Spirits from Beyond

NINE

The main bar of the King’s Arms seemed reassuringly calm and normal after the extremes of the upper floor. Only the unrelenting din of the storm raging outside remained to remind them that the game wasn’t over yet. JC went behind the bar, found three unbroken glasses, and ceremoniously poured out the last of the good brandy. They all toasted each other solemnly while Kim looked on wistfully. Happy knocked his brandy back in one gulp, ignoring the disparaging looks from the other two, who knew how to treat a good brandy.

“This stuff is feeling more and more medicinal,” said Happy, slamming his glass back down on the bar and looking about him distractedly.

“You should know,” said Melody.

“Children, children,” murmured JC. “Do me a favour and slap each other round the head. I haven’t got the energy.”

“So what do we do now?” said Melody, deliberately averting her gaze from the bar’s windows, as they jumped and rattled in their frames. “I mean, we’ve dealt with all the obvious trouble, on the upper floor; but it doesn’t seem to have changed anything. Listen to that storm!”

“Not a fit night out for man or beast,” muttered Happy, looking glumly into his empty glass. “If it rains any harder, it’ll be ark-building time.”

And then his head came up suddenly, and he looked quickly about him.

“Hold everything and pass the ammunition. Something. . is heading our way. I can feel it.”

JC put down his glass and looked steadily at Happy. “What kind of Something are we talking about here, Happy? Is it the dark, coming back again?”

“No,” said Kim. “I can feel it, too. Listen. .”

JC came out from behind the bar to join the others, and they all stood close together. Listening. The sound of the storm outside seemed to fade away, retreating into the distance, just so they could hear what was coming. Voices. . voices that seemed to come from every direction at once, drifting in from all around them. A slow susurrus of human voices, whispering. Rising and falling, but slowly growing in volume. Spoken conversations, shouted arguments, raucous laughter, and the sobbing of broken hearts. More and more voices, from everywhere at once, filling the whole bar from end to end. Growing steadily louder and more distinct.

Voices, voices, more and more of them, entire crowds of men and women fighting to be heard. Other sounds arose in the background: what might have been fights, with broken furniture; lovers’ quarrels; the raucous singing of disreputable songs. Everything you might expect to hear from every kind of bar.

But it seemed to JC that there was something strange, something decidedly off, about these distant and disembodied voices. Many of them were oddly accented, with the kind of extreme dialects you don’t hear any more. Harshly pitched voices, speaking the kind of English that hadn’t been spoken for centuries. And as the clamour of voices rose to an uproar, JC was sure he could hear other languages mixed into the general hubbub-Norman, Saxon, Celtic, Latin-all the old lost tongues of England. And some things JC couldn’t even recognise. England’s linguistic history had always been full of strange bedfellows.

“A whole army of dead voices,” said Melody, raising her voice to make herself heard above the din. “It’s like everyone who ever patronised this pub has come back, for an after-life reunion.”

“All human life is here,” said JC. “And all human death, apparently.”

Finally, the ghosts appeared. Grim, grey, roughly human shapes, glowing with their own unnatural light as they came walking through the walls from every side at once. Some slipped in through the main door, as naturally as you please, while others came tripping down the backstairs. More and more of them, filling up the bar with their cold, spectral presence. Some rose out of the floor, while others dropped down from the ceiling, following stairways and entrances that had existed once, long ago, in earlier incarnations of the building that eventually became the King’s Arms. When it was an inn, a tavern, a meeting-house.

Melody and Happy moved quickly to stand back-to-back.

“Hold your ground,” said JC, sternly. “They’re only ghosts. We can do ghosts.”

And still they came, forcing their way in, an endless flow of the dead, walking right through the tables and chairs, and even each other. Glowing figures overlapped as they tried to occupy the same limited space, dressed in clothing and outfits and even rough armour, from a hundred different periods of Time Past. All of them talking at once, the terrible clamour rising and falling. . And yet even through the din, JC slowly became aware that he couldn’t hear any sounds of movement from the ghosts. No footsteps, no bodies jostling against each other.

And, he couldn’t fit a single voice to any particular ghost. As though the voices and the apparitions came from different places.

Melody opened her lap-top on the bar-counter and fired up. She used her scanners to pick out images from the most-recent-looking ghosts, then set them against local records, trying to put some names to the deceased faces. Hoping to work out who they were and why they’d come back. JC could tell from her face that she wasn’t having much luck.

“There’s one good thing,” said Happy.

“Really?” said Melody, without looking up from what she was doing. “Tell me. I’d love to hear it.”

“There are two faces I don’t see anywhere in this spooky crowd,” said Happy. “I don’t see Adrian Brook or his Lydia. Their spirits aren’t trapped here. They got away.”

