Ghost of a Chance

ONE OUT OF TIME

These days, ghosts turn up in the damnedest places.

It was a cold night under a cold sky, in a supermarket car park a short distance outside the Georgian city of Bath. The supermarket was shut, the car park was deserted, and all the normal people had gone home to sleep the sleep of the just, or at least the weary. A great open space, now, with its carefully laid-out parking bays, half a dozen cars parked haphazardly across the asphalt. A dozen or so abandoned supermarket carts stood forlorn and forgotten in the night. Nothing moved in the surrounding empty fields, not even a breath of wind; and only the faintest of sounds made it all the way from the distant city. Nothing of interest here, nothing to see; except for the three figures standing together in the middle of the car park, looking expectantly about them like theatre patrons waiting for the play to begin.

No lights in the closed supermarket. There was only the harsh yellow glare of the car-park lights, left on as a favour to those who waited, and the blue-white glare of the full moon, sailing high in the star-speckled sky. A cold wind gusted suddenly out of the east, adding a distinct chill to the hour before dawn. Scattered litter tumbled end over end across the great open space, like mice suddenly disturbed in a dark basement. The two men and one woman ignored the wind and the chill as they waited for something to come out of the darkest part of the night and do its best to scare them.

“How much longer are we going to stand around here, freezing our nuts off?” said Happy Jack Palmer.

“Until something ghostly shows up and justifies our expense claims,” JC Chance said cheerfully. “If not tonight, then perhaps tomorrow night, or the night after that. It is, after all, the suspense and uncertainty of things that makes life worth living.”

“I’d hit you if I dared take my hands out of my pockets long enough,” Happy said darkly. “What, exactly, are we supposed to be looking for?”

“I wish you’d, just once, read the briefing files, ” said Melody Chambers, not looking up from the equipment she was casually assembling in a semicircle before her. “No-one’s seen anything, as such, but there have been hundreds of reports from people using this car park after dark: feelings of unease, panic, even outright terror . . . and a very definite sense of being watched by unseen, malevolent eyes. People are afraid to come here any more, even in broad daylight.”

“Ah,” said JC. “The usual.”

“Why can’t ghosts manifest during working hours?” said Happy, a bit wistfully. “It’s not as if there’s any rule that says ghosts can’t appear in daylight. I think they do it to be spiteful.”

“That’s right, Happy,” said JC. “They’re only doing it to annoy you.”

Happy scowled fiercely. “I am not an early-morning person! I have been up for twenty-seven hours straight, and I’m not even getting overtime! Somewhere there is a hotel bed calling my name, and I wish I were in it.”

“So do we,” said Melody. “If only so we could get a little peace and quiet. I’ve known poltergeists that were less of a nuisance than you.”

“Can’t we at least order some pizza?” said Happy. “I’d kill for a meat feast with a stuffed crust.”

“Hush, man,” said JC, peering about him into the gloom with lively enthusiasm. “If you want to find ghosts, you have to go where ghosts are. Logic. You can’t expect to find Jaws in a swimming pool.”

“I want to go home,” Happy said miserably.

“You always want to go home,” said Melody. “How you ever got the nickname Happy is beyond me. I can only suppose your school was an absolute hotbed of irony.”

“Listen,” said Happy, “I am a Class Ten telepath. If you could see the world as clearly as I do, you’d be clinically depressed, too. I want some of my little pills.”

“Not now,” JC said immediately. “I need your head clear and your thoughts sharp.”

“Spoil-sport.” Happy sniffed loudly, sulking. “Come on, JC, we’ve been here almost five hours now, and nothing’s happened. This place is as dead as my love life. Let’s call it a night. My stomach’s empty, my back is killing me, and my feet aren’t talking to me. All to investigate a ghost that may not even be here. I mean, be fair: a sense of unease and of being watched? You can get that in a public toilet.”

“Bear up,” said JC. “All in a night’s work for the intrepid heroes of the Carnacki Institute.”

