Voices From Beyond (A Ghost Finders Novel) by Simon R. Green Read Free Book Online Page B

demanded the professor.
    “That’s his normal condition,” said JC. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”
    “Why is he taking those pills?” said the professor.
    “He does that,” said JC.
    Happy dry-swallowed hard and put his pill box away. “Ah! Yes! That’s the stuff to give the troops! If I were any more aware, I’d be twins. The doorway’s shifted position, JC; I can tell. It’s moved away from the coffee table, to the television set. The Beast is forcing the door all the way open, from the other side. It wants in. It wants . . . Oh dear God, it’s so hungry, JC! It wants to eat us all up, the whole damned world, body and soul.” He laughed suddenly; a sound with no real humour in it. “Let it come through! I’ll kick its head right off.”
    “Might have overdone the dosage a bit there, Happy,” murmured JC.
    “Can it do that?” demanded the professor. “Can it break through? Actually appear, here, in our world?”
    “That’s what doors are all about, Prof,” said JC.
    “It wants to come here and . . . eat our souls, as well as our bodies?”
    “That’s what Beasts do,” said JC.
    “I think I’m going to be sick again,” said the professor.
    “Perfectly normal response,” said JC. “Try to keep some of it off my shoes, this time.”
    The professor swallowed hard and looked beseechingly at JC. “Can you stop it? Can you get my students back? Bring them home?”
    “We can try,” said JC. “But if we’re to successfully pull off this increasingly unlikely long shot . . . I’m going to have to bring in the fourth member of our little team. The real expert on all things ghostly. Come in, Kim.”
    The ghost girl Kim Sterling walked through the far wall to join them. She stood beside the television set, glowing, and smiling sweetly on one and all. A beautiful, pre-Raphaelite dream of a woman, with a great mane of glorious red hair tumbling down to her shoulders, framing a high-boned, sharply defined face with vivid green eyes and a wide, happy smile. She was in her twenties and had been ever since she was murdered down in the London Underground. She wore a long black dress with white piping and a neat little hat pushed well back on her head.
    Kim Sterling, the only working ghost in the Ghost Finders.
    “Hello, darlings,” she said. “Don’t I look divine? Is no-one going to applaud? It isn’t easy, you know, looking this glamorous on no budget.”
    The professor almost jumped out of his skin when she walked through the wall. He looked very much like he wanted to run again, but JC had a hand ready to clamp down should it prove necessary; so he settled for hiding behind JC and peering at the ghost girl over his shoulder.
    “Why didn’t you ride down with us, in the Land Rover?” asked Melody, entirely unmoved by Kim’s dramatic arrival.
    “She probably heard about your driving,” said Happy.
    Kim smiled easily about her. “Sorry I’m a bit late. I came by the low road, the paths the dead walk. It’s very scenic, this time of year.”
    She smiled disarmingly at the professor, who was still refusing to come out from behind JC.
    “I don’t believe in ghosts!” he said loudly. “I don’t!”
    “Really?” said Kim. “I don’t believe there are people as stupid as you, but I keep being proved wrong.”
    She hadn’t even finished speaking when suddenly everything that wasn’t actually nailed in place or bolted down went flying round the room. Heavy objects shot through the air, seeking out living targets. Porcelain figures flashed past ducking heads, to crash and shatter against the walls. Clocks exploded, sending metal fragments flying through the air like shrapnel. Every piece of furniture went tumbling end over end, in a major outbreak of poltergeist activity. The only things not to move were the coffee table and the television set. A shard of broken mirror-glass almost took the professor’s head off as he sat there gawping; but JC dragged him down at the last moment. The