“You’re right,” said JC. “That is a good thing. Not a terribly useful piece of information, but. .”

“I don’t do useful,” said Happy. “What do you want? Miracles?”

“Yes, please,” said JC. “I could use one if you’ve got one about you. I swear this case is wearing me down. Every time I think I’ve got it worked out, it changes gear and speeds off in another direction.”

“Hello,” said Melody. “This is interesting. .”

“In the absence of a miracle, I’ll settle for interesting,” said JC. “What have you got, Mel?”

“Look at the ghosts,” said Melody. “They’re avoiding us. According to my scanners, there’s a perfect circle around us that the ghosts aren’t entering. They actually change direction at the last moment, to avoid it.”

“Yes!” said Kim. “I can feel it. It’s you, Melody! Or, at least, you and your lap-top. You’ve established a circle of scientific reality that the ghosts can’t enter. I’m standing right at the edge of the circle, and it is weirding me out big time. As though scientific reality itself is trying to push me away because it doesn’t believe in me. It’s like a very loud voice telling me I don’t exist. If I didn’t know better, I think I’d find that very upsetting. These ghosts all around us. . they’re simply memories, trapped in this building. Slowly disintegrating, down the centuries, into little more than sound and fury and increasingly unstable images. Not really proper ghosts at all, to my mind. .”

She gestured dismissively at the ghosts as they came near, and a grey hand shot out of the crowd and fastened onto her wrist. Kim looked at the hand in shock, unable to believe anything could actually touch her. And then she was dragged sharply out of the scientific circle and hauled away into the crowding ghosts. If she did cry out, she couldn’t be heard above the raised voices.

JC immediately went to go after her, but Happy and Melody grabbed him by both arms and dragged him back. He fought them for a moment, then stopped and stood still, breathing hard. Happy and Melody let go of his arms and stepped back, and watched him anxiously.

“You have to stay in the circle, JC,” Melody said carefully. “We’re only safe from the ghosts as long as we stay inside the circle.”

“It’s all right; really!” said Happy. “It’s not like Kim’s in any danger; she’s a ghost, right? She can’t come to any harm.”

“You don’t know that,” said JC. “They were able to touch her. And ghosts can be hurt. I found that out down in the London Underground.”

“That was different!” Melody said firmly. “That was Fenris Tenebrae; these are common or garden everyday ghosts. Kim’s been around; she’s not just any ghost, now. She can take care of herself. You’re the one who might be in danger out there. We don’t know what’s going on here, JC. We have to be careful.”

JC nodded abruptly. He hadn’t actually calmed down, but he did his best to seem more in command of himself. He looked at Melody, then at her lap-top.

“Talk to me, Mel. Explain to me what’s happening. I am prepared to accept informed guesses.”

“It’s Time,” said Melody, her attention fixed on the information streaming across her lap-top screen. “Time is breaking down in the King’s Arms. As in: Time doesn’t seem to be as tightly nailed down at the corners as it ought to be. Linear Time is being disrupted, under direct attack from the sheer power of a storm that’s been building for centuries.”

JC turned to Happy. “All right, you explain it to me.”

“It’s all concerned with the terrible anger generated by the death of the blonde woman all those years ago,” said Happy. “Her sacrifice, in a local place of power, gave birth to Something the Druid priests never anticipated-a great scream of rage given shape and form and power by an unsuspected bad place. So that Something set in motion long ago is still happening. Growing, building in strength, searching for a way to break into our reality. The storm we hear. . is the smile on the face of the tiger.”

“Could you be any more vague?” said JC.

“If you want,” said Happy. “Look, the storm started long ago. Back in the Druid days. The rage of the sacrificed victim got mixed up in it and gave it focus. Something’s held it off, all these years, but now it’s back. And it’s mad. Tell me you’ve got it now, JC. Because all I’ve got left is mime and finger-painting.”

“I get it,” said JC. “You’re saying that maybe we had it wrong before. The storm wasn’t the cry of the blonde woman. Just the opposite. Everything that’s happening here, from the rooms to the blonde woman to the ghosts, was really a manifestation of the storm.”

He glared about him, into the shifting, overlapping layers of ghosts that filled the main bar from one end to the other. Rank upon rank of shimmering grey figures, some more human or more complete than others. All of them constantly moving and stirring, never still for a moment. There was a general air of. . restlessness, as though they were all lost, or searching for something they couldn’t quite remember. They walked through walls and furniture and even the far ends of the bar-counter.

Still more ghosts came walking in, through the walls and the windows and the closed main door. Some seemed as solid as any real person while others faded in and out, wisps of human-shaped mist. Some had strange lights inside them that came and went, while others seemed oddly out of focus, as though not entirely sure who they were.

