Ghostfinders 01 - Ghost of a Chance

get the hell back here with the rest of us!” said JC.
    Happy seemed to suddenly realise where he was. He sprinted back down the platform, not stopping until he was safely past JC and Melody, and had put the rack of instruments between him and the on-coming train. “Sorry about that,” he said breathlessly. “You can’t take as many pills as I do to make you brave and fearless without losing some of your self-preservation instincts. And they turn your piss orange.”
    He broke off as the sound of the train grew suddenly louder—painfully, deafeningly loud. It filled their heads and shuddered in their bones, a far louder sound than any train should ever make. Like the roar of a great beast, it filled the station, harsh and threatening. JC realised he could feel it as much as hear it, a terrible presence that triggered a recognition in the darkest and most primitive levels of his mind, where the lizard brain had never forgotten how it felt to be hunted, to be prey. The whole platform shook, as though it was afraid of what was coming.
    JC stuck his head right next to Melody’s and shouted in her ear. “Is this real ? Is that a real train coming, or some kind of psychic projection?”
    “Are you crazy?” she yelled back. “Listen to it! Doesn’t it sound real?”
    “It’s too loud! It’s too loud, and I don’t trust it! What do your instruments say? Is it real ?”
    Melody checked her instruments, clinging to them for support. “It’s real enough! It’s showing up on all the sensors as a real moving physical object!”
    “Of course it’s real!” yelled Happy, glaring at the tunnel-mouth. “I can hear screaming! I can feel real pain and horror and death! It’s real! It’s real! God help us all, it’s real!”
    A burst of compressed air slammed out of the tunnel-mouth ahead of the on-coming train, sweeping through the station, hitting the three ghost finders like a blow in the face. They all rocked back on their feet as the air wave hit them, then the train roared into the station at impossible speed, brakes squealing painfully as the cars shuddered and skidded to a halt. Clouds of steam billowed up around the train and its long row of cars, thick creamy steam that stank of brimstone and blood, spoiled meat and sour milk. JC turned his head away from it. Melody bent over her instruments as though she could protect them with her body. Happy gazed into the slowly dispersing cloud of steam with an awful fascination, his face twisted with horror and disgust. JC made himself look back at the train. The steam died away, revealing a line of cars that stretched the whole length of the platform.
    Every car was packed full of people, men and women from earlier in the day, caught and trapped, then taken away, not to be seen again, until that moment. They’d been in there for hours, travelling God alone knew where, in the dark places under the earth. Driven mad, they had turned on each other. JC and Happy and Melody watched helplessly as the trapped passengers went at each other with their bare hands. Half-naked, clothes torn and tattered, they fought and tore at each other like animals, their faces distorted by savage, primal emotions. They murdered and raped and ate each other, laughing and crying and howling like the damned things they were. Blood and shit and piss, and other liquids from torn-out organs, had been spattered and smeared across the car-windows, but not enough to hide the horror within. The uproar from inside the cars was almost unbearable, a horrible mixture of sounds that should never have come from human mouths.
    JC and Happy and Melody saw it all, like glimpses into Hell.
    JC grabbed Melody by the shoulders and physically turned her away from the sight, making her concentrate on her instrument panels instead. It helped to steady her, a little. She stopped shuddering and shaking and fought to understand what the readings were telling her. Happy was lying on the platform, curled up into a ball, both hands over his ears, while tears coursed down his face from behind clenched-shut eyes. JC shook Happy’s shoulder hard, and even kicked him a few times, but Happy was beyond reaching. JC reluctantly left him to his misery. There was nothing he could do to help Happy, but he had to believe there was still something he could do for the people trapped in the cars.
    He strode over to the nearest doors and tried to force them open; but they wouldn’t budge, no matter how much strength he threw