Ghost of a Smile

SIX

“I am getting really fed up with climbing stairs,” said Happy, in a more than usually fed-up voice. “It’s not like they ever take us anywhere nice. And it still feels like we’re going down, rather than up. Like we’re descending into Hell, step by step by step…”

“If you were any gloomier, you’d walk around under your own personal thunderstorm,” said Melody.

“If the New People really are superhumans, or perhaps more properly posthuman,” said JC, “it should feel like we’re ascending towards Heaven. Or at the very least towards Olympus, to commune with the gods.”

“And yet it doesn’t,” said Happy. “Funny, that…”

“Not talking to you, when you’re in this kind of mood,” said JC. “Melody, you’re the one with all the information at her fingertips. What’s supposed to be next?”

“Could be anything,” said Melody. “There was nothing at all about this floor on any of the computers. Could be empty.”

“We’re not that lucky,” said Happy.

“Not listening to Mr. Moody,” said JC. “Hardly seems likely, does it? A whole floor left empty, in such a highrent area?”

“Nothing about this building makes sense,” said Melody. “I don’t think MSI knew half of what was really going on here. Someone’s been playing games, and we’re the latest contestants.”

“You mean, whoever it was that supplied the extra funding for ReSet?” said Happy, to show he wasn’t being left out of anything.

“Who can say?” said JC. “Upwards and onwards, my children…”

“Oh God, he’s getting enthusiastic again,” said Happy. “That’s always dangerous.”

“Shut up, Happy,” said Melody.

They stopped at the swing doors, listened briefly, then walked right in, on the grounds that being cautious hadn’t got them anywhere before. JC stopped the others with an upraised hand the moment they were inside. The whole of the floor was full of thick, curling mists, a pearlescent grey fog that stretched away for as far as the eye could see. Like a great grey ocean, greater than any building could hope to contain. There was a definite sense of being outside, and that the fog stretched away forever. Strange lights came and went in the pearl grey reaches of the fog, which moved constantly, slowly, as though troubled by some unfelt gusting breeze. The mists curled and roiled, churning in slow vortices, and the lights came and went, came and went

…

“Okay,” said JC. “This is new. You don’t normally get fog inside a building.”

“Unless something’s gone seriously wrong with reality,” said Melody. “Which is always possible, given everything that’s happened here recently.”

“I like fog,” said Happy. “Fog is nice. Fog is not dangerous, or threatening, or liable to jump on you without warning. I can live with fog.”

“I’m more worried about what might be hiding in the fog,” said JC.

“You see.” said Happy. “You had to go and spoil it, didn’t you?”

“Everyone stay right where you are,” said JC. “Don’t get out of sight of each other, or of the doors. Lose track of where you are, and you might never get out of here.”

“Life was so much easier when I was paranoid,” Happy said wistfully. “When I was delusional, and the world really wasn’t out to get me.”

“It’s not simply fog,” said Kim. They all looked at her, but she had nothing else to say.

“I think the creation of the New People damaged the state of reality itself, inside this building,” said JC. “Or at least, I hope the changes are confined to this building… Either way, their arrival has placed an unnatural strain upon the local environment. You’ve heard of sick building syndrome, where the building itself can affect people’s health in unfortunate ways? That’s low-level genius loci at work. But there is also haunted building syndrome, a building that’s gone bad, that either creates ghosts or calls ghosts to it. The whole of Chimera House has been adversely affected, psychically stained, by recent events, an imprinting that will take decades, maybe even centuries, to clean up and make right. Things that would normally be improbable, or wildly unlikely, become more possible in places like this. Even inevitable…”

“Like the Bio Reactor’s mobile organs?” said Kim.

“Exactly,” said Melody. “You don’t normally get to see things like that outside of a Cronenberg film.”

“ They Came from Within!” said Happy. “Oh, that’s a classic! I had to sleep with the lights on for days, and I never felt the same about swimming pools.”

“Strange little man,” said Kim. “I’ve never cared much for horror movies.”

“Did you join the wrong team!” said Happy.