Happy grimaced. “God, I hate it when you’re being this cheerful. It’s not natural. Especially given the nature of what we do.”

“Be strong!” urged JC, beaming even more brightly because he knew it got on Happy’s nerves. “Remember . . . when the Ghostbusters have a headache; when the Scooby gang are having a panic attack; when Mulder and Scully don’t want to know and the psychic commandos of the SAS are sitting in a corner crying their eyes out . . . Who do you send for? The specially trained field agents of the Carnacki Institute!”

“He’s quite right, you know,” Melody said coldly. “It isn’t normal to be that cheerful, at this hour of the morning. You haven’t been dipping into Happy’s pills again, have you?”

“I do so love to see the sun come up!” said JC.

“They’re not paying me enough for this,” growled Happy. “In fact, they couldn’t pay me enough for this. It’s only the general gloom and the opportunities for self-pity that keep me going.”

“Be quiet, you annoying little man, and let me concentrate on my instruments,” said Melody. “Or I’ll short-circuit your kirlian aura.”

Josiah Charles (JC) Chance looked fondly on his bickering team-mates, then turned his attention back to the shadows and the dark. JC was tall, lean. Full of energy, and far too handsome for his own good. Well into his late twenties, he had pale, striking features, a great mane of dark, wavy hair, intense eyes, a proud nose, and a mouth whose constant smile would have been more reassuring if it had touched his piercing gaze a little more often. He wore a rich cream suit of quite striking style and elegance, and wore it well. A born adventurer, risk-taker, and experienced ghost finder, JC Chance was the rising star of the Carnacki Institute; and he knew it. He knew more about ghosts, hauntings, and paranormal phenomena than any man should who hoped to sleep soundly at night. Fortunately, he also knew a lot of things to do about them. Really quite unpleasant things, sometimes, but that came with the job.

Melody Chambers was the main brain and science geek of the team, and therefore strictly responsible for all the marvellous new technology supplied by the Carnacki Institute. In fact, Melody had been known to slap people’s hands away if they even tried to touch her tech. She was very protective of her toys, even if she did tend to break them on a regular basis, usually by trying to get far more out of them than the design specs allowed. Pushing the very edge of her late twenties, Melody was pretty enough in a conventional way, short and gamine thin, and burned constantly with more nervous energy than was good for her. She had a disturbing tendency to rush headlong into any situation that looked like it might promise her something, anything, that she hadn’t encountered before, armed with a complete willingness to kick the hell out of anything that proved even a bit stubborn. Melody Chambers wasn’t nearly scared enough of the dark, considering what she did on nights like this.

She wore her auburn hair scraped back into a severe bun, serious glasses with black plastic frames, and clothes so anonymous they actually sidestepped fashion or style. In her spare time, she enjoyed a sex life that would have scared Casanova out of his jockstrap. It’s always the quiet ones . . .

Then there was Happy Jack Palmer. Telepath, smart-arse, and full-time gloomy bugger. Closing fast on thirty, and resenting it bitterly, Happy was short and stocky, prematurely balding, and might have been handsome if he ever stopped scowling. He wore grubby jeans, a rude T-shirt, and a battered old jacket, and looked like you’d have to put him through a car wash to get the top layer of soil off him. He shaved when he remembered and enjoyed all the worst kinds of food, traces of which still showed on his jacket. He claimed to have a heart of gold. In a box, under his bed. The most reluctant hero ever accepted into the ranks of the Carnacki Institute, and owner of so many medical prescriptions he had to file them in alphabetical order to keep track, Happy had an unequalled talent for detecting the presence of things that most people wouldn’t even admit existed.

He saw things and heard voices, and only the pills let him lead anything like a normal life.

Thrown together by fate, held together by repeated success, the three of them made a good team and did good work. And because they worked so well together, they got all the most difficult, dangerous, and demanding cases. Happy was always threatening to quit but never did. Partly because he enjoyed the company, mostly because he enjoyed the free medical benefits. JC made no secret of the fact that he was still looking for some solid proof on the fate of human consciousness after death. And Melody stayed because the Institute gave her access to the very latest tech, and because she couldn’t hope to do nearly as much damage anywhere else.

