Spirits from Beyond

TWO

Everyone else wanted to go home and get some rest. But JC was the man behind the wheel, and he insisted on driving them all the way across London, to the Carnacki Institute’s Secret Libraries. So Happy and Melody slumped down in the back seat and sulked, while Kim hovered serenely an inch or so above the seat next to JC. She had to concentrate, to keep her spirit self moving along at the same speed as the car because the physical world no longer had any hold over her. She could have teleported straight to the Secret Libraries and waited for the rest of them to catch up; but being only recently reunited with JC, she was loath to leave him even for a moment. JC stared straight ahead, lost in his own roiling thoughts. It was one thing to feel under threat from so many directions at once when it was just him, or his team; they’d always been able to look after themselves. But now that Kim was back, he felt an added responsibility. He needed information on how best to defend himself and on exactly who or what he was defending himself against. And for that, he needed the Secret Libraries.

Often called the Unofficial Record, because the books in the Secret Libraries covered everything in the world that didn’t officially exist, or shouldn’t exist but unfortunately did.

JC’s Boss, the redoubtable Catherine Latimer herself, had given him password access to the Libraries sometime back; and he wasn’t prepared to wait for an official security upgrade any longer. He was fed up guessing and theorising; he wanted to know. So he aimed his car like a bullet through the empty streets of early-morning London, heading for the south-east of the city and the Woolwich Arsenal. The Secret Libraries were located directly below the Arsenal itself, presumably so that if they ever came under direct attack, the Army would already be there to defend them.

The streets didn’t stay empty for long. In fact, JC barely had Chimera House in his rear-view mirror before vehicles came pouring in from every side street at once, and the road filled up with regular early-hours traffic. Buses and taxis, newspaper deliveries and food trucks, and people coming and going as shifts ended and started. Almost immediately, JC was forced down to a merely legal speed and method of driving. There wasn’t enough room on the roads for anything else. JC scowled fiercely. Clearly someone had gone to great lengths to keep the traffic away from Chimera House and its environs, to make sure that what happened there would remain private, unobserved, and uninterrupted. But who had enough power, or influence, to shut down a whole section of London? Presumably someone inside the Carnacki Institute itself. . JC made the mistake of musing on that one aloud and was immediately hit with loud reactions from the rest of his team.

“I don’t care!” Happy said flatly. “I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. Don’t want to go to the Secret Libraries, either. Want to go home. My system’s crashing, I feel awful, and I am currently sweating chemicals so corrosive they will almost certainly eat holes in your leather upholstery. And I’m getting car-sick. Please can we go home? Pretty please? Can’t the Libraries wait?”

“You used to say you would sacrifice a whole bus load of blind orphans for one peek inside the Institute’s Secret Libraries,” JC said calmly. “All those years of rabid paranoia, and saying the truth is out there. . Well, the truth is out there, out in Woolwich Arsenal, and I’m taking you right to it. You always said They were out to get you; here’s your chance to get Their home address and personal-contact details. So you can sneak up on them and do appalling things in revenge.”

“Let Them finish me off,” said Happy. “The way I feel now, it would be a mercy killing.”

JC glanced at Melody in his rear-view mirror, expecting support; but she sat stiffly upright with her arms tightly folded, staring straight ahead and saying nothing. She was in a mood. She wasn’t talking to Happy, making that very clear by giving him as much space as possible on the back seat; and from the look on her face, she didn’t feel at all inclined to join in the conversation. JC sighed, quietly, and looked at Kim, who smiled sweetly back at him. She was currently manifesting as a Flapper girl, a bright young thing from the 1920s, complete with canary yellow dress, a long string of beads, and cute little cloche hat. Since Kim’s appearance was composed entirely of ectoplasm, she could change the details of her look on a whim and frequently did.

“Nothing wrong with a visit to the Library!” she said brightly. “I’m sure it will be very educational!”

“These are the Carnacki Institute’s Secret Libraries we’re talking about!” snapped Melody, unable to maintain her silence in the face of such open provocation. Melody lived for the opportunity to shove someone’s ignorance back in their face. “Nothing good or instructive is to be found there, only forbidden knowledge, all the nastier parts of the hidden history of the world, and things you’re better off not knowing. People can’t order you killed for things you don’t know about.”

“Unfortunately, that turns out not to be the case,” JC said mildly. “The Flesh Undying wants us dead just for knowing it exists even though we don’t know what it really is or who works for it. I say ignorance is not bliss and is actually dangerous to our continued good health and existence. We need to know things, and we need to know them now. Information is ammunition. Remember?”

“But, given that the Secret Libraries are in fact protected by large numbers of the British armed forces,” said Happy, “how are we going to get in?”

“Oh, they’re much better defended than that!” JC said cheerfully. “Layers upon layers of psychic protections, backed up by wholly unnatural forces of a downright malevolent nature. Plus a whole lot of guns and booby-traps and bad shit. But not to worry, team, because I have a plan!”

“This can only go well,” said Happy.

He slumped back in his seat and gave all his attention to feeling miserable. JC studied him in the rear mirror. Happy really didn’t look well. He was going through hot and cold sweats, shaking and shuddering, and his face was the colour of a fish’s belly. Every now and again, he would glance out the car window and jump briefly as his mental control slipped, and he Saw something he didn’t want to. It was obvious the pills he’d taken were wearing off and kicking the crap out of his immune system on the way out of his body. He used to be able to cope with sudden changes in his brain chemistry; but that was before JC and Melody persuaded him to stop taking the pills. The road to someone’s hell is always paved with someone else’s good intentions.

