JC thought of several things he could say in response to that, but moved on. “And what are these forces from Outside? I’ve researched everything I could find on the subject, in some pretty unlikely places, and I haven’t been able to find a single solid answer. Or at least, nothing I could trust. Given that the supernatural and the uncanny are our business, it’s amazing how little we know for sure about the realms that lie beyond our own. The only other person I know has had direct contact with these Forces is Catherine Latimer. And I’m not sure how I feel about her right now. I’d say she’s playing both sides against each other, but I’m not even sure how many sides there are . . .”
He rose abruptly from the bed and prowled around the cabin like a caged animal. Kim drifted carefully back out of his way. They both hated it when he sometimes accidentally walked through her. JC strode up and down, his head bowed, lost inside his own racing thoughts. Kim said nothing. At times like this, he needed to work things out for himself. JC stopped, facing a mirror on the cabin wall. He looked at himself for a long moment, then took off his sunglasses. Bright golden light spilled from his eyes. It was hard for him to see anything of himself in the reflection, past the light.
“I don’t even remember what my eyes used to look like,” he said slowly. “What does it mean, these changes they’ve made in me? The glowing eyes show they’ve marked me, but as what? A warrior for the Good? Or their property? Is this a sign of grace, or ownership?”
“Those eyes have saved your life,” said Kim. “On more than one occasion. They’ve scared off some fairly scary things. I can understand that. They creep me out, sometimes. And I’m dead.”
“Yes, but . . . saved me for what?” said JC. “For what reason, what purpose? I need answers, Kim! If I’m going down into the dark, all the way to the bottom of the ocean to stare the Flesh Undying in the face . . . If I’m going to my death tomorrow . . . I need to know what’s really going on.”
Kim came and stood beside him, standing as naturally on the floor as she could manage. “Being dead isn’t so bad. It beats the alternatives.”
JC looked at her. “There are alternatives?”
“Look!” said Kim. “This is me, changing the subject! The only way you’re going to get any straight answers about the forces from Outside is to talk to them directly. Ask them.”
“Is that even possible?” said JC. “How can you make contact with something that isn’t even a part of our reality?”
“They reached out to you,” said Kim. “Maybe you can reach out to them.”
JC thought about it. “Yes . . . When they reached down to touch me, they forged a connection. Whether they meant to or not. And I think . . . it’s still there.”
“Be careful, JC,” said Kim. “And very polite. You don’t want to risk upsetting them. If nothing else, they made it possible for us to be together.”
“That buys them a lot of credit,” said JC. “But not a blank cheque. I have to talk to them, Kim. I need answers, something definite to hang on to. Down in the depths, in the dark.”
“All right,” said Kim. “How do you want to do this?”
“I think we already know how,” said JC. “Think hard; think back to the day you and I first met.”
“I remember,” said Kim. “Though God knows I’ve tried to forget a lot of it. The demons, the horror, that old monster Fenris Tennebrae. I was never so frightened in my life. Or my death.”
“Concentrate,” said JC. “On that moment when the Forces found us, and everything changed forever.”
They stood facing each other, staring into each other’s eyes. The golden glow and the ghostly gaze.
“What did it feel like?” said Kim. “When something from the world above the world touched and altered you?”
JC concentrated, remembering a great force that raced through his body and soul, transforming the way he saw the world . . . and slowly he turned his head to look in a new direction, one he’d never noticed before.
“JC!” said Kim. “Your eyes! They’re glowing so brightly!”
She stared directly, unblinkingly, into the fierce light that blazed from his eyes, filling the cabin. She could do that because she wasn’t alive, with life’s limitations. And she remembered that she could see beyond this world, too. JC and Kim concentrated on the new direction, looking beyond the cabin wall, beyond the boundaries of this reality, beyond the fields we know. Kim began to glow, just like JC. He pointed an accusing finger at the world beyond the wall.
“I can see you!”
“I can see you!” said Kim.
“Took you long enough,” said a calm, kind, and not in any way human Voice.
JC and Kim stood close together, feeling very small in the face of something so vast and overwhelming. The cabin wall had disappeared, replaced by a whole new vista. Another place, of perfect shapes and concepts, perfect thoughts and emotions. Existence on a much grander scale. They could no more comprehend its details and significances than a fly crawling over a stained-glass window in a cathedral. All they could grasp were glimpses, impressions. But in a strange sort of way, it reminded them of home. The home they left, to be born. They couldn’t see what was speaking to them, or even where the Voice was coming from. Just a sense of being seen and understood by some incomparably vast Presence. Something taking an interest in them for reasons of its own.
“Who are you?” said JC. “Really?”
“Ah,” said the Voice. “The difficult ones first, eh? We’re you, JC, only more so. What you need to know is, we are the inhabitants of the realm the Flesh Undying came from.”
“Why did you dump it here?” said JC.
“We didn’t,” said the Voice. “It escaped. You can’t hope to comprehend what it really is except through the mercy of metaphors. Think of it this way; it isn’t a criminal. It’s insane. Broken, on a spiritual level. It was running from us, when some very foolish people on your side of the Veil opened up a gap in the walls of the world. And the Flesh Undying plunged through, to get away from us. And because it thought it could be a god in your lesser reality. It didn’t realise how much taking on form and shape and Flesh would bind and limit it.”
