Ghost of a Chance g-1

by Simon R. Green

  JC moved slowly forward, through the archway, and the others went after him. Because they’d come this far, and they had to see, had to know, for themselves. And because something in that terrible sound compelled them. And once they were through the archway, the light blazed up, and they all saw what poor little Billy Hartman had seen.

  Huge and vast and intense beyond bearing, big as a house and more imposing, cruel and vicious and utterly wild, a great Wolf’s head. It had manifested on the earthly plane by manufacturing a shape out of its surroundings, using stone and cement and steel for its bones, then covering them with the wet red flesh and blood of the commuters it had abducted in its hell trains. Its great sharp teeth were made from human bone, and its huge shining eyes were formed from hundreds of human eyes. There was no fur, only wet crimson meat, to give shape to the Wolf’s head, all of it held in place by an implacable, inhuman will. It even had great pointed ears made of human flesh. It growled, and its breath stank of dead things.

  For all its makeshift form, it was still Fenris Tenebrae, one of the Great Beasts, and its sheer presence was overwhelming. To look on it was like staring into the sun. It was all teeth and snarl and malevolent eyes, every wild wolf that ever was, embodied in a single brutal avatar—ancient and primordial, almost abstract, blazing with hate and hunger and cunning. Hatred especially for all the small running things that had dared to prosper in this world, dared to get above themselves and forget their true place as prey. The Wolf, the Great Wolf, Destroyer of Civilisations, and of Worlds.

  Fenris Tenebrae.

  Nature red in tooth and claw and loving it, all in one terrible face. No wonder poor little Billy had been driven out of his mind. Most people aren’t equipped to deal with monsters. But JC and Happy and Melody had been trained and hardened and refined by the Carnacki Institute, and Natasha and Erik had been beaten into shape by the harsh masters of the Crowley Project. So that they could track down monsters and stare them in the face, and not be broken or disturbed. So they could go face-to-face with things that were so much bigger than them, more real than them . . . and not look away.

  They were agents. And Kim was dead. And not one of them was prey.

  In the end, JC laughed in the Wolf’s face. It took everything he had, and it was only a small, brief sound, but it was enough to break the mood. Natasha and Erik shook their heads, as though coming out of a bad dream. Melody shuddered, and Happy put his arm round her shoulders and held her close, comforting, and she let him, glaring defiantly back into the Wolf’s huge eyes. Kim moved in close beside JC, and he laughed again—a real, hearty, dismissive sound. It hung on the air, refusing to go away. Natasha laughed, too, and Erik sniggered. Happy gave Melody a comforting squeeze and managed a breathy laugh of his own. Melody smiled coldly.

  The Wolf growled again, a great roar of a sound, loud enough to shake the surroundings and rock the floor under their feet. A hateful sound, to fill all the world with cruelty. The stench of blood and carrion from the gaping jaws was sickening. Happy sneered at the Wolf.

  “I have to say, as projections of the infinite into the material plane go . . . this really is pathetic. Only a head? What happened to the rest of you? Get stuck in the hole you opened because you couldn’t make it big enough to crawl through? Is your rear end hanging out on the higher plane? Maybe somebody’s hanging their washing on it, like they did with Pooh’s behind when he got stuck in Rabbit’s hole. All the other Great Beasts must be laughing their socks off. I mean, yes . . . the head’s pretty good. I’ll give you that. All big and nasty and wild; but when all’s said and done, it’s still only a head. My old Gran’s got a stuffed fox head on the wall; and I can’t help thinking you’d look really good as a trophy in the Boss’s office. Make a hell of a conversation piece. Your time is past, Beast. No-one worships or fears you any more. We’ve moved on.”

  “I will make them fear me,” said the Wolf. “I will give them reason to worship me again.”

  It had a voice like tearing flesh and spilled blood, and howling in the night. All the cruel joy of the chase and the slaughter.

  “Nice speech,” JC said quietly to Happy. “But I think you’ve annoyed it enough now. Try and bear in mind that the Wolf is currently powerful enough to change our reality just by thinking about it.”