Melody deliberately didn’t look at Happy. “You did this to yourself,” she said loudly. “After you promised me you wouldn’t. So don’t look to me for sympathy.”

“I thought you weren’t talking to me,” said Happy, managing a small smile.

“I’m not! I’m merely. . thinking aloud!” She glared at the back of JC’s head. “Why are we going to the Secret Libraries? All right, any other time I might have been. . interested, but why do we have to go there now?”

“Lud got me thinking,” said JC, bullying a black London taxi out of his way and openly intimidating a London bus. “The Druids knew a lot of things now lost to the world, but maybe some of them are retained on file in the Unofficial Record. Lud said he recognised something on me, from where I was altered by some force from Outside. Maybe the Druids had a name for it. .

“If not, the Faust said I actually died down there in the Underground, before the Outside brought me back. I want to know if that’s true. And if it is, I want to know a lot more about it. I want to know Who or What did it, and I very definitely want to know Why. Because there’s always a price to be paid. .

“While I’m busy doing all that, the rest of you can search the stacks for anything they might have on The Flesh Undying and its servants’ infiltration of the Carnacki Institute. And any of the other secret subterranean organisations. Bound to be something there even if they don’t know they’ve got it. .”

“You don’t want much, do you?” said Happy. “Pardon me if I admit noxious gasses.”

JC made a point of lowering all the windows. Bracingly fresh air rushed into the car from all sides.

“I thought Catherine Latimer was supposed to be carrying out her own investigation into potential traitors and double agents?” said Melody, drawn into the conversation in spite of herself. “Wouldn’t she have told us if her people had turned up anything? I mean, she is our Boss. In her own scary and very efficient way. She’s supposed to have our back on this.”

“Good point, well made,” said JC. “But I haven’t heard a single word from our revered Boss on this subject; and I don’t feel like putting up with that one moment longer. Not while The Flesh Undying and its rotten agents are taking open pot-shots at us.”

“How are we supposed to find something useful in the Libraries if all the Boss’s people couldn’t?” said Melody.

“You are supposing someone has actually looked,” murmured Kim; and everyone in the car sat quietly for a moment, considering that.

“A fresh pair of eyes is always useful,” JC said vaguely, swerving his car in and out of the packed traffic perhaps a little more casually than was safe or desirable. “Perhaps a pair of unprejudiced eyes will turn up something new. . Preferably something we can use as a defence. Or a weapon. Either way, I want answers. I demand answers! I need to know things for sure. Whether the Boss wants me to know them or not.”

“You’re starting to sound a bit like me,” said Happy. “Which is not necessarily a good thing. ”

“How are we going to get in?” demanded Melody. “You said it yourself: the Secret Libraries are surrounded by some of the most powerful, appalling, and openly distressing defences anywhere in the land. I’ve tried to hack their on-line presence any number of times, for the challenge, of course; and I never got anywhere.”

“The Boss provided me with password access after the events at Chimera House,” said JC. “What happened to Robert Patterson shook her.”

“You’ve had access all this time?” said Melody, her voice rising dangerously. “And you never said anything?”

“So the Boss isn’t the only one who’s been keeping things from us!” said Happy accusingly.

“Do I detect the sound of mutiny in the air?” said JC. “I’ll have any one keelhauled who dares dispute my authority! I was content to let the Boss do the hard work, digging up proof of hidden informants; but when someone aims the ghost of a dead god and his enfleshed followers at me, my patience evaporates. It is clearly time to take matters into our own hands.”

“You’re not wriggling out of it that easily,” said Melody. “Why did the Boss give you a password, and not us?”

“Because I’m team leader,” said JC.

“Only because we all voted, and you lost,” said Happy.

“Exactly,” said Melody. “Somebody had to take responsibility for our actions; and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be us.”

“I’ve missed all this jolly banter,” said Kim.

* * *

At the Woolwich Arsenal, JC parked his car in someone else’s private parking space. The car’s CD plates should ensure that no-one bothered it; and if someone was foolish enough to do so, the car was quite capable of looking after itself. In a thoroughly mean-spirited and unpleasant way. No-one messes with the Carnacki Institute. Dealing with the restless dead, the monstrous, and the demonic on a daily basis gives you a rather short temper when faced with more everyday annoyances.

The team disembarked from the car in their own various ways. Happy got out slowly and painfully, with many loud, creaking noises from his joints, and peered dubiously around him into the harsh electric light of the car park. He gave the appearance of something that had crawled out from under a rock and was seriously considering going straight back again. Melody kicked her door open, hauled herself out in one lithe movement, and glared about her in the hope that someone would come along and give her some grief. So she could cheer herself up by punching them repeatedly in the head. Kim floated through her door without opening it and drifted over to hover beside JC as he stood in front of the car and looked thoughtfully about him.

The Woolwich Arsenal was basically a collection of barracks and assorted anonymous military buildings, some more interesting to look at than others. JC gestured grandly at one particular structure, set a little away from everything else. Old brickwork, a slanting roof, and a single door with the word STORES set out in peeling paint.

“And there we are, children. The gateway to a place of wonders. Or so I’m told. I’ve never been inside the Secret Libraries, and I don’t know anyone who knows anyone who has. There’s always the chance that this is all one big con, a distraction from the real secret repository of hoarded knowledge. And all we’ll find down below is a collection of old Reader’s Digests and a bunch of Dan Browns. Still, on the chance that this is the Real Deal, act confidently, like we have every right to be there, and no-one will challenge us. Kim, I hate to say this. . but I think you’d better wait in the car. You do draw people’s attention. .”

“No-one will see me,” said Kim.

