“Exactly,” said Melody. “You don’t normally get to see things like that outside of a Cronenberg film.”
“ They Came from Within!” said Happy. “Oh, that’s a classic! I had to sleep with the lights on for days, and I never felt the same about swimming pools.”
“Strange little man,” said Kim. “I’ve never cared much for horror movies.”
“Did you join the wrong team!” said Happy.
“Shut up, Happy,” said JC. He stared thoughtfully at the curling fog. “When this is all over, we may have to destroy the entire building. Blow it up, tear it down, crush the rubble, and scatter it at sea.”
“Chimera House has become a strange attractor,” said Melody. “Attracting, pulling ghosts to it.”
“Like moths to a candle,” said Happy.
“Oh dear,” said Kim. “You mean proper ghosts? People ghosts? I’ve always found them rather unnerving.”
“But you are one!” said Happy.
“But I still think I’m human,” said Kim. “I still feel human. Even though I do sometimes see or hear things that only the dead can know.”
“Like what?” said Happy.
She stared at him very seriously. “You really don’t want to know, Happy.”
“I’m a Class Eleven Telepath!” said Happy. “I see things every day that would make grown men rip their own heads off!”
“But I’m dead,” said Kim.
“You’re right,” said Happy. “That does trump a hell of a lot of things.”
“I don’t know much about ghosts,” said Kim. “Despite being one. It’s one of the reasons I joined this team. I don’t understand ghosts. They scare me as much as they do you.”
“I am going to change the subject,” said Happy. “Because this one is creeping the hell out of me. Given that the computers didn’t have anything to say about this floor, and so therefore it couldn’t possibly contain anything important or significant, why don’t we skip it and move on up?”
“Doesn’t the fog fascinate you?” said JC.
“Let me think about that for a moment no not at all,” said Happy. “I have officially decided I can take it or leave it.”
“We are staying,” JC said firmly. “Because we need all the information we can gather as to what went down here before we have to meet the New People. In a situation like this, information is ammunition. And… we really don’t want to overlook anything that might come sneaking after us and creep up on us from behind. Do we?”
“Very good point there,” said Happy. “God, it’s coming to something when you’re the paranoid one on this team.”
They all went back to staring into the great grey expanse before them. JC stepped cautiously forward and swept one hand through the fog. It felt cold and damp, as though it had blown in off some ancient unknown ocean. He shuddered suddenly, not from the cold. Whichever way he looked, endless shades of grey filled his sight, with no trace of the floor they were supposed to be on anywhere. Lights flickered and flared, glowing and fading in the grey deeps, like taunting will-o’-the-wisps. JC squinted. The fog was hard on the eye, the featureless grey almost painful to look at for too long. He strained his altered eyes against the fog. He couldn’t shake off a very definite feeling that somewhere deep in the fog, something was staring back at him.
JC turned to Happy. “Time to do your thing, team telepath. What do you sense about this fog?”
“Nothing specific,” said Happy, scowling in concentration. “No thoughts, no intent, no emotions… Just this diffused sense of presence.”
Kim nodded immediately, looking nervously this way and that. Melody stuck both thumbs in her belt and tapped one foot ominously on the floor. She felt frustrated and left out, with nothing to contribute. She felt naked without her equipment. With all her usual toys at her disposal, she could have analysed the hell out of the fog by then, broken it down into its various components, and come up with half a dozen different solutions to the problem. But there wasn’t even a computer she could use in the room. She said as much, and JC nodded soberly.
“We have been relying on the building’s computers, rather a lot. And I’m starting to wonder if we can trust what they’ve been telling us. You said yourself someone was making it too easy for you to access information. Maybe they only meant for us to know what they wanted us to know.”
“Someone was definitely sending messages through the computers,” said Melody. “And they’ve all been spot on useful, so far.”
“Quite,” said JC. “Convenient, that. Perhaps a little too convenient.”
“Then why not tell us what’s going on here?” said Happy.
“Maybe they don’t know,” said JC. “A sign, perhaps, that our mysterious benefactor isn’t all-knowing.”
He took off his sunglasses and unleashed his brightly glowing eyes on the fog. Happy and Melody turned their heads away, unable to look at him directly. It wasn’t that they were afraid of what they might see if they were to look directly into JC’s golden eyes, it was that they found the light too fierce, too unrelenting, for human eyes.
“What does it look like, JC?” said Happy. “When you see the world through those eyes?”
“Everything seems so clear, so simple,” said JC. “As though… everything finally makes sense.”
“I don’t know why you two keep looking away,” said Kim. “It doesn’t bother me. They look like eyes to me. Nice colour, too.”
JC took another step forward, concentrating on the fog. He couldn’t see anything new, but wherever he turned his gaze, the fog reacted. It seemed to recoil from him, churning and roiling violently, as though disturbed or agitated. When he swept his hand through it, there was no reaction, but he got the sense that the fog didn’t like his golden gaze at all. That perhaps… the fog was frightened of it.
“The fog!” Kim said suddenly. “ It’s the presence!”
JC nodded slowly. “Yes. It is. I’ve heard of this phenomenon though I’ve never encountered it before. Don’t know anyone who has. But I know what this is, what it has to be. It’s rare, very rare. Takes a lot of energy to produce and maintain, to make it even possible… This is ghostlight. Undifferentiated ghosts. This is what will become ghosts, in time. As the building calls the dead to it, they will form out of this fog, taking on shape and nature and purpose.”
“Okay,” said Melody. “That’s all very fine and groovy, but what is it exactly? Are we talking ectoplasm of some kind?”
“Spookier than that,” said JC. “What we’re looking at isn’t really water droplets suspended in the air. Our eyes interpret this as fog because that’s as close as our minds can get to understanding it. This
… is pure potential, the raw chaos from which order unfolds itself.”
“Oh crap,” said Melody.
Dim dark shapes began to form in the grey depths of the fog. Row upon row of them, standing unnaturally still, stretching out wider and further back than the building should have been able to accommodate. Most of the shapes were human, or at least humanish. Others were larger, bulkier, distorted. And some were only abstract shapes, impressions of people, like nightmares given shape and form in the waking world. JC looked back and forth, trying to get some sense of numbers, and failing. So many ghosts, drawn there by the birth of the New People, and what had been done to Chimera House. Standing in ranks, as though waiting for something. For some voice, perhaps, to tell them what to do.
“Have you noticed?” Happy said quietly. “They all seem to be looking at you, JC. They’re not even glancing at the rest of us. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, of course, but it is interesting, and possibly even significant.”
“The eyes have it,” said Melody. “They’re attracted to the light.”
“No,” said Kim. “It’s more than that. I think it’s because JC has been touched by the Outside, the afterworlds. They recognise that and respond to it.”
“Yes…” said Happy. “I’m picking up all kinds of things now. Fear, and fascination, and… a whole bunch of other things I don’t even recognise, let alone understand. These ghosts might once have been human, but they don’t feel like people. I’m not picking up even the most fundamental sense of identity, or individuality. It’s almost like… looking at them from far, far away. And it’s almost as though they think of JC… as one of them, only more so.”