“Shut up, Happy,” said JC. He stared thoughtfully at the curling fog. “When this is all over, we may have to destroy the entire building. Blow it up, tear it down, crush the rubble, and scatter it at sea.”

“Chimera House has become a strange attractor,” said Melody. “Attracting, pulling ghosts to it.”

“Like moths to a candle,” said Happy.

“Oh dear,” said Kim. “You mean proper ghosts? People ghosts? I’ve always found them rather unnerving.”

“But you are one!” said Happy.

“But I still think I’m human,” said Kim. “I still feel human. Even though I do sometimes see or hear things that only the dead can know.”

“Like what?” said Happy.

She stared at him very seriously. “You really don’t want to know, Happy.”

“I’m a Class Eleven Telepath!” said Happy. “I see things every day that would make grown men rip their own heads off!”

“But I’m dead,” said Kim.

“You’re right,” said Happy. “That does trump a hell of a lot of things.”

“I don’t know much about ghosts,” said Kim. “Despite being one. It’s one of the reasons I joined this team. I don’t understand ghosts. They scare me as much as they do you.”

“I am going to change the subject,” said Happy. “Because this one is creeping the hell out of me. Given that the computers didn’t have anything to say about this floor, and so therefore it couldn’t possibly contain anything important or significant, why don’t we skip it and move on up?”

“Doesn’t the fog fascinate you?” said JC.

“Let me think about that for a moment no not at all,” said Happy. “I have officially decided I can take it or leave it.”

“We are staying,” JC said firmly. “Because we need all the information we can gather as to what went down here before we have to meet the New People. In a situation like this, information is ammunition. And… we really don’t want to overlook anything that might come sneaking after us and creep up on us from behind. Do we?”

“Very good point there,” said Happy. “God, it’s coming to something when you’re the paranoid one on this team.”

They all went back to staring into the great grey expanse before them. JC stepped cautiously forward and swept one hand through the fog. It felt cold and damp, as though it had blown in off some ancient unknown ocean. He shuddered suddenly, not from the cold. Whichever way he looked, endless shades of grey filled his sight, with no trace of the floor they were supposed to be on anywhere. Lights flickered and flared, glowing and fading in the grey deeps, like taunting will-o’-the-wisps. JC squinted. The fog was hard on the eye, the featureless grey almost painful to look at for too long. He strained his altered eyes against the fog. He couldn’t shake off a very definite feeling that somewhere deep in the fog, something was staring back at him.

JC turned to Happy. “Time to do your thing, team telepath. What do you sense about this fog?”

“Nothing specific,” said Happy, scowling in concentration. “No thoughts, no intent, no emotions… Just this diffused sense of presence.”

Kim nodded immediately, looking nervously this way and that. Melody stuck both thumbs in her belt and tapped one foot ominously on the floor. She felt frustrated and left out, with nothing to contribute. She felt naked without her equipment. With all her usual toys at her disposal, she could have analysed the hell out of the fog by then, broken it down into its various components, and come up with half a dozen different solutions to the problem. But there wasn’t even a computer she could use in the room. She said as much, and JC nodded soberly.

“We have been relying on the building’s computers, rather a lot. And I’m starting to wonder if we can trust what they’ve been telling us. You said yourself someone was making it too easy for you to access information. Maybe they only meant for us to know what they wanted us to know.”

“Someone was definitely sending messages through the computers,” said Melody. “And they’ve all been spot on useful, so far.”

“Quite,” said JC. “Convenient, that. Perhaps a little too convenient.”

“Then why not tell us what’s going on here?” said Happy.

“Maybe they don’t know,” said JC. “A sign, perhaps, that our mysterious benefactor isn’t all-knowing.”

He took off his sunglasses and unleashed his brightly glowing eyes on the fog. Happy and Melody turned their heads away, unable to look at him directly. It wasn’t that they were afraid of what they might see if they were to look directly into JC’s golden eyes, it was that they found the light too fierce, too unrelenting, for human eyes.

“What does it look like, JC?” said Happy. “When you see the world through those eyes?”