“I’ve never seen this many ghosts in one place at once,” said Melody.

“Call Guinness,” said Happy. “And yet. . I have to say, JC; they’re not actually frightening, as such. And I am an expert when it comes to being frightened. They don’t feel. . threatening.”

And then he broke off and fell back a step. Some of the ghosts were starting to notice that there was one place in the bar they couldn’t get into. They’d been banging up against the perimeter of an invisible circle of reason for some time; but now more and more of them were turning their dead gaze on the one place they couldn’t go. They turned their heads to look in that direction, with their cold, unblinking eyes, and those on the perimeter crowded up against the invisible barrier. They pressed slowly forward, taking a slow, steady interest in the three living souls inside the circle. And not in a good way.

The ghosts could see them now.

The crash of voices shut off in a moment, replaced by an intent, watchful silence. The ghosts stopped moving. They stood still, staring into the circle. An army of ghosts, with only one thought and one interest in common. To get in.

“Still think they’re not dangerous, Happy?” said JC.

“Something’s changed,” said Happy. “I can feel it.”

“Why are they looking at us?” said Melody, one hand resting protectively on her lap-top. “What do they want?”

“What do ghosts usually want?” said JC. “The one thing they can’t have. Life. Rooms aren’t the only things with unnatural appetites.”

“You’re not making me feel any better,” said Happy. “I really don’t like being looked at like this.”

“But we’re protected!” said Melody, her voice rising. “We had to go through all kinds of training, at the Carnacki Institute, before they’d allow us to go out into the field. Reinforcing our auras against possession, putting in extra layers of psychic protection, so we’d be safe from. . Things like this!”

“You might want to mention that to these ghosts,” said Happy. “Because they don’t seem to know that.”

“It’s the bloody local power source,” said JC. “They’re drawing on it to sustain their existence. . Or, more likely, it’s using them to get at us. The local power source is the storm! Or it’s the rage that drives the storm. Or Something. I swear, this whole case makes my head hurt. . Either way, the Big Bad has tried every other way to get at us, so now it’s using the one thing the King’s Arms has more of than anything else-ghosts.”

“Yes, but they’re still just ghosts,” said Melody. “Like you said. We can handle ghosts. They can’t reach us inside this circle.”

“Maybe,” said JC. “Who knows what ghosts can do when you put this many of them together? When it comes to things like scientific reality, I don’t think things are as clear-cut here, as everywhere else.”

The ghosts were pressing really close now, right up against the edges of the circle. JC and Happy and Melody huddled close together, looking quickly back and forth to make sure nothing was sneaking up on them. The ghosts were looking right at them, with cold, empty eyes. The sheer presence of so much death in one place was almost unbearably oppressive. JC could feel his heart hammering in his chest. It was getting harder to breathe. Like he had to fight for every breath of air. Some of the ghosts put their hands against the invisible barrier of the circle and pushed. The lap-top burst into flames on the bar-counter, and the scanners exploded. The first ghostly fingertips pushed forward, through the barrier.

Some of the ghosts were smiling.

JC stepped forward, whipped off his sunglasses, and glared right into the faces of the ghosts nearest him. They recoiled, falling back as though thrust away by some unseen force, unable to bear the pressure of JC’s golden, glowing eyes. But others immediately pressed forward to take their place, stepping right through the retreating ghosts. None of them could actually meet JC’s altered gaze, but it affected some more than others. And he could only look in one direction at a time. The ghosts were surging forward from every side now, and the protective circle seemed to be shrinking. JC looked desperately back and forth; and the ghosts looked back at him.

“So many ghosts. .” said Happy. “I’ve never seen so many in one place, even in the oldest parts of London.”

“What’s calling them here?” said Melody.

JC put his sunglasses back on. “Can’t help feeling I’m getting less and less mileage out of my gaze.”

“Maybe the world’s getting used to it,” said Melody.

JC looked at her. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know!” said Melody.

“Whatever’s at the heart of what’s happening here,” JC said heavily, “we must be pretty close to finding it or it wouldn’t be trying so hard to stop us.”

“I don’t think so,” said Happy, slowly. “It doesn’t feel like that. . I may be wrong, JC, but it really doesn’t feel to me like we’re in any danger from these ghosts.”

JC looked at him. “They seem desperate enough to get in and get at us. Are you sure about this, Happy?”

“Of course I’m not sure!” said Happy. “There’s so much spectral information here, it’s swamping my Sight. But look at their faces! That’s not hate, or malevolence, or even revenge. That’s. . need, anticipation, maybe even hope. They don’t want to kill us; they want something from us. And you know what; I don’t see the blonde woman anywhere.”

“She isn’t a ghost, remember?” said Melody. “Though. . I suppose she could be orchestrating all this, from a distance.”

