“For God’s sake, JC,” said Melody.
“‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,’” said JC. “But he isn’t here right now, and I am.”
He slammed his fist down on Patterson’s hand. The dark fingers sprang open under the impact, and Patterson lost his grip. He fell like a stone, screaming all the way down. JC watched him fall and wouldn’t let himself look away until he lost sight of the man in the gloom of the stairwell. The scream cut off abruptly, and JC finally turned away.
“Damn, JC,” said Happy. “That was… hardcore. I’m not saying you were wrong, necessarily, but…”
“You killed him,” said Kim, looking at JC as though she’d never seen him before.
“It’s part of the job, sometimes,” said Melody. “We’re trained to kill the bad guys, if necessary. If there’s no other way.”
“Yeah,” said Happy. “But there’s a difference between taking out a threat in the heat of the moment and a cold-blooded execution. I mean, I never liked Patterson, but he was one of us. Still a part of the Carnacki Institute.”
“Yes,” said JC. “One of us. That’s why I did it.”
He led the way up the last remaining set of steps, and one by one the others followed him up, all of them watching him thoughtfully, in their own ways.
All too soon they ran out of stairs and stood together looking at the last set of closed swing doors. None of them made any move, for quite a while. JC finally reached out a hand to the doors, then snatched it away again as a great Voice was heard, filling the stairwell, filling their heads. Not a human Voice, not even human words, but still it seemed to JC and the others that Something called to them, summoned them, to come to the final floor and account for themselves.
“What the hell was that?” Melody said hoarsely. “It was inside my head…”
“It went right through all my shields and barriers as though they weren’t even there,” said Happy. “And no, JC, I’m still not picking up anything else. That wasn’t telepathy. It didn’t feel anything like telepathy.”
“The power,” said Kim. “The sheer power…”
“If they’re that powerful, we’d better not keep them waiting,” said JC. “In we go, children. Best foot forward and try not to show me up.”
He pushed the doors open and strode straight in, and the others followed right after him.
JC kept walking, even though he wasn’t sure where he was any more. He could feel the pressure, the sheer presence of the New People, even before he could see them. An overwhelming impact, as though their simple existence had stamped itself onto reality so completely, it was hard to feel anything else. He finally stumbled to a halt, stopped in his tracks by the sheer alien strangeness of the situation. A fierce, unnatural light with no obvious source suffused everything, a light painful even to his altered eyes, and a great Sound filled the air, without beginning or end. JC felt it in his bones and in his soul as much as heard it. He knew that he was in the presence of something unknown, and perhaps even unknowable.
The others had stopped with him. Happy and Melody and Kim huddled close together for the simple comfort of human contact. They all had their eyes screwed up against the light, and the sound and the heavy presence of a place not meant for human kind. Kim seemed as much affected as any of the living.
“We shouldn’t be here,” Happy whispered, like a child in a cathedral. “We don’t belong in a place like this.”
“Chin up, my children,” said JC, as clearly and calmly as he could manage. “Yes, I would have to say that we are in the presence of things unknown… But that’s the job, when you work for the Carnacki Institute.”
“I resign,” said Happy.
“Shut up, Happy,” said JC.
He took off his sunglasses and looked around. In this new place his eyes hardly glowed at all. It was as though the golden light was nothing compared to the harsher light of what had been the top floor of Chimera House. JC nodded slowly, and put his shades back on.
“We have a job to do,” he said flatly, “And we’re going to do it together. Because it’s our duty, and our responsibility, to the Institute and perhaps all Humanity. And because we’re the best damn team in the Institute, and we don’t back down from anything. Right?”
“Right,” said Happy.
“Damned right,” said Melody.
“If I weren’t already dead, I think I’d be very worried,” said Kim. “But yes, of course you’re right. Let’s do it.”
They all moved slowly forward, pushing against the presence of the New People, like swimmers breasting a heavy tide.