“Everything seems so clear, so simple,” said JC. “As though… everything finally makes sense.”

“I don’t know why you two keep looking away,” said Kim. “It doesn’t bother me. They look like eyes to me. Nice colour, too.”

JC took another step forward, concentrating on the fog. He couldn’t see anything new, but wherever he turned his gaze, the fog reacted. It seemed to recoil from him, churning and roiling violently, as though disturbed or agitated. When he swept his hand through it, there was no reaction, but he got the sense that the fog didn’t like his golden gaze at all. That perhaps… the fog was frightened of it.

“The fog!” Kim said suddenly. “ It’s the presence!”

JC nodded slowly. “Yes. It is. I’ve heard of this phenomenon though I’ve never encountered it before. Don’t know anyone who has. But I know what this is, what it has to be. It’s rare, very rare. Takes a lot of energy to produce and maintain, to make it even possible… This is ghostlight. Undifferentiated ghosts. This is what will become ghosts, in time. As the building calls the dead to it, they will form out of this fog, taking on shape and nature and purpose.”

“Okay,” said Melody. “That’s all very fine and groovy, but what is it exactly? Are we talking ectoplasm of some kind?”

“Spookier than that,” said JC. “What we’re looking at isn’t really water droplets suspended in the air. Our eyes interpret this as fog because that’s as close as our minds can get to understanding it. This

… is pure potential, the raw chaos from which order unfolds itself.”

“Oh crap,” said Melody.

Dim dark shapes began to form in the grey depths of the fog. Row upon row of them, standing unnaturally still, stretching out wider and further back than the building should have been able to accommodate. Most of the shapes were human, or at least humanish. Others were larger, bulkier, distorted. And some were only abstract shapes, impressions of people, like nightmares given shape and form in the waking world. JC looked back and forth, trying to get some sense of numbers, and failing. So many ghosts, drawn there by the birth of the New People, and what had been done to Chimera House. Standing in ranks, as though waiting for something. For some voice, perhaps, to tell them what to do.

“Have you noticed?” Happy said quietly. “They all seem to be looking at you, JC. They’re not even glancing at the rest of us. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, of course, but it is interesting, and possibly even significant.”

“The eyes have it,” said Melody. “They’re attracted to the light.”

“No,” said Kim. “It’s more than that. I think it’s because JC has been touched by the Outside, the afterworlds. They recognise that and respond to it.”

“Yes…” said Happy. “I’m picking up all kinds of things now. Fear, and fascination, and… a whole bunch of other things I don’t even recognise, let alone understand. These ghosts might once have been human, but they don’t feel like people. I’m not picking up even the most fundamental sense of identity, or individuality. It’s almost like… looking at them from far, far away. And it’s almost as though they think of JC… as one of them, only more so.”

JC looked at Happy, who flinched away from the golden gaze in spite of himself. “How can they be ghosts and not people?” said JC. “What are ghosts, except memories of people?”

“I don’t know! It’s as though they’re… becoming people! The ghostlight is using the memories of ghosts to make forms rather than the other way round! These are… copies of ghosts, created by the fog, to do… something!”

“The ghosts of London,” said Kim. “From the Past, the Present, and maybe even the Future. Memories of the London dead, drawn to this place, to be made again out of the ghostlight. I never knew there could be so many kinds of ghosts. I don’t think some of the things rising out of the ghostlight are even human, or ever were.”

Happy moved in close beside JC though still careful not to look at him. “Come on, JC, this is where we usually rely on you to pull a rabbit out of the hat, and by that I mean produce some really nasty weapon out of your capacious pockets. Tell me you’ve got something really destructive about your person that can deal with this.”

“Well,” said JC. “I have a brass knuckle-duster, a silver dagger, and several phials of holy water to sanctify them with. I have various useful herbs and charms, in small sealed bags to keep them fresh. I’ve even got an amulet, somewhere. And I have-something else.”