  “Trust me, that thought is never far from my mind,” said Happy. “Our only hope is to keep the thing occupied, hold its attention, while we think of something to do. Right?”

  “Good thinking, man,” said JC.

  “And?” said Happy.

  “I’m working on it,” said JC.

  “Terrific,” said Happy.

  “You know, you can let go of me now, Happy,” said Melody.

  “Oh, sorry,” said Happy, quickly removing his arm from around her shoulders.

  “That’s all right,” said Melody. “You knew how close I was to cracking. You held me together. And, you saved my life earlier. So, to say thank you, when all this nonsense is over, I am going to take you back to my place, throw you back onto the bed, and then do you and do you until you can’t stop smiling.”

  “If we survive,” said Happy.

  “Oh yes,” said Melody. “If we survive.”

  “I knew there had to be a catch in it somewhere,” said Happy.

  They grinned at each other.

  “Who are you chattering creatures?” said the Wolf, and his voice was like thunder, like lightning, like the storm that breaks the greatest of trees. “What are you, that you can bear my terrible gaze, my awful presence?”

  “We are the Carnacki Institute,” said JC.

  “And the Crowley Project,” said Natasha.

  “Agents trained and armed to stand between Humanity and all the Forces of the afterworlds,” said JC. “Now, are you going to leave quietly, or are we going to have to give you a good kicking, then boot your nasty arse out of here?”

  “He hasn’t got an arse,” said Happy.

  “Then we’ll improvise,” said JC.

  “Yes, let’s,” Natasha said cheerfully. “I do so love to improvise.”

  “Suddenly and violently and all over the place,” said Erik. “It’s an education just to watch her.”

  The Wolf looked at them. Whatever opposition Fenris Tenebrae had expected to face on the material plane, this clearly wasn’t it. Open insolence and defiance were new things to the Wolf, and it didn’t know how to cope. It tried another growl, an even louder one, but no-one so much as flinched this time. Happy actually faked a yawn. The Wolf closed its bloody mouth with a snap and fixed JC with a crafty, spiteful gaze.

  “You cannot make me leave this place, little thing. I have a hold on your world. I will not give it up, and you cannot make me. You cannot even hurt me, or you would have tried by now. You are nothing but a distraction, and I am done with you.”

  “We have your hold on the world right here,” said Natasha, gesturing at Kim. “You used her death to open a portal into our world, which means as long as her ghost haunts this station, you can’t be thrown out. She’s the focal point of everything that’s happened here.”

  “Natasha,” said JC. “Where, exactly, are you going with this?”

  “I would have thought it was obvious,” said Natasha. “What’s the fate of one dead person, compared to the whole world?”

  “No,” said JC. “There has to be another way.”

  “But there isn’t,” said Kim. She smiled gently at JC. “I’m dead. My life is over anyway. I won’t fight this, JC, and I won’t let you fight it either. It’s necessary.”

  “But I love you . . .”

  “And I love you. But love is for the living.” She looked at Natasha. “What are you going to do, exorcise me?”

  Natasha smiled. “No, dear. I eat ghosts.”

  She moved forward, still smiling, and JC stepped forward to block her way, his face cold, and very determined. And Kim walked straight through him, to stand before Natasha. JC cried out and pulled the monkey’s paw from his pocket.
Melody drew her machine-pistol, and Erik his pointing bone. And Happy threw both hands in the air and waved them vigorously as he yelled at the others.

  “Hold it! Hold everything! Look at the Wolf!”

  Everyone hesitated, then turned and looked at the Wolf’s head. It was grinning mockingly, its wet red mouth stretched wide. Dead men’s blood drooled and dripped.

  “What about the Wolf?” snapped Natasha. “It isn’t doing anything.”

  “Exactly!” said Happy. “You’re about to destroy the one thing that gives it a hold on our world, and it isn’t even worried? If Kim meant anything at all to the Wolf, it would have acted to defend her. Probably turned us all into frogs or something, and I do wish I hadn’t said that out loud.”

  “He’s right,” said JC. “Kim isn’t the focal point.”

  “Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?” said Natasha.

