potential to be something else entirely. Happy swallowed hard, sniffed back his tears, and concentrated.
“She’s still here. Faint but definite trace. Lost, alone, walking up and down in the night, trying to find her way home.”
“Bring her here,” said JC. “Bring her to me.”
Without looking down, Melody placed a comforting hand on Happy’s shoulder. He stopped shaking and glared out into the dark as he concentrated.
The Presence was thundering in all their heads, a great demanding wordless Voice, but Happy fought through it to reach a much smaller presence, the tiniest motes of light, drifting through the dark. He called to it, and the light hesitated, then changed direction. She came walking slowly out of the dark, into the circle of light, a little old lady in a battered old coat, walking stiffly but steadily, her wrinkled face calm but puzzled. She stopped abruptly, her eyes slowly focusing on the three ghost finders. JC stepped forward.
“Hello,” he said, his voice surprisingly kind. “Can you tell me your name?”
The ghost looked surprised for a moment, as though being asked to remember something that really wasn’t important any more. “Muriel,” she said finally. Her voice sounded perfectly normal. “Muriel Foster. Yes. I don’t . . . I don’t quite remember how I got here. My memory isn’t what it was . . . Don’t get old, young man. No-one ever tells you how much hard work it is, being old.”
“Muriel . . .”
“I shouldn’t be here, should I? There’s somewhere else I ought to be. I feel . . . like I’ve been dreaming, and now it’s time to wake up.”
“That’s right, Muriel,” said JC. “It’s time for you to go on. To the place appointed for you, where there is no old age, and all old things are made new again.”
“Yes,” said Muriel. “I’d like that.”
“Can you hear the thunder all around us?”
“Of course; I’m not deaf, you know.”
“All you have to do is walk towards the thunder,” said JC. “Just . . . keep walking. And all of this will be over.”
Muriel looked at him sharply. “There’s something you’re not telling me. I may be old, young man, but I’m not stupid. Tell me this; this thing you want me to do . . . Is it necessary? Does it matter?”
“Yes,” said JC. “It will save a great many lives.”
“Good,” said Muriel, drawing herself up. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had the opportunity to do something that mattered.”
She nodded briefly to JC and walked steadily out of the light and into the dark. Happy and Melody looked disbelievingly at JC, but he merely looked after Muriel. There was a moment, as though something incredibly powerful was holding its breath; and then, instantaneously, the Presence was gone. The car park was back again, the lights shone brightly, the stars were back in the sky, and the moon was just a moon.
Happy made a sound, deep in his throat, and rose to his feet. JC turned to look at him.
“How are you feeling, Happy?”
“Never mind me; what did you just do? She trusted you, JC! And you sacrificed her to the Presence!”
“Of course I didn’t,” said JC. “What kind of person do you take me for?”
“Right now, we’re not too sure,” said Melody. “Perhaps you’d better explain it for us. Bearing in mind that if I don’t like what I hear, I still have this gun.”
“It’s really quite simple,” said JC, patiently. “The Presence depended on live sacrifices. They were the source of its power. And I fed it a ghost, a dead woman with not a spark of life left in her. Nothing actually there for the Presence to feed on. Essentially, we gave the Presence a really bad case of spiritual indigestion. It couldn’t consume dear Muriel, so she passed on to her reward . . . and with her gone, the haunting’s focal point was removed. The link between Past and Present was broken, and the Presence went home crying. An elegant solution to a tricky problem, I think you’ll agree.”
Happy and Melody looked at each other.
“I nearly had a coronary,” said Happy.
“Me too,” said Melody.
“You hit him first, you’re closest,” said Happy.
“After you,” said Melody.
“Look,” said JC. “The sun’s coming up.”
They looked. It was. Spreading out across the horizon, in long streamers of glowing red and gold, pushing back the dark, breathing life into the world.
“Come, children,” said JC. “Back to the hotel, and breakfast is on me. Who’s for a good fry-up?”
“Can I take some of my pills now?” said Happy.
“Why not?” said JC.
TWO
THE SCARIEST PLACE ON EARTH
Buckingham Palace is a big place, with a lot of rooms. State-rooms, living-rooms, exhibition rooms. Room for everyone and everything; including a few very specialised institutions that shouldn’t need to exist but unfortunately do. Tucked away behind locked doors and closed-off corridors, the Carnacki Institute has been based in Buck House for many years, under many names. It has always been a Royal Prerogative, rather than a government department, because ghosts are far too important to be entrusted to the whims of transitory politicians. Hell, most of them don’t even know the Carnacki Institute exists. Her Majesty the Queen decides whether or not to tell each new Prime Minister, as they come to office. Some cope better than others. No-one ever talks about the Missing Prime Minister of 1888, whose entire existence had to be removed from the history books.
The Carnacki Institute takes its responsibilities very seriously, and sometimes, entirely ruthlessly. It comes with the job.
The Institute was first convened in 1587, the result of a Royal Charter from Queen Elizabeth I. Consequently, all operatives are answerable only to the head of the Institute and the reigning monarch. Either of whom can order any operative killed at any time. This ensures security, honesty, and integrity, and helps motivate everyone to do the very best.
The Carnacki Institute is a job for life, however long that might be.
JC, Happy, and Melody waited unhappily in a small room at the back of Buckingham Palace, at the end of a corridor that doesn’t officially exist. They’d barely stepped off the train back from the West Country, exhausted and hollow-eyed and running on fumes, when all their mobile phones went off at once, summoning them to Buck House to meet with the Boss of the Carnacki Institute. Passing travellers were briefly disturbed by a flurry of foul language, not a little brandishing of fists, and a few bitter tears. Normally, it was understood that field agents were entitled to at least a month’s downtime between missions, to prevent them burning out. To be called back in this abruptly meant something seriously bad was in the wind.
Either a new and very urgent case . . . or the Boss had finally found out what the three of them got up to between cases, and they were all in real trouble. The Boss tended to take a very dim view of those necessarily private pleasures and distractions that made a field agent’s life bearable; so the agents went to great pains to make sure she never found out about them. They didn’t want to worry her. JC and Happy and Melody made their way across London in silence, really hoping it was merely a dangerous new mission.
And now here they were, sitting in the outer office, waiting to be called in to what people in the know considered the scariest place on earth.
Like most of Buckingham Palace, the Boss’s outer office was always kept that little bit warmer than it really needed to be; and the recirculated air in that small, windowless room was giving JC a headache and a seriously dry mouth. It was either that or the stark terror. JC had learned to deal with ghosts and revenants and demons; but the Boss was another matter. He looked around the office, hoping for something interesting to take his mind off the horrors to come, but there really wasn’t much to look at. Only a brutally efficient desk for the Boss’s secretary,
