“Fossilised trees?” said Melody, after a while. “How is that even possible? I mean, how old would trees have to be, before. .”
“Maybe there’s a Gorgon down here,” Happy said brightly.
“The trees continue because the Druids continue,” Kim said quietly. “Because this is the world they remember. From when they were alive. There are old sleeping powers here, and people. The Flesh Undying has promised to aid them if they will serve him. They know we’re here. They know we’re coming.”
“All right,” said JC. “How do we fight them?”
“We can’t,” said Kim. “But the ghost of the old god Lud, he can. If we can persuade him that such actions are in his best interests.”
“Marvellous,” said Melody. “What can we promise him that The Flesh Undying can’t? What does a dead god want, anyway?”
“Broad band?” said Happy.
“Come on,” said JC, “We can do this! Slapping down ghosts is our business.”
“You can be so cocky sometimes,” said Melody.
“I know!” said JC. “It’s one of my most endearing qualities.”
* * *
Kim insisted on taking the lead as they pressed on between towering stone trees, following a trail or direction only she could see. The moonlight that fell from no moon took on a blue-white, shimmering aspect, while the surrounding shadows seemed to grow deeper and darker all the time. The air smelled close and bad, as though something had breathed all the goodness out of it long ago. JC strode along beside Kim, quietly trying to get her to open up and answer some questions; but she had nothing further to say. Melody clung firmly on to her machine-pistol with one hand and hauled Happy along with the other. He kept wanting to go off and chase butterflies. But in the end, he was the first one to realise they were not alone in the stone forest. That something, or rather some large number of somethings, was following along with them. Sticking to the more extreme shadows, staying well out of sight; a presence more felt than properly observed.
JC pulled everyone in close and kept them moving. He trusted Kim’s sense of direction, but he still had to wonder if they were being herded. . Whatever was moving silently along with them between the grey trees felt bad. A threat to the spirit as well as the body. Something that served the kind of forces that could only be found in the dark. JC could hear them, after a while, moving in closer, behind and around them. Surrounding them, forever on the edge of vision, barely glimpsed out of the corner of the eye. Melody waved her machine-pistol around until JC made her lower it again. He didn’t want to start something he wasn’t sure he could win. Until finally the trees fell suddenly back to either side, revealing a huge open space before them-a vast natural amphitheatre. A carefully arranged setting for what was waiting for them.
The Ghost Finders came to a halt. JC looked up, half-expecting to see an open night sky above, complete with full moon. But there was only stone and gloom above. So JC had no choice but to look at the terrible thing sitting on its throne, before them.
Lud was huge. A massive, towering, mostly human figure, sitting unmoving on a throne so old. . that both Lud and his throne seemed impossibly ancient. And equally fossilised. Like the trees in his forest. JC had never seen anything, living or dead, as big as Lud. In his time, in his prime, Lud could have intimidated dinosaurs. His shape and proportions were subtly wrong, even disturbing to any normal human sense of aesthetics; but in the end the thing on the throne looked more like a man than anything else. Its skin was grey and dusty, like the trees. It almost looked like a statue, a nightmare carved in old stone; but it was clearly, unsettlingly, so much more than that. It had a huge, horned, almost skeletal head, with an elongated muzzle packed full of blocky teeth, and two deep, dark, empty eye-sockets. The horns looked more like branches than bone, and even more like branching antlers.
JC hated to think how big Lud would be if he ever rose from his throne again.
“He’s been dead for centuries,” Kim said softly. “And he hasn’t moved from that throne since the Romans left Britain.”
“But, he’s still. . here,” said Happy. “A physical presence; not just a spirit. Like you.”
“That is the ghost of a god,” said Kim. “The rules are different.”
“Rules?” said Melody. “There are rules? Who sets them?”
“Such things are decided where all the things that matter are decided,” said Kim. “On the shimmering plains, in the Courts of the Holy.”
“If anything, I think I feel even less confident than before you started explaining things,” said Happy.
“We’re currently standing under that part of London known as Ludgate,” said Kim. “Where St. Paul’s Cathedral is now. A Christian holy site, put in place over an old pagan site. They did that a lot, to hold the old things down. Lud’s Gate, where the first Wicker Men were ignited; whose awful burning light illuminated Druid Britain from coast to coast. And here before us, on his throne, all that remains of the old god Lud. People have attributed all kinds of stories and powers to him; sun god, warrior god, protector of his people during the long winter. . but Lud was here long before there were humans around to worship him. He chose to become a humanlike form, so humans could more easily worship him. He wanted to scare them, not scare them off. Lud isn’t even his real name. I don’t think anyone knows what Lud was, originally. Faith is fuel, to his kind. They feed on emotions, and death, and souls. You don’t think The Flesh Undying had the shape it does now, the one we saw in the vision, before it was kicked out of the greater world it came from? No; it was forced into its present shape, contained by the physical limitations of this world, to punish it. Its shape and conditions are the true bars of its cage.”
She drifted silently forward, to stand directly before the throne, tilting her head all the way back to look up into Lud’s awful face, half-lost in shadows.
“Lud, forgotten now, no longer worshipped by anyone or anything, outside of London Undertowen. Oh yes, JC, there are those here who still look up to him. The Flesh Undying has given them new shape and power, so they can raise Lud from his long sleep. So The Flesh Undying can bargain with him. Appeal to him, as one outcast to another.”
“Hold it,” said JC. “Are you saying Lud came here, to this world, from some other place? Like The Flesh Undying?”
“They weren’t the first, and they won’t be the last,” said Kim. “Other-dimensional remittance men, slumming it in the lower dimensions. But it’s all conjecture. If Lud was forced through a crack in the sky, there was no-one human here to see it. This all happened long ago, before human history, let alone human civilisation.”
“We are not the original owners of this world,” said Melody, unexpectedly. “We merely inherited it.”
“She reads a lot of H. P. Lovecraft,” said Happy, a bit apologetically. “I never read horror fiction. Gives me nightmares.”
“She could be right, this time,” said Kim.
“Oh thanks a bunch,” said Happy. “I may never sleep again.”
“Good,” said Melody, unfeelingly. “So I won’t have to put up with your snoring.”
“I do not snore!”
“Cut it the hell out, right now, both of you; or I will slap you both, and it will hurt!” said JC. “We are standing before the ghost of an old and very dangerous god. Keep the noise down.”
“Lud is the trap,” said Kim. “But he is also the way out of the trap. The Flesh Undying promised Lud that if he would destroy me, and all of you, then it would make Lud powerful again. Worshipped again. A force to be reckoned with in the world of men. Question is-is Lud desperate enough to actually believe that?”