“This is a Carnacki Institute site,” JC said patiently. “They maintain all kinds of surveillance here, to keep out uninvited spirits.”

“But I am not any old ghost, darling,” said Kim. “No-one can see me now unless I want them to. Disappearing from the world’s eyes was one of the first things I had to learn when I went on the run. In fact, I learned many strange and unusual secrets on my travels. I am wise and wonderful and know many things, and don’t you forget it. You are my sweetie and my love, JC; but you are not the boss of me.”

JC shot a quick glance at Happy and Melody, but they were carefully looking somewhere else.

“Very well,” said JC. “On your own ectoplasm be it. But, we will talk about this later. .”

“Yes, dear,” said Kim, demurely.

“You’re not fooling anyone,” said JC.

“Hold everything, hit the brakes, go previous,” said Happy. “What did you mean when you said, ‘Act like we have every right to be here’? If the Boss gave you the password, then we do have every right to be here. Don’t we?”

“Oh, she gave me the word,” said JC. “Right there in her office. Made a big presentation out of it. I had to sign a whole bunch of very official papers first. She very definitely gave me the password. But whether she ever intended me to use it, that’s a whole different matter. For all I know, she changed the password the moment I left her office.”

“Terrific,” said Melody. “What do we do if the password doesn’t work?”

“I shall be sprinting for the car,” said Happy. “Try to keep out of my way, or I will run right over you.”

“You faced down the ghost of an old god,” said JC. “Are you really worried about getting past the one uniformed soldier they’ve got guarding the door?”

“If you could See the kind of defences and protections surrounding that building, you would wet yourself,” Happy said firmly. “There are booby-traps set in place that could turn you inside out and play you like a concertina. There are others that could blow your soul right out of your body. This place is more private than a very private place with extraordinarily private tendencies.”

“Do I need to give you a paper bag to breathe into?” said JC.

“Couldn’t hurt,” said Happy.

JC led the way across the half-empty car park, heading straight for the nondescript building ahead of them. He had a strong feeling of being watched by cold unfriendly eyes. But then, he often did. He squared his shoulders and put a bit of a swagger into his walk. Never give them an inch, or they’ll walk all over you. He strode straight up to the single uniformed soldier standing in front of the only door and nodded to him briskly. He could hear the rest of his team shambling to a halt behind him but didn’t look back. The soldier gave every appearance of being as ordinary as the door and building he guarded: average height and weight, with a face you wouldn’t look at twice. . but his smile and his eyes were very cold.

JC gave the solider his best charming smile, to no obvious effect. JC carefully avoided looking at the soldier’s rifle, which happened to be pointed right at him, and glanced back at his team-mates. Melody was scowling, Happy was sweating, and Kim was smiling sweetly.

“Step forward, children, and make a good showing. Allow me to present to you. . the official guardian of the Carnacki Institute Secret Libraries. Not just any British soldier; this is Tommy Atkins. He’s not real, as such, but don’t hold that against him. Mr. Atkins here is the ghost of every British soldier who ever fell in battle, defending his country; with some stain still on his character. This is his last chance to do penance and make amends for his sins, before he moves on.”

The team took it in turns to blink at Tommy Atkins, who looked calmly back.

“And you know all this how, JC?” murmured Melody.

“The Boss told me,” said JC. “I think we can all guess why.”

“So,” Happy said carefully to Tommy Atkins, “you’re not only you; you’re a whole bunch of you. Are you all volunteers?”

“That’s the idea, sir,” Tommy Atkins said easily. “Each of us stepped forward, grateful for one last chance to put our papers in order. You’ve heard of the Unknown Soldier? Well, we’re the Known Soldier. Guilty as charged, every one of us, for sins small and large.”

“How many of you are there?” said Melody.

“As many as needed, to do the job, miss,” said Tommy Atkins. “We take it in turns to stand guard, do our duty, protect the contents of the Secret Libraries. Until we’ve done enough to put things right and move on; and then the next man steps up. We will guard this door till Judgement-Day, if need be. Never any shortage of Tommy Atkinses.”

“The very best kind of guard,” JC said cheerfully. “Never gets tired, never sleeps, never loses concentration. Because he’s dead and therefore beyond such weaknesses.”

“Professional soldier, that’s me, sir,” said Tommy Atkins. “Now and forever; or at least until my time’s up. Now, sir, I’m all for a nice chat now and then, but either you present to me the proper password, or I’m afraid I will have to blow several large holes through you.”

“Of course,” said JC, still carefully not looking at the soldier’s rifle. He presented his left hand to Tommy Atkins, palm down, and carefully pronounced a certain Word. A glowing eye appeared on the back of JC’s hand. It swivelled around to look at Tommy Atkins, blinked once, then disappeared. The soldier nodded briefly and lowered his rifle. He looked thoughtfully at the rest of the team.

“They’re with me,” JC said firmly.

Tommy Atkins nodded again, turned around, and pushed open the door to the building. Nothing showed beyond it but a dim, unwavering light. JC glanced at the back of his hand, but the eye had already disappeared.

“Hell of a library stamp,” muttered Happy.

“Shut up,” muttered Melody.

JC led the way in, and they all took turns to shuffle sideways past Tommy Atkins. He seemed solid enough, but up close he still made the hair rise on the back of their necks. Apart from Kim, of course. Tommy Atkins looked at her thoughtfully.

“Pardon me, miss; but you are a ghost, aren’t you? Yes, thought so. Not the first I’ve let go past, and won’t be the last, probably. They say there are books down there that only the dead can read. Probably just as well. But you watch yourself down there, miss; there are much worse things than dangerous books in the Secret Libraries.”