  “No,” Erik said reluctantly. “The telepath’s right. The Wolf isn’t worried. Kim was only ever a decoy, a distraction. We’ve missed something. Damn. Damn! We’ve missed something important!”

  “Then why did he have me killed?” said Kim.

  “Because it was fun,” said the Wolf. And it laughed at them all.

  Melody stepped forward, trained her machine-pistol on the Wolf’s left eye, and emptied the whole magazine into it. The great manufactured head soaked up the bullets and took no damage at all. Erik stabbed his Aboriginal pointing bone at the huge Wolf face. The bone exploded in Erik’s hand, and he cried out in agony as jagged splinters were driven deep into his hand. He cradled the bloody mess against his chest and fell back, moaning.

  Happy cried out to Natasha. She looked at him, nodded quickly, and grabbed his outstretched hand. Their minds slammed together, and the combined strength of their joined thoughts struck out at the Wolf like a single shining lance. The Wolf opened its mouth, swallowed the attack whole, and took no harm at all. The head surged forward, its great jaws snapping at Natasha and Happy. They scrabbled backwards, letting go of each other’s hands.

  JC brandished his monkey’s paw and advanced on the Wolf’s head, holding the burning fingers of the modified claw out before him. It was a forbidden weapon because it could give a man the power of a god, for a while; but even it was no match for the Great Beast. It burst into flames, hot and fierce, and JC cried out and dropped it. He grabbed for it again, but already the paw was nothing but ashes smeared across the platform. The Wolf’s head surged forward again, pulling more of itself into the world, but JC stood his ground. He whipped off his sunglasses and stared right into the Beast’s huge eyes. The Wolf sneered at him.

  “My, what big eyes you have . . .”

  “And they help me see so clearly,” said JC. “Especially things that have been right under my nose all along. Kim isn’t the focal point of your haunting, and never was. There’s nothing of you in Kim. She’s a ghost, an unfortunate by-product of your actions. You’ve been waving her in front of me all along, to distract me. She isn’t the focus; her murderer is. That’s why you brought him here. By committing an act of murder in a certain place at a certain time, when the walls between the worlds were at their weakest, that act opened a door for you. Murder magic has always been a trait of your kind; you kill because you can’t create. In all the time you’ve been here, you haven’t made one new thing—only copies of existing things.”

  He turned abruptly to Happy and Natasha. “I need the murderer’s spirit. Find it. Kim said he was still here, with us. Find him and put him back in his head.”

  “He won’t stay long,” said Happy. “He’s too traumatised.”

  “Put him back together for a while,” JC said urgently. “I need to talk to him.”

  Happy and Natasha joined hands again, and concentrated. The Wolf cried out angrily, but no-one was listening to it. There was a sharp, cracking sound, and flecks of frost flew on the air as the frozen head turned slowly to look at Kim. The murderer blinked once, and his eyes cleared. He looked at Kim and tears started from his eyes, only to freeze before they were half-way down his cheeks. He worked his mouth, amid more harsh, cracking sounds, and Kim drifted forward to stand over him, to hear what he had to say.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, in a voice full of all the pain and tiredness in the world. “I’m so sorry.”

  The thick layer of frost covering his body exploded out from him as he stretched suddenly and forced himself up onto his feet. Great cracks appeared, in his clothes and in his frozen flesh, but he ignored them, all his attention fixed on Kim.

  “My name is Billy Hartman,” he said slowly. “I never meant to kill you. Never meant to kill anyone. It was like a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from.”

  “I gave you what you wanted,” said the Wolf. “What you dreamed of. Don’t say you didn’t.”

  “We don’t always want what we want in dreams,” said Billy. “They’re just dreams!”

  “Humans are so complicated,” said the Wolf. “You can’t even tell the truth to yourselves.”

  “You don’t understand us,” said JC. “You never did. You may be realer than us, but we’re still more than you are.”

  Billy glared at the Wolf’s head, able to face it at last, in the last few moments of his life. “You lied to me. Used me!”

  “That’s all you’re good for,” said the Wolf.

