Melody had finally found a way to see inside Happy’s head; and what she’d found there was killing her, too. Happy saw it happening, saw it eating her alive, so he reached out to her in the only way left to him.
He embraced her telepathically, joined with her on every level there was. He calmed her racing thoughts, taught her how to keep the bad things at bay. How to survive when you’re hanging on by your fingernails. He loved her; and that made him strong enough to carry the heavy burden of his life for as long as he had to. Melody held him, and he held her, and they were together. For whatever time they had left.
Happy broke the mental link, and they both fell back into their own heads. They stood facing each other, looking into each other’s eyes. Melody was back in control again; and, surprisingly, so was he.
“You’re back!” said Melody. “I can feel it. You burned up all your pills helping me; but you’re still stable.”
“Yes,” said Happy. “In saving you, it seems I’ve saved myself. How about that? Your sanity jump-started mine. It won’t last, of course. There’s no miracle cure for what I’ve done to myself. But at least I can be me again, for a while.”
“You’re still dying,” said Melody.
“Everyone needs something to look forward to,” said Happy.
“You can’t die,” said JC. “I can’t lose you. You’re my team. You’re all I’ve got.”
“You’ve got me,” said Kim.
He looked at her with calm, unflinching despair. “I gave up my life to do this job; and what has it got me? What good is it, to be a Ghost Finder solving other people’s problems, if I can’t solve my own? If I can’t help you? If I can’t save the one woman who means more to me than anything else. Please don’t go, Kim. You’re all that keeps me going.”
“You’re all that keeps me . . . me,” said Kim. “When I had to leave you for a time, on the Boss’s orders, it almost destroyed me. Being a ghost is like enduring endless sensory deprivation. You’re all that keeps me focused. Away from you I became vague, uncertain. You’re my anchor, JC, my reason for being. You’re the only thing that holds me to this world. But . . . you can’t move on as long as I’m still here, holding you back. So because I love you, I have to give you up . . .”
She was already starting to fade.
“No!” said JC. “Don’t go, Kim! Don’t you dare give up on us!”
“If you love them, let them go,” said Kim. Her voice sounded far away. “You deserve better than this, JC.”
“Please . . . Kim . . .”
“I’m scared to stay,” said the ghost girl. “And scared to go . . .”
“You don’t have to be frightened,” JC said steadily. “And you don’t have to go alone. If you’re going, I’m going with you. I’d rather die than live on without you.”
And, just like that, Kim snapped back into sharp focus again; smiling tremulously at him.
“There is still hope,” said JC. “We give each other hope. That’s what love is.”
All four of them stopped and looked around the room. Something had changed. They could feel it.
“Okay . . .” said Melody. “Let me be the first to say, What the hell was that? What just happened here?”
“I feel like I’ve just been through a spiritual purge,” said Happy. “I feel good. I feel good about myself. I’m not used to that.”
“It feels like someone cut me open and let all the poison out,” said JC.
“Not someone,” said Kim. “The room. The room did it . . .”
The door to Room 418 swung slowly open on its own; and beyond it lay a perfectly ordinary corridor. The room . . . felt like just a room. Nothing more.
“Whatever just hit us, I think it’s over,” said JC. “The room is finished with us. But you know what . . . I’m not finished with this room.”
“Normally, I would be the first to say, let us get the hell out of here while the getting’s still good,” said Happy. “But I have to admit I’m curious. It feels like we all just passed some kind of test.”
“A haunted room as personal therapy?” said Melody. “Weird . . .”
“Something made this room a Bad Place, originally,” said Happy. “But it doesn’t feel like the work of any individual person. So what’s powering this phenomenon? There was a definite sense of direction, of purpose, to everything we were put through.”
“Don’t say purpose,” said Melody. “Say rather programming. This room now exists to perform a specific task . . .”
“I don’t think this is a Bad Place,” said JC. “I think . . . it’s a testing ground.”
He walked around the room, looking at everything, his nerve endings almost painfully raw and receptive after everything he’d been through.
“Think of all the people who’ve stayed here, down the years,” he said finally. “So many people, in this room, passing long, dark nights of the soul . . . Lying awake in the early hours of the morning, asking themselves the kind of questions that people only ask themselves in the long reaches of the night. All the things we don’t dare think about in daylight but can’t hide from in the dark. Is this it? Is this all there is? Is this what my life has come to? What happened to the life I was going to live? What happened to the person I planned on being? When did I lose all my ideals, give up on my dreams?
“And somehow . . . all that soul-searching and personal despair rubbed off on the room.”
“Imprinted it,” said Melody. “Soaked into the surroundings and programmed Room 418 to search for the truth in all of us. No wonder so many people died, or went mad, or hurt themselves . . .”
“Why didn’t it affect everyone the same way?” said Happy.
“Not everyone can be honest with themselves,” said JC.
“But then . . . why aren’t all hotel rooms like this?” said Kim. “People must ask questions like that in every hotel room. What’s so special about this one?”
