His psychic shields were still firmly in place, not even touched by the various chemicals fighting it out for supremacy in his battered grey cells. Happy took drugs to give him an edge, not to hide behind. Or at least, that was what he told himself.
He stopped at an intersection and spun round and round on his toes, his head up as though testing the air, listening for sounds only he could hear. He’d been nagged for some time by a constant feeling there was someone behind him; but no matter how quickly he turned around, there was never anyone there. Happy reined in his raging thoughts with an iron will unsuspected by the rest of his team and stood very still. There was definitely someone, or something, down in the corridors with him. He didn’t need his telepathy to tell him that. He sniffed loudly, giggled briefly, and rubbed his dry hands together. It was times like this he wished he carried a really big gun. Or even a really big stick. With nails in it.
Many people asked, and not a few demanded to know, why Happy needed to take so many pills. A few, with some experience of telepathy, said they understood; but they didn’t, really. Happy only ever took what he needed to make himself brave, smart, or strong enough to be able to do his job properly, so he could strike back at those aspects of the world that had made his life such a misery from an early age.
Revenge is always the best comfort.
At home he ate, slept, and watched television, just like anybody else. Drugged himself with the routine and the ordinary and the everyday. He couldn’t afford to be doped up all the time. Couldn’t afford to bliss out and dream his life away. Because Happy knew what else lived in the world alongside the rest of us. He needed to be prepared. Because you never knew when something might be sneaking up on you from behind.
No friends, no lovers, no love. Because he could never share his world with anyone. It wouldn’t be fair.
Happy looked around, and the corridors stretched away in every direction, impossibly long, openly threatening. Happy laughed out loud and clapped his hands together, the sound almost shockingly loud in the quiet.
“You can’t get me!” said Happy, in a loud breathy voice. “You can’t even touch me because I’m not really here. I’m armoured up, and ninety degrees from reality, far beyond your reach. So come on out and give me your best shot; and I’ll laugh right in your face. How do you like them apples, Casper?”
The corridors lay open and silent before him, but Happy knew someone was listening. Checking him out, from a distance. Happy wondered what it made of him and his altered state of consciousness. Maybe it was scared of him. That would be fun. Ghosts were quite simple things, really; if they couldn’t scare you, they were usually lost for an alternative. So Happy set off down the nearest corridor, full of chemical good cheer and hardly shaking at all, medicinally armed against anything the unknown could throw at him.
Happy liked to think of himself as the last of the Untouchables.
Back on the southbound platform, Melody struggled with her precious equipment, trying through expert intimidation and sheer force of personality to make the damned things do what they were supposed to. She bent over the computer keyboards, staring right into the monitor screens, coaxing and cursing them in the same half- conscious murmur. Melody dealt in hard facts and felt helpless and vulnerable without them. She’d approached the Carnacki Institute in the first place because all her researches had convinced her that only the Institute could provide her with answers to questions no-one else would even discuss. She’d hoped for a nice quiet life in some nice quiet Institute Library; instead, they made her a field agent and sent her out into the world to find her own answers. Typically, her experiences in the field had only provided her with a whole new set of questions.
Still, her position did give her access to cutting-edge, state-of-the-art technology, and that made up for a lot. The instruments ranged before her could break down and analyse events and energies that most scientists wouldn’t even admit existed. Of course, that wasn’t enough for Melody Chambers. She didn’t only want to know what existed in the hidden corners of the world; she wanted, needed, to understand how they worked and why. Melody hated a mystery.
Some nights, lying on her back in the dark with an exhausted lover slumbering beside her, Melody dreamed of a special Nobel Prize, just for her, awarded for her unprecedented advances in the field of the so-called supernatural. The first woman to make the unseen world make sense.
She worked furiously, her fierce gaze tracking impatiently from one screen to another, following the flow of information with quick jerky movements of her head. Although she’d never admit it, she always hated this part of the mission, where the other two went off on their own to see what there was to see and left her behind, on her own, to see things second hand through her instruments. She didn’t like being left on her own. Like the girl who tags around after a boys’ gang, and always gets dumped at the first opportunity. She felt better when there was someone else around. Someone close at hand. They didn’t have to be right there with her; just . . . around. So she could call on them for . . . assistance, if she wanted to.
She felt the same way sometimes when she was alone in her little flat. No matter how many other people had been through it.
Happy and JC returned at the end of the agreed hour, making a certain amount of noise so Melody could be sure it was them coming and not get over-eager with her machine-pistol. None of them had anything specific to report, and the more closely Melody questioned the men about what they’d seen and encountered, the more vague their answers became. And when they questioned her, Melody was forced to admit that while her machines were providing her with more sensor readings than she could keep track of, she had nothing useful to contribute either.
“I’m picking up ghosts everywhere,” she said quickly, in self-defence. “I’ve never seen so many hauntings in one place. No actual personality or surviving intent in most of them; only images from the Past, impressed on Time by the extreme conditions of their creation. Snapshots of what was, repeating loops of history, preserved like insects trapped in amber. Presumably drawing energy from our other-dimensional Intruder. Unless they’ve been stirred up by our presence. Or my machines.”
“She doesn’t know what’s going on either,” Happy said to JC, smiling widely.
JC looked at the state of Happy’s pupils and sighed audibly. “Tell me at least you haven’t touched the little yellow pills, Happy. You know what happens when you take the little yellow ones.”
“Not yet,” Happy said cheerfully. “But it’s probably only a matter of time. I always get a bit jumpy when the ghosts start manifesting. In case one of them takes a fancy to me and follows me home like a stray dog. I’m probably the only ghost finder in the Carnacki Institute with his own exorcist on speed dial.”
“I wouldn’t worry,” said Melody. “They’d soon leave, once they got to know you.”
“How very unkind,” said Happy, trying for wounded dignity, then ruining it with a sudden hiccup.
“Never get personally involved with a ghost,” JC said sternly. “No matter how tragic its story. Nothing good can ever come of it.”
“Damn, I’m peckish,” Happy said abruptly. “I’d kill for a curry and chips.”
He wandered over to a nearby vending machine, studied the display of snacks on offer with owlish eyes, and made his selection. He forced money into the slot, then bounced up and down before the machine, humming an old Smiths’ song. The machine chuntered quietly to itself for a while, then a slot opened in the front and the food shot out. Happy actually had the thing half-way to his mouth before he realised something was wrong. He stopped at the last moment, his eyes widened, and his mouth pursed up in disgust as he saw what he was holding. The pastry slip was hot and steaming, but the meat oozing out of it was rotten and decaying. Maggots burst out of the pastry, writhing and roiling. Happy cried out and threw the stinking mess on the floor. It hit with a wet, slapping sound, and Happy stamped on it again and again, making shrill distressed noises, until all the maggots were crushed and dead, and nothing was moving. Then he scraped the bottom of his shoe against the platform and rubbed both hands hard on his jeans.
“Okay, that was interesting,” said Melody. “There’s no way that could have happened naturally.”
“No!” said Happy. “Really? You do amaze me.
“Far too much information, Happy,” murmured JC.
“There’s no way the food could have decayed that quickly inside the machine, under normal conditions,” said Melody. “Whatever it is that’s down here, it’s draining the living energy out of everything within reach. Presumably our Intruder needs help in maintaining its hold on our dimension.”
“You’re going to try and explain entropy to me again, aren’t you?” said Happy. “Please, JC, don’t let her
