Spirits from Beyond Read Free Page A

the entire building a strange attractor, drawing in nasty people, and things, from all around. So I have to ask: why is it still here?”
    “You should keep up on your interdepartmental memos,” said Melody. “Somebody very high up on the food chain over-ruled the Carnacki Institute. And I mean someone with really impressive clout. They insisted on preserving the building until a full investigative study could be performed on its contents. The Boss was mad as hell. Took her argument all the way to the top. And got nowhere.”
    “Are we talking political or business clout?” said Happy.
    “Yes,” said Melody.
    “Ah,” said Happy.
    “Pretty much the same thing, at that level,” said JC. “What was the name of the big company in charge of the medical experiments that went wrong, in Chimera House?”
    “Mutable Solutions Incorporated,” said Melody. “One of the biggest drug companies in the world. Where does the eight-hundred-pound drug company sit? Anywhere it wants . . .”
    “But what good does it do them, keeping Chimera House intact?” said Happy. “No-one will be able to work in it for ages. It’ll take years, more likely decades, to get the psychic stains out. You’ve heard of Sick Building Syndrome; well, Chimera House is the psychic equivalent of the Ebola virus. That whole building is crazy on a stick, waiting to happen.”
    JC couldn’t help noticing that Happy didn’t even want to look at Chimera House as he spoke. They could all hear the open strain in the telepath’s voice.
    “Maybe what happened inside the building is what makes it valuable,” said JC. “Valuable to The Flesh Undying, or its agents . . . Maybe it wants to maintain bad places, to make weak points in the walls of the world, so it can break out and get back where it came from.”
    “Don’t you start,” Melody said firmly. “It’s bad enough having to live with a paranoid depressive, without having two of them on the team.”
    “I don’t like it here!” Happy said loudly. “I feel . . . vulnerable. Like a target. Like I’m standing at ground zero, right in the middle of a bloody big bull’s-eye. With a target painted on my forehead.”
    “Will you please calm the hell down!” said Melody, waving her hand scanner around. “There’s no-one else here!”
    “There’s always something here,” said Happy. “We’re never alone, wherever we are. The world is packed full . . . I can See things, feel things . . . I want to get out of here!”
    “We’re not going anywhere until Kim turns up!” JC said firmly. “However long that takes. Get a grip on yourself, Happy. This isn’t your first time at the rodeo.”
    Happy sniffed miserably and stared determinedly down at his shoes. “Still want to know why there aren’t any guards.”
    “He may be paranoid, but he has a point,” said Melody. “I’m pretty sure that was a condition on the building being allowed to stand. So where are they?”
    “Someone must have called them off,” said JC. “Which implies . . . someone knew we were coming here before we did.”
    The three of them stood close together. It was still the early hours of morning, cold and quiet and empty. No sign of the living, or the dead. But not exactly peaceful. JC and Happy and Melody hugged themselves against the chill and stamped their feet hard on the ground to keep warm.
    “This is just like last time,” said Melody.
    “Bloody better not be,” said Happy. “We were lucky to come out of that mission with all our important parts still attached. Dead men walking, insane doctors with cutty things, rogue transplant organs on the loose, Gog and Magog and the New People . . . We should get danger money. We should get unionised!” He scowled about him, still carefully avoiding looking at Chimera House. “I never thought it would be like this when the time came to get Kim back. I thought we’d have to storm some kind of castle, fight some monsters, to win back our lost