Ghost of a Smile (12 page)

She fiddled with the exposed parts of the computer, and what she was hearing burst suddenly from the speakers. A sound like a never-ending wind, strange background noises like the singing of insane whales, the frantic pattering of a million angry insects. And then, slowly, human voices began to come forward, rising above the background gabble. Human voices, but far and far away, as though they'd had to cross some unimaginable distance to reach the world. It wasn't even clear what languages they were using.

“I just had an unnerving thought,” said Happy. “Could we be hearing the collective unconscious? I've always wanted to listen in to that.”

“You are entirely right, Happy, that is an unnerving thought,” said JC. “If you have any more, feel perfectly free to keep them to yourself. And anyway, I don't believe in the human unconscious.”

“Tough,” said Happy. “It believes in you.”

“Keep the noise down,” Melody said sharply. “I'm listening . . . EVP is a new and barely understood branch of physics. Or psychics. Either way, there's a lot of theories but hardly any hard evidence you can trust . . . and then there are moments like this when it rears up and bites you on the nose, and spooks the hell out of you. You are all hearing this, right? A sea of voices, coming and going, on a dead channel. Maybe it's the voices of everyone who ever spoke on the phone network, somehow recorded and preserved, only slowly fading away . . .”

“Or it could be the dead,” said Kim. Everyone looked at her, and she smiled sweetly. “Dead voices, on a dead channel. Still trying to reach out to the living, to make contact. I used to know this guy who was really into Electronic Voice Phenomena. He said it was the last great frontier of the unknown. He let me listen to some of the recordings he'd made, but I couldn't hear what he did. It was only noise . . . the audible equivalent of a Rorschach ink blot. The only shape and meaning is what we provide ourselves.” She looked down her ghostly nose at Melody. “I may not have a dozen science degrees, but I do know a thing or two.”

“There's far more to EVP than simple pattern recognition,” said Melody, a bit defensively. “Too many people have heard the same sort of thing . . . Voices where there couldn't be voices . . . The dead trying desperately to make contact with the living, to warn them about something, something terrible and terribly important . . .”

“How come the dead never want to tell us anything nice?” JC said wistfully.

“All right,” said Happy. “You're scaring me now.”

And then he broke off, as all the clashing voices and deafening background noise cut off abruptly, replaced by a single voice. Slow, dragging, every word an effort. Melody threw her mobile phone away from her, and they all listened to the speakers.

The voice stopped, and the computer speakers fell silent. There was not even a hint of hiss. Melody looked around, but the others were already off and running, heading for Room Seven.

They hadn't got far down the corridor when they all stumbled to a halt, because the door to Room Seven was quite clearly shut. The only closed door. JC looked quickly up and down the corridor, but there was no-one about. Melody caught up with them and glared at the closed door to Room Seven as though it was a personal insult. Happy stayed at the back, looking past everyone's shoulder. Kim seemed puzzled.

“All the doors were open the last time we came this way,” she said firmly. “It's not something you could miss, one shut door among so many open . . .”

“I walked right past that door to get to Room Fourteen,” said JC. “And I didn't see anything. Did anyone notice anything?”

They looked at each other, but no-one was sure, one way or the other.

“Somebody has been messing with our heads,” Happy said grimly. “To make us overlook Room Seven. And so subtly, so carefully, even I didn't realize it. He won't get away with that again, I'm ready for him now. And now I really want to see what's in that room. No-one craps in my head and gets away with it.”

Kim stepped forward and thrust her head right through the closed door.

“Oh bloody hell!” said Happy. “I hate it when ghost girl does that! That is so not natural. That is freaking me out big-time!”

“Then don't look,” said JC. “Anything, Kim?”

She pulled her head out of the door and smiled at JC. “No-one seems to be home. But it really is quite messy.”

JC moved in closer and looked the door over carefully. “The lock's been smashed. And the steel bolt's been ripped right out of its socket. I'd say this door was burst open, from the inside, and whoever did it had to be really strong.”

“Inhumanly strong?” said Melody.

“Seems likely,” said JC.

“Suddenly, I'm not at all keen to see what's in there,” said Happy. “You go ahead, I'll stand here and keep watch—
Take your hands off me!
”

“Well volunteered, that man,” said JC. “God loves a volunteer!”

He pulled the door open and pushed Happy forward into the room. Happy made a whole series of loud protestations, but by then he was already inside, so he shut up and tried for quiet dignity. He sniffed at the air and shook his head.

“Smells like a zoo in here . . . Like an animal house. Wild, musky, feral . . . And I can smell blood, too. Oh yes, there it is.”

By that time, they were all inside Room Seven, taking up most of the available space. The room had been trashed. The furniture and fittings had been smashed and torn apart. The carpet on the floor had been ripped and rucked up, as though trampled by wild animals. The computer had been beaten into small pieces and the pieces scattered everywhere.

“That's not easy to do,” said Melody. “Somebody really had a grudge against this machine.”

Everyone else was looking at the long claw marks gouged deep into the far wall. Blood was splashed thickly across walls and the ceiling. It hadn't been dried long. Great, heavy, dark red swatches of blood, and one oversized bloody handprint on the inside of the door. JC put his hand beside it, and the print was almost twice as large.

“This is where it all started,” he said finally. “The first unexpected reaction to the drug, perhaps? Did the test subject panic when the bad symptoms began? Did he cry out for help that never came and so had to smash his way out?”