“What?” said Melody. ”

“It’s not something I should have, so I’d better not tell anyone,” said JC. “And it may be a bit too much for this particular situation. It’s not exactly fine-tuned. If I use it, I’m not sure what might happen. We might end up in pieces, end up scattered all over the Moon.”

“I vote we don’t use it, then,” said Happy.

“Unless we absolutely have to,” said JC.

“Well, of course,” said Happy. “That goes without saying.”

“What?” said Kim. “Under what circumstances could having your bodily parts scattered over the craters of the Moon possibly be considered a viable option?”

“There are times when death is the kinder option,” said Melody.

“You had to say that, didn’t you?” said Happy.

“Children,” said JC, “the ghosts are becoming restless.”

Some were swaying in place, others were turning their heads to orientate on the Ghost Finders in general, and JC in particular. Some stepped slowly forward, advancing through the mists, heading towards the group. JC gave them the benefit of his best golden glare, but it didn’t seem to bother them in the least. And as they drew closer, emerging out of the fog, they began to reveal more of themselves. Some were suicides, with bloody wounds at their wrists and rope marks at their throats, or sullen faces distorted by gas or poison. Some were broken and shattered, pieces of splintered bone protruding through dead white flesh-jumpers, probably. Some were murder victims, still displaying their death wounds from knives and guns. Some were only children, with cold dark eyes, abused and murdered by those they had every reason to trust.

People who die peacefully don’t make ghosts.

Not all of the figures were entirely human. Some were like animals, and some were like machines, and some… were simply monsters. Because you can’t hide your true nature after you’re dead. JC considered them all carefully and noticed that the dead weren’t looking just at him. Some were fixing on Kim. She’d noticed, too, and wavered uncertainly this way and that, trying to escape their gaze. When she found she couldn’t, she moved in close beside JC. He gave her his best reassuring smile. The ghosts were coming out of the fog, slowly, deliberately, more solid and more real.

“They’re just images,” Melody said loudly, though whether she was trying to convince herself or the others was open to question. “They don’t have any physical form. They can’t… They can’t hurt us!”

“Try saying it louder,” said Happy. “You might convince some of them. They looked solid enough to me…”

“They’re drawing strength from the ghostlight,” said JC. “Which, in turn… is drawing strength from the altered reality of the building. And, possibly, from the New People…”

“Don’t you have anything good to say?” demanded Happy.

“Not often,” JC admitted. “Comes with the job, and the territory.”

Happy scowled. “They feel real. More like individuals, now. Though all I’m picking up from them is… bad intent.”

The first rank of ghosts was almost upon them, dead hands reaching out for Kim. They smiled at her, devouring her with dark, unblinking eyes. She cried out and shrank away. JC moved forward, to stand between her and the approaching ghosts. He took out his silver dagger, and quite deliberately cut his palm with the razor-sharp edge. He closed his fist, and blood dripped thickly from it.

“Spilled blood has a voice,” said JC, almost casually. “It calls to the dead. Leave her alone, you bastards! Concentrate on me!”

When he cut himself, the ghosts had stopped. When he spoke, all their heads turned at once, towards JC, and when they started moving again, they all headed straight for him.

“All right,” said JC. “Now I’ve got their attention, a plan would probably be a good idea. Anyone got any ideas? Because I think I’m going to be very busy in a moment.”

“I don’t know what to do!” said Melody. “I don’t have my tech, my gun’s no use… What can you do, against an army of ghosts?”

“The fog keeps making more of them,” said Happy. “The ghostlight’s the source of their power, but how do you fight fog…”

“The fog!” said JC. “That’s the answer! It shouldn’t be here, inside the building! It’s an unnatural condition, which makes it physically precarious. Which means vulnerable! Melody, run back down to the previous floor, log on to the computer, and access the building’s internal systems. Override the air-conditioning, throw it into reverse, and have it suck the fog right out of here!”

“I thought you said it wasn’t really fog?” said Happy.

“The more real it becomes, to make the ghosts real, the more real its physical properties become,” said JC. “Don’t argue with me, I’m a doctor!”

“No you’re not!”

