Ghostfinders 02 - Ghost of a Smile

maintain their half-life existence in the waking world.
    “It’s getting cold, just like in the lobby. Something is sucking all the life energy out of this place, so the ghosts can bleed in from whatever bolt-hole they’ve found to manifest here, with the living.”
    “Who is it, Happy?” JC said quietly. “Who is it that’s coming?”
    “The Doctors,” said Happy. “Slaughtered and butchered here by their own creations, driven insane just by being here when it happened.”
    “Are you saying that simply being around these New People is enough to drive humans crazy?” said Melody.
    “They’re too much for us,” said Happy, dreamily. “We can’t cope. Witnessing the change was enough to blow all the Doctors’ fuses. That’s what we’ve got here—the flotsam and jetsam of a radical experiment, the fall-out and debris from the creation of a new thing. Mad Doctor ghosts, riding the coat-tails of the New People, soaking up the energies released to maintain their insane existence after death.”
    “Happy?” said JC. “Happy, can you hear me? You’ve gone too far; you need to come back to us.”
    “I see you,” said Happy, staring down the long laboratory at something only he could see. “I see you . . .”
    Melody stepped in front of him, blocking his view. She raised both hands to cup his face tenderly, meeting his gaze with her own.
    “Come back to us, Happy. Come back to me. Don’t leave me here alone, in the light.”
    His eyes snapped back into focus, and he smiled at her. “I never knew your voice could reach so far. All right, I’m back. I don’t like it, but I’m back. What’s happening, and is it too late to head for the exit?”
    “The Doctor . . . is in,” said a voice, seeming to float down the long, open floor towards them. A foul, desiccated voice, dripping with ill will.
    The whole floor was changing. The very structure and constituents of the long laboratory became warped and twisted, wrenched out of shape by unnatural forces. Advance harbingers of the Mad Doctor ghosts, altering the world into something more to their liking, something more able to support their awful existence. Making the world over into a reflection of their own insane needs and wishes. Solid surfaces slumped, flowing and re-forming. Metal ran away in lumpy streams, like melting wax, while scientific equipment heaved and turned, taking on new shapes and meanings. The walls bowed slowly inwards, and the ceiling drooped. The light intensified, becoming painfully bright—perhaps because the Mad Doctors wanted what was happening to be clearly seen, and appreciated. Or perhaps to make the hunting easier.
    The computer Melody had been working on swelled up suddenly. The monitor screen burst stickily and vomited its contents onto the floor. The pool spread, as bits of silicon and steel grew legs and scuttled across the floor like maddened insects. All across the laboratory, machines unfolded like blossoming flowers, becoming strange enigmatic things with too many angles. The glass windows all along the far wall disappeared. Where they should have been was nothing —an absence in the world, something the eye couldn’t even acknowledge.
    “Scalpel, scalpel, shining bright, in the horror of the night,” said the voice. “What unnatural hand and eye can undo thy yielding flesh?”
    “I am getting serious operating-theatre vibes,” said Happy. “And not in a good way.”
    “Look,” said Melody, pointing down the long floor. “The Mad Doctors are here.”
    They came scuttling and crawling, around and over and in between the warped and twisted structures that now filled the laboratory. They moved in sudden darts, like white-coated spiders, sometimes on two legs and sometimes on more. Mad Doctors in pristine white gowns and blood-spattered surgical masks, ghostly hands clutching scalpels and bone-saws and sharp steel probes. Their eyes were cool and vicious and full of a terrible, hot insanity. They had left their humanity behind them when they died and become something else, with new thoughts in their twisted minds, and dark foul emotions.
    There was no way of telling how many Mad Doctor ghosts there were. They were here and there and everywhere, blinking in and out, never still.
    “We can see what’s wrong with you,” said the voice. It didn’t seem to come from any one ghost in particular. “We can see what’s bad in you. We’re going to cut it out and play with it, and make it ours. And oh what