The light seemed to fall away some as they moved on, revealing the substance and details of the place in which they found themselves. Huge abstract shapes loomed up everywhere, weird mutated structures that watched and observed. Great pyramids with massive unblinking eyes; jagged energies crackling up and down the air like slow lightning; blurred uncertain shapes that had the feel of living things. Wherever JC looked there were colours he couldn’t name, objects with too many details for the human eye to encompass, and nightmare forms on the edge of his vision that shrieked of bad intent
… And always, everywhere, the feeling of potential doors, or even trap-doors, that led Somewhere Else. Doors to let things In as well as Out…
The New People were waiting for them. Four of them. Standing inhumanly still in the middle of everything, untouched and untroubled by the world around them. The world they’d made, or perhaps a world that appeared to accommodate who and what they were now. Often it seemed that there were more than four of them, dozens or even hundreds, in infinite ranks, superpeople in a superposition, everywhere at once. Their number and location was constantly changing, and yet at the same time there were only four, standing before JC and his group, waiting. JC squeezed his eyes hard shut, and then opened them again, but it didn’t help. He wasn’t sure what he was seeing was actually happening, or whether it was his mind trying to make sense of an impossible situation.
He couldn’t look at the New People directly; none of his group could. They shone too brightly, they were too real, too overpoweringly there. Stamped on this world like an identifying imprint. Each of the New People existed in more than three dimensions at once. They had length and width and breadth, and other things, too. Other dimensions, physical and spiritual dimensions.
Happy couldn’t cope with what he was seeing, or experiencing, even with his shields in place. He dropped to his knees and vomited noisily. Melody crouched beside him, partly to comfort and protect him, partly so she didn’t have to look at the New People any more. She didn’t vomit, but she looked like she wanted to. JC understood. It hurt him to look at them, even with his blessed eyes. The New People existed in spiritual dimensions as well as spatial. The human brain wasn’t equipped to deal with so much information at once.
And all the time, JC was thinking… Is this what we were meant to be? What we all should have become? Or is this what we were spared?
Kim moved in close beside JC, gazing uncertainly at the New People. “I can’t see them,” she whispered. “It’s all just light to me. Why can’t I see them?”
JC shook his head vaguely, then turned his whole body away from the New People. It didn’t help. He didn’t need to see them to know they were there. Their presence overlaid everything.
The longer JC and his people remained in the new place, the more they saw. Contact with the New People opened their inner eyes, opened up their minds, to the noumenon-all the adjacent levels of reality, the worlds within worlds, or surrounding worlds, the interpenetrating and overlapping worlds that most of us are mercifully unaware of. All the places and all the things that exist right next to us, blessedly hidden from normal view. Because if most of Humanity knew who and what we shared this world with, they’d go stark, staring mad. JC had seen some of it before, through his golden eyes, but never as much as this.
He shut his golden eyes and still caught glimpses of other places, other worlds, other dimensions, where
life had taken on shapes and aspects far beyond the possibilities of this limited Earth. He saw two suns shining fiercely in a sick green sky, over a landscape that was always moving, never still. He saw dinosaurs with huge, distended heads stalk purposefully through stone galleries and massive tunnels, carved into the side of a mountain. He saw a dull red sun drop sullen bruised light from a mustard yellow sky, over man-sized insects that crawled all over a stone mound the size of a skyscraper, darting in and out of deep dark holes in its sides, intent on unknown missions.
JC cried out, and put his hands to his head. He thought he said, Too much, too much, but he couldn’t be sure. His thoughts came painfully fast, idea upon idea, rushing through his mind, darting this way and that beyond his control, as he fought to understand and assimilate a dozen improbable things at once. Sudden sharp insights slammed into his head, insights into the nature of reality itself. Blindingly obvious… but he was never able to remember them afterwards. Or at least, not in any way that made sense. Except sometimes in dreams… from which he woke cold and sweating, crying out, gripped with a nameless horror.
