He was tired all the time now. Woke up tired, spent the day tired, and went to bed tired. Bone-deep, soul-deep, weary. He wanted to sit there in his room and do nothing. . feel nothing. . He wanted to take a pill, any pill, any number of pills, to shock himself out of this. . At least the pills woke him up, gave him a reason to go on, helped him invest himself in the world. Like it mattered. .
The pills made him feel alive, but he didn’t want to take them any more. Because he didn’t like who he was when he took them; because he wanted to be somebody Melody might take back.
Because he had a feeling she might be his last hope. His last life-line.
And because if he did give in to the pills, dived into the great chemical ocean one more time and let it close over his head, he didn’t think he’d be coming back.
While Happy was sitting there, quietly thinking about life and death, he heard the sound of a door opening. He looked at the main door, leading out onto the landing; and it was closed. Happy slowly realised the sound must have come from behind him, from the rear of the room. He pushed his chair back from the writing-desk, turned around in his chair, and looked behind him. A door had appeared in the wall at the back of his room, one Happy was sure hadn’t been there before. He looked at the door. It seemed ordinary enough, set in an ordinary wall. It was standing a little ajar, no more than a few inches. It wanted Happy to get up and come over to it, he could tell. When he didn’t, the door swung wide open, all on its own, revealing a long corridor falling away, lit with a sullen blood-red glow. The walls beyond the door were red, like flesh, or meat. . something quite definitely organic. And repellent.
It was a really long corridor, falling back and back, stretching off into the distance, much further than the inn could have physically contained. And the more Happy looked down the corridor, the longer it seemed to be. There was a feeling of promise to it, that if Happy would walk through the door and down the long red corridor, something would be waiting there for him.
Happy glared at the door, and the corridor beyond, and raised his voice. “Do I look like a tourist? How dumb do you think I am? Piss off!”
The door slammed shut, quite silently, and disappeared. Happy was left looking at a perfectly normal, uninterrupted, deadly dull wallpapered wall. He sighed slowly and turned back to the writing-desk. He wasn’t surprised to find a young woman sitting beside him, on a chair that hadn’t been there a moment before. It wasn’t like she’d appeared out of nowhere. More like she’d always been there and he hadn’t noticed till now. Except Happy knew she hadn’t been there.
The young woman looked real, and solid. She was medium height, with a trim body and long blonde hair falling down around a pretty, heart-shaped face. She had big eyes and a sweet smile. She wore a long white dress-not actually a bridal gown, but that was what Happy thought of when he looked at it. The young woman held her hands neatly folded together in her lap, perfectly calm and peaceful and at ease. She seemed happy to be there with Happy.
He looked at her for a long moment. He didn’t even try to raise his Sight, to See what she really was, what was really going on. Not because he was scared to but because he was so worn-out. . that he couldn’t bring himself to give a damn. He wanted someone to talk to, and she would do as well as anyone. And if she turned out not to be real, so much the better. He could be honest with someone who wasn’t really there. He smiled at the young blonde woman, and she smiled back at him.
“I’m tired,” said Happy. “Really, really tired. It’s hard for me to feel anything, to care about anything. Or anyone. Including me. I do try, but. . it’s getting more difficult every day, to force a way through the tiredness, to find a reason to go on. At first, I had the job. I liked helping people, helping the living in their troubles, helping the dead to move on. But the job keeps getting harder, and more complicated, taking more and more out of me, and the pressure never ends. . When the job wasn’t enough any more, I looked for another reason to go on living. Melody tried hard to be that reason, God love her, but. . She did everything she could to distract me from my problems; but she couldn’t solve any of them. She couldn’t save me from being me. So I went back to the pills because the pills were always there.
“The effort wears me out. . the everyday effort of fighting to stay sane. Sometimes I wonder whether it might be better to lie down, and go to sleep, and not have to wake up again. And if God is good, I won’t dream. .”
The young woman shook her head slowly. “Death is worse,” she said. “Trust me.”
She became suddenly, utterly horrible.
* * *
Happy screamed and screamed and screamed. Until Melody kicked his door in and came running into the room, her machine-pistol at the ready in her hand, searching for a target. She was half-expecting another intruder, like the man she’d thrown out of her room, but it only took her a moment to see the room was empty. Apart from Happy, staring at nothing, screaming at the top of his voice. His face was bone-white with shock, his eyes bulging half out of his head.
Melody put her gun away, hurried over to Happy, knelt beside him, and took him in her arms, hugging him to her as tightly as she could. He stopped screaming and buried his face in her shoulder, sobbing like a frightened child. Melody patted his back and murmured comforting words in his ear. She was honestly shocked. She’d seen Happy face down ghosts and gods and everything in between, and never seen his nerve broken this badly. She thought at first he must have taken something, but it only took a glance to see that all the bottles and boxes set out on the writing-table were unopened. And besides, Happy took pills so he wouldn’t have to see the things that frightened him. Melody glared around the empty room, desperate for some enemy to lash out at.
JC arrived a moment later. He stopped abruptly in the open doorway as Melody aimed her machine-pistol at him. She quickly recognised him and lowered the gun. JC took a moment to make sure neither she nor Happy were injured, then he prowled quickly round Happy’s room, checking the place out. He opened the wardrobe and looked inside, looked out the window, checked the tiny bathroom, and even looked under the bed. When he’d satisfied himself that there was no-one else in the room, he went back to Melody and Happy. They were still holding on to each other. Happy had stopped crying, but he was still shuddering uncontrollably. JC raised an eyebrow at Melody, who shook her head. JC did his best to sound calm and reassuring.
“Happy, this is JC. You’re safe now. There’s only Melody and me here. Can you tell us what happened?”
Happy slowly raised his head to look at JC, not letting go of Melody. His eyes were puffy, but his gaze was steady. He tried to explain, talking of a door that came and went, and a blonde woman who wasn’t real, and said things. . but most of what he said made no sense. JC understood. Often, it’s not what actually happens in a haunting that matters; it’s how it makes you feel. Ghosts are very good at finding your weak spots. Your psychic pressure points.
Happy stopped shaking. He took a deep breath and let go of Melody. She immediately let go of him, stood up, and stepped back. Happy mopped at his face with a handkerchief, blew his nose, and rose unsteadily to his feet. He looked at where the door had been in the rear wall, but, of course, there was nothing left to show where it had been because it was never really there. Or at least, never really a door. JC nodded to Melody, and the two of them moved away to stand in the open doorway, so they could talk quietly together.