“I might be. You don’t know. Melody…”

But Melody was already off and running, through the doors and back down the stairs. Happy started to go after her.

“Happy, stay right where you are!” JC said urgently. “I need you here. You have to look after Kim while I’m busy.”

Happy hesitated, looked longingly at the doors, then looked at Kim, cringing miserably back against the far wall. He sighed, heavily.

“What do you need me to do?”

“Good man,” said JC.

“I’ve always thought so,” said Kim, trying hard to smile bravely.

“I know I’m going to regret this,” said Happy. “What’s the plan, JC?”

“Well, I plan to keep them occupied, while you keep Kim safe, and Melody hopefully saves the day,” said JC.

“That’s it, is it?” said Happy.

“Everything else is just details,” said JC.

The first ghost to emerge fully from the fog seemed utterly real and solid, and very dangerous. The fog itself seemed to be thinning, as more and more ghosts walked out of it. Up close, they were a horrid sight. Road-crash victims, dragging broken bones and twisted necks. Victims of domestic abuse, with wild, feral eyes. Victims of gang wars and honour killings. Old men and women who died alone and weren’t found for months. All of London’s dark, dead secrets, given shape and form and purpose by the ghostlight.

A tall, spindly figure in the rotting remains of an evening dress, with a dead white face and outstretched hands like claws, loomed suddenly up before Kim, coming at her from out of nowhere. Kim shrieked, and Happy thrust himself between Kim and the ghost, and hit it with a concentrated blast of disbelief. The ghost blew apart in slow motion, falling away in bits and pieces, dissipating back into the fog.

“Thank you, Happy,” said Kim.

“You have no idea how much that takes out of me,” said Happy, trying for a companionable grin and almost bringing it off. “JC! They really are getting awfully close now!”

“I’m on it!” said JC. “Time to go old school again…”

He slipped the brass knuckle-duster onto his left hand with the ease of long practice, transferred the silver dagger to that hand, then produced a phial of holy water from inside his jacket. He carefully unscrewed the metal cap, poured a generous amount over the brass and the silver, drank the rest to be on the safe side, and tossed the empty phial aside. He grinned nastily at the ghosts before him and went to work.

He strode right into the first rank of ghosts, cut them up and knocked them down. Being dead, they shouldn’t have taken any damage or felt any hurt, but because they believed they had bodies, they did, with all their inherited limitations. JC punched them in the head with his blessed brass knuckles and cut their throats with his silver dagger, and the dead figures fell apart before him, dispersing back into the fog before they could even fall to the floor. But even as JC turned to new opponents, the old ones were already re-forming, re-created by the power of the ghostlight. JC fought on, not because he thought he could win, but because while the ghosts were concentrating on him, they would leave Kim alone.

And, hopefully, forget all about Melody.

But no matter how hard he fought, no matter how much he roared and struck about him, he couldn’t hold them all. Some ghosts ignored him completely, heading straight for Kim, perhaps because she was dead but still acted as though she were alive. She still had the spark of life within her. She stared, horrified, at the ghosts advancing on her. She tried to back away, to pass through the wall behind her, and found she couldn’t. The ghostlight was in control of local conditions. JC saw what was happening and tried to get back to her, but the ghosts surrounded him, reaching out to him with cold, dead hands. It was all he could do to keep them at bay.

“Happy!” he yelled. “Don’t let them touch her!”

“Can’t you exorcise them?” said Happy.

“Do these creeps even look like they believe in God?” said JC.

The ghosts swarmed all over him, even as he lashed wildly about him, the silver dagger tearing through ghostly flesh and the brass knuckles smashing ghostly bone. They laid their hands upon him, and he cried out despite himself. Cold, dead hands, drawing the living warmth right out of him, to feed their endless hunger for what they had lost. A terrible cold shuddered through JC, a physical and spiritual cold, which numbed his thoughts as well as his body. Frost formed on his clothes, then on his flesh. He struck out at the ghosts, with slow, sluggish movements, though there was hardly any feeling left in his hands any more. He was trying to force the ghosts back, so he could get to Kim. But they crowded in around him, pressing him from every direction at once, and all he could see were dead, hateful faces, hideous grins that showed teeth but no human emotion, and all he could feel were the cold, dead hands, falling on him from everywhere at once, leaching the living warmth out of him.

