“The train isn’t the real problem,” said Melody. “Don’t get side-tracked, JC. The real problem is the Ghost Caller. It was dangerous enough when it was first placed aboard the train; by now it could have accumulated enough power to blow a hole clean through the Space/Time continuum. If the stress of the return activates the machine, we could be talking about a mass psychic summoning. One last call for all the dead that ever were.”
“I am leaving now,” said Happy. “Try and keep up.”
“Stand still! Show a brave face, Happy,” said JC, sternly. “There are civilians present.”
“Oh, don’t mind me,” said Laurie. “I told you, no-one with any sense stays here once it gets dark.”
“See!” said Happy. “See!”
“We should get danger money,” said Melody.
Happy stopped and looked at her. “It would help,” he said finally.
“Hold it,” said JC. “We have company.”
They all looked around, to find the ghost of Dr. Todd had joined them out on the platform. He stood on his own, some distance away, staring unblinkingly into the dark tunnel-mouth. JC calmly strode forward to join him, looked into the tunnel opening, then right into the ghost’s face.
“Why are you here, Dr. Todd? You’ve failed to prevent the train’s return, so why are you still here?”
The ghost looked straight through him, as though he weren’t there, and said nothing at all. JC glanced back at Happy.
“Are you sure you aren’t picking up something from him? Anything at all?”
“No thoughts, no personality…it’s as though he’s so far-away, I can barely see him. Something really bad happened to Dr. T; and I don’t think it was only the head injury. I think part of it is still happening. There’s a definite connection between the ghost, the missing train, and the Ghost Caller. I can sense it, feel it; this whole setting is soaked in information. And JC…I can’t feel Dr. Todd, but I can feel something that I’m pretty sure is the Ghost Caller. It’s not simply a machine. It’s close now, closer than it has ever been, ready to break through…And I think it needs Dr. Todd to be here when it arrives. He’s not here through his own free will; the Ghost Caller holds him here.”
“Why?” said JC. “What’s the connection?”
“I don’t know!” said Happy. “I’m getting a headache trying to process all this. It’s something to do with the price Dr. Todd paid for the creation of the Ghost Caller.”
“No-one move,” Melody said quietly. “But look around you. The fog is rolling in.”
They all looked carefully up and down the platform. A shimmering grey fog had descended on both ends and was creeping slowly and remorselessly along the platform towards them. It rose out of everywhere at once, curling and coiling thickly on the still evening air, pulsing with its own eerie light. The tunnel-mouth was already lost to sight. In a few moments, the fog was already so thick that none of them could make out the opposite platform. The pulsing mists spilled along the railway tracks, covering them up in a thick grey tide, and soon the Ghost Finders and Laurie and the ghost of Dr. Todd were surrounded by a grey sea of impenetrable fog, filling the station with its own sour and bitter light.
Laurie stepped back, into the main station building, as though he felt safer inside, in the candlelight. Dr. Todd drifted back before the fog, to stand with the Ghost Finders. He still stared unblinkingly through the thick grey mists, at where he believed the tunnel-mouth to be. The fog was cold and wet and intimidating. It felt like being trapped underwater, cut off from the rest of the world, every sound eerily muffled. The foggy air smelled of smoke and coal dust and times past. It grew slowly, steadily thicker.
Happy suddenly put both hands to his head and pressed hard against his ears to keep out some terrible sound only he could hear. His face screwed up, and he stumbled away from the others. JC yelled for him to come back, but Happy couldn’t hear him. He disappeared into the curling folds of the fog, becoming a dark and indistinct shape. And then he disappeared from sight completely, as his feet took him over the edge of the platform, and he fell.
But Melody was right there behind him.
She’d followed him into the fog, and when he fell, she threw herself forward and grabbed his out-flung hand at the last moment. She slammed facedown onto the platform, driving all the breath out of her lungs with the impact; but still she held on to Happy’s hand with desperate strength.