She moved happily back and forth in front of her assorted computers, scanners, and certain arcane assemblies of her own design, arranged on a collapsible frame. Her fingers flashed across keyboards, adjusted dials, and administered the occasional warning slap to any piece of equipment that didn’t do what it was supposed to do fast enough to suit her. Lights flared and flickered, monitor screens blazed, and information came flooding in from every direction at once. JC kept a watchful eye on it all, from a safe distance.

“Picking up anything interesting?” he ventured casually after a while.

“You wouldn’t understand if I told you,” said Melody, not looking round. “Everything’s operating as it should, all the motion detectors and temperature tests are fine, and there’s not a single energy spike across the board. Rest assured that if anything ectoplasmic should deign to show its face in what’s left of tonight, I am ready and waiting to analyse it in any number of interesting ways. A ghost mouse couldn’t fart around here without me knowing.”

“And if our ghosties and ghoulies don’t present any measurable activity?” said Happy, cunningly.

“Then that’s why we have you,” said Melody. “Though I often wish we didn’t.”

“Girl geek.”

“Spice Girls fan.”

“Children, children,” JC murmured. “Play nicely, or there will be spankings.”

“I hate it here,” Happy said miserably. “It’s cold, it’s damp, and I think moss is starting to grow under my testicles.”

“Eeew,” said Melody. “There’s a mental image I wasn’t expecting to take home with me.”

“Hold it,” said Happy, his head coming up suddenly, like a hound catching a scent. “Hold everything. Did either of you feel that?”

“Feel what?” said JC, moving in close beside Happy and looking quickly around.

“We’re not alone,” said Happy, frowning, concentrating. “There’s something here with us . . . No visible presence, can’t say I actually heard or smelled anything . . . but there’s definitely a sense of being observed. And not in a good way.”

“Not friendly, then?” said JC.

“What do you think?” Happy said pityingly. “When was the last time we encountered a happy ghost? Very definitely not including the Laughing Ghoul of Leicester, bad cess to his mouldering bones. If you were hoping to meet Casper the Dead Baby, you’re in the wrong team. We only get the bad-tempered ones.”

“Let us remain optimistic,” said JC. “If only out of a sense of perversity.”

“Easy for you to say,” growled Happy. “You’re not a Class Eleven sensitive. Damn . . . the presence is so strong now it’s almost overwhelming. My head is pounding.”

“Take some of your pain-killers,” said Melody. “You’re so much more bearable when you’re medicated.”

“No,” said JC. “No pills, Happy. Concentrate.”

“Not even the little purple ones? You like those.”

“Maybe later, Happy. Hang in there. Melody, anything showing up on your instruments?”

“Nothing. Not a damn thing anywhere. And no; I don’t feel anything.”

“You wouldn’t,” Happy said scathingly. “You have all the sensitivity of a night-club bouncer.”

“Not listening, not listening,” said Melody.

“According to the briefing files,” said JC, “an old lady was knocked down and killed in this very parking lot a few months ago. A reversing car ran over her. Driver swore he never even saw her. Could she be our ghost? I do good work with little-old-lady ghosts. They trust me.”

“No fool like a dead fool,” Happy said absently. “This doesn’t feel like any old lady, JC. I’m not even sure it’s human. I’m getting images now, sounds, associations . . . None of them recent. This is old, and I mean really old. Centuries past . . . Dark, brutal, hungry. I don’t like the feel of this at all.”

“Where is it?” said JC, glaring about into the harsh light of the car park and the darkness beyond. “Can you narrow it down to a location, or even a direction?”

“It’s everywhere!” said Happy, turning round and round in small, stumbling circles. “It’s closing in on us, from every direction at once! The whole damn area’s haunted, not only the car park . . . But this is the focus, all right. We’re standing at ground zero.”