“Thank you, Tommy Atkins,” said Kim. “Always nice to meet a ghost with manners.”

* * *

The door closed firmly behind them, and the Ghost Finders huddled together, looking around a small room not much bigger than the average washroom. A single bare light bulb hung down, providing the only illumination. No furniture; no window; no other door. Happy looked at JC.

“So who was that, outside? Really?”

“He’s Tommy Atkins,” said JC. “Or at least I have been given no reason to believe otherwise. And no-one has ever got past him that shouldn’t have. Until now.”

“What do you mean?” said Melody. “We’re the good guys!”

“That’s not the point,” said Happy. “We are not officially supposed to be here, password or no, because the Boss didn’t specifically approve it. So who else might have got in here, on equally spurious grounds?”

“Still not talking to you,” said Melody.

Happy turned to JC. “Where do we go from here? I can’t See anything, with all these protections in place.”

“Probably because you’re looking in the wrong direction,” said JC.

He pointed down at the floor, where there was a large trap-door. JC leaned over, grabbed the heavy ring set into the trap-door, and hauled it open. He let it fall back onto the floor with a loud, echoing bang; and they all looked down into the dark opening. A heavy iron staircase went winding and spiralling down into the gloom.

“Down we go!” JC said cheerfully.

“You are definitely getting on my nerves,” said Melody. “I don’t care if Kim is back; it’s not natural to be that cheerful all the time.”

“I have defeated a living god, I am close to answers that have been kept from me, and my girl-friend has returned!” JC said grandly. “If I were any happier, I’d have to be more people.”

“You say the nicest things, JC,” said Kim.

Happy shuffled uneasily beside the dark opening. “That staircase does not look safe to me, JC. And God and the Boss alone knows how far down it goes. No; I am not going down that stairway without a parachute.”

“Go!” JC said firmly. “Be a brave little Ghost Finder, and there shall be Jaffa Cakes for tea. And tea!”

“After you,” said Happy, just as firmly.

JC stepped down onto the stairway with exaggerated calm and started down the spiralling iron steps. His feet clattered loudly on the bare metal, but the stairway didn’t shake in the least under his weight. Melody went down next, and Kim drifted down after her, leaving Happy standing alone in the room. He took out a pill box, looked at it for a long moment, then put it away again. He sighed loudly and went down after the others.

* * *

A pleasant glow with no obvious source surrounded the team as they descended. The light didn’t spread far, moving along with them as they went down and down, into darkness after darkness. JC peered over the top of his sunglasses from time to time, but even his altered eyes couldn’t pierce the dark beyond the stairs. JC carefully pushed his sunglasses back into place and glanced back up at Happy.

“Can you See anything out there, Happy?”

“Yes. .” said Happy. “Enough to make me not want to See any more, so I’m going to stop looking. Trust me on this, JC; you don’t want to know. Some transitions are more distressing than others. Let’s just say. . the Secret Libraries aren’t where we thought they were. You take me to the weirdest places.”

They carried on down the spiralling staircase, all of them being very careful to stay well away from the edges, which lacked any kind of railing. Kim got bored pretending to walk down and dropped quietly down through the open space in the middle, sticking close to JC. He’d already lost all track of how far down they’d come. His leg muscles had begun to seriously ache when a light suddenly flared up, and he stepped off the bottom of the staircase and onto solid floor. He stumbled away from the stairs to give the others room to get off, and looked around him.

He was standing in a huge underground cavern, packed with row upon row of tall, sturdy bookcases. A stone floor, and a stone ceiling high above. And book-shelves, book-shelves everywhere, stretching away further than the human eye could follow, in every direction JC could think of, plus a few more.

Melody and Happy stared about them with wide, hungry eyes, making Oooh! and Aaah! noises, both of them forgetting the sour moods they were supposed to be in. Kim laughed softly, clapping her hands silently together.

“So many secret places turn out to be something of a disappointment when you finally get to see them,” said JC. “But not this! It’s like they have every book in the world here, including all the ones that no-one’s supposed to have.”

Melody took hold of herself and sniffed loudly, striking a conspicuously unimpressed pose. “Who needs all these books? Why not put them all on e-files? Then there’d be no need for so much storage space.”

“Because you can’t hack books, of course,” Happy said witheringly. “If you want to know what’s in a particular volume of forbidden lore, you have to come down here in person, check out the book, and read it. Except you can’t because that isn’t allowed. Mostly.”

“What about remote viewing?” said Melody, to be stubborn.

“With the shields they’ve got in place here? Any wandering spirit that tried to sneak in here would get its ectoplasm kicked so thoroughly it would end up in another dimension, with its arse on fire. And besides, most of the books down here are so dangerous in their own right that they would deep-fry your brains inside your skull if you tried to read them without taking the proper precautions.” Happy paused. “Or so I’ve heard. There are an awful lot of stories about the Carnacki Institute’s Secret Libraries, and every single one of them contradicts all the others. Does your password give us access to everything, JC? Or should we lurk quietly to one side and not touch anything?”

“We can look at anything we want to, now we’re in,” said JC. “Or so I was given to understand.”

“And if you’re wrong?” said Melody.

“Listen for the bang,” said JC. “Ah, here comes the Librarian.”

They all turned to look as the current Librarian came strolling forward to meet them. Everyone in the team took their time looking him over because this particular individual was in fact an empty suit of rather old-fashioned clothes, inhabited by nothing obvious or indeed visible. There was clearly something inside the clothes from the way they bulged and moved and wrinkled. But nothing protruded from the starched collar or the stiff cuffs or the bottom of the trouser legs. There were also subtle and somewhat worrying indications that whatever was inside the clothes wasn’t necessarily, entirely, human. The clothes came to a halt in front of the team and struck a sort of respectful pose.

