firmly closed.
Everything seemed peaceful enough; but Happy wasn’t fooled. There was a definite air of…something. An atmosphere of something not easily named.
JC moved quickly from one door to another, opening each one in turn and shouting a cheerful
“There’s something very sad about that,” he said. “A real sense that the party is over; everyone get your coats and go home.”
“Softy,” said Melody, not unkindly, not even looking up from fitting her various bits of tech together and hitting them if they didn’t cooperate fast enough for her liking.
“Is that really all you’re going to use?” JC said innocently because he liked to live dangerously.
Melody slammed down a sciencey thing and glared at him. “This is deliberate!” she said fiercely. “It’s all part of downsizing; if they prove I can do the job with a minimum of equipment, then that’s all they’ll let me have.”
“So what are you going to do?” said Happy. “Deliberately sabotage a mission to prove the accountants wrong?”
“Don’t think that hasn’t occurred to me,” growled Melody.
“I think I’ll go and hide somewhere safe until you’re in a better mood,” said Happy.
“We’re not going to be here that long,” said Melody.
While the two of them were preoccupied, JC spotted a door on the far wall that he would have sworn hadn’t been there a moment earlier. He moved slowly over to stand before it. He looked the door up and down, and it looked like all the other doors. He reached out very carefully, very cautiously, and tried the door handle. It turned easily under his hand, almost invitingly, and he pushed the door open. It swung weightlessly back before him, revealing a deep, dark gloom.
“JC?” The voice came from deep inside the gloom; and he recognised it immediately.
“Yes, Kim,” he said. “I’m here.”
He stepped forward into the dark, and there was Kim, standing right before him. Glowing so brightly, she threw back the gloom. JC stood very still, careful not to do anything that might frighten her away. His breath caught in his throat, and he could feel his heart hammering painfully fast in his chest.
“Kim?” he said. “Is it really you?”
She smiled at him, her eyes shining. She was hovering a few inches above the floor, rising and falling slowly. She looked like she wanted to say something; but she didn’t.
“What are you doing here, Kim?” said JC. “Am I in danger again? Are you? How did you get away…? Or, is someone still holding you?”
She didn’t respond to any of his questions, but her gaze never wavered, fixed entirely on him.
“Please…” said JC. “Tell me who’s got you, where you are, and I will come and get you! I will!”
She smiled sadly at him. JC reached out to her, and she backed away from him, drifting slowly down the endless, dark corridor. JC started forward after her, only to slam face-first into the wall before him. The door was gone, with no trace left behind to show it had ever been there. JC beat at the wall with his fist, once, then tiredly leaned forward to rest his forehead against the cold, implacable surface. He took a deep breath, stood up straight, squared his shoulders, and turned away from the wall to find Melody and Happy both staring at him.
“I saw Kim again,” he said.
Happy and Melody looked quickly around the empty lobby, then back at JC, who shrugged briefly.
“I’m not picking up anything,” Happy said carefully. “If a ghost had manifested here, even popped in for a moment, I’m sure I would have sensed it.”
“Nothing on my instruments, either,” said Melody. “Are you sure you saw…something?”
“Don’t look at me like that,” said JC. “It was Kim. I saw her. Spoke to her…”
He turned away from what he saw in their faces, his back stiff and straight, hands clenched into fists at his sides. Happy moved over to stand with Melody at her instrument panels. Lights came and went on her monitor screens, signifying nothing.
“She was there, at the railway station,” Happy said tentatively.
“Was she?” Melody said quietly. “The image we saw looked like her, but it never said a word; and normally you can’t get a word in edge-ways with ghost girl. It’ll take more than a brief look-alike image to convince me. So I have to wonder if someone is playing mind-games. With us in general, and JC in particular. Showing him what he wants to see, to distract him from what’s really important.”
“Oh great,” said Happy. “Fantastic. That’s all I need, something else to be paranoid about.”
“Unfortunately, you’re not as paranoid as you used to be, sweetie,” said Melody. “There really are dangerous forces in the universe out to get you.”
“Life was so much simpler when I was merely mentally ill and chemically deranged,” said Happy, glumly. “Now every case we go into feels like a trap.”
“That’s situation normal where the Ghost Finders are concerned,” said Melody.
“I want danger money,” said Happy.
“We are getting danger money.”
“I want more danger money.”
“It’s nice to want things,” Molly said briskly. “I saw the sweetest French Maid outfit in an Anne Summer’s, the other day.”
“I told you,” said Happy. “I’m not wearing it.”
“You can be very unadventurous sometimes,” said Melody.
They looked across at JC, on the far side of the lobby. His head was bowed, and he was frowning, lost in thought. He might have been a thousand miles away. Unreachable. Happy shrugged, uneasily.
“Do we know where the homeless guy died?” he said. “Was it here? Because I’m not picking up anything to suggest a recent death, natural or otherwise. In fact, I’m not picking up anything. Just…dead air.”
“Ho ho ho,” said Melody, concentrating on her instrument readouts. “Telepath humour. It’s all in the mind.”
Happy scowled, moved away, and lowered his mental shields, slowly and methodically opening himself up to his surroundings. Nothing happened until he was completely open and defenceless; and then everything hit him at once. The lobby was suddenly packed full of people, men and women, from all times and fashions, milling back and forth, overlapping and passing through each other. Memories, ghosts, of all the people who’d ever been in the theatre lobby. A hundred thousand audiences, all of them talking at once, a terrible clamour of raised voices from out of the Past, filling Happy’s head to bursting. He clapped both hands to his ears, a practiced psychological trick to keep voices outside his head; but it didn’t help. There were too many of them, layer upon layer of people pressed upon people…Voices determined to be heard.
And slowly, one by one, then in small groups, heads turned to look at him. Faces focused on him, becoming aware of his presence. They could see Happy because they weren’t memories, they were dead. Ghosts of people who’d died in the lobby, or the theatre, or returned there because it had special memories for them. They drifted slowly, implacably, towards Happy, passing inexorably through all the other presences in their way. Drawn to him like moths, to the bright light of his living soul. Happy looked about him desperately, but everywhere he looked there were more, coming right at him, their dead faces distorted by an awful, endless hunger.
Happy slammed down all his shields at once, forcing his mental defences back into place, until every last bit of his telepathy was shut down and he was as blind to the world as everyone else. Until he couldn’t have seen a ghost even if it walked right up to him and glared into his face. Or, at least, he hoped so. He stood very still, breathing hard. He could feel cold sweat on his face. When he finally lowered his hands, they shook violently. Happy looked quickly around the lobby. JC was still wrapped up in himself, but Melody was looking at him steadily. She came out from behind her instruments, walked over to Happy, and put her arms around him. She held him close, while he hung on to her like a drowning man. She patted his back gently, giving him the warmth of her body to drive out the cold of the dead. Giving him her steady presence to anchor him in the world again.
“Bad one?” she said, her voice carefully calm and neutral.
“Bad enough,” he said, when he could find his voice. “My own fault. I should have known better than to lower my guard in a place bound to be soaked in people and memories. Still…”