“Melody?” said JC. “Tell me something, Melody. Anything.”

“My instruments are lighting up like Christmas trees,” said Melody, moving quickly from one screen to another. “But none of the readings make any sense. I’m getting sharp spikes in the upper electromagnetic range, massive energy surges almost overloading the sensors . . . Far too strong for any human revenant. Something’s coming, JC. Something huge and powerful . . . Coming up out of the past, out of the deep past, the really long-ago . . . I’ve never seen readings like these, JC. We are off the scale here, people.”

“It’s been here all along,” whispered Happy. “Waiting for some poor damned fools to break its bonds and turn it loose . . .”

“Hold on,” said Melody. “I’m getting something, on the radio station I keep detuned for Electronic Voice Phenomena. I can’t tell where it’s coming from, but . . . Listen to this. It’s in the air, all around us . . .”

She cut in the main speakers, and a massive chorus of grunts and growls, sudden shrieks and deep coughing sounds, spilled out into the empty car park. Voices, the voices of men, but as much animal as human, the voice of the beast in all of us. There was rhythm in the sound, and definite traces of sense and meaning, but no recognisable words. Harsh, aggressive, and terribly exalted; but also deeply disturbing, on a primitive, almost atavistic level. Voices from out of the Deep Past, when we were still learning how to be human. JC shuddered as gooseflesh rose up all over him, and his scalp crawled. Melody clung desperately to her instruments like a drowning woman. Happy’s face twisted as he shrank away from the sounds. JC put a calming hand on Happy’s shoulder and gestured for Melody to shut off the sounds. She did so, and blessed silence returned to the car park. Nothing moved in the harsh glare of the electric lights or in the surrounding darkness. Even the wind had stopped blowing.

“What the hell kind of language was that?” said Happy, shaking his head slowly.

“I’m not sure it was a language,” said Melody, giving all her attention to the monitor screens. “Or at least, not anything we would recognise as such. It’s old, very old. Ancient. It may even predate language as we know it.”

“So much for the little-old-lady theory,” said JC. “I have a strong suspicion we are in way over our heads, people, and sinking fast.”

Happy sniffed loudly. “Situation entirely bloody normal then.”

A car horn went off, the sudden sound shockingly loud in the quiet night. It blared viciously, aggressively, on and on as though some unseen hand were pressing hard on the horn. It sounded like some angry beast, roused suddenly from slumber with slaughter on its mind. More horns joined in, from every corner of the car park. The noise grew unbearably loud, the cars howling like a pack of wolves beneath the full moon, anticipating prey. And then the sound cut off abruptly, all the horns stopping simultaneously. The sudden quiet would have been a relief . . . if the night hadn’t been so heavy with threat and menace. Happy slowly took his hands away from his ears.

“Well,” he said, a bit shakily, “something wants us to know it’s here.”

“Don’t make a big thing out of it,” said JC, quietly, “But . . . take a look around.”

The six cars left in the car park overnight weren’t where they had been. Instead of being dispersed haphazardly across the open space, they were now arranged in a perfect circle around the three ghost finders. The cars hadn’t moved in the usual way. Their engines hadn’t started, and their wheels hadn’t turned, but there they were, lying in wait, their turned-off headlights like terribly empty eyes, their grillework like snarling teeth. Keeping their distance for the moment, like so many junkyard dogs considering their attack. The driver’s door on one car swung slowly open. The ghost finders held themselves still, holding their breath in anticipation of their first look at whoever was behind what was happening. But the door simply hung open . . . promising, teasing, taunting; and then slowly it closed itself again.

Out in the shadows at the very edge of the car park, where the harsh glare of the electric lights gave way to the heavy dark of the night, the supermarket carts were moving. They rolled silently along, as though pushed by unseen hands, forming a great circle around the outer limits of the car park. As though laying down a line that could not be crossed, cutting the ghost finders off from the safety and protections of the sane and rational everyday world. Simple shopping carts, nothing but wire and wheels, suddenly infused with real threat and menace by some unknown force.