“Take a good look around, Happy,” said JC. “Are you sure you can’t See her anywhere?”

Happy snarled and shook his head. “I keep telling you; the aether’s so saturated with psychic energies, it’s like trying to look through thick fog.”

“You make this stuff up as you go along, don’t you?” said JC.

Kim suddenly reappeared, right there inside the shrinking circle with them, smiling brightly. Everyone jumped. Melody glared at her.

“How can you be in here, with us-in a circle of scientific reality? Not that I’m not glad to see you, of course, but. .”

“I can be here because I’m linked to all of you,” said Kim. “I belong with you. Your affirmation of my existence overpowers science’s need to deny me.”

“All right, now you’re making stuff up, too,” said JC. “Where have you been, Kim?”

“Searching,” Kim said cheerfully. “The ghosts didn’t want to hurt me; they wanted to point us in the right direction. There’s a power behind these ghosts that’s trying to distract you. Follow me.”

She walked right out of the circle and kept going, and the ghosts fell back on every side, opening a wide corridor for her to walk through. JC and the others moved cautiously after Kim, and the army of ghosts let them. Walking through the ghosts made JC want to shake and shudder. So many ghosts in one place projected a spiritual cold, the absolute opposite of life’s warmth and vitality. JC made himself stare straight ahead. Happy and Melody crowded in close behind him. Kim led them through the main bar and all the ranks and rows of watching ghosts, all the way to the main entrance and out the door. The ghosts stood there and watched them go.

* * *

Outside in the car park, everything had changed. To start with, the car park wasn’t there any more. The concrete base and its surrounding low stone walls had simply disappeared, replaced by a great open area of bare earth punctuated with tufting grass. Like an old clearing in a forest. The sky above was full of stars and a bright full moon. There was no rain, and no wind, but JC could still hear the storm. When he looked up, the storm was circling overhead, like a great whirlpool of disturbed air, hurtling round and round in the sky above the King’s Arms. The pub looked as it had, with friendly lights blazing from all the downstairs windows.

It took JC a moment to realise that the sound of the storm had changed. The roaring and the rage was so much clearer now. It sounded. . like a living thing.

But what drew everyone’s attention away from the pub and the clearing and the storm was even more impressive. Standing opposite the King’s Arms, on the other side of the clearing, towering high above them, was a giant Wicker Man. A huge, roughly human shape, woven together out of dark green wicker strands, with a great barrel chest set on thick, stumpy legs. Stiff, downward-thrusting arms ended in spiky wooden fingers; and all of it was topped with a blunt, square, featureless head. A massive wicker cage to hold all the people and livestock the Druids would burn alive, in sacrifice. Their gift to their gods, for when they wanted things the gods didn’t want to give them, without tribute. Just standing there, its blunt, featureless head rising way up into the night sky, its dark green shape overpowering in the moonlight, the Wicker Man was an ugly, brutal thing.

Its feet stood in a huge pool of recently spilled blood. JC almost choked on the thick copper smell of it. Dark oils dripped from the spike-fingered hands, old-time accelerants to help it burn better. The Wicker Man looked disturbingly real and solid, but it was full of ghosts. All that remained of all the people and animals that had been sacrificed in Wicker Men in the past. They glowed faintly, like ghostly candles, and did not move or speak. They were burned, blackened bodies, faces still stretched in their last, agonised, dying screams. They stared past the wicker bars of their prison with dark, eyeless faces, looking down at the Ghost Finders, begging silently for help. Or revenge. Or-perhaps-their freedom, at last.

Standing before the Wicker Man, smiling calmly and utterly composed, was the blonde woman. She wore a simple white sacrificial shift stained with a great splash of blood across her lower abdomen. Her death wound, still dripping steadily after all the years. She saw JC looking at it and nodded briefly.

“Oh yes,” she said. “Nailed my guts to the old oak tree. They really did. Two of them held my arms, while the third rammed an iron spike right through me, pinning me to the trunk of the tree. It took me a long time to die.”

“Where are we?” said JC. “Or should that be when are we?”

“We’re outside the King’s Arms,” said the blonde woman. “Outside of Time and Space. For the moment. The inn has been here for centuries, under many names and identities, built to help hold off the awful thing the Druid priests created here, in this clearing. They used the power my sacrifice gave them to perform a great magical working, and it all went horribly wrong. I wasn’t killed so they could summon the storm; my death gave them the power to stop it. Except my dying here, in this bad place, gave me power. My dying curse linked me to the storm and this place, which is at least partly why Time and Space are so messed up here.”

“You know,” said Happy, “I have to say, you speak very good modern English for someone who lived and died fifteen hundred years ago.”

