Ghostfinders 02 - Ghost of a Smile

fun we’ll have—while you last.”
    “Happy,” JC said quietly. “Are they really there? I mean— physically there?”
    “Oh yes,” said Happy. “Very, very definitely solid and real . . . These are powerful manifestations, JC. Dead, but not departed. I think . . . they exist in the spaces between spaces, in the odd little gaps and lacunae of reality, hiding like trap-door spiders. Think of them as a by-product of the process that made the New People. Or think of them as aetheric parasites. Remaking the laboratory was them putting on something more comfortable. They want to terrify us. I think they feed on fear.”
    “They’re still ghosts,” said JC. “And we deal with ghosts.”
    “They’re predators,” said Kim, her nose wrinkled with disgust. “And they’re hungry. I can see them more clearly than you can. They’re not human any more. I don’t have words for what they’ve made themselves into, for what they really are. They’re insane, JC, and their madness is contagious. It’s affecting the world.”
    “Can we destroy them?” said JC.
    “They’re dead,” said Kim. “But not all the way. You might say . . . they’re clinging on to existence by their fingernails. Their madness lets them do impossible things, but that very madness is what makes their grip on reality so precarious. Pry them loose, JC.”
    “Sounds like a plan to me,” said JC, rubbing his hands together in a brisk and hearty fashion.
    “But what are we going to do ?” said Happy. “I don’t see our usual bag of tricks working with these ghosts. And those scalpels look really sharp.”
    “We’ll do what we always do,” JC said grandly. “Experiment, with extreme prejudice.”
    “How do I get out of this chicken-shit outfit?” said Happy.
    The Mad Doctor ghosts came charging forward. Some ran, some scuttled, some hopped and leapt like white-coated bugs. Some swarmed over the crazily outcropping structures they’d created. Some walked jerkily, in sudden strobelike motions, as though they couldn’t be bothered to cross all the space they travelled through but rather jumped from bit to bit. They brandished their cutting tools with horrible glee, laughing the vague but confident laugh of the utterly insane. Their eyes were deep and dark, horrifyingly empty of anything a sane man could hope to understand.
    Melody stepped forward and opened fire with her machine pistol. She swept it back and forth with cool precision, raking the ranks of the Mad Doctor ghosts with a steady stream of bullets. But she couldn’t seem to hit any of them. Some of the ghosts darted back and forth with inhuman speed, easily avoiding the gunfire. Others simply weren’t there when the bullets arrived. And some simply stood and laughed at her as the bullets went straight through them. Bullets ricocheted from warped structures or sank into moist spongy surfaces. The Mad Doctor ghosts laughed their hateful laughs and kept on coming.
    JC glanced at Happy. “Even in the midst of all this, I have to ask—where does she keep that gun when she’s not using it?”
    “I’ve never dared ask,” said Happy.
    “Which part of they’re already dead did you miss, Melody?” said Kim. “You’re not going to take them out with a bullet. You’d have more luck clubbing them over the head with the barrel.”
    “Can’t blame a girl for trying,” Melody said airily, making her machine pistol disappear again. “I am now officially open to fresh ideas. Preferably very soon because those bastards are getting really close.”
    A Mad Doctor ghost appeared out of nowhere, leaping in from the extended blind spot where the windows used to be. He threw himself at Kim and passed straight through her. She cried out, in shock and horror. The Mad Doctor ghost howled and shrieked and jumped up to run about on the ceiling, slashing at the air with his scalpel. JC moved in close beside Kim, half reaching out to hold her.
    “Are you all right, Kim?”
    “It wasn’t only his body that went through me,” said Kim. “It was his mind, too. Or what was left of it. His thoughts don’t make sense any more, JC.”
    JC nodded quickly, pulled another of his holy-light grenades out of an inner pocket, primed it, and tossed it into the midst of the Mad Doctor ghosts. But it never got there. While it was still in mid air, the ghost standing on the ceiling caught it easily with one hand, then dropped down to squat on a massive steel shape. The Mad Doctor ghost shook its