single file. No windows, no signs or instructions on the wall or the doors, and no signs of violence or destruction anywhere. Like the lobby, it was all very still and very quiet, with a subtle tension in the air. JC moved over to the first open door and studied it carefully.

  “All right,” he said. “First interesting thing. This door has a very heavy, very solid steel lock. No electronics. Far more security than you’d need for what is, after all, a basic hotel room. Especially when beefed up by this very solid steel bolt, on the outside of the door. Suggesting that once the subjects were bedded in for the night, they were intended to stay put until someone came and let them out in the morning. Now why would the researchers feel the need to do that? To stop their subjects from wandering? Or because said subjects might become dangerous once they’d been dosed? Or even… because they might panic when the first symptoms or changes occurred and try to run?”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” said Melody. “The best security measure, with drug trials or anything else, is to control the supply of information. The people in the trial might have been locked in to make sure they didn’t see anything they weren’t supposed to. Never put down to supernatural nastiness what you can as easily put down to the fear of industrial espionage.”

  “A lock and a bolt,” said Happy. “The researchers weren’t taking any chances, were they?”

  JC strode off down the corridor, leaving the others to catch up with him. He was doing his best to seem cool and calm and utterly at his ease, but he looked very thoroughly into every room he passed, taking it all in. The rooms were comfortable enough, if somewhat small, with all the usual luxuries. Television, computer…

  Melody waited till they reached the third room, then she couldn’t stand it any longer. She darted inside and sat down at the computer. The others stopped and came back, watching from the doorway as Melody turned on the computer and logged on.

  JC sighed quietly.“So much for being in charge…”

  “You need information,” said Melody, not looking up from the many illegal things she was doing. “This is where I find information.”

  “Indeed,” murmured JC. “I’m amazed you were able to hold yourself back this long. So, what is the computer telling you, in what I’ve decided to call Room Three? Because there are no numbers or other designations on any of the doors. Did any of the rest of you notice that? I always notice things like that. Happy, Melody doesn’t seem to be talking to me. What about you? Do you have anything to tell me? Are you picking up anything?”

  “Not really,” said Happy, looking vaguely up and down the empty corridor. “No-one lived here long enough to make much of an impression. I can say there’s definitely no-one alive hiding anywhere on this floor. All the rooms are empty. Still, it’s odd… normally when I lower my shields and look around, you three all start shouting at me with your minds, and I have to fade you down before I can hear anything else. But here… I’m only sensing you dimly, as though from a great distance. Somewhere in this building, something is interfering with my reception.”

  “Are you saying someone is jamming you?” said JC.

  “Wouldn’t surprise me,” said Happy. “Can’t say I’m that bothered. It’s actually quite relaxing, not having to keep all your voices out of my head for a change.”

  “Can you pick up any traces of the person who used to live in this room?” said JC.

  Happy glared at him. “I keep telling you, I’m not that kind of psychic! I read people, and places, and that’s it! I do not read objects, channel past events, or read tea leaves! I am a telepath, and that’s more than enough to deal with. I am not a miracle-worker!”

  “Pity,” said JC. “I could use a miracle-worker. I’m going to take a stroll further down the corridor, see what there is to see. Yell if you need anything, Melody.”

  And he was off and gone, with Kim drifting after him. Happy slouched sullenly in the doorway.

  “We shouldn’t be working this case,” he said flatly. “We’re supposed to deal with ghosties and ghoulies and things that go Boo! in the night. Whatever happened here has heavy science written all over it. We’re already out of our depth, even if JC won’t admit it, and way out of our comfort zone.”

  “You speak for yourself,” said Melody, scowling thoughtfully at the monitor before her.

  “I am!” said Happy. “Loudly and meaningfully, but no-one is listening! We shouldn’t be here! This isn’t what we do…”

  Melody sighed loudly and turned round in her chair to look at him. “Those were ghosts, down in the lobby, weren’t they?”

  “Well, yes, of a sort, but…”

  “But nothing. You heard what the annoying man from the stretch limo said-find out what’s going on, and stop it. That’s the job. Everything else is just details.” She stopped and smiled at him almost fondly. “I know you don’t like to admit it, Happy, but it’s all science, all of the time. Ghosts, demons, the afterworlds-all of existence and everything beyond-it’s all science. We don’t always understand it yet, that’s all. Now hush like a good bunny and let me get on with my work, or I’ll start throwing words like quantum around, and you know how you hate that.”