“Well, hello there!” said a dry, dusty voice from somewhere in the vicinity of the starched white collar. “Visitors! How very unexpected and unannounced! Don’t get many visitors these days since I put down the enchanted man-traps. And the head-eating things. Never can remember what they’re called. . Anyway, nice to see you all! I’m in charge here, inasmuch as anyone is, or can be. I prefer to be called the Keeper of Secrets; but unfortunately that never caught on. Mostly, I’m called the Empty Librarian. Guess why? Never mind, never mind, moving on. . How can I be of service to you good ladies and gentlemen?”

JC looked at the others, and the others looked right back at him, making it very clear they had no idea of what to say either and were therefore leaving it to the team leader. JC gave them all a cold glare that promised exacting retribution in the near future and turned back to the Empty Librarian.

“Pardon me, sir,” he said very politely, accompanied by his most winning smile. “But are you dead or alive?”

“Almost certainly, sir,” said the Empty Librarian.

“All right,” said JC. “Absolutely definitely moving on. . I am here to inquire about whatever material you might have concerning the original Druids.”

“Hardly any, I’m afraid, sir,” said the Empty Librarian. “Given that the Druids possessed no written tradition of their own. Modern Druidry is a whole different thing, being mostly made up by a bunch of woolly-minded second-guessers.”

“Doesn’t anyone know anything about the original Druids?” said JC.

“You could always ask the Droods, sir. .”

“I’d rather not,” said JC.

“Very wise, sir,” said the Empty Librarian. “Simply thinking about that horrible family is enough to make me mess my underwear. If I wore any.”

“Far too much information,” muttered Melody.

“We had an encounter with the ghost of the old god Lud,” said JC, talking quickly over Melody. “Down in London Undertowen.”

“Consider me officially impressed, sir,” said the Empty Librarian. “Did he have anything to say? I could always add another page to his official biography.”

“He said he wasn’t of this world, originally,” said JC. “That he came from another place, Outside our reality. And that there were others like him. One of whom recently reached down and made. . alterations in me.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me at all, sir,” said the Empty Librarian. “You’re not the first visitor I’ve seen down here with eyes like those.”

JC knew a distraction when he heard one and shouldered it firmly to one side. “Have you any books on the subject of people being touched and changed by forces from Outside?”

“Stacks and stacks of the things, sir. Everything from the original Siggsand Manuscript to Jane’s Field Guide to Abominations from the Outer Rings. We used to have an illustrated edition of that last one, but it kept freaking people out, and I got fed up cleaning up after them. So now I only show it to people I don’t like. There are any number of very useful books on the subject, sir. However. .”

“I just knew there was going to be an however,” said Happy. “Didn’t you just know there was going to be an however?”

“Shut up, Happy,” said JC.

“However,” said the Empty Librarian, firmly, “these are the kind of books where you have to study for years to be able to read them. Never mind understand them. Some scholars have been visiting here for years, working their way through a particular volume one page at a time. While making copious notes. And occasionally having to stand up face-to-face shouting arguments with other scholars over what it all really means. Fist-fights, head-butting matches, and rolling-around-on-the-floor biting contests were not uncommon until I got bored and started fining them body parts for each infraction. Nothing like losing the odd ear to calm someone down. In my experience, sir, you can’t get two of these so-called experts to agree on anything, where forces from Outside are involved. That’s Academe for you. Is there anything else I can help you with, sir?”

“Yeah,” muttered Happy. “Because you’ve already been so helpful. .”

“Shut up, Happy,” said JC. He gave the Empty Librarian his best determined smile. “How about. . books on suddenly not being dead any longer?”

“Oh, there’s no shortage of those, sir,” said the Empty Librarian. “Most of them entirely contradictory, of course.”

“Of course,” said JC. “How about, more specifically, books on people dying, then being brought back again by forces from Outside?”

“Quite a lot of those, too, sir. Some days it seems like forces from Beyond can’t keep their hands off us. Hanging around our reality like ambulance-chasing lawyers. Or winos outside a bar, looking for a hand-out.”

“Is that what happened to you?” said Melody.

“Nothing happened to me, miss,” said the Empty Librarian.

Melody gave him a hard look, then decided to rise above it. “Do you have any computers here? Anything on-line I can look at?”

“Nothing like that in here, miss,” said the Empty Librarian. “The very idea. . We are a Library; not a video arcade. We do have an Index you might find useful. Connected to every volume here, and voice-activated for easy use. If you’d like to follow me this way, miss. .”

He shambled off, and the team hurried after him. Seen from the back, the empty suit of clothes appeared even more disturbing, if anything. The Empty Librarian led them through several sets of book-shelves, took a sharp left, and stopped abruptly. He waved an empty sleeve at an oversized volume set out on a gleaming brass reading stand. The book reminded JC of an old-fashioned family Bible. Someone had left it open, and the huge pages overflowed the sides of the reading stand. The Empty Librarian gestured for Melody to come forward and stand before the book.

“This is the Index for the entire Secret Libraries, miss. Like many useful things, it is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Thinking about that makes my head hurt, and I don’t even have a head. Blame the Travelling Doctor; he founded the Libraries, after all. Speak your wishes aloud, miss, and the Index will give you the name and location of the volume most likely to be of help. Do try to speak clearly. If you mumble, the Index gets confused, then people shout at it, and I have to put up with its sulking, afterwards.”

“Got it,” said Melody. “Now go away and help the others. I don’t like people peering over my shoulder.”