“Why haven’t you come to take it back?” said JC.
“We can’t,” said the Voice. “If we were to force our way into your world, our presence alone would be enough to damage it forever. Our very existence would be too much for your laws of physics to accept. So, like the Flesh Undying, we have to work through agents. Like you and Kim. Happy and Melody. Catherine Latimer. And . . . others.”
“Wait a minute!” said JC. “The Boss said you contacted her ages ago, when she was still young, long before the Flesh Undying entered our world!”
“Time doesn’t mean the same thing to us as it does to you,” said the Voice. “We see it from the other side.”
JC desperately wanted to ask what the hell that was supposed to mean but somehow just knew it wouldn’t get him anywhere. So he stuck to the questions he most wanted answered.
“Why did you choose me?”
“You were there,” said the Voice.
“Really? That’s it?”
“You were there, doing the right thing at the right time, for the right reasons. Do you have any idea how rare that is?”
“I just happened to be there!”
“A long chain of events brought you to that place, to that time,” said the Voice. “Do you think they all happened by blind chance?”
“You’ve been running my life all this time?” JC said angrily.
“All the choices you made were yours. We simply provided a context.”
“What if I choose not to serve you?”
“What if your world ends?”
“So I don’t have any choice.”
“Do any of us?” said the Voice. “We all do what we feel we must.”
“If the Fl
esh Undying escaped from you to come here,” said JC, “why is it so ready to destroy this world in order to leave it?”
“Because it’s crazy,” said the Voice. “And because it didn’t realise how very limited your world, your reality, would make it. What it would have to be, just to survive your harsh local conditions. Bound in Flesh, tied to cause and effect, trapped in linear Time.”
“How do we stop it?” said JC.
“Destroy the Flesh,” said the Voice. “That’s all that holds it in your world.”
“You don’t mind us destroying it?” said JC.
“Put it out of its misery, and ours,” said the Voice. “With our blessing.”
“All right,” said JC. “Tell me. How do we destroy its Flesh? What kind of weapon do we need?”
“You don’t need anything,” said the Voice. “You are the weapon. Our weapon. We made you over into what we needed you to be.”
“But what am I supposed to do?” said JC, not even trying to hide his desperation.
“You’ll know,” said the Voice. “When the time comes.”
“I hate answers like that,” said JC.
“I know,” said the Voice.
“Am I ever going to get a straight answer out of you?”
The Voice actually considered the question for a moment. “I tell you what you are capable of understanding. Anything else would be cruel.”
“Could you be any more condescending?” said JC.
“If you like.”
“Give me this much, at least,” said JC. “Did I die, down in the London Underground? Did you bring me back to life, to serve your will?”
“Life and death,” said the Voice. “Such small concepts.”
And that was all it had to say. The other reality disappeared gone in a moment. JC and Kim were left staring at a perfectly ordinary cabin wall. JC felt even more tired than he had before, as though he’d just fought a duel, or run a marathon. He put his sunglasses back on and wasn’t surprised to find that his hands were shaking. The only thing worse than demanding answers from Above is getting them answered.
“What was that place?” he said slowly. “Was it the after-life?”
“No,” said Kim.
JC looked at her. “You sounded very certain, there. You’re keeping things from me again.”
“Only to protect you,” said Kim. “I’d tell you if I could. You must believe that, JC.”
He nodded. “Why didn’t you ask the Voice any questions?”
“I didn’t know what to say,” said Kim. “Why didn’t you ask the Voice for help? For favours; for you and me?”
“I didn’t think of that,” said JC.
“You didn’t think . . .”
“I’ve got a lot on my mind! All right?”
Kim looked at him and started to fade away.
“No!” said JC. “Please! Don’t go! I didn’t mean . . .”
Kim snapped back into focus and smiled at him. “You’re so easy to tease. I was only thinking, you could have asked the Voice to improve the bathysphere. Make it safe.”
“You heard the Voice,” said JC. “They don’t intervene directly. What do you suppose it was, really?”
“I don’t know. I don’t believe we can know. It’s just . . . something from Outside.”
“I’m not sure I trust it,” said JC.
Kim grinned. “Just because something is from a higher dimension doesn’t mean it can’t also be a manipulative, supercilious little prick.”
“Well said,” said JC.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
In Happy and Melody’s cabin, it was all very quiet, if not particularly peaceful. Happy lay curled up on his narrow bed, hugging himself tightly to keep from flying apart. Shaking and shuddering, soaked with sweat, he’d run out of strength and stamina, energy and certainty. He’d been running on spiritual fumes for far too long, and the tank had run dry. He collapsed pretty much the moment his cabin door closed, and he didn’t have to pretend to be strong any longer. Melody had to use all her strength to haul him across the cabin to the bed and lay him down on it.