  Happy shuddered briefly in the doorway and shut up, and Melody went back to work.

  Further down the corridor, JC was looking around what he had loudly declared he was naming Room Fourteen, picking things up, examining them, and putting them down again, trying to get a feel for the last person who’d lived there. Given the number of well-thumbed magazines, like Heat and OK, he was pretty sure the occupant had been female, but he didn’t say that out loud because he knew Kim would accuse him of being judgemental. There were no personal touches, no photos, no jewellery, not even any clothes. Were the test subjects supposed to go around all the time in those awful hospital gowns that only do up at the back? JC stood in the middle of the room, looking thoughtfully about him, but the room defeated him. It was deliberately bare and characterless, more like a waiting room than living quarters.

  Kim threw herself onto the bed by the far wall to watch JC work, misjudged the distance, and fell half-way through the bed before she could stop herself. She quickly floated back up out of it, before JC could notice, and with precisely the right amount of concentration managed to float directly above the bed-sheets, so it looked like she was lying there. Kim wasn’t alive, but she liked to pretend she could still do everyday things, as though she were an ordinary girl. For JC’s sake, as well as her own.

  “Anything?” she said brightly, when she was sure she could present the right image.

  “Nothing useful,” said JC. “No trace of any upset or disturbance here. No signs of interrupted activity. Just like all the other rooms. It’s as though… everyone got up and left. Except, they couldn’t. Because all the doors were locked and bolted shut from the outside. So someone must have come and let them all out, and given them good reason to leave… Even though they must have been strictly instructed not to. Which implies they knew who the person who let them out was… someone in a position of authority.”

  “Like the Marie Celeste,” said Kim, to show she was keeping up. “The old ship found floating out at sea with everyone missing and nothing to show where they had gone.”

  “Yes,” said JC, smiling. “Something like that.” He looked over at Kim, and stopped smiling. “Kim, you’re sinking again.”

  Her concentration had lapsed while they were talking, and she’d almost disappeared under the bed. She swore briefly and jumped up. She dropped to the floor and concentrated until her feet were as close to the carpet as she could manage without sinking through, then she walked carefully forward to stand before JC. She looked at him, almost defiantly.

  “It’s not easy, you know, being dead. In
fact, it’s really hard work. All those little things you take for granted, I have to fight for. I don’t sleep, eat, or rest. I can’t stand still, or sit, or lie down. Mostly, I just hover. There are strange aetheric winds that blow me this way and that, and odd impulses I don’t understand… You don’t know what it’s like! I do try to be normal for you…”

  “I know,” said JC. “I know.” He smiled at her, careful not to appear upset in any way. There wasn’t anything useful he could say, so he settled for trying to lighten the moment. “Aren’t I worth it?”

  “You’re the only thing that makes this bearable, JC,” said Kim, with painful earnestness. “If I didn’t have you, I think… I’d just let go.”

  JC stood as close before her as he could, taking off his sunglasses so he could hold her eyes with his. She was the only one who could meet his unnatural gaze these days. “You know I’d never keep you here against your will. You do know that, right? If you ever feel it would be… easier for you to move on…”

  “No,” Kim said immediately. “We found each other. After spending our lives alone, and thinking it would always be that way… Out of a whole world full of people, we found each other. How remarkable is that? I wish it could have happened while I was still alive. That I didn’t have to die to find love.”

  “Me, too,” said JC. He put his arms around her, very carefully, not quite touching her. It was difficult because he couldn’t feel her, but he did his best. She put her arms around his waist, without quite touching him, and leaned her head almost on his shoulder, so their faces could be side by side. Hardly any space separated them, but it might as well have been forever. Their mouths were close, but they couldn’t even feel each other breathe. Because only JC was breathing. It was tense, and it was awkward, but it was the best they could do, so they stood that way for a while.

  “Are you sure you can’t feel anything?” said Kim.

  “Not even a ghostly chill,” said JC.

  “Sooner or later,” said Kim, “you’re going to want someone who can touch you. A lover who can hold and comfort you.”