“Was that his voice we heard?” said Melody. “Or was it someone who wanted us to see what someone else was hiding?”

“But look at the claw marks!” said Happy. “The size of them, and the depth of the grooves . . . think of the strength needed to do that much damage. And smell the animal stench in here! What did the Zarathustra drug do to the poor bastard?”

“Not the kind of superhuman change his minders were expecting, certainly,” said JC. He turned abruptly to Kim. “What do you see here? I need to know what you see because the dead often see things that are hidden from the living.”

“Of course,” said Kim, calmly. “Because the living couldn't cope.” She looked around, slowly. “I can't see whoever it was used to live here. It's as though all traces have been wiped clean, scoured out by the sheer intensity of what happened. No stone tape, no psychic imprinting . . . the occurrence was too powerful for that . . . But I am feeling things. Emotions. Strong, supercharged, impossibly extreme emotions, saturating the aether.”

Melody sniffed. “She's making it up. No such thing as aether.”

“Lot you know, girl geek,” said Kim. “Emotions . . . but not human emotions.”

“Animal?” said JC.

“No. More than human,” said Kim. “I can feel them, but I can't understand them, or describe how they make me feel. It's like listening to a thunderstorm that's also a name that's also a howl of rage and horror and enlightenment. Emotions so big, so complicated . . . they frighten me, JC.”

Happy was concentrating so hard his face was one big scowl, trying to get some feel, some sense of what Kim was experiencing, but it eluded him.

“I'm getting a word, JC,” he said finally. “Yes, a word. Repeated over and over. One word. ReSet.”

And then his gaze snapped past JC, caught by something behind him. Happy cried out, and pointed urgently with a quivering hand. Everyone spun round, to stare at the cracked mirror on the wall behind them. They all looked hard, but all they saw were their own startled reflections.

“What is it, Happy?” said JC. “What did you see?”

“There was a face!” Happy's face was grey, wet with sudden sweat. “There was a face in the mirror, and it wasn't one of us!”

They all looked again, but the reflection was still stubbornly only them.

“It's gone now,” said Happy. “But it was there. A face. Watching us!”

“All right,” said JC. “I believe you. What kind of face?”

“I don't know,” said Happy. He looked confused, like an overtired child. “It wasn't human . . . not really. A face, like a human face, but . . . more so. It was like God looking out of the mirror, and judging us.” He shook his head. “I can remember seeing it, but I can't remember what it looked like any more. As though my mind can't . . . hold on to it.”

JC nodded slowly. For all his nervous talk, Happy was a veteran of many cases, and there wasn't much that could genuinely shake him any more. Melody moved in close beside Happy, calming him with her presence.

“ReSet?” said JC. “You're sure about that?”

“Oh yes,” said Happy. “I heard it. Clear as a bell.”

Then the sounds started. They all looked round sharply as they heard running feet. A great many people, all heading down the corridor, towards Room Seven. JC darted out of the room, then stopped as he saw that the corridor was empty. The sounds grew louder and more urgent, and there were voices, too, shouting and crying out, voices overlapping and drowning each other out. The sounds reached the doorway and stopped abruptly.

A new Voice filled the room, a huge, overpowering Voice, like God crying out from a mountaintop—or a cross.

A Voice that was both more and less than human, full of over- and undertones, too subtle for the human mind to comprehend. It shuddered through flesh and bone, shaking them with a deep atavistic terror. Even Kim cried out. She might be dead, but she was still human. And the Voice wasn't.

And then the Voice was gone, and everything was still and quiet again.

“Okay,” said JC, shakily. “That bit out in the corridor was a stone tape, extreme events imprinting themselves on the surroundings, and playing back . . . but the Voice . . . was a hell of a lot more than that. Something really bad happened in here.”

“Or started here,” said Melody. “Whatever it was, it isn't finished yet. We need to go up to the next floor, to the science labs, and get some answers.”

“I'm not sure I want to know,” said Happy. “They might have gone looking for a supersoldier, but I think they ended up with a lot more than they bargained for.”

FOUR

They went up the next set of stairs like a military unit. Taking their time, checking the corners and the shadows, listening hard for any hint of an attack. Kim went first, flitting silently up the stairs without touching them, out in front because of all of them she was the least in danger.
You see?
she said brightly.
Being dead does have its advantages
. JC went next, pushing forward because he always did, eager to get into the next interesting thing. Melody came next, bristling with caution, alert for the smallest noise or hint of danger, so she could do nasty things to it. And Happy brought up the rear because that was what he did best. He somehow managed to hold his peace until they were more than half-way up, but finally an urgent question forced its way out.

“What, exactly, are we proposing to do if attacked?”

“I have my machine pistol,” Melody said immediately.

“Not actually noted for its use against things that are already dead,” said Happy.

“Be of good cheer, my children,” said JC, not looking back. “I have many useful and really quite nasty and only borderline-illegal items tucked away about my person. I won't tell if you won't.”

“It's true,” Kim said solemnly. “He does.”

“I can't believe we're still going on,” Happy said miserably. “We're ghost finders! This is a job for the psychic commandos of the SAS!”

“Well, for mass destruction, general bloodshed, and scorched-earth policies, they do have their uses,” said JC. “But I think even they would admit that subtlety is not their favoured suit. There is a mystery here, questions that need answering, secrets that must be dug up, and that is what we do best. You are, of course, free to walk away at any time, Happy. But you know the rules—you walk out on an active investigation, and your time with the Institute is over.”