“Something about the location, perhaps?” said JC. “Or perhaps some psychically gifted traveller passed through, and supercharged the room . . . Who knows? The result is a room that tests everyone who stays here. Tests to destruction, if necessary. Forces people to confront their own personal demons . . . who sometimes turn on their owner. I suppose we never hear about the ones who pass the test—just the ones who fail dramatically.”
“Did we pass?” said Melody.
“Hard to tell, with us,” said Happy. “But I think so. We’re all still here and as sane as we ever were.”
“We can’t leave the room like this,” said JC. “It’s like an unexploded bomb, waiting to go off over and over again. It plays too roughly with people and breaks too many of them. We have to defuse this room.”
“How the hell are we supposed to do that?” said Happy.
“I’m open to suggestions,” said JC.
“I could bring my equipment up here, hit the room with a small, localised EMP,” said Melody. “That might be enough to wipe the slate clean.”
“Bit too scientific and real-world, for a spiritual experience,” said Kim. “Didn’t you once have an exorcist grenade, JC?”
“The energies that have accumulated in this room have become so powerful, they’re probably resistant to open attack,” said JC. “No; we need something less direct. Lateral thinking caps on, everyone.”
He walked around the room, looking at everything, thinking hard. The others looked at him, then at each other, and shrugged pretty much simultaneously.
“This room is haunted,” JC said firmly. “By all the lost hopes and broken dreams of everyone who ever stayed here.”
“So what are we supposed to do?” said Happy. “Call them all up and give them a big comforting hug?”
JC turned abruptly to look at him, then smiled slowly. “Well, if you put it that way . . .”
“Why do I give him ideas?” said Hap
py.
“We can’t bring back all the people who stayed in this room,” said Kim. “The living and the dead . . .”
“But we might be able to call forth the genius loci, the spirit of this place,” said JC. “What all the previous guests left behind, that’s still powering the testing ground. A . . . representation, of all those people. And then we comfort them.”
“So the manager was right,” said Melody. “This is an exorcism, after all. Do we need to bring in a priest? I hate that. They’re always so smug about it . . .”
“No,” said JC. “This isn’t about good and evil, Heaven and Hell. Just people. We know how to deal with people. Come on. We’ve melded our minds together before, to help others. And isn’t that why we got into this job in the first place? To help people?”
“Speak for yourself,” said Melody. “I got into it for access to technology I couldn’t find anywhere else.”
“I got into it for access to arcane and unnatural chemicals,” said Happy.
“And I got into it for the glory,” said JC. “But that’s not how it is now, is it?”
“Not always,” said Melody.
“Go team,” said Happy.
“Let’s do it,” said Kim.
She stepped forward, slipping effortlessly inside JC, her ghostly form superimposing itself on his body and disappearing inside it as they joined together. The golden glow from JC’s eyes sprang up all around his body, like an all-over halo. A sane, healthy light, it pushed back the flat, ugly illumination of the room. JC reached out to Happy and Melody, and they each took one of his hands. The golden light leapt out to surround them, too. Four good friends; a team joined together on every level there was.
They all concentrated on the same shared thought; and the golden light blasted out from them to fill the whole room. Slowly, a presence stirred. Room 418 was waking up from a long, deep sleep. Another figure was suddenly standing in the room, a basic human shape with no details, no identity . . . It walked slowly forward, and the group opened up to accept and encompass it.
You’re not alone, they said. Someone knows, and understands. Someone gives a damn. And isn’t that all any of us really needs to hear?
Comforted at last, the figure faded away slowly.
The Ghost Finders let go of each other and stepped back. The golden light snapped off. Melody and Happy were still holding hands. Kim stepped out of JC.
“Damn,” said Happy. “What were we mainlining there? It felt like . . . raw spiritual power. There isn’t a pill in the world that could match that.”
“Are you ready to swear off the mother’s little helpers now?” said JC.
“No,” said Happy. “Sorry, JC. I’m still going to need a chemical crutch to lean on. For what little time I’ve got left.”
JC nodded. He’d been doing this job long enough to know some problems don’t have answers. Or at least not one you can easily live with.
“Feel the difference in the room,” he said. “Like the calm after a storm has passed. It’s over. It’s gone.”
“I am really not comfortable with all this touchie-feelie hippy crap,” said Happy. “You’ll be wanting me to hug some trees next.”
“I think I preferred it when you weren’t talking,” said JC. “So much more peaceful.”
Happy looked at Melody and grinned. “Go on. You know you want to say it.”
Melody struck a pose. “This room . . . is clean.”
TWO
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SOME ANTS AND ONE HELL OF AN ELEPHANT
It’s always hardest on the team after the mission is over. When the danger is past, the adrenaline has stopped pumping, and all the nervous energy has packed its bags and gone home. Going down to the lobby in the elevator, the three Ghost Finders stood slumped together. Heads bowed, staring at nothing, too tired even to make small-talk about how good it felt to be alive. It did feel good, to have another successful mission under their belt, but mostly they were thinking about how much better it would feel to get the hell away from the job and take a nice little vacation. No ghosts, no horrors, no weird shit; just peace and quiet and the comfort of normal things. A secure place to get their heads down, where they wouldn’t have to worry about closing their eyes. When every mission is a matter of life and death and sometimes worse . . . it does wear you down.
