“The longer they stay in our world, the more bound by its rules they become,” said Kim, drifting up by the ceiling. “That’s what they want-to become real again. They don’t know they’re dead.”
Happy nodded quickly, and picked up the ghost’s bone-saw. It was cold and fragile in his hand at first, hard to get a hold on, but the longer he hung on to it, the heavier and more real it felt. The ghost reared up before Happy, screaming and howling as it reached for its weapon. And Happy cut its head off with one hard blow. The head fell to the floor and shattered slowly, like a smashed egg in slow motion. The headless body drifted apart, like smoke on the wind. The bone-saw disappeared from Happy’s hand.
He looked back down the laboratory, in time to see the Mad Doctor ghosts pull Melody down and swarm all over her. Scalpels flashed brightly. Happy yelled her name and sprinted back the way he’d come. Melody fought as hard as she could, but she was only human, and her attackers weren’t, any more. They held her down with their cold hands, while one of them pressed a scalpel against her belly.
“It’s all got to come out,” said a familiar voice. “The insides are the best part. Flesh is wasted on the living.”
Happy hit the ghosts like a cannon ball, scattering them with his sudden appearance and a telepathic blast of sheer rage and fury. The ghosts were blown away by his fierce concentration and ran madly this way and that, flailing their arms, light glinting fiercely from their surgical weapons. Happy hauled Melody to her feet, and they stood back to back as the Mad Doctor ghosts remembered their purpose and circled them slowly.
“You hurt?” Happy asked Melody.
“I’ll live,” said Melody. “Any chance you can do that again?”
“Not for a while,” said Happy. “That kind of thing takes a lot out of you.”
“Any other ideas?”
“Not really.”
“Terrific,” said Melody.
JC had found Kim. “Is there anything you can do to help? Anything you can see here that we can’t?”
Kim nodded slowly, her head bobbing directly below the ceiling. “The ghosts all look the same to me. They’re all Mad Doctor ghosts-no trace of individuality. It’s like they’ve all been overwritten by something stronger. Whatever they were exposed to didn’t only make them crazy, it made them all crazy in exactly the same way. Someone has taken advantage of that to graft on purpose and intent. Driving them on, like it did the shells. These Mad Doctor ghosts are really just more of the building’s attack dogs, another layer of the New People’s defences.”
She broke off abruptly as one of the Mad Doctor ghosts came dancing along the ceiling towards her. It shot past her, scalpel flashing as it lashed out at her, and Kim cried out in shock and horror as the vicious blade cut deep into her ghostly flesh. Blood-tinged ectoplasm ran down her arm and dripped from her fingertips.
“Paper cuts scissors, doctor cuts patient,” said the Mad Doctor ghost, pirouetting unnaturally slowly in place. “You’re all grist to the mill to us, the living and the dead. Suffering is such sweet sorrow, and we eat it up with spoons. We will cut you all up and put you back together, remake you in our own fashion, to serve our special needs and pleasures. And you will last forever, and your torment will never end.”
“JC?” said Kim. “Please do something. I’m really not ready for a fate worse than death.”
“JC!” yelled Happy. “We’re surrounded! And their world is invading ours! Any suggestions would be gratefully received!”
“Kim says they’re all linked!” JC yelled back. “Can you find that link and break it?”
“Now I know what to look for…” said Happy. He concentrated, and his face lightened a little. “Yes! It’s there! Like a signal, connecting and commanding them. So if I interrupt that signal, like this…”
The Mad Doctor ghosts cried out and lurched in every direction at once, like puppets whose strings had been yanked out of them. Lost, without purpose or identity, they flailed madly, striking at each other and the empty air. They were still dangerous, still foul and malignant, but for the first time they seemed vulnerable.
“Time to go old school, I think,” said JC. He took a phial of holy water from inside his jacket, unscrewed the cap, and poured the blessed water carefully over each of his hands in turn. And then he walked quite deliberately into the midst of the Mad Doctor ghosts and laid those hands on them one at a time, speaking the powerful old Words of Exorcism. The ghosts crumbled and dissolved under his blessed touch, as the Words broke their connection with this world. One by one they vanished, driven out of reality, sent on to whatever was waiting for them. None of them ran, or fought, or tried to avoid his touch. They stood trembling where they were, like rabbits staring into approaching headlights. Until he came at last to the final ghost who held up one hand for him to pause for a moment. It dropped its scalpel, which disappeared before it hit the floor, and pulled down its blood-spattered surgical mask, to reveal a surprisingly human face. The eyes were still tormented but no loner insane.
“Go up,” he said. “Go all the way up. The New People are waiting. But beware. We looked into the Medusa’s gaze. Don’t you make the same mistake.”
JC laid his hand on the ghost’s head, and it faded away, as though it had only been hanging on to say those last few words.
JC nodded slowly and went back to join the others. Kim dropped down from the ceiling to drift along at his side. Happy and Melody were leaning on each other, breathing hard. The laboratory had returned to its original shape and purpose, and the bad world at the end of the floor was gone. JC started to say something, then stopped and looked at the tear in the sleeve of his jacket. The crimson stain was still there, from where the ghost’s scalpel had cut him, but when JC pushed the edges apart, the sleeve was cut and bloodied; but the flesh beneath that was untouched.
“My arm doesn’t hurt any more,” he said. “And I don’t mean it’s healed-more like it was never cut at all.”
“Same here,” said Melody. Happy was too busy checking himself in all sorts of important places to speak.
“And I’m fine, too!” said Kim. “Though I still don’t know how he was able to touch me…”
“Belief,” Happy said finally. “It’s all about belief. They were imposing their world-view on us, so if they thought they could cut us, they could.”
“You’re right,” said JC.
“Someone take a photo,” said Happy. “Moments like this don’t happen very often.”
“You were right when you said this isn’t what we signed up for,” said JC. He looked slowly around him. “This is above and beyond the call of our pay grade. We’re investigators, not soldiers. But… someone has to stop these New People, and we’re all there is.”
“You heard the loony ghost,” Happy said reluctantly. “The New People want to see us, and they’re not going to let us out of here till they get what they want.”
“But are they the ones running the shells, and the Mad Doctor ghosts, or is there another unseen party, operating from the shadows?” said Melody.
“Wonderful,” said Happy. “More complications.”
JC looked around at the high tech scattered across the laboratory. A lot of it had been smashed or knocked about, but some still seemed more or less intact. He looked at Melody.
“Any chance you could use something here to get a message out to Patterson, or the Boss? Tell them what’s going on, get them to send in some serious reinforcements?”
“You really think the New People would let us talk to the outside?” said Melody. “I mean, I’ll try if you like, but…”
JC looked at Happy, who shook his head immediately. “I’ve been mentally yelling for help for ages. Screaming at the top of my mental voice. No response.”
JC scowled, folded his arms, and thought hard. “We know a lot more than when we started,” he said finally. “But I don’t think we’ve got anything like the full picture yet. If these New People really are everything they’re supposed to be, why are they waiting around for us? No… something else is going on, and we need to find out what. So let’s go up and take a walk through the other floors and see what there is to see, before we go have our nice little chat with the New People.”