Ghostfinders 01 - Ghost of a Chance

feel dead. I don’t! I still feel human things, living things; and I’m afraid to give up on them because that would mean giving up on you, JC, and how I feel about you.”
    “Then don’t do it,” JC said immediately. “Look away. Dealing with things like this is my business. I’ll find out Who or What is behind all this and make them pay. That’s what I do.”
    “I love it when you sound all cocky and confident,” said Kim. “It gives me hope. Tell me . . . what does JC stand for?”
    “Josiah Charles,” said JC, after a moment.
    “Ah.” Kim considered this, for a moment, then smiled broadly. “JC is fine.”
    “I thought so,” said JC.
    “Why is life so unfair? Why did I have to die to find true love?”
    “Life’s like that,” said JC. “And death, too, sometimes.”
    From out of the darkness, at the end of the platform, there came the sudden thunder of an approaching train. It beat on the air like the roar of some great, hungry, beast. JC moved forward automatically, to put his body between Kim and the approaching train, to protect her. Kim giggled, despite herself.
    “JC, sweetie, I’m a ghost, remember? I don’t need protecting.”
    “Being dead doesn’t necessarily mean you’re beyond all harm,” said JC.
    “What?” said Kim. “I’m not safe even now I’m dead? How unfair is that? And exactly when were you planning to tell me that?”
    “I just did. Can we concentrate on the on-coming threat, please?”
    “We will have words about this later,” said Kim.
    “Oh joy,” said JC.
    The growing roar of sound became too loud for further conversation, then the train slammed into the station. The compressed air blasted ahead of the engine stank so badly that JC actually recoiled from it. The train roared past him, dripping blood, as though it had been doused in gallons of the stuff, and behind it came cars covered in graffiti, daubed in fresh blood. Some of it was still running down the steel sides. As the cars slowed to a halt in the station, JC recognised some of the graffitied words, and he winced despite himself.
    “What?” Kim said immediately. “What is it, JC? Do you know that weird writing?”
    “Yes,” JC said reluctantly. “It’s Enochian. An artificial language created in Elizabethan times, so men could talk with angels and demons and spirits of the air.”
    “Enochian? I never heard of it.”
    “Not many have, and it’s better that way. It’s not a language for everyday conversation. The name comes from Enoch, the first city of men, according to the Old Testament.”
    “Never mind the history lesson, sweetie. Can you read it?”
    “No. I really should have studied more. Though I doubt very much it’s saying anything we’d want to know.”
    Steam curled up around the long line of cars, thick and rancid, smelling of brimstone and bitter honey, blood and shit and sour milk. Kim pulled a face.
    “What is that awful stench?”
    “Trust me,” said JC. “You really don’t want to know. Wait a minute . . . you can smell that?”
    “I can see and hear,” said Kim, defensively. “Why shouldn’t my other senses work as well?”
    “I’m going to have to get back to you on that one,” said JC.
    The doors slammed open, one after another, all down the long row of cars, sounding like firecrackers in Hell. Suddenly every car was illuminated from within by a fierce blood-red glow; and in that hellish light, demons glared out the windows and through the open doors, all their glowing eyes locked onto the living man and the dead woman. And then the demons laughed, a harsh, awful sound that hurt the ears of the living and the dead. They laughed and howled and stamped their misshapen feet, seething together in their packed cars like maggots in an open wound.
    JC’s blood ran cold at the sight of them. His heart lurched in his chest, and he could barely get his breath. These were no traditional, medieval demons, with scarlet skin and barbed tails, claws and fangs and batwings. No simple distortions of Humanity, like those old familiar monsters carved into stone on churches and cathedrals all over Europe. These were the real thing, low-level demons made flesh and bone so they could operate in the material plane. The dregs of the damned, the gutter sweepings of Hell.
    They wore forms calculated to horrify, intended to disgust. Shapes that held only a little Humanity, the better for Humanity to be mocked and insulted. Sin made plain in flesh and bone, stamped with