He sat down suddenly, and Kim hovered over him uneasily. JC gritted his teeth together, and concentrated on being the master of his own mind, the captain of his soul. And slowly, piece by piece, he put his thoughts back together again. And when he opened his golden eyes, he was at last able to cope with what he saw.
And one of the first things he saw was Happy, pushing away Melody as she tried to stop him dry-swallowing a handful of pills from various containers. JC forced himself back up onto his feet and went over to Happy, who abruptly stopped what he was doing and let more pills fall from an open hand. He looked at JC and his eyes were wild, almost feral.
“Guess what, JC? You were right all along! The drugs don’t work!”
JC still stumbled doggedly towards him, Kim floating timidly at his side. Even with his renewed mental discipline, he was still seeing things. Great inhuman faces, with incomprehensible expressions, watching, watching. They seemed to come from all directions at once, and some things that weren’t even directions. Strange things moved through the air, filling up the spaces between spaces, like the micro-organisms that roil and riot in a drop of water. They shot this way and that, passing through things and people and even each other. And then there were large forms, so big JC couldn’t even guess at what they were, moving through the building and its contents as though they were the ghosts.
JC forced them all out of his gaze and his thoughts, and went on, step by step, refusing to be stopped or turned aside until finally he reached Happy and Melody, after what seemed like miles, or hours, or worse. Melody was trying to talk to Happy, but her words couldn’t reach him. She didn’t seem as bothered by the surroundings, perhaps because most of her attention was fixed on Happy. JC lurched forward and thrust his face right in front of Happy’s. He whipped off his sunglasses, so that his golden eyes stared right into those of the telepath, filling his view. Happy met the golden gaze and slowly relaxed, as though someone had thrown him a lifeline. The golden glare kept everything else out. Happy breathed deeply, and sense returned to his eyes. He nodded jerkily, first to JC, then to Melody.
“All right. I’m back. I’m not sure where, and I don’t think I like it, but I am quite definitely here. Can we go now?”
“Go where?” said JC, stepping back. “You see any way out of here? We’re in the world of the New People now, and we have to start with them.”
He turned to face them, and everything else disappeared. Driven away, pushed aside, by the sheer presence of the New People. Only them, and the light they stood in. Or generated. And when they finally spoke, they all spoke at once, like a thunderous cloud or choir of voices. Just four motionless figures, in all their many dimensions, but when they spoke, there might have been four hundred or four thousand, as many aspects as there were dimensions.
We’ve been waiting for you. The intrepid Ghost Finders of the Carnacki Institute. We knew you were coming. Clearing up the mess left by our creation. Birth is always messy.
“Do you know who’s behind your creation?” said JC, forcing the words out. “Do you know about Patterson?”
Of course. He had plans for us. So did the people he represented. But they were so limited in their thinking. So human. Patterson couldn’t understand us. Nor could his organisation. We are so much more than they expected. They planned our creation but couldn’t deal with what they got. You are all of you incapable of understanding what we are, what we have become. The human mind lacks the capacity to contain what we are. And what we will do.
“What do you want?” said JC.
To make everyone like us, of course. To wake up the world, and everything in it, and set it to useful work. To do all the things that matter, instead of filling in time till death. There is so much that needs doing, matters of great scale and worth-putting the universe to rights.
“What if we don’t want that?” said Happy, moving forward to stand with JC. “What if we’d rather choose our own way?”
You will want it. After you’ve been changed. Upgraded. Made wondrous New People, like us. When you are like us, you’ll understand everything. The universe and its purpose will be clear to you. All the answers to all the questions you ever had, will be yours.
“But will we still care about those questions, and those answers, when we’re not human any more?” said Melody, stepping forward to be with JC. “Will we still care about any of the things we care about now, as poor, limited, human beings?”
“Will we still love?” said Kim, stepping in beside JC. “Will he still care for me, and I for him, as man for woman? Will we still have that?”
Don’t be afraid. We are more than you, not less. We have gained much and lost nothing. We are different from you now, but we still contain you.