“Of course, miss. I feel the same way. And I don’t even know who’s down here to peer over my shoulder. .”

The Empty Librarian led the rest of the team away. Melody glared at the Index.

“What have you got on strange occurrences down in the London Underground railway system? Ancient and modern? I want book titles, and a precis, if possible.”

The heavy pages fluttered quickly back and forth before her, so fast the print became a blur, then stopped abruptly to show her a double-page spread of book titles, complete with every detail, and a precis. Melody sniffed loudly, to make it clear she wasn’t going to be impressed that easily, and leaned eagerly forward to work her way through the various entries. It soon became apparent to Melody that there was no shortage of books on the subject: private and personal and professional. Strange sightings, encounters with ghosts and demons, weird happenings, and alien encounters. Reports of strange things went all the way back to when the first railway tunnels were dug out of the earth under London. Interestingly, though, there were no reports of any encounters with the old catacombs of London Undertowen. Which confirmed what Melody had already suspected-that the Undertowen wasn’t necessarily, literally, underneath London itself any longer. Melody turned her search to those volumes dealing with intrusions into the Tube system from Outside and was genuinely shocked at how many books there were on the subject. The Empty Librarian had been right; whatever happened to JC was neither a new nor a rare thing. .

Melody asked the Index on where these books could be found and received her second shock. According to the notes that appeared on the pages before her, each and every one of these books had been recently removed from the Secret Libraries. On the orders of Catherine Latimer.

Melody called the Empty Librarian back to her, in a loud and carrying voice. He came striding through the stacks, his empty suit of clothes positively radiating outrage at being summoned in such a peremptory manner; but when Melody showed him how many books were missing, he was genuinely shocked and appalled.

“But this. . this is simply not allowed! Books are never taken out of the Secret Libraries, under any circumstances! And I can tell you for a fact, miss, Catherine Latimer has not paid a visit down here in over a year. Whoever removed these books may have done so in her name, but she did not do it herself. More importantly. . I have no record, and no memory, of these books’ leaving the Libraries. And I am always here! I do not sleep, I do not rest, and I never turn aside from my duties. Though I am forced to admit. . this is not the first time such a thing has happened.” He leaned in close for a conspiratorial murmur, his empty collar close to her ear. “More and more, I get the feeling. . that I am not alone down here.”

“Okay,” said Melody. “Let’s concentrate on the missing books, shall we? Look at the details set out in the Index; do you by any chance remember the contents of these books? What they were about?”

“Of course, miss!” said the Empty Librarian. “I have read every book in the Secret Libraries! Not much else to do down here, you understand. . That title, there, was a detailed account by a young Institute field agent, on how she was attacked on a mission in the Underground, and how Something from Outside intervened to save her. I had the honour of speaking with this remarkable young lady on several occasions. Her eyes glowed like Mr. Chance’s until she learned to control it.”

“Who was this?” said Melody. “Do you remember her name?”

“Of course,” said the Empty Librarian. “It was Catherine Latimer.”

* * *

Sometime later, the Empty Librarian escorted Happy deep into the stacks, to the Acquisitions Suite. Not books, but rather Items of Special Interest that had been gifted to the Carnacki Institute, down the years. Basically, the Suite was an open space set aside to hold several rows of display cases, of varying size, with solid steel and silver surrounds and heavily reinforced glass. Containing things, objects, and general weird shit that had proved important or significant in the past. Happy looked them over dubiously.

“So these are all the important bits and pieces the Institute has gathered to itself, apart from those the Boss keeps in her office?”

“Exactly, sir,” said the Empty Librarian. “All Heads of the Institute like to hang on to reminders of their own time out in the field. Until they retire, and it all ends up down here. In the end, everything turns up down here, one way or another. There was a move, some years back, to have all dead field agents buried down here, as a security measure. But that was considered disrespectful. To the books. Some of them are very sensitive, sir.”

Happy nodded in a way he hoped indicated he neither believed nor disbelieved what he was hearing. He waited until the Empty Librarian had moved off before moving slowly up and down between the rows of display cases, studying their contents thoughtfully, while being very careful to touch nothing. Most of the items on display were simply. . objects, presumably of some importance at some time but now without even a name or case history attached. Only an Index number. A single marble finger, a brass mezzotint, a bottle of comet wine, and a stuffed cat’s head with three eyes and drooping whiskers. A few still had names, or titles: The Merovingian Crown, Cardinal Woolsey’s Scrapbook, The Doom That Came To Liverpool, The Sword Sacnoth.

And then. . Happy looked at the thing in the case before him and felt his strength drop away. He tried to examine it with his Sight, to make sure it was what it claimed to be, but the layers of protection laid down around the display case defeated him. So he stepped back and raised his voice, calling the others to him in an increasingly loud and hysterical tone. The Empty Librarian arrived first, running into the Acquisitions Suite, waving its empty sleeves.

“Please, sir, remember where you are!”

“Go to Hell!” said Happy. “How long have you had this? You had this here; and you didn’t think to tell us?”

Kim appeared out of nowhere to stand next to Happy, calming him with her proximity. JC and Melody came running through the stacks to join them. The Empty Librarian fell back, as Happy gestured wildly at the thing in the display case.

“That, right there, is supposed to be an actual part of The Flesh Undying!” he said loudly.

They all gathered together before the display case, maintaining a safe and respectful distance. Beyond the reinforced glass was a small, pulsating blob of. . something. Something that didn’t belong in this world. It was no colour they could name, no consistency that made any sense, and it never stayed one shape for long. It rose and fell, turning itself inside out, throwing itself back and forth against the sides of the steel-and-glass case that contained it. Like a caged animal, desperate to be free.