JC realised that his hands had clenched into fists at his sides, and he made himself relax. Just looking at the cars and the carts made his flesh creep, but then, that was the idea. To unnerve them, to frighten them, to prepare them for what was coming. Something was playing mind games. JC smiled his widest smile. No-one played those games better than he.

One by one, the car park’s electric lights started to go out. Fading away one after another like so many guttering candles, the lights disappeared. Starting at the outskirts, moving slowly but inexorably inwards, darkness crept across the car park. It closed in on the three ghost finders, cutting them off, until there was nothing left but the dark, surrounding a small circle of light produced by Melody’s instruments. Her panels blinked and flickered, stubbornly holding out against a malign outside influence. The only other light now was the harsh blue-white glare of the full moon. What used to be called, in the old days, a hunter’s moon.

“All right,” said Happy. “This is not good. Officially, and very definitely, not good. Melody?”

“Don’t look at me,” she said immediately. “It’s all I can do to keep my tech operating. There’s so much power out there, in the night, in the dark—power off the scale. It’s like we’re in the eye of the hurricane, and I can’t guarantee how long that’s going to last.”

“Wonderful,” said Happy, bitterly. “Don’t suppose there’s any chance this supermarket was built over an old Indian burial ground, like in that movie?”

“In south-west England?” said Melody. “Roman burial site, maybe. But the one thing my instruments agree on is that we’re facing something much older than that. What was here, before the Romans? History never was my strong point.”

“Ah . . .” said JC.

“What?” said Happy, suspiciously. “That was your I’ve just remembered something, and you’re really not going to like it voice. Ah what?”

“If either of you had taken the time to read the briefing files thoroughly, you’d know there are reports of Iron Age settlements all through this area,” said JC, keeping a careful eye on the shopping carts as they slowed smoothly to a halt. They still looked like they were watching. “Even some Neolithic sites. Stone Age human settlements, thousands of years old. Back when we were still learning how to be people. Primitive people, with primitive but still-powerful beliefs. Melody, can your instruments confirm whether there is any such evidence here, right under our feet?”

“Easy-peasy,” said Melody, her fingers moving rapidly over the keyboards. “Yes . . . Yes! Definite traces of some kind of ancient settlement; and not that far down, either. The evidence suggests it was recently disturbed, then covered over again.”

“Of course,” said JC. “It’s all coming clear now.”

“Is it?” said Happy. “If it did, it missed me completely. Spell it out, for the hard of thinking among us.”

“The building contractors must have found the ancient site when they were laying the foundations for this new car park,” JC said patiently. “Unknowingly, they uncovered a seat of power that hadn’t been disturbed for thousands of years.”

“Is it just me,” said Melody, “or are those cars . . . a bit closer than they used to be?”

“The cars aren’t the problem,” said JC, staring out into the dark. “They’re not part of the haunting. That’s simply the ancient Power, stretching its muscles.”

“Power?” said Happy. “What Power?”

Light blazed up all around them, hot and fierce, fire-light thousands of years old. It jumped and leapt, and so did the men and women around it, as the Present was abruptly shouldered aside and replaced by the Past. The three ghost finders huddled together, hanging on to each other, as Time Past filled their eyes. Flames burned fiercely, leaping up from a huge banked bonfire, or bale-fire, around which the Tribe danced and howled, jumping and slashing at the air, brandishing roughly carved stone totems. Men, women, and children, shorter and stockier than their modern counterparts, hunched and distorted but still powerfully built; filthy dirty and wrapped in crudely tanned skins and furs. Primitive Man, Pre-civilisation Man, dancing and prancing and slamming bare feet against the bare ground, crude amulets of animal claws and human finger bones hanging round their throats. Shrieking faces, painted blue with woad and red with fresh blood.

