Spirits from Beyond by Simon R. Green Read Free Book Online

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?”
    “Kim,” JC said carefully, “I have to ask. How do you know all this? I mean, you’re talking about things that even the highest levels of the Carnacki Institute almost certainly don’t know about.”
    “I have travelled in many places,” said Kim. “And I have witnessed many things. I will tell you everything, JC, eventually. When it’s safe. But right now, down here, I need you to trust me. So we can concentrate on what’s before us.”
    “I trust you,” said JC. “If only because the thought of not being able to trust you scares me more than anything else.”
    Kim laughed softly. “Dear JC, always so wonderfully practical.”
    Happy put his hand in the air and waved it around. JC looked at him.
    “What is it, Happy? Do you need to be excused? I don’t think there are any facilities around here. Use a tree. Take your pick. It won’t care. We won’t look. Though I can’t promise anything for what’s out there.”
    “I have a question!” said Happy, with great dignity. “Why does the appallingly powerful Flesh Undying need help to destroy us? We’re only human. Apart from Kim, obviously. No offence. Have I said that before? Oooh . . . flashbacks . . .”
    “He may be out of his skull, but he has a point,” said Melody.
    “The Flesh Undying is stuck at the bottom of the ocean,” Kim said patiently. “To try anything directly would use up a great deal of power. So instead, it prefers to act in this world through agents. Like the Faust, or the Phantom of the Haybarn. Or the traitor who possessed Robert Patterson. Lud would make a far more powerful local agent. Even if he is much diminished from what he once was. Only a ghost of his former self . . . As to why The Flesh Undying is so determined to wipe us out. I think it’s scared of us.”
    “Us?”