“Someone put a bit of The Flesh Undying inside a box?” said JC.

“That is not a box, sir,” said the Empty Librarian. “That is a display case. Though I am forced to admit, it is one of our more secure display cases.”

“How was it brought here?” said Melody, staring fascinated at the writhing, pulsating thing.

“I’m not exactly sure, miss. It appeared here, a few weeks ago, already contained within its case. Along with an account of its acquisition.”

With the end of an empty sleeve, he indicated a heavy note-book set beneath the display case. JC and the rest of his team looked at the note-book, each of them quietly wondering why they hadn’t noticed it before. JC finally picked up the note-book, very carefully and very gingerly, and opened it, holding it out so they could all see. The handwritten pages contained a brief account of how this particular piece of The Flesh Undying had come into the possession of the Carnacki Institute.

They all recognised the handwriting. It was Catherine Latimer’s.

Apparently, a large communications company had been laying a new section of transatlantic cable. The machinery hit something, on the very bottom of the ocean, and the ship laying the cable was mysteriously lost, with all hands. Other ships went to investigate; and as a result the cable was redirected to another section of the ocean, many miles away. And to hell with the extra expense. Somewhere along the way, a small piece of what the original cable-laying ship had encountered had been acquired, then gifted to the Institute. No names, no details. And there the record ended.

JC put the note-book back under the display case and looked at the others. And then they all looked at the raging thing in its case.

“I’ve been trying to examine it through my Sight,” said Happy. “But forcing my mind through the defensive shields takes so much out of me. . What I can See makes no sense at all. There’s so much of it, I can’t get a grip on it. As though it’s denser, realer, than everything else.”

“I wish I had my equipment with me,” said Melody. “I’d make this thing talk. Hell, I’d make it sing and dance and give up all its secrets.”

“It’s been tried,” said the Empty Librarian.

Melody bristled and glared at him. “You don’t even know what I have in mind!”

“I don’t need to, miss,” said the Empty Librarian. “It’s been tried. It’s all been tried. Long before it got here. It’s all in the back of the note-book.”

Kim drifted forward and stuck her face right up against the glass side, so she could look directly at the blob. It became increasingly agitated under her steady gaze, throwing itself back and forth and flailing at the glass sides. It suddenly expanded, growing greatly in size, pushing outwards until it filled the entire display case, pressed flat against each of the glass walls. And the heavily reinforced glass began to crack. Jagged lines shot across the sides of the case, splintering the glass. Everyone fell back sharply, including the Empty Librarian.

“It’s a trap!” shouted Happy. “It’s another bloody trap! The Flesh Undying gave up part of itself so it could be brought here! I can hear it now; its thoughts are as loud as a thunderstorm, powerful as an earthquake. . That blobby thing may be separated from the main body, but it’s still connected, still part of The Flesh Undying!”

“But what does it want?” said JC. He grabbed Happy by the shoulders and held him in place. “Concentrate, Happy. Why did it want to be brought here?”

“Because it knew we’d come to look at it!” said Happy. “It wants us dead, JC. The whole team! It wants us destroyed because. . we’re dangerous to it! Damn. I didn’t know that. Kind of heartening, really. . JC, you’ve got to Do Something! It’s getting out! The glass is cracking and the shields are failing and once that thing has escaped from its cage, there’s nothing here that can stop its growing big enough to. . Oh. Oh no. . You really don’t want to know what it wants to do to us. .”

The blob had filled every square inch of its container now, not a gap or bubble anywhere, seething and straining against the glass sides of the display case. Strange lights sparked and flared inside it, multi-coloured threads of energy snapping back and forth like illuminated blood-vessels. Melody pointed her machine-pistol at the case, then lowered it again, uncertainly. Happy stepped forward and put himself bodily between her and the thing in the case. Melody smiled briefly and stepped forward to stand beside him. She put an arm across his shoulders, and he put an arm around her waist.

JC took off his sunglasses and turned the full force of his golden eyes on the thing in the case. The blob shook and shuddered but didn’t withdraw an inch.

“Rather hoped for more than that,” said JC. “Kim, this might be a good time for you to teleport out of here.”

“I won’t leave you,” said Kim. “I only just got you back. There must be something you can do.”

“I don’t have my equipment,” said Melody.

“We could still run,” said Happy. “Running’s always good. But I don’t think we’d get very far. .”

“And we can’t leave the Libraries undefended,” said JC. “We stand and fight; that’s the job. Except, we have no tech, no weapons, no magics or special Institute techniques that would do any good. I suppose we could eat it. .”

“After you,” said Happy.

“The Acquisitions!” JC said sharply. “That’s the answer! Objects of Power, right? Smash the cases, everyone, and grab anything that looks useful!”

“That really won’t be necessary,” said the Empty Librarian. Everyone stopped and looked at him. The empty suit of clothes didn’t seem at all worried.

“What?” said JC.

“Refreshing though your zeal to protect the Libraries is, before you go wild and start smashing all the exhibits, I feel I should point out that we here at the Libraries are perfectly capable of dealing with a rogue exhibit. Tommy Atkins! Your presence is required!”

The uniformed soldier appeared out of nowhere, standing before the display case. And then there was another soldier, standing on the opposite side. And then more, and more, dozens of Tommy Atkinses, surrounding the case in row after row. They didn’t raise their rifles; they simply glared at the blob in its case, concentrating their full attention on it. The blob faltered and fell back, falling in upon itself, until there was nothing left of it in the display case but a small ball of suppurating organic matter, barely moving at all.

