“Please don’t taunt the deadly supernatural threat,” murmured Melody. “Not when I haven’t got my proper defensive equipment to hand.”
Kim looked up and down the long corridor, frowning prettily. “It’s hiding. I can’t See anything. Happy, can you See anything?”
“More than you can possibly imagine,” said Happy indistinctly.
They all looked round in time to see Happy knock back a single fat pill, canary yellow with ice-blue stripes. He dry swallowed the bulky thing with the ease of long practice, then shook his head hard. His eyes bulged, his breathing grew steadily deeper, and he smiled broadly. He started snorting and grunting, and stamped one foot on the ground like an animal getting ready to charge.
“Oh hell,” said JC. “What’s he taken now?”
“Something he usually only takes with me in mind,” said Melody. “I’d stand well back if I were you.”
“But what does it do?” said Kim.
“Amplifies some of his more. . basic instincts,” said Melody.
“The two of you never cease to appal me,” said JC. “Really. I mean it.”
“I can See you!” Happy said loudly, his whole body orientated on the right-hand side of the landing. “Don’t think I can’t See you!”
And he charged straight down the landing, like a bull who’d spotted a way past the matador’s cloak. JC and Melody and Kim hurried after Happy, until he slammed to a sudden halt and stood quivering like a pointing dog, facing one particular room. He grunted and growled at the closed door, his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists. Still grinning his very disturbing grin.
“This is it! I can tell. . This is the room where if you go in, you don’t get to come out again. Except, of course, this isn’t a room and never was.”
“What are you Seeing, Happy?” said JC, moving cautiously in beside him.
“Oh, I’m Seeing all kinds of things,” said Happy, staring at the closed door with wide, unblinking eyes. “JC, you wouldn’t believe some of the things I’m Seeing. Hello, can any of you hear that? It sounds like. . a baby, crying.”
JC looked at Melody, then at Kim, and turned reluctantly back to Happy. “I don’t hear anything,” he said carefully.
“Of course you don’t!” said Happy. Sweat was pouring down his face, but his eyes still didn’t blink. “You were born with mental blinkers on, like everyone else. Don’t worry; it’s not actually a baby. It’s something that’s learned to sound like a baby crying, to lure people in. But I know better. I know a lure when I hear one. .”
He went suddenly quiet, glaring at the door. JC looked at Happy, at the others, then at the door. It gave every appearance of being completely safe and ordinary, but JC still couldn’t bring himself to touch it. All the hairs were standing up on the back of his neck and his arms, in ancient, instinctual warning. It felt like the door was watching him. .
“Excuse me, everyone,” said Kim. “But what are you all looking at? I didn’t hear any baby, and I don’t see any door. You’re all staring at a perfectly unremarkable stretch of wall.”
“I told you. It’s not a room, it’s a trap!” Happy said loudly. “And since it’s a trap designed to lure in the living, you can’t see it, Kim. Being dead, as you are. The room doesn’t want you. Because you ain’t got no body, and therefore no chewy bits.”
“I think I feel left out,” said Kim. “Passed over.”
“Ghost humour,” said Happy. “Ho ho ho!”
“Calm the hell down, Happy, or I swear I will stick a nozzle up your bottom and rinse your insides out with Ritalin,” said Melody. “When this is all over, I am going to have to sit down and work out some serious checks and balances for you.”
“Fun time!” said Happy.
JC tore his gaze away from the door, walked back to the top of the stairs, and shouted down them. “Brook! Get back up here! You’re needed!”
He waited, but there was no response. JC growled under his breath and tapped one foot impatiently.
“I could ghost through this section of wall,” Kim said helpfully. “Or stick my head through and take a quick peek at what’s in there. .”
“Really wouldn’t do that,” Happy said immediately. “Really bad idea, ghost girl.”
“But you said it isn’t interested in me,” said Kim.
“Not to eat,” said Happy. “Doesn’t mean it couldn’t do something very nasty to your ectoplasm. I suppose there must be something Out There, that eats ectoplasm. . There are all kinds of predators, after all. Hate to think what they’d excrete, though. .”
Melody decided she didn’t want to say anything about that and considered the door-handle before her. “Do you suppose it’s locked?”
“That door is only locked when it wants to be,” Happy said wisely.
JC gave up on the stairs and came back to join them, so he could glare at the closed door, close-up. “Come on, Happy, aren’t you picking up anything behind that door?”
“I keep telling you!” said Happy. “There is no room behind this door! A lot of what’s happening in this bloody inn is destructive energies and emotions, mixed and fused together, manifesting in physical ways. . But what we have here is different. This is a predator from Outside that’s forced its way through some crack in the walls of the world. There’s nothing on the other side of the door, or at least nothing you or I could hope to recognise or understand. It’s out of this world. Like Kim said, there is no door there. Just something that’s learned to look like a door, for the same reason it learned to sound like a baby crying. To lure the food through and into its belly.”
“All right,” said JC. “This isn’t a haunted room, like yours. Or a receptacle for a piece of broken Time. This isn’t another side effect of the sacrificed victim, or the storm, or the local power source. This isn’t a room; it’s a Beast.”
“Finally, someone is listening to me!” said Happy. “Marvellous, wonderful; I may faint. Look! There’s Something in there, a really powerful Something. Possibly one of the Abominations from the Outer Rings. They’re always trying to get in at us.”
“But if it is some kind of Beast,” said Melody, “what’s it doing here? What does it want with us?”
“It’s hungry,” said Happy. “It’s always hungry.”
“So there’s absolutely no chance of getting any of its victims back?” said JC.
“No,” said Happy. “They’re gone. Not even any bones left. .”
“Then there’s no need to play by the rules any longer,” said JC, rubbing his hands together. “No more Mister Nice Guy! Happy; what would happen if I were to open this door?”
“What do you think?” said Happy. “You might as well soak your arm in barbecue sauce and stick it down a lion’s throat. But you go right ahead if that’s what you want. I shall be right behind you. Way behind you, watching from the other end of the corridor.”
“Why not destroy the door?” said Melody. “Remove the Beast’s access to our world? I could shoot a whole bunch of really big holes through it.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” said JC. “Happy! Stay where you are!”
“My heart is currently brave, but my legs are still chicken,” said Happy. “Or, to put it another way-sensible. Bullets won’t do it, Mel.”
“Why not?” said Melody. “I have cursed and blessed bullets, along with ammo dipped in holy water, sacred blood, deadly nightshade, and fallen angel’s urine.”
Happy gave her a look. “Only you would have a gun with poisoned bullets. And it still wouldn’t work. The door isn’t the problem. It’s only the mask on the face of the creature.”
“If cold iron won’t do the job, what about fire?” said JC.
Happy beat a rapid tattoo on the closed door with both fists while he considered the point. “Might work,” he said finally. “Fire has. . cleansing connotations. What did you have in mind?”
JC had already produced something from an inside pocket. He held it out, so they could all get a good look at it. Small and round, easily double the size of a cricket ball, it shone with an almost unbearable light.
“Is that. . what I think it is?” said Happy.