“I’ve been hanging around the inn for ages,” said the blonde woman. “Watching, and listening. I paid attention. And it’s not like I have human limitations any longer. You’ve all done remarkably well, dealing with the individual horrors of the King’s Arms, breaking the many chains that held me down. So I am free enough now to tell you the truth of what happened in this awful place. Whether you’ll be able to do anything about it remains to be seen. But I have hope. At last.

“Before there was ever a building of any kind here, this was a place of worship and sacrifice. The Druid priests practiced their nasty arts here, to help them protect and control their people. And in this place, they performed a great and terrible magic, to put an end to a storm that seemed like it would never end. It rained for months, without pause. Flooding the roads and saturating the fields, washing away the good topsoil. Rivers burst their banks and carried away the bridges. Rising waters washed away the crops, flooded the local habitations, and destroyed settlements for miles around. The livestock drowned, and the people were forced to flee the area.

“The Druid priests couldn’t have that. You can’t control people when there aren’t any people. Those who did remain were turning against the priests, who were clearly not in favour with the gods any more. So the priests raised the power they needed, with one of the oldest forms of magic. Necromancy, the magic of murder. They couldn’t stop the storm, or dissipate it, so they did the next best thing and forced it outside our reality. Made a crack in Space and Time and forced the storm through. They sacrificed a lot of people to gain that power. But then, as far as the Druid priests were concerned, that was what people were for. They used Wicker Men, at first. Ranks and ranks of them, stretched out across the land, burning like beacons in the night. And then, when that wasn’t enough, they picked out certain significant people and sacrificed them in the local places of power.

“They murdered me here, in a clearing that everyone else had the good sense to stay well clear of. It was a bad place, even then. My sacrifice, in such a place, gave the priests the last piece of power they needed to drive the storm away. And that was that. They thought.”

“Hold everything,” said Happy. “Rain, rain, go away; come again another day? Really? That’s what this is all about?”

“They forced the storm outside the world, but they couldn’t destroy it,” said the blonde woman. “And all this time it’s been trying to get back. Growing bigger, and stronger, and more determined. Looking for a weak spot to force its way back in. Because it wasn’t just a storm, any more. My dying rage, amplified by the bad place, mixed with the storm. Gave it a purpose. The storm. . is my dying curse.

“Even after I died, some of me still remained here, linking the storm to this place. So the Druids had a house built, to hold me here, to hold me down. Which, of course, made the bad place even worse. No wonder the King’s Arms has always been lousy with ghosts.”

“What made you so. . special?” said JC. “That you could be responsible for all this?”

The blonde woman shrugged. “Perhaps I had magics and abilities of my own, unsuspected. Perhaps the bad place, and my awful death, brought them out of me. Because it is my rage that still drives the storm.”

“But all the Druid priests, and the people responsible for your death. . they’re all long gone,” said Melody.

The blonde woman shrugged again. “It’s a lot easier to start something than it is to stop it. Revenge, like love, is blind. It wants what it wants.”

“What’s your name?” said JC, as kindly as he could.

“I don’t remember,” said the blonde woman. “That woman is gone, long gone. It doesn’t matter. It’s not as if I’m real. I’m only a small part of something much bigger. I’ve been here so long, held in this place, that I had to give up most of my memories to survive.”

“Are you a part of the storm, or is it the other way around?” said Happy. “It sounds like a living thing.”

“We’re. . connected,” said the blonde woman. “I’m the rage that drives the storm on; but it isn’t just a storm any longer. Hasn’t been for centuries. It took what it needed from me, to keep it strong. But. . I have no control over it. I’m only a part of this. . the part that has watched over this inn, and these people, and this town for so long. . that I have formed a fondness for them. This small part doesn’t want to see them all die. But that’s me speaking. Only a very small part of what’s happening.”

“What do you want with us?” Melody said bluntly.

“I would have thought that was obvious,” said the woman. “I want you to stop me. Stop the storm from returning and destroying everything. The storm is so big now, I think it could drown the whole world without getting tired. By removing the layers of ghosts and traps and Things from Outside from the King’s Arms, you’ve managed to remove some of the barriers that kept the storm out.”

“How do we stop it?” said JC.

“You don’t understand,” said the blonde woman. “I’m only the small rational part that’s left. My rage has taken on a power of its own. It drives the storm on. It is the storm. I have no control over it. That’s why I need you. I can speak to you, warn you, but that’s all. The greater part of me still wants its revenge, denied for centuries. All I can say to you is: remember what Brook told you, about the oldest part of the inn. Remember its significance.”

She’d barely finished speaking when a great bolt of lightning slammed down from the circling storm overhead. It grounded itself through the blonde woman, pinning her in place, like an iron spike to a tree-trunk. She faded away, becoming a ghost image of herself. The lightning bolt snapped off, and the faintly glowing human shape rose into the air and was pulled away backwards, faster and faster. The last expression JC could make out on her face was a terrible resignation. The figure flew across the clearing, still rising into the air, until it slammed into the massive curving chest of the Wicker Man and was absorbed.