“Don’t let go!” yelled Happy, his voice rising from the deep gap between the platforms. “I’m not sure there’s anything here, any more! The fog’s eaten it all up! There’s nothing underneath me!”
“Oh hush up, you big baby,” said Melody, between gritted teeth. “I’ve got you. I’ve always got you. Haven’t you learned that yet?”
While they were busy with each other, the fog took advantage of the moment to surge forward, from both ends of the platform at once. A great grey wave swallowed up everything. JC lost sight of Melody, grimly hanging on to Happy’s hand. And when he looked back, he couldn’t see Laurie or Dr. Todd. He was cut off from everyone, standing alone in a great grey sea that was becoming steadily thicker all around as though it was walling him up.
And then Kim Sterling came walking out of the fog, heading straight for him. His lost love, his ghost girl, striding towards him, smiling. The fog fell back from her, as though intimidated by her presence, as though it couldn’t touch her. Kim came walking through the fog, and her feet on the platform didn’t make the slightest sound. She slowed to a halt before JC, and his unbelieving smile slowly widened to match hers. He took off his sunglasses, so he could meet her eyes with his, and the blazing light from his altered eyes blasted the last of the fog away, illuminating Kim like summer sunshine in a church. She stood tall and easy before him, a magnificent pre-Raphaelite beauty with long red hair, in a shimmering, long, white dress. She had a high-boned, sharply featured face, and her wide mouth was a red dream with a smile always tucked away in one corner. She looked so fine, so wonderful, so full of life…JC reached out to take her hand, and she reached out a pale hand to him…but his hand passed right through hers. Because only he was really there. The living and the dead were never meant to touch.
“Where have you been?” said JC; but Kim smiled sadly at him.
She gestured at the sunglasses in his hand, then looked right into his eyes in a meaningful way. JC nodded slowly, looked around him at the fog, and said, very distinctly, “I can still see the platform.” The fog rolled back before him, giving up its hold on the station, unable to withstand the otherworldly glare of his eyes. It slowly faded away and disappeared, as though it had lost its grip on the world. JC looked around for Kim; but she was already walking away, back down the platform. By the time the fog was completely gone, so was she. As though she had never been there.
“I’ll find you,” said JC. “I’ll never stop looking.”
* * *
JC didn’t waste time with regrets. He hurried over to where Melody was still lying facedown on the platform, one hand over the edge, grimly hanging on to Happy. JC knelt and grabbed Happy’s other hand, and, between them, he and Melody hauled Happy back up to the platform. Happy scrambled up onto his feet, breathing hard, then retreated quickly away from the edge. Melody went with him, while JC took his time getting back onto his feet, brushing fussily at his marvellous ice-cream white suit.
“What the hell did you hear,” Melody said to Happy, “to make you go rushing off like that?”
“A steam-whistle,” said Happy. “Like a howl out of Hell, getting closer by the moment.”
Melody nodded, then turned away to look back at JC. “Before you ask. Yes, I saw her, too.”
“Saw who?” Happy said immediately. “What did I miss?”
“Kim,” said Melody. “She was back. She helped save us from the fog, then disappeared again.”
“She looked exactly the way she did when I first saw her,” said JC. “Down in the Underground.”
“Everyone else has
a guardian angel,” growled Happy. “Trust you to be different and have a guardian ghost. Did she say anything to you, like where she’s been all this time? Who was holding her; how she broke free?”
“No,” said JC. “She didn’t say a word. But at least now I know…she’s not lost. Not gone. She’s…out there, somewhere.”
“Then where’s she been all this time?” said Happy; but JC wasn’t listening. He looked across at Laurie, standing stiffly in the candle-lit doorway. JC considered him thoughtfully for a long moment, then looked across at the ghost of Dr. Todd, back where he used to be, staring into the darkness of the tunnel-mouth. JC moved away from both of them and gestured for Happy and Melody to join him.
The three Ghost Finders stood close together, speaking in quiet voices.
“The train is coming back,” said JC. “We can’t hope to stop it, so I say we do all we can to encourage it and keep all the weird shit limited to this one location.”