He’d shut down most of his mental abilities, to keep the world outside his head. His eyes were wild, fey, frightened. He didn’t even react when Melody tried to talk to him. As though he couldn’t see or hear her. He’d withdrawn all the way inside, hiding from the world that was killing him by inches. Melody sat on a chair beside the bed, sorting carefully through the contents of his pill box, trying to work out the best combination to help him. She kept telling herself it was just chemicals, just science; nothing more than cause and effect. It didn’t help. It was like looking at little coloured pieces of death. She finally settled on some medium-strength pills, poured out a glass of water, and persuaded Happy to swallow the first two. After a worryingly long moment, they brought him some of the way back.
His eyes focused on Melody, and he smiled wearily. His face was unnaturally pale and horribly drawn as she mopped sweat from it with a handkerchief. He had the look of someone who was on his last legs and knew it, and didn’t have enough strength left to care. Melody knew he was dying but stubbornly refused to accept it. She needed to believe there was still something she could do. She showed Happy the other pills she’d selected, and he sighed and nodded resignedly. He got them down though it took most of the glass of water to help him do it. And then he sat up.
“How are you feeling?” said Melody.
“Hard to tell,” said Happy. “Everything feels . . . loose, unconnected. My thoughts are all drifting . . . I can’t be sure whether I’m speaking to you now, or if I’m just remembering a conversation I had earlier. I feel so tired, Mel . . . Used up and worn-out.”
“Tired of me?” said Melody.
“Tired of living,” said Happy, almost casually. “I don’t know what day it is, or what time of day . . . Whether I’ve eaten or slept recently . . . I can’t always remember why I’m here. What I’m supposed to be doing. Sometimes I look at you and wonder who you are. And it worries me that it doesn’t worry me more . . . I’m scared, Mel. I’m scared all the time, now. And that’s no way to live.”
He stopped because Melody was crying. She didn’t make a sound, but tears rolled jerkily down her cheeks, and she couldn’t seem to get her breath. “I don’t know what to do,” she said finally, forcing the words out. “Tell me what I need to do to help you, Happy!”
“If you love them, let them go.”
“No! I can’t do that! I won’t do that!”
“Sooner or later, we all come to the point where we don’t have any choice in the matter,” said Happy. “Give me my pills, Mel.”
“You’ve just had some,” said Melody.
“I mean the really heavy-duty ones,” said Happy. “You know the ones I mean. The baseline bombers. The kamikaze chemicals.”
“Are you sure?” said Melody.
“It’s time,” said Happy. “One last battle against the forces of evil, so let’s go out on a high. A real high.”
She looked at the pill box in her hand but couldn’t bring herself to make the decision. So she handed the box to Happy, and watched numbly as he chose half a dozen of the largest, prettiest pills. She winced with every selection he made but wouldn’t let herself say anything. Happy rolled the pills around on the palm of his hand.
“Time to be the best a man can be,” he said lightly. “One last time.”
He had to struggle to get the pills down, even with another glass of water, then sat looking at nothing for a long moment. Melody took the pill box back from him, and he didn’t even notice. And then he jumped up off the bed and stretched widely, like a cat in the sun. Suddenly full of energy, if not life. His face was flushed, his pupils were huge, and when he grinned broadly at Melody, she had to look away. The smile was a death’s-head grin.
“Do you want t
o try a little something?” said Happy. “A little taste of Heaven and Hell, to put a smile on your face?”
“All I have is my mind,” Melody said steadily. “I won’t put it at risk.”
“You always were the practical one,” said Happy. “When I’m gone, throw it all away. Flush the pills down the toilet. Though I hate to think what they’ll do to the sewer rats . . . Mel? What is it?”
“What will I do?” she said. “What will I do, when you’re gone?”
“Be happy for me,” said Happy.
Melody put her arms around him and hugged him close. Because she’d promised to hold him while he was dying.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
Natasha Chang sat alone in her cabin, in full lotus position on her narrow bed. Her face was calm, her thoughts untroubled. She wasn’t thinking about the bathysphere, or the descent in the morning, or any of the problems on board ship. She’d always believed in dealing with things as they happened. And she’d already had a good look around the cabin, to assure herself there was no trace of a surviving personality anywhere. Nothing to nibble on. When faced with complicated situations and problems beyond her immediate control, Chang always fell back on her favourite pastime. Plotting how best to kill all the people who’d annoyed her. There were never any shortage of qualified candidates.
As soon as the Flesh Undying had been dealt with, and its threat neutralised, (and Chang never doubted for a moment that it would be,) then Catherine Latimer and her precious Ghost Finders would become irrelevant. And fair game. Chang smiled sweetly, working out the best order in which to finish them off, in the most appalling ways. It never failed to calm her. Something with knives. You can’t go far wrong with knives. She’d leave JC till last, of course. Because he would suffer so, watching all his friends die before him. And by then she’d have worked out something really nasty to do to him. She had no doubt his tortured soul would be the tastiest of all.
There was a knock at her cabin door, and it swung open before she could tell her unwanted visitor to get lost. Catherine Latimer entered the cabin as though she had a written invitation and nodded brusquely to Chang, who just looked back at her. Latimer closed the door. Chang was sure she’d locked it.
Forces from Beyond Page 25