They could all see her for a moment, looking out through the wicker bars of her cage, a prisoner in the Wicker Man along with all the other dead sacrificial victims. And then she faded slowly away, lost among all the other ghost candles.

The huge Wicker Man creaked loudly as its great blocky head slowly turned to look down on the Ghost Finders. Its whole enormous structure stretched and groaned, as the Wicker Man raised its great green arm, wooden fingers slowly clenching into a jagged fist. The Wicker Man was alive.

“Look on the bright side,” said Happy. “At least it isn’t on fire.”

Two dark yellow flames appeared, burning fiercely in the blank face-fiery eyes for the Wicker Man to see them with.

JC glared at Happy. “You had to say it, didn’t you?”

They all scattered, as the giant Wicker Man surged forward, its huge bulk moving with impossible speed. The massive wooden fist came sweeping down and hammered onto the bare ground with such force that the earth split open from one end of the clearing to the other. All of the Ghost Finders were sent sprawling. They heaved themselves back onto their feet again, and JC yelled for everyone to run in different directions, so the Wicker Man would find it harder to target them. But Kim stuck by his side, refusing to leave him, and Happy and Melody wouldn’t be separated. They did move quickly away from JC and Kim, as the Wicker Man raised its terrible hand again, glaring down with its flaming eyes. And then it stepped forward on its great stocky legs, making the ground jump and dance as it strode forward to stand between the Ghost Finders and the King’s Arms.

Melody produced her machine-pistol and opened fire. Cursed and blessed ammunition stitched long ragged rows of holes across the wide chest, blasting the green threads apart; but the Wicker Man didn’t even shudder under the impact. Melody kept on firing anyway, raking the head and chest until she ran out of bullets. She lowered her gun, breathing hard, and looked at Happy.

“I can’t reach it!” he said, his hands clenched into desperate fists. “I’m not even sure there’s anything in there to be reached! It’s not a living thing, it’s a construct! A memory of the Past given shape and form and malice by the local power source! JC! Tell me what to do!”

“To start with, keep its attention!” said JC. “I’ve got an idea.”

“Whatever this idea is, I love it!” Happy said immediately. “You have my full and total support! Go ahead and-Oh bloody hell, it’s moving again!”

The Wicker Man stooped forward, bending right over, its massive hands opening as they reached out to grab the Ghost Finders. Its huge feet stamped down hard as it moved, so that the bare earth jumped under JC’s feet as he ran for his life, Kim hovering at his side. Melody and Happy ran in the opposite direction, trying to distract the Wicker Man. The great jagged hands swept back and forth but couldn’t find anything. JC couldn’t help noticing that the Wicker Man’s movements were becoming more supple, more sure. As though it was leaning how to move, how to be alive. He stopped where he was, took a deep breath, and concentrated. Kim hovered at his side, smiling bravely, trying to be supportive. JC put his head back and addressed the heavens, trying very hard not to look at the storm circling overhead.

“Move, JC!” yelled Melody. “It’s coming your way!”

“I am calling for help!” said JC. “You said it was no coincidence that we were sent here; and I think you’re right. We’re here because of our experiences with old Druid ways, down in London Undertowen, and because we’re the only ones who can stop this. Because we have a trump card. Before the old god Lud left this reality, he said he owed us one last favour; and I’m thinking this is the time to call it in. So, Lud! Are you listening? We need your help, right now!”

“No need to shout,” said Lud. “I’m dead, not deaf. And I’ve been waiting for your call.”

He stood towering above them, facing off against the giant Wicker Man, who seemed frozen in place. If JC hadn’t known better, he’d have said it was shocked. The Wicker Man was huge; but Lud was massive. A great old god from when the land was young, Lud stood a hundred feet tall and more, looming over the Wicker Man; and he didn’t look like a fossilised statue any more. His dark, leathery skin gleamed with vitality, and his huge, horned head rose grandly into the night sky. His eyes glowed with the same golden gleam as JC’s. Lud looked down and smiled slowly, showing huge, blocky teeth.

“I knew you’d need me here, for this one last unfinished thing from my Time. Go to the inn. Do what needs to be done. And I will buy you some time.”

He strode forward and grabbed hold of the Wicker Man with his great clawed hands. The Wicker Man grabbed onto the god, and the two huge figures struggled together, staggering back and forth across the clearing, striking at each other with terrible blows that could have toppled hills. Lud was bigger and stronger, but every time he tore into the Wicker Man, its dark green body stitched itself back together again. They swayed back and forth, their great feet stamping on the bare earth with such force they cracked it apart. The old god Lud struck down the Wicker Man with savage force; but it always rose again, re-formed and remade by the power of the storm circling above it.