“Good idea, oh great boss and leader,” said Happy. “You get on with that while I sprint for the nearest horizon. Be sure and send me a nice postcard when it’s all over and let me know how it turned out.”
“Unfortunately, I can’t do this without you,” said JC. “So stay where you are, or I’ll nail your feet to the platform. Or maybe I’ll only nail the one and watch you walk round and round in circles.”
Happy scowled at him. “You would, too, wouldn’t you? Bully. All right. What do you want me to do, and I know I’m going to hate it.”
“I will use my amazing eyes to find the weak spot in reality,” said JC. “And then you will use your amazing mutant mind to force it all the way open. Lance the boil before it bursts.”
“You have such a way with words,” said Happy. “And all of them bad.”
“You really think that’s going to work?” said Melody.
“Oh yes,” said JC. “The train wants to come home. The Ghost Caller wants to come home. They’ve been Away too long. All we have to do is open the door a crack, and they’ll force it open the rest of the way, from the other side.”
“I’m more worried about what might come through with them,” said Melody.
“I should have been a plumber, like Mother wanted,” Happy said miserably. “Always good money, in plumbing.”
* * *
In the end, it really was that simple. JC and Happy stood together on the platform, concentrating on the dark tunnel-mouth, while Melody hurried back into the Station building, gathered up her precious instruments, and hauled them out onto the platform. Laurie watched interestedly, but he had apparently observed enough of Melody in action not to make the mistake of offering to help. The ghost of Dr. Todd ignored them all, still orientated unwaveringly on the tunnel-mouth. JC and Happy gave him plenty of room. It was cold on the platform, but the natural cold of an evening shading into night, not the unnatural chill Dr. Todd had brought to the Station room. Presumably he didn’t feel the need for any more energy; and JC and Happy were quite content for him to go on feeling that way.
JC took off his sunglasses and stared meaningfully into the tunnel-mouth. The deep dark shadows seemed to stir uneasily under the touch of his augmented gaze. Happy stood half-crouching behind JC, concentrating, reaching out with his mind. Feeling for something that strictly speaking wasn’t actually there yet.
“You’re right, JC. There’s definitely something…almost there. A dimensional door with something very powerful pushing up against the other side. There is a light at the end of the tunnel but not necessarily in a good way.”
“Something’s coming,” JC agreed, smiling confidently. “So close now, even I can feel it. Melody! Can you tell me what direction it’s coming from?”
“According to my instruments,” said Melody, breathlessly, as she slammed the last bit of high tech into place, “whatever it is, it’s coming from every direction at once! Forget spatial coordinates; this is coming from Outside our reality. Still, if I were the betting kind, which I’m not, but if I were…the odds do favour its coming through that tunnel-mouth. Completing the journey the train began all those years ago. The Universe has a fondness for circles and neatness. But JC, I have to tell you…it’s not only the train that’s coming. Something really powerful is hitching a ride with it, something so big, so intense it’s overloading all my sensors!”
“Yes,” said Happy, almost absently, all his concentration focused on the tunnel opening. “I can See it, I can Hear it…Like a bright Light, like a great Voice…”
“The Ghost Caller,” said JC.
“The Light is shining very brightly now,” said Happy, in a far-away voice. “I don’t like it. That’s not a proper Light. And it’s not a good Voice. It wants to tell me things. Things I don’t want to know…”
“Is it calling you?” said JC, quickly.
“No,” said Happy, almost reluctantly. “It doesn’t care about me. I’m just in the way. Its attractions are not for the living. I think both the Light and the Voice are lies, lures…It calls to the dead, to trick them away from the true Light and the true Voice…”
“Okay,” said JC, surprisingly gently. “That’s enough of that. Come home, Happy. Come back to me, or I’ll have Melody come and bring you back.”
“I’m back!” said Happy, scowling at JC. “I can look after myself, you know.”
“Really,” said JC. “You do amaze me. Have we done enough to open the door?”