And stretched out before the fire, naked and helpless, held down on the flat sacrificial stone by four elders of the Tribe—the sacrifice. Young, very young, little more than a child; with a stone blade held firmly over her frantically rising and falling chest. She wasn’t screaming, she knew it would do no good, but her eyes were full of a terrible, hopeless dread.

The fire blazed up, throwing flames and cinders high into the night sky, under the malignant eye of the full moon. Drums pounded deafeningly loud, providing the only music for the dance. A powerful, demanding rhythm, driving the dancers on to further exertions and greater excesses, an endless thunder to madden their already deranged minds. And when the fury and the madness had reached its peak, the stone knife slammed down into the victim’s chest; and everything stopped. She screamed, then, but the sound was lost in the great roar that went up from the rest of the Tribe. The shaman hacked roughly into the victim’s chest, levering aside the bones to cut out the heart and tear it from its cavity. He held the still-beating heart up, and the Tribe howled again. It was still, horribly, a very human sound.

And then, just like that, it was gone. The fire, and the sacrifice, and the dancing primitive people worshipping Something, in their primitive way. The small circle of scientific light was back, bounded by watching cars and the feeling of a Presence, on the night.

Happy shook his head slowly. “Human sacrifice,” he said thickly. “Death and horror and celebration, repeated so often it’s imprinted on this place, like grooves cut in a record. Genius loci, the spirit of the place; a bad place, poisoned by the psychic stain of what happened here . . . Sacrifice, to ensure the sun will rise again, and that spring will follow winter, and that at least some of the babies will live. One life offered up freely for the greater good. In worship to some great Power.”

“But what woke it up, after lying quiet for so long?” said Melody. “There’s always a focal point to every haunting, some single trigger . . .”

“The fools,” said JC. “The bloody fools . . . When the building contractors broke ground here, they must have dug down deep enough to uncover the ancient site. They stopped work and consulted the supermarket bosses, who were afraid that archaeologists might move in and bring operations to a halt, costing them millions. So they had the contractors cover over the disturbed site and built their new car park here anyway.”

“Yeah,” said Happy. “So far, so typical. So?”

“Don’t you get it?” said JC, almost angrily. “First they disturb the energy stored in the old site, the ancient bad place with all its memories of long-forgotten Power. And then they held a big opening ceremony here, made a real celebration of it. Even then, they might have got away with it . . . If an old lady hadn’t died here, killed by a man in a hurry. So—a ceremony, blood and death, calling across the centuries, like to like. A direct link between Past and Present, awakening . . . Something ancient and unspeakably powerful. All it needed to manifest fully was three poor damned fools who thought they knew what they were doing. A telepath, a woman with powerful technology, and a leader who should have known better. It’s us. We did this. We woke it up.”

All six cars started rocking back and forth in place, shaking wildly. Their headlights snapped on, burning bright like dragons’ eyes. Their engines revved and roared like angry beasts, their horns bleating and blaring. Then they all surged forward. The three ghost finders scattered, and the cars ploughed right through Melody’s stacked instruments. The comforting circle of light disappeared, replaced by the fierce, stabbing beams from the cars and the pitiless glare of the full moon. The cars screeched around in narrow turns and came back again, only to slam into each other in head-on collisions, like maddened stags going head to head in rut. They rocked to a halt, steam rising from the crumpled bonnets, their headlights slowly fading like the light going out of dying eyes. The three ghost finders came together again, breathing hard.

“Whatever it is, it doesn’t know how to drive a car,” said Happy. “Sorry about your toys, Melody.”

“They’ll give me some more,” she said, but her heart wasn’t in it.

JC glared at Happy. “Concentrate! That was only the overture, to throw us off-balance and remove the advantage Melody’s tech gave us! What do you feel, Happy?”

“Something’s here,” Happy said slowly. “Something’s right here, with us. The chain of events opened a door, and now Something from the Past is forcing its way through, into the Present!”