JC led his people back to the King’s Arms, dodging this way and that to avoid being trodden on; and then they all stopped as a grey army of ghosts came pouring out of the inn, passing through the walls. JC braced himself, but the ghosts swept right past him, their dead gaze set on the two huge fighting figures. They swarmed up and over the Wicker Man, clinging to its arms and legs, struggling to hold it back and slow it down. Because they saw at last a chance to be free from the old power that held them. Lud laughed aloud, and hit the Wicker Man’s blunt head so hard his fist buried itself deep inside.

JC gathered up his people and ran back inside the King’s Arms.

* * *

Inside the bar, everything seemed perfectly calm and normal. All the ghosts were gone. But from outside there still came the roar of the storm and the sound of two giant things crashing together. JC looked quickly around the main bar, then up at the ceiling. He pointed a triumphant finger at the long, exposed, oaken beams.

“There! That’s it! Brook said those beams were the oldest surviving parts of the pub. . I’m betting they were taken from the original oak tree the Druid priests used for their sacrifices, the bastards. God knows how much death and blood that wood soaked up in its time.”

“So if we destroy the beams, we destroy the one remaining physical link between Past and Present!” said Melody.

“Seems a bit obvious,” said Happy. “Are you guys sure about this?”

“Of course I’m not sure!” said JC. “I’m guessing! It’s a wild stab in the dark, which is what you’ll be getting if you don’t stop arguing! Have you got a better idea?”

“Never liked those beams,” said Happy.

The storm was growing louder. JC moved quickly over to the nearest window and looked out. The great circling storm was descending out of the night sky, lowering onto the great heads of the Wicker Man and the god Lud as they crashed back and forth in the clearing. JC didn’t wait to see what would happen when the storm reached them. He turned away from the window, glared about him, and gestured for Happy and Melody to help him drag one of the tables beneath the oak beams. The three of them pulled it into place, clambered up onto it, and tried to pry the old beams loose. Only to discover the beams had been very firmly fastened in place long ago, with heavy copper nails. They all tugged and pried at the beams but couldn’t budge them.

Kim ghosted up through the table and hovered above it, studying the beams at close range. And then she smiled coldly, and wagged an authoritative finger at them.

“Behave yourselves and stop being a pain. Or there will be trouble.”

There was a slight pause, and one by one the copper nails rose out of the beams. They squealed loudly as they rocked back and forth, forcing themselves out of the wood. JC looked at Kim.

“Another little trick that you picked up on your travels?”

Kim smiled dazzlingly. “You’d be amazed what I can do when I put my mind to it.”

The last of the nails fell away, but the beams remained stubbornly in place. JC and Happy jumped down from the table, grabbed up heavy fire-irons from the open fire-place, then scrambled back up onto the rocking table again. Melody nodded approvingly as Happy handed her a heavy iron poker. The three of them attacked the oak beams with their new tools, forcing them deep into the wooden sides; and one by one they prised the heavy beams loose and sent them crashing to the floor.

By the time the last one fell away, JC and Happy and Melody were soaked with sweat and breathing hard. They had to help each other down from the table and lean on each other for support as they got their breath back.

“I did not sign up for manual labour,” said Happy. “If I wanted to work hard for a living, I’d have my head examined.”

They all looked round sharply. The storm was upon them. The roar of wind and rain was suddenly deafening, almost drowning out the sounds of battle still going on outside. The glass in the windows shattered as the wind ripped the wooden frames out of the old stone wall. The main entrance door was blown right off its hinges and fell clattering to the floor. Heavy rain blasted into the inn through the ragged openings where windows had been, almost like a storm at sea. For the first time, there were great long rolls of thunder, and jagged bursts of light from heavy forked lightning. The storm had arrived; and it wanted in. That old rage, which would not be denied.

“All right!” said Happy, flinching away from the rain spraying in. “We’ve got the beams! What now?”

“I say we take a tip from the Wicker Man,” said JC. “Burn the bloody things and destroy the physical link forever!”

“In here?” said Melody. “We light this much wood up, and we’ll all go up with it!”

“Not if we set a few alight, to get the pile started, then run like hell,” said Happy, judiciously. “I’m really very good at running like hell.”

They all looked up suddenly, open-mouthed despite themselves, as the ceiling lights rocked madly back and forth. And then, with a great creaking and groaning, the whole upper floor of the King’s Arms was torn away and thrown behind the inn, landing with an impact that shook what was left of the building. And then the whole ceiling was ripped away, revealing the Wicker Man standing over them, holding what was left of the disintegrating ceiling in his great green hands. The fires that were its eyes blazed fiercely. The wind and the rain blasted into the bar, immediately soaking JC and Happy and Melody to the skin. And then two massive hands grabbed the Wicker Man from behind. The Wicker Man dropped the ceiling and staggered backwards, as Lud hauled it away from what was left of the King’s Arms.