“Oh yeah,” said Happy, scowling at the dark tunnel opening. “All I had to do was pry at the edges, and the train did the rest. The train and what’s coming with it. Still not too late to gather up our skirts and run, you know.”
“We don’t run,” said JC. “We are the Ghost Finders, and we don’t take any shit from the Hereafter.”
“What’s this we stuff, white man?” said Happy.
“It’s close!” said Melody, staring raptly at her sensor readings. “And I mean, really close. My instruments are going crazy! In fact, one of them melted…I’m getting really weird energy spikes, other-dimensional radiations…Time and gravity and…and temperature readings that don’t make any sense in our world…Holy crap!”
She backed rapidly away from her bank of instruments as, one by one, they burst into blue-white flames, then exploded, unable to cope with what they were experiencing. Melody tried to get back, to shut everything down, but the sheer heat drove her away again. She reluctantly abandoned her precious toys and hurried down the platform to join the others. The railway lines down in the valley between the platforms were jumping and juddering, ripping free of the thick weeds that had grown around and over them. The platform vibrated fiercely under the Ghost Finders’ feet. Signs hanging on steel chains swung heavily back and forth. And all the doors in all the buildings slammed open and shut, again and again. Laurie was forced out onto the platform, looking at the tunnel-mouth with wide eyes.
Until, finally, a great light appeared in the tunnel, blasting out of the tunnel-mouth, red as all the fires of Hell; and out of that unnatural light the steam train appeared at last, thundering out of the old tunnel-mouth. It was huge and dark, with gleaming steel and brass, smoke pumping out of its chimney and its whistle screaming like a soul newly damned to the Pit. Strange-coloured sparks rose where its steel wheels met the rusting rails; and then all the wheels screamed and squealed as the brakes slammed on, and the train and its carriages bucked to a shuddering halt, all along the platform of Bradleigh Halt.
Come home, at last.
JC and Happy and Melody stood close together, looking over the steam engine and its seven carriages as they settled to a halt. There was a loud ticking of cooling metal, and great gusts of steam rose on the still, evening air. A thick viscous liquid dripped steadily from every outer surface, bubbling and boiling in reaction to Earth air and Earth conditions. Some alien substance, covering all the train, brought back from the Away place, as though the train had been born again in some strange, alien amniotic fluid. The stuff fell slowly and reluctantly away from th
e train, dissipating, giving up the ghost, unable to hold itself together in this new kind of world. The whole train smelled like rotting meat, like something that should have been buried long ago.
The steam still issuing in sudden spurts from the cooling engine smelled bad, too; smelled wrong, unearthly, changed. The few sparks still jumping around the great steel wheels were odd and unnatural colours. The weeds that had choked the railway lines for so long, those that hadn’t been chewed up and thrown aside by the train’s return, now curled up and withered from contact with the great steel wheels.
JC beckoned urgently to Laurie, and the old man hurried over to join him. He stared at the old steam-engine with fond, almost worshipful eyes.
“She’s everything my old grand-dad said she was,” said Laurie. “He saw her go into that tunnel, you know, back in the day. He always said she’d find her way home again, eventually.”
“Are all the carriages there?” asked JC. “Is anything missing? Is everything there that should be?”
“Oh yes,” said Laurie. “But look at the state of the engine! All that…stuff, dripping off her! It’s a disgrace…What have they done to you, girl? You were a classic!”
JC looked at Melody. “Any idea where the Ghost Caller might be?”
“All of my instruments are shot, fried, and dead in the water; but if I had to guess, I’d say probably the baggage-car.”
“Look at her,” said Laurie, softly and reverently. “Been away so long everything about her has changed. All the metals and alloys are different now…the wood of the carriages is rotting, corrupt. And what’s inside…makes my skin crawl. There’s more to this train than there should be. As though the whole thing’s alive…How can it be alive?”
“How can you tell all this?” said Happy, staring at him. “I’m a telepath, and I’m not getting half of that!”
“I can feel it,” said Laurie. “Can’t you?”
Happy scowled at the train and said nothing.
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