Perhaps fortunately, Dennis came back at that moment, giving us both his best professional smile. “All arranged, my dears! Now let us get this all over and done with. Maurice will look after things, in my hopefully short absence. He’ll cheat me on the take, no doubt about it, but better to lose some than all by having to close up. No-one appreciates the trials and tribulations of the honest business man.”
“Least of all you,” I agreed. I held his gaze firmly with mine. “If I ever find out you’re holding any of these ghost girls against their will . . .”
Dennis came as close to real laughter as he dared. “Do me a favour, Mr. Taylor! They come to me! They ask for this. Every girl working here is a volunteer. They need the life-force they suck out of the punters every night, to hold themselves together. To maintain their grip on this world. You couldn’t make them leave here if you tried. Couldn’t drive them out, with bell, book, and candle. This is their club, Mr. Taylor; I get to run things for them. Of course, I also get a bit of the old rumpy pumpy, from time to time . . .”
“Oh, ick!” said Cathy, firmly.
Dennis sniggered. “Every job has its perks, my dears. Can I help it if I like my ectoplasm cold?”
We all clambered into Cathy’s MINI Cooper and headed off into the Nightside rather more swiftly than I was comfortable with. Dennis enjoyed the trip immensely, waving his podgy fingers out the window at people he recognised though most of them chose not to recognise him. If nothing else, he made a great distraction. I thought hard about what I was going to do when I revisited the hole in the ground that was all that was left of the Hawk’s Wind Bar & Grille. I also kept a watchful eye on Cathy and Dennis. I wasn’t too concerned about dear old Den-Den. You always knew where you were with him. He didn’t care that I’d killed Julien Advent because he didn’t care about anyone. He’d back-stab me for the reward in a moment, given half a chance, but we both knew he didn’t have the balls to do it to my face. He’d do whatever I told him, in the hope of favours to call on, further down the line. But Cathy . . . worried me. Why hadn’t she fallen under the influence of the Sun King? Like Suzie had? I couldn’t ask Cathy. I didn’t want her to think I didn’t trust her.
When we finally pulled up alongside the great hole in the ground where the Bar used to be, it all looked exactly as it had before. Big and ugly and completely lacking in any supernatural energies. We all got out of the MINI Cooper, moved over to the edge of the hole, and stared down into it. No difference at all. Just a hole, where something marvellous used to be. Something about the scene bothered me, and I realised it was the quiet. I looked quickly about me. Most of the watching crowd had disappeared, gone in search of something more interesting to look at. Never any lack of that to be had, in the Nightside. And . . . “Why aren’t there any naked people here?” I said suddenly.
Cathy gave me a sideways look. “Should there be? Were you expecting naked people; or are you at a funny age, boss?”
“I mean the Tantric Troops,” I said. “The Authorities’ new attack dogs. They were all over the place here before.”
“Oh, them,” Dennis said wisely. “The Fuck Buddies. Oh yes, my dears, we’ve all heard about them. Talk about making a virtue out of a necessity . . . Last I heard, the remaining Authorities had scattered them across the Nightside, looking for you, Mr. Taylor. After all; it’s not like there’s much here for them to guard . . .”
I nodded and went back to looking into the hole. “I was here before, with Julien. Talking about the Bar’s sudden disappearance. And I can’t help feeling I’m missing something . . .”
I took the book out of my inside pocket, and leafed quickly through it. Cathy frowned slowly.
“Does that book, by any chance, come from where I think it does?” she said. “From, in fact, the much-respected and even-more-feared HPL?”
“I borrowed it, for a while,” I said. “Unofficially. Without telling anybody. Though they’ve probably noticed by now.”
Cathy was already shaking her head. “You’re a lot braver than I am, boss. They’ll send the Library Policemen after you. The big men, with hammers.”
“I have more pressing things to worry about,” I said, still flipping quickly through the pages. It was all very familiar. I’d read it all before. I knew everything that was in the book; so what was I missing? And then I stopped, as a very familiar phrase jumped out at me. The Bar burned down in 1970, possibly in self-immolation as a protest against the breaking up of the Beatles, then came back as a ghost of itself. The Hawk’s Wind chose to come back! That was the answer, right there! The Bar made a conscious decision to return, which meant the building was sentient. Not just a ghost image of a missing place but a conscious entity in its own right! That’s why the Bar was able to be so solid and hold aspects of the sixties within itself. And as a real, sentient, ghost personality . . . I should be able to ask it questions and get some answers.
I slammed the book shut, put it away, and quickly explained my thinking to Cathy and Dennis. They both nodded quickly—Cathy excitedly, Dennis reluctantly. I looked out over the empty hole.
“Den-Den; can you . . . ?”
“I’ve been trying ever since we got here, Mr. Taylor; and I can’t feel a thing. Wherever the Bar’s gone, it’s way out my reach.”
So I had no choice but to raise my gift again. It didn’t come easily. It was like lifting a dead weight, then forcing it to do tricks. But I made it work, through sheer will-power, and reached out with my gift to find the Hawk’s Wind Bar & Grille and call it back.
It really was only a ghost, this time. A grey, semi-transparent shape, its colours a faded memory, with transparent walls, through which could be seen dark human figures, standing or sitting at tables, very still. All the people trapped inside when the Bar was forced out of Time and Space. It was a very tenuous, very flimsy manifestation; but it was quite definitely there, right in front of me. I could sense its presence, feel its living, conscious thoughts . . . but I couldn’t understand them. The Bar might be a sentient thing, but it wasn’t in any way human. How the hell was I going to get any answers out of it?”
I turned to Dennis, but he was already shaking his head. “Wery sorry, Mr. Taylor, but I only work with deceased peoples.”
“Try!” I said, very coldly. “Because every damned soul in the Nightside is depending on us, right now, and if we screw this up . . .”
And then I stopped, as one of the dark figures inside the ghostly Bar rose abruptly from its table, then walked slowly through the Bar to the front door. None of the other figures moved, or even acknowledged it. The front door opened of its own accord, and the dark figure stood there, in the doorway. It looked at me. A cold hand took hold of my heart, and squeezed it tight. I knew that face. I hadn’t known Julien Advent back in the sixties, but he hadn’t changed at all. I wasn’t even born then, but he looked exactly the same. He spoke to me; but it was the voice and words of the Hawk’s Wind, speaking through the sixties incarnation of the Great Victorian Adventurer.
I could tell.
“The Sun King didn’t remove me from this reality,” said the Bar, through Julien’s mouth. “The Entities from Beyond did it.”
“The Aquarians?” I said. My mouth was very dry.
“That’s not their name. They removed me from the world because I’m the only part of the Nightside that the Sun King cares about. He went along with it because the Entities said it was important to remove the people held within me; but they lied.”
“How do you know what the Entities want?” I said carefully.
“Because you can’t hide the truth from the dead,” said the Bar. “Many things about the world become so much clearer, once you’re dead. Especially if you’ve chosen not to depart, just yet.”