“Out!” said JC. “Everybody out of here, right now, before this mess collapses on us!”

“Way ahead of you, boss,” said Happy.

* * *

Back out in the clearing, the storm no longer hung overhead. It had come down to earth, at last, unleashing all the rage it had contained for so long. Gale-force winds blew so hard, JC and Happy and Melody could barely stand up straight and had to cling to each other to keep from being blown away. Rain hammered down with such force, it bounced back from the bare-earth floor of the clearing. Thunder roared, and forked lightning split the sky.

Lud had forced the Wicker Man to its knees and was happily tearing it to pieces. He’d already ripped off one of its arms. It lay twitching on the ground. Lud grabbed the square, featureless head with both hands, digging his clawed fingers in deep. The Wicker Man lurched back and forth but couldn’t break free. Lud roared triumphantly and ripped the head right off the green shoulders, crushing it beneath his hands. The two flaring eyes went out. The body stopped struggling and was still. And it seemed to JC that some of the strength went out of the storm.

The ghosts fell away from the motionless body of the Wicker Man, no longer needed. They stood in long ranks, unmoved and unbothered by the wind and rain, glowing fitfully like candles in danger of going out. They looked at the Ghost Finders. Waiting to see what they would do. Lud threw away the crushed wicker head and nodded familiarly to JC.

“So much evil done, in my name,” he said. His voice wasn’t all that loud, but it rang out easily over the storm. “All because I wanted to be worshipped. . Nothing like dying to give you an appreciation for life. All life. I am leaving this world now, and it is only right I take some of this old evil with me.”

He disappeared, with a great flash of otherworldly light; and when the glare died away, he was gone, and so was the Wicker Man. The wind dropped away, some, and the rain wasn’t as bad. JC grinned. He’d suspected that the storm had placed a lot of its power in the Wicker Man.

Happy looked at JC. “What do we do now?”

“Give me a minute,” said JC. “I’m thinking. .”

“I don’t think we have a minute!” said Melody. “The oak beams are still back in the inn. Should we drag them out here and burn them?”

“In this rain?” said Happy.

“Oh, I think they’ll go up easily enough,” said Melody.

“No,” said JC.

Melody looked at him. “No? What do you mean, no? It was your idea!”

“I think I’ve had a better one,” said JC. “Fire is the old way. The Druid way. And I have had enough of that old evil.”

He looked out across the clearing. Where the Wicker Man had been, the blonde woman stood in her white shift, untouched by the storm. JC walked over to stand before her, smiling reassuringly.

“Go,” he said kindly. “Go. There’s nothing holding you here any longer. This is still a place of power, the local power source; so use it to do something right, at last. Let your rage go. Let the storm go. . And be at peace, at last.”

The blonde woman considered his words; and then nodded slowly. She rose into the air, light as a moonbeam, until, finally, she hung in the night sky, high above the clearing. Glowing bright as any star. One by one, the ghosts rose after her, taking the rain with them. The rain-drops reversed direction, falling upwards. The wind slowed, and calmed, and died out. The storm was gone. After so many years, only the rage had kept it going. One by one, the ghosts winked out, like blown-out candles. Until only the blonde woman remained. She looked around slowly, saying good-bye to the land and people she had looked over for so long, then. . quietly and without any fuss, she was gone.

* * *

JC looked slowly around him. The car park was back, and not a drop of rain or breath of wind anywhere. The King’s Arm was still a ruin, though.

“How about that?” said Happy. “After everything we’ve been through, all it took to put things right was the quiet voice of reason.”

“Shame that doesn’t work more often,” said Melody.

“One big tick in the win column, I think,” said JC. “Pity about the King’s Arms, but then, it’s not like Brook’s around to complain about it.”

“To save the inn, it was necessary to destroy the inn,” Melody said solemnly.

“Cold, Mel,” said Happy. “How are we going to explain what’s happened to the townspeople?

“Lightning strike,” said JC.

“What about the local power source?” said Happy. “Is it still here? And what was it, originally?”

“I don’t suppose we’ll ever know,” said JC. “It’s a bad place, that made bad things possible. Hopefully, it will lie quiet now; so long as no-one’s stupid enough to disturb it. I’ll put a note in my report, for the Institute to keep an eye on things, just in case.”

“Let’s go home,” said Kim. “We’re not needed any more.”

“Good idea,” said JC. “I think we’ve done as much damage here as we can.”