“Of course,” said JC. “That. . thing, is just flesh. While Tommy Atkins, all of him, are pure spirit. It has no effect on them and no defences against them. They outnumbered it, and overwhelmed it, through sheer spiritual presence.”

“Yeah, more or less,” said Tommy Atkins. “I was hoping I’d get a chance to bayonet it. .”

He was the one they recognised, from outside the door. All the others had disappeared, gone in a moment. He leaned over the display case, wrinkling his nose at what remained of the blob. “You, behave yourself! Don’t make me have to come down here again. Or there will be trouble.”

He straightened up, nodded easily to the Empty Librarian; and disappeared.

Melody and Happy realised they were still holding each other. They quickly let go, stepped back; and then looked at each other. JC went for a little walk, to calm himself down. He was used to being the one who saved the day at the last moment; and he didn’t like being upstaged. And he was pretty certain his plan to use the Objects of Power would have worked, in a generally destructive kind of way. .

The Empty Librarian looked thoughtfully at the ghost girl Kim.

“You’re not the first restless spirit we’ve had down here, my dear; not by a long shot. Some field agents have difficulty letting go. . The filters keep most of them out, but you’re something different, aren’t you? I can see the mark of Strangeness on you, like your Mr. Chance. And your two other friends, of course.”

“Don’t tell them,” said Kim. “They don’t know. They don’t need to know, yet. It would only upset them.”

“As you wish, miss,” said the Empty Librarian. “Now, is there any way in which I can be of service to you?”

“Is there anything here especially suited to my. . special nature?”

“There are the Ghostly Reads, miss. The last aetheric remains, of books that no long exist on the material plane. Ghosts of lost books; perfect reading material for the not yet departed.”

“Show me,” said Kim.

But when the Empty Librarian led her to a collection of glowing, semi-transparent books on a dusty shelf, flickering like dying light bulbs, Kim found that although she could take the books off the shelf, and even open them and read them, they were all of them written in dead languages she couldn’t understand.

She went back to join the others and found JC glowering at the Empty Librarian.

“These are the Carnacki Institute Secret Libraries! One of the biggest repositories of hidden knowledge in the world! There must be something here that can help us!”

“JC. .” said Kim.

“No! I need to know this. I need to know why Outer forces brought me back from the dead!”

“Ah, sir,” said the Empty Librarian, not unkindly. “You don’t need books for that. You don’t need anything we have here. We deal only in the Past; and you are concerned with the Future. You need to get back out in the field, sir, take names, and kick bottoms, and get your answers direct from the horse’s mouth, as it were. You need to go to the source, sir.”

* * *

JC and his team sat quietly in the car, in someone else’s private parking place. Thinking, considering, what to do next. The sun was finally up, shedding a cold grey light across the Woolwich Arsenal. A few birds had started singing, in a half-hearted sort of way. People in uniforms came and went, but went nowhere near the car. Word had got around.

JC turned suddenly, to look at Melody in the back seat. “Did you bring your lap-top with you?”

“Of course,” she said. “It’s in my back-pack.”

“Get it up and running,” said JC. “Can you get a signal here?”

“This lap-top could get a signal anywhere,” said Melody. “It’s very well trained.” She soon had it open on her lap. “All right, I’m signed in. What am I looking for?”

“Catherine Latimer,” said JC. “Dear old Boss of Bosses. Her fingerprints were all over what just happened. See if there’s anything new about her in the Carnacki files. See what people are saying about her.”

“No problem,” said Melody, her fingers flying across the keyboard.

“What’s going on?” said Happy.

“Damned if I know,” said JC. “But I’m starting to get a really bad feeling. .”

“Welcome to my world,” said Happy. “We have T-shirts and decoder rings and everything. And you don’t even want to know what the and everything involves.”

“Mouth is open, should be shut,” said JC.

“Yes, boss.”

It took a while, with Melody frowning more and more severely as she jumped from site to site, looking at things she definitely wasn’t cleared to know, but finally she let out a long breath and looked at JC.

“If the Carnacki Institute was a business,” said Melody, “I would say I was looking at a hostile takeover. Someone is trying to remove Catherine Latimer from her position as Head of the Institute, and replace her with someone else. Loyal to. . someone else.”

“Is that necessarily a bad thing?” said Happy. “Would be nice to have a Boss who didn’t make me want to wet myself every time she looks at me.”

“She may be an ogre,” said JC, “but she’s our ogre. And better the ogre you know. . Who’s plotting against her, Melody?”

“I can’t tell,” said Melody, scowling. “Whoever it is is hiding their tracks with great thoroughness, behind walls and walls of secrecy. There are lots of people involved in this, with a hell of a lot of the left hand not knowing what the right foot’s doing. . but this is all very definitely being organised by someone already deep within the Carnacki Institute. And, fairly high up. . Someone is quite definitely informing against Catherine Latimer, easing the path for whoever’s trying to oust her.”

And that was when Catherine Latimer’s grim face suddenly appeared on the lap-top screen, glaring out at them all. Melody made a loud squeak of surprise, then tried very hard to look as though she hadn’t.

“What the hell are you people doing, looking at things that are none of your business?” the Boss said loudly. “And what were you doing back at Chimera House? I didn’t authorise any return visit! Come and see me in my private office. And yes, that does include the ghost. Welcome back, Kim. It’s about time. Be in my office at 9:00 A.M. sharp! All of you! Or there will be trouble.”

Her face disappeared from the lap-top screen, and Melody quickly slammed the lid shut.

“Well,” said JC. “This should be interesting.”

“Have I got time to change my trousers?” said Happy.