  Billy turned his head away, dismissing the Wolf, and studied Kim with his sad, betrayed eyes. “What’s it like, being dead?”

  “You’re closer to death than I am,” said Kim, not unkindly. “I’m stuck here. I was going to do so many things . . . and now I never will.”

  “I know,” said Billy.

  “It’s hard to know what I feel about you,” said Kim. “Finally having a name and a face to put to my murderer . . . doesn’t really make any difference. You were used by the Wolf, like me . . . but you, at least, had some choice in this. I can’t forgive you.”

  “That’s all right,” said Billy. “I don’t forgive me either.”

  JC stepped forward. “You want a way to get back at the Wolf? Make it pay, for everything it’s done to you and Kim and everyone else?”

  “There’s a way for me to put things right?” said Billy.

  “No,” said JC. “What’s done is done and can’t be undone. But I can give you a chance to defy the Wolf and save the world from what it wants to do to us.”

  “I’d give anything for a chance like that,” said Billy.

  “There’s only one way that works,” said JC. “One chance to pay all debts. Sacrifice.”

  Billy looked at the Wolf and smiled slowly. His frozen cheeks tore as his mouth stretched. “I can do that.”

  “Not on your own you can’t,” said JC. “Take my hand, Billy, and walk with me.”

  The dying man put out his hand, and JC took it carefully in his. The frozen flesh burned his hand, but he didn’t let go. The two men strode towards the huge Wolf head, and it snarled warningly at them. Kim suddenly flew forward, putting herself between JC and the Wolf.

  “No! JC, you can’t do this! You mustn’t! You’ll die, and leave me here alone! What debts do you have to sacrifice yourself for? What was your sin?”

  “Loving the dead,” said JC.

  And he walked straight through her, his living lips briefly coming up against her dead mouth, for one last kiss, as his face passed through hers. The Wolf growled at JC and Billy, watching them carefully, grinding its great bone teeth together. JC stared right back into the Wolf’s huge eyes, and the Wolf blinked first. JC’s gaze was burning so very brightly, and the Great Beast could not match it.

  “You,” said JC. “You brought people to this place, in blood and horror and suffering, and killed them, to build your face. You turned the station into a bad place and infected it with your presence—a psychic stain that will last for generations. So you could make a place of your own. You destroyed two lives: Kim and Billy. To make your portal into our world. You came here to destroy us all . . . because you could. One o
f the Great Beasts, with no soul, no conscience, and not even the faintest trace of true greatness. Even the smallest human is bigger than you. Right, Billy?”

  “Right,” said Billy.

  Fenris Tenebrae howled horribly, and the great head surged forward again. The massive jaws opened, and started to snap closed on Billy and JC, because it couldn’t bear to hear what they were saying. To silence and punish and hurt them because that was what the Wolf did. And as the jaws were slamming together, at the very last moment, Billy pushed JC back, with all the strength remaining in his frozen arms. So that when the terrible jaws came together, only Billy was there. His frozen body exploded into a thousand jagged pieces . . . and with him finally dead and gone, with the focal point of the haunting destroyed, the Wolf no longer had a hold on the world. It had destroyed the very thing it had worked so hard to make. Fenris Tenebrae howled once, a wild, horrid, despairing sound, then it was gone. The manufactured head was left behind, all the stone and steel, bone and flesh of it; but nothing within it remained.

  The world had been saved from the Great Destroyer, and not by the Carnacki Institute or the Crowley Project. By one little man, with a man’s courage.

  ELEVEN

  MORTAL AND IMMORTAL ENEMIES

  The unreal platform melted away, dissolving into mists and shadows; and they were all back at the southbound platform, as though they’d never left. Everything was calm and quiet and normal again. First JC, then the others, surreptitiously checked themselves to make sure everything was where it should be.

  “How did . . . No,” Happy said firmly. “I am not going to ask. Because even if I did understand the answer, which I am prepared to bet good money I wouldn’t, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t like it.”

  “See?” said Melody. “You’re learning. Personally, whenever I encounter something I don’t understand, I say quantum, very loudly, and everyone else nods and goes along. Science is lot like magic. Words have power.”