JC turned to Melody, scrabbling on her knees amid the wreckage of her instruments. “Anything still working that you can use to break the link between Past and Present, slam the door shut in its face?”

“Not a damned thing!” Melody rose suddenly, brandishing a very large machine-pistol. “On the other hand . . . Any caveman with a club who turns up here is in for a nasty surprise.”

“I want a gun,” said Happy. “You never let me have a gun.”

“Damn right,” said Melody. “I am not having the words friendly fire on my death certificate.”

“Hush,” said JC, looking slowly around him. “It’s here . . . I can feel it, like the gaze of a blind god, smell it, like the dragon’s breath . . . the cold of the winter that never ends, the dark between the stars . . .”

“Nothing like imminent death to bring out the poet in you, JC,” said Happy. “How about composing something really lyrical that we can retreat to? Because I’d really like to get the hell out of here . . .”

“Too late! Too late . . .” JC glared about him, searching for an answer he could sense but not pin down. “Think! Something big, Something powerful . . . What did those primitive people dance and sacrifice to, what did they believe in and worship, strong enough to make the sun rise and the winter end? They weren’t ready for gods yet, nothing so civilised . . . But together, their massed minds and desperate need invoked a powerful Force from Outside . . . Created, or summoned, by the terrible brutal passion of their faith . . . A god with no name or singular nature; simply a Presence . . .”

“Could it be one of the Great Beasts?” said Melody. “The Hogge, or the Serpent?”

“No,” Happy said immediately. “I know them. What I’m feeling . . . is even older than they. More primitive. Just a force. A Presence. And since its worshippers had no language to name it, to define it and limit its powers . . . We can’t hope to control or dismiss it with any of the usual techniques or formulas. We don’t have anything we can use against it!”

The dark was all around them now. The supermarket was gone, and most of the car park. Only a circle of moonlight remained, stabbing down like a spotlight, picking them out. No stars shone in that dark night, no distinction left between earth and sky. Just the three of them left, the only living things in the night, huddling together for comfort and warmth, adrift in an endless dark sea. And it was cold, so cold . . .

“Dark and cold,” said JC, shuddering despite himself. “The dark before the sun rises, and the cold of the winter that never ends. It’s threatening us, demanding our worship.”

Suddenly, it was there with them. A vast, endless Presence hammering on the night, manifest but not material, enforcing its awful Presence on the world through an act of sheer malicious will. The monster in the dark that all children know and fear because they are so much closer to the primitive. An ancient Presence, powerful and pitiless, demanding worship and sacrifice, blood and horror. Out of the Past, out of Time, come to drag Humanity down to its own level again.

Happy fell to his knees, both hands pressed to his head. He was crying raggedly, his face distorted by strange passions as he fought to maintain his psychic shields and keep out the primordial demands beating against his thoughts. Melody stood close by him, swinging her machine-pistol back and forth, desperate for something definite she could fight. And JC . . . stood thoughtfully, frowning a little, as though considering some difficult but distasteful problem.

“It wants a sacrifice!” Happy cried out miserably. “A human sacrifice!”

“No,” said JC. “We don’t do that any more.”

“If we don’t give it what it wants, it’ll take us!” said Happy. “And after us, it’ll move on to the city!”

“Well,” said JC, his voice carefully calm and composed, “we can’t have that, can we? Consider the haunting, my friends; every manifestation has its heart, its focus, its specific link to Present Time. And in this case . . . that focus, that last link in the chain of events, has to be the poor little old lady who was killed during the opening ceremony. Find her for me, Happy.”

“Are you crazy?” Happy glared at him through teary eyes. “I don’t dare drop my shields! It’ll eat me alive, I can’t . . .”

JC looked at him, and Happy’s babbling cut off immediately. JC could do that. One moment he was talking quite calmly and reasonably, and the next he was looking at you with eyes dark as the night and twice as cold. JC tried hard to be a good man, but you only had to look into his eyes at moments like that to know he had the potential to be something else entirely. Happy swallowed hard, sniffed back his tears, and concentrated.