The elevator doors finally opened, and JC gathered up enough strength to lead his team out into the hotel lobby. The manager hurried forward, his face equal parts hope, concern, and desperation. JC gave him a brief smile and a thumbs-up; and Garth almost collapsed with relief.
“It’s over now?” he said. “Really over?”
“Down and dusted,” said JC. “Four-eighteen is just another room, now.”
The manager actually performed a little jig of happiness, right there in front of them, beaming so widely it was a wonder his face didn’t crack in half. Behind the desk at Reception, Garth’s wife didn’t look like she believed it, and perhaps never would, entirely. Which was understandable. Hauntings leave their mark, on all kinds of levels. The manager made a point of shaking all the Ghost Finders’ hands, in turn; and it was a sign of how exhausted Melody was that she let him.
“You’re all welcome to stay at my hotel, anytime!” Garth said happily. “Any room, on the house!”
JC hadn’t been that impressed by the state of Room 418, even after it had been cleansed, but he smiled and nodded politely. Never know when you might need some goodwill or a bolt-hole to hide out in. Happy pulled a face and started to say something; but Melody dug an elbow into his ribs before he could spoil the mood. JC looked at the manager thoughtfully; the man did seem rather more pleased than he would have expected.
“So,” he said. “What are your plans for the future?”
“Well,” said Garth, still smiling broadly, “now I know the room is safe, I can advertise it as previously haunted! Oh yes; there is a real market for such things these days. Ghost enthusiasts from all over the world will want to come here, to spend the night in a room that was quite definitely haunted! People will pay really good money, just for the experience. I’ve been looking it up online . . . A once-in-a-lifetime thrill you can sell over and over again . . . I’m going to be rich!”
JC felt like saying a great many things but didn’t. He just smiled and nodded, while the manager rushed off to impart the good news to his wife. Melody reacquired her trolley full of equipment and made a point of checking it was all still there. Happy peered blankly around the lobby as though he’d never seen it before. And possibly he hadn’t, given the state he was in when he arrived. JC looked around quietly, but there was no sign of Kim anywhere. She had said she’d take the short cut down, then vanished. JC never knew what to say when she said things like that, so he hadn’t said anything. She’d turn up. She always did.
He’d only just started for the door when his cell phone suddenly played the theme from Ghostbusters. JC stopped, actually startled, then took his phone out and looked at it. Melody moved in beside him.
“I thought you always kept that turned off when we’re out in the field?”
“I do,” said JC, still staring at his phone as though he half expected it to bite him. “When I’m out, I’m out, and I don’t want to be bothered. I only keep it with me for emergencies. And I am now torn between thinking This had better be a real emergency and being concerned that it is.”
He checked caller ID and winced. Catherine Latimer was calling: the revered and much feared Boss of the Carnacki Institute. She didn’t usually contact him in the field; she knew better. Happy leaned in on JC’s other side and glowered at the phone.
“Take my advice and throw the damn thing away,” he said. “Hurl it to the floor, stamp on it, and piss on the pieces. You must know this isn’t going to be anything good.”
“Of course it isn’t,” said JC. “Th
at’s why I have to take the call.”
He put the phone to his ear. “I didn’t know you could turn my phone on from the other end,” he said, accusingly.
“Lot of things you don’t know about me,” Latimer said briskly. “Which is as it should be, given that I’m in charge, and you’re not. I need you and your team to take on another case, immediately; at the new Brighton Conference Centre. It’s not far. This case is ranked extremely urgent, and you’re the nearest A team.”
“Of course we are,” said JC. “That’s why you sent us down here in the first place, isn’t it? To deal with this nothing job! Which, by the way, I am here to tell you turned out to be in no way at all routine. You wouldn’t believe what we’ve been through. But you only sent us here so we’d be on hand for this other mission!”
“Got it in one,” said Latimer.
Melody studied JC’s face. “Is it really that bad?”
“It’s another case,” said JC. “Important and urgent, right here in Brighton. Smell the joy.”
“She can’t expect us to go back to work straightaway!” said Melody, so outraged she didn’t even try to lower her voice. “We’re entitled to downtime between missions! It says so in our contracts.”
“We don’t have contracts, as such,” said JC. “I’ve been told there is one, but I’ve never been allowed to see it. I was assured the conditions are very fair. Which is nice. Have you seen yours?”
“Don’t change the subject,” said Melody, scowling fiercely, both fists planted on her hips. “We can’t do this, JC. Really, we’re not up to it. Happy definitely isn’t.”
“Actually, I am,” said Happy, blinking mildly. “For now.”
Melody looked at him. “Are you sure?”
“I want to keep busy,” said Happy. “Make the most of my life, while I still can. And I think . . . that would be better for you, too.”
Forces from Beyond Page 4