The golden light from his eyes didn’t bother the dead at all. They sucked it right up.

Happy did his best to protect Kim, but the ghosts were closing in on both of them. He scowled till his head ached, concentrating on projecting a telepathic defence, a simple circle of sheer will-power, a line the ghosts could not cross, because he believed in the line more than they believed they could cross it. Happy truly was a powerful telepath, perhaps even more so than he allowed himself to know, but even so, he was only one man, and the ghosts were so many. The circle around Kim and Happy shrank, inch by inch, forced back by the pressure of so many dead minds, as the ghosts pushed remorselessly forward, wanting in. Happy stood between Kim and the ghosts, defying them to get past him, to her. Putting everything he had into her defence, and to hell with what that would do to him later. Cold, dead fingers reached out, and the defensive line shrank back before them, and Happy shivered, deep in his soul, from their proximity.

But he made them work for it, one step at a time. Because JC was trusting him to protect Kim, and though he would never admit it, Happy would fall in his tracks before he’d let JC down.

Kim looked at Happy, and at JC, both of them fighting with everything they had, both of them dying by inches, all for her. She became so furious she forgot how frightened she was. She moved forward, through Happy, who smiled unexpectedly at a sudden feeling of peace and happiness and the smell of elderflowers, and then Kim went on, right into the midst of the ghosts. She blazed with a sudden light, fierce and incandescent, like a living star. It was the same golden glow that shone from JC’s eyes, only taken up to the next level. The blazing light stopped the ghosts in their tracks and forced the curling fog back on itself. The dead withered, and retreated, turning their faces away from her, away from the proud, shining light, lurching back into the protection of the ghostlight, which in turn fell back, back… The ghosts abandoned Happy and JC, who stood utterly still, mesmerised, in awe of what Kim had become. JC stretched slowly, as the living warmth welled up in him again, and crusted frost cracked and fell away from him. He stumbled back to join Happy.

“I never knew she had so much life left in her,” said JC. “Where is all that energy coming from?”

“My love for you, darling!” said Kim, not looking back as she drove the dead before her, blazing with the light of worlds beyond ours.

JC smiled and nodded, and waved encouragingly to Kim; but he wasn’t sure he believed that. When forces from the afterworld reached down to touch him, had they perhaps also touched Kim? And if so, for what purpose?

Kim was blazing so very brightly, and the ghosts had all disappeared back into the fog. But the ghostlight was no match for Kim’s unearthly glow.

“That can’t be good for her,” said Happy.

“She’s strong,” said JC. “Stronger than she realises.”

Suddenly, the air-conditioners kicked in, sucking the fog out of the room. The air began to clear immediately, and, without the ghostlight to draw on, the ghosts quickly faded away and were gone, becoming shadows, and less than shadows. In a few moments, the fog had lifted, sucked entirely away, leaving behind a perfectly ordinary-looking, entirely empty floor. JC strode forward to join Kim. She was still glowing, but not as fiercely. She turned to meet him-a man with glowing eyes and a woman who glowed. Happy had to look away. It was too much for him, too much for any human to look upon. Or at least, that was what he told himself. He glanced back sharply as Melody came charging through the swing doors. She took one look at JC and Kim, staring into each other’s glowing eyes, and looked away.

“Nice work with the air-conditioning,” said Happy.

“No problem,” said Melody. “I’m not entirely sure where the fog’s gone, but that’s a problem for another day.”

“And hopefully another team,” said Happy. “Because once I’m out of this building, they will not see my twitching arse for dust.”

Melody glanced quickly at the glowing couple. “Did I miss something?”

“Something,” Happy agreed.

They glanced cautiously at JC and Kim, surrounded by a golden glow, with glowing eyes only for each other.

“Makes you wonder if this is how we’ll all feel, when we finally meet the New People,” said Happy.