Voices From Beyond (A Ghost Finders Novel) Read Free Page A

Ghost Finders moved slowly and cautiously down the long, narrow hallway, looking about them, careful to touch nothing. All the lights were on, every bulb glowing brightly, but there was no-one present to greet them. A terrible, oppressive silence lay over everything, seeming to stifle even the smallest noise. Happy winced and rubbed at his forehead.
    “Bad atmosphere,” he complained.
    “What kind of bad?” JC said patiently.
    “Malignant,” said Happy. “Toxic.”
    “As in actually, immediately life-threatening?” said JC.
    “What do you think?” said Happy.
    “Why do cheerful, friendly people never come back as ghosts?” said Melody, plaintively. “Why do we never meet happy smiley people from the vasty deeps, who are actually pleased to see us?”
    “The answer is almost certainly implicit in the question,” said JC. “People at peace and at rest don’t need to come back. It’s the ones who have a complaint to make who end up disturbing the living. Let’s try the lounge.”
    He moved quickly down the hall, throwing open each door as he came to it and peering into the room beyond. Until he found the lounge and went inside. Happy skulked along behind him, while Melody struggled fiercely with her trolley as the wheels caught and spun on the rucked-up carpet. The lounge turned out to be a pleasantly spacious room, with comfortable chairs and a huge red leather settee, along with all the usual comforts and luxuries, including a really big wide-screen television. Set a little to one side was a long, narrow coffee table, with four young men and women sitting on the floor around it. They were all wearing assorted jeans and sweaters, and had that indefinable but unmistakable look of students. None of them looked up as the Ghost Finders entered the room. None of them made a sound, or moved a muscle. They sat in place, staring straight ahead of them, with blank faces and empty eyes.
    JC started to address them, then stopped as he realised how very still they all were, and how completely empty their faces seemed. He moved slowly forward, one step at a time, until he could lean over and study their faces close-up. They didn’t react, but they were all still breathing, very gently. JC relaxed a little. Where there’s even a little life, there’s hope. He gestured for Happy and Melody to stay back, and moved cautiously around the four seated figures, looking them over, with his hands clasped behind his back so he could be sure he wouldn’t touch anything. He leaned in past the students to look at the coffee table. An old-fashioned wooden Ouija board had been set out on the tabletop in front of the four students. All the usual markings, in old-fashioned lettering, so a message could be spelled out. There was no sign of the usual upturned glass, but there were fragments of broken glass all across the table and on the carpeted floor around it.
    “A Ouija board?” said Happy, coming forward very cautiously for a better look. “Oh, that’s never good. Those things should be banned. They open doors, and never to anywhere good. Giving one of those things to a bunch of amateurs is like giving a hand-grenade to a group of toddlers. There are bound to be tears before bedtime.”
    JC snapped his fingers fiercely in front of each empty student face in turn, but there was no reaction. He straightened up and turned to look consideringly at a camera on a tripod, set up not far away, aimed at the coffee table. JC gestured to Melody, and she came forward to look the camera over.
    “Expensive,” she said briskly. “State-of-the-art, all the latest bells and whistles. The kind of camera that does most of the work for you. Some really nifty filters, and extra options . . . for when you need to be sure you won’t miss
anything
. What was going on here? What were these four doing . . . that someone needed to record every detail of it for posterity?”
    “Is the camera still working?” said JC. “Still recording?”
    “No.