Ghostfinders 02 - Ghost of a Smile

footsteps echoing in the quiet. He stopped right before JC and looked at him sternly.
    “I’ve had a look at your machines. Machines won’t help you with the spirit world. Nor will official attitudes. It’s all about prayer and belief and compassion. Spirits who are having trouble passing on respond best to the personal touch. Human contact, kindness, sympathy, positive attitudes. I’m here to talk and to listen, and to help if I can.”
    “An entirely worthy intention,” said JC, getting in quickly before Melody could stop sputtering long enough to say something unhelpful. “Unfortunately . . . not all ghosts want peace. Some have to be pacified.”
    Suddenly, without any warning, the whole building was shaking with the deafening sounds of machines working filling the air. Huge machines slamming and grinding, overpowering. The floor vibrated heavily, shaking everyone with the brutal power and motion of unseen machinery. They all put their hands to their ears, but it wasn’t the kind of sound they could keep out. The roar of the machines filled the whole factory floor, filled their heads, and rattled their bones. Susan grabbed onto her grandfather’s arm with both hands, to hold him steady. They all looked around them, Tiley waving his lantern with a shaking hand; but there was nothing to see anywhere.
    “I know this noise!” said Tiley, leaning in close and shouting to be heard over the din. “Though I haven’t heard it in years. This is what it sounded like on the factory floor, when all the machines were working at once. It made me deaf for a week when I first started! No ear protectors in my day . . . But they pulled all the machines out of here when they shut the place down!”
    The sound stopped abruptly, and Tiley shouted his last few words into an echoing silence. The air was still, the building was steady, and the floor was calm and certain again, as though nothing had happened. But there was still something . . . in the dark, out beyond the light.
    “Can you feel that?” said Happy, stepping forward reluctantly. “There’s a definite presence here . . .”
    “Of course there is!” snapped Tiley. “And you and your young friends have upset it, with your modern scientific attitudes! You people need to get out of here. You’re making things worse. Leave me to get on with my work.”
    “We can’t do that,” said JC.
    “Why not?” said Susan. “Who are you, really? And don’t give me that professionals bullshit. Who wears sunglasses at night, in a deserted building? You’re not from any of the official ghost-hunting groups, like FOG and PIS.”
    “Fog and what ?” said Happy.
    “Friends of Ghosts, and Paranormal Investigation Society,” said Tiley. He stabbed an accusing finger at JC. “You’re journalists, aren’t you? Bloody tabloids!”
    “No,” said JC. “We’re really not interested in publicity. The horror of ghosts, for most people, is that they’re beyond all the usual methods of control. People feel helpless before them, terrified by the unknown, not knowing how to cope. But we are from the Carnacki Institute, and we know what to do with ghosts.”
    “Like what?” said Tiley.
    “Whatever’s necessary,” said JC.
    Again, there was something in his voice that seemed to reach the old man and calm him down. JC gave him his full attention.
    “What was it like, Mr. Tiley, working here, back in the day? Was it a bad place, back then?”
    “Not really,” said Tiley. “Hard work, but steady. Regular work that you could rely on, year in and year out. And that meant a lot, back when I was a young man. I spent most of my working life here, man and boy.”
    “I don’t know how you can be sentimental about it, Gramps,” said Susan.
    “It was work you could depend on,” Tiley repeated. “And we were all grateful. Nothing much to show for it, mind. We just made parts, for other machines. We never made anything complete.”
    “Ah, interesting,” said JC. “No sense of closure. Could be significant.”
    He walked slowly out across the great expanse of open space, head cocked to one side, as though listening. “Huge machines, heavy machinery, working endlessly, doing the same things over and over, tended by people doing the same things, over and over. For decades . . . A ritual, impressing itself on Time and Space, digging psychic grooves into the surroundings . . .”
    “Hold on,” said Melody. “Are you suggesting that this place is haunted by the ghosts of