“She’s still here. Faint but definite trace. Lost, alone, walking up and down in the night, trying to find her way home.”

“Bring her here,” said JC. “Bring her to me.”

Without looking down, Melody placed a comforting hand on Happy’s shoulder. He stopped shaking and glared out into the dark as he concentrated.

The Presence was thundering in all their heads, a great demanding wordless Voice, but Happy fought through it to reach a much smaller presence, the tiniest motes of light, drifting through the dark. He called to it, and the light hesitated, then changed direction. She came walking slowly out of the dark, into the circle of light, a little old lady in a battered old coat, walking stiffly but steadily, her wrinkled face calm but puzzled. She stopped abruptly, her eyes slowly focusing on the three ghost finders. JC stepped forward.

“Hello,” he said, his voice surprisingly kind. “Can you tell me your name?”

The ghost looked surprised for a moment, as though being asked to remember something that really wasn’t important any more. “Muriel,” she said finally. Her voice sounded perfectly normal. “Muriel Foster. Yes. I don’t . . . I don’t quite remember how I got here. My memory isn’t what it was . . . Don’t get old, young man. No-one ever tells you how much hard work it is, being old.”

“Muriel . . .”

“I shouldn’t be here, should I? There’s somewhere else I ought to be. I feel . . . like I’ve been dreaming, and now it’s time to wake up.”

“That’s right, Muriel,” said JC. “It’s time for you to go on. To the place appointed for you, where there is no old age, and all old things are made new again.”

“Yes,” said Muriel. “I’d like that.”

“Can you hear the thunder all around us?”

“Of course; I’m not deaf, you know.”

“All you have to do is walk towards the thunder,” said JC. “Just . . . keep walking. And all of this will be over.”

Muriel looked at him sharply. “There’s something you’re not telling me. I may be old, young man, but I’m not stupid. Tell me this; this thing you want me to do . . . Is it necessary? Does it matter?”

“Yes,” said JC. “It will save a great many lives.”

“Good,” said Muriel, drawing herself up. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had the opportunity to do something that mattered.”

She nodded briefly to JC and walked steadily out of the light and into the dark. Happy and Melody looked disbelievingly at JC, but he merely looked after Muriel. There was a moment, as though something incredibly powerful was holding its breath; and then, instantaneously, the Presence was gone. The car park was back again, the lights shone brightly, the stars were back in the sky, and the moon was just a moon.

Happy made a sound, deep in his throat, and rose to his feet. JC turned to look at him.

“How are you feeling, Happy?”

“Never mind me; what did you just do? She trusted you, JC! And you sacrificed her to the Presence!”

“Of course I didn’t,” said JC. “What kind of person do you take me for?”

“Right now, we’re not too sure,” said Melody. “Perhaps you’d better explain it for us. Bearing in mind that if I don’t like what I hear, I still have this gun.”

“It’s really quite simple,” said JC, patiently. “The Presence depended on live sacrifices. They were the source of its power. And I fed it a ghost, a dead woman with not a spark of life left in her. Nothing actually there for the Presence to feed on. Essentially, we gave the Presence a really bad case of spiritual indigestion. It couldn’t consume dear Muriel, so she passed on to her reward . . . and with her gone, the haunting’s focal point was removed. The link between Past and Present was broken, and the Presence went home crying. An elegant solution to a tricky problem, I think you’ll agree.”

Happy and Melody looked at each other.

“I nearly had a coronary,” said Happy.

“Me too,” said Melody.

“You hit him first, you’re closest,” said Happy.

“After you,” said Melody.

“Look,” said JC. “The sun’s coming up.”

They looked. It was. Spreading out across the horizon, in long streamers of glowing red and gold, pushing back the dark, breathing life into the world.

“Come, children,” said JC. “Back to the hotel, and breakfast is on me. Who’s for a good fry-up?”

“Can I take some of my pills now?” said Happy.

“Why not?” said JC.