“That isn’t answering the question,” said JC. “Would Kim and I, Happy and Melody, still share our simple human love for each other? Would the fundamental things still apply-care and compassion, honesty and honour, good and evil, life and death? Would they still matter to us? And if not, how could we still be us?”
Why would you want to settle for something so small?
“You see?” said JC. “You’re the ones who don’t understand. You’d have to destroy what makes us… us, to make us you. You’ve gone too far, progressed too far beyond us. The world isn’t ready for you. Not yet. People aren’t ready yet. You can’t jump to the front of the queue, to the top of the evolutionary ladder. We have to get there on our own, achieve it on our own, or it won’t mean anything. We have to earn it by our own efforts, one step at a time. Remember what you were. Who you were. What it felt like to be human. Small joys and small achievements are no less real for being small. Remember what you wanted out of life before chemical godhood gave it to you on a platter.”
We remember… but only as a dream. A long nightmare from which we have at last awakened. But yes-we do remember.
“You think all our junk DNA being blocked off just… happened?” said JC. “No. It’s there waiting, for the right time. For us to be ready for it. It’ll awaken itself when conditions are right. And then, and only then… we’ll all become like you. When the world needs us to be like you. Because by then, hopefully, we’ll have earned it.”
The New People paused. They seemed to be talking among themselves, but it was not speech that JC or Happy or Melody or Kim could comprehend. Finally, they spoke again.
Yes. This is not our Time. We are ghosts from the Future. That’s where we belong. So that is where we will go. Now.
And they were gone. All of them, gone. The overpowering presence of the New People disappeared, snapped off, as they moved on into Future Time. Except… JC was always sure afterwards, that for a moment one of the New People, the terrible transformed living gods, dropped her godly mask to look back at him as the young woman she’d originally been… to give him just the ghost of a smile, before she left.
The four Ghost Finders, the thre
e living people and the dead woman, looked slowly around them. They were standing in an empty floor at the top of an office building in London, and everything else they had seen there was already a fading memory. The world was back the way it should be, and full of only those things that belonged there. And the warm amber street light falling through the glass windows was like a benediction.
“That’s it,” said Happy. “It’s all over?”
“No,” said JC. “This is over, but we still don’t know who or what Patterson represented. Why they wanted us, and what they hoped to achieve. Remember what those Crowley Project agents said, down under Oxford Circus Tube Station? That there are people operating behind the scenes, weakening the walls of the world, for purposes of their own. .. Nothing to do with the Project or the Carnacki Institute. We need to find out who these people are. Before they do something even worse than this.”
“Could we at least take a day off, first?” said Happy. “I am so tired I feel like I could go into reverse.”
“Of course!” said JC, smiling broadly on his people. “All work and no play makes Jack a pain in the arse. But still, you know, I have to wonder… what kind of world the New People might have made. Whether it might actually have been… something very like Heaven.”
NINE
RIDER ON THE STORM
Some hours later, outside Chimera House
The night was almost over. The sun was fighting its way up the sky, pushing back the dark with streaks of red and gold. The shadows were no longer as deep, or as menacing, and a few of the more optimistic birds had started singing. London’s morning traffic was getting under way, the muted roar barely audible in the distance. It was still bloody cold, though.
The Carnacki Institute had turned out in force to mop up the mess left behind by its latest mission. Dozens of people were running this way and that, up and down the street before Chimera House, all kinds of people, representing all kinds of specialities, all of them moving like they had a plan. Or at the very least, all trying hard to look busy so they wouldn’t get shouted at. Some were inside the lobby, taking readings with an impressive array of instruments. Others were already deeper in and further up, cleaning the place thoroughly, before the local authorities were allowed in. Removing all traces of the weird and uncanny, and any and all evidence that might give lesser mortals nightmares. Scientific equipment was being removed, computers wiped clean, and certain objects were being bagged up and taken away for examination, autopsy, or a quick trip to the incinerator.
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