Ghostfinders 02 - Ghost of a Smile

me,” Happy said solemnly.
    “If not, it’s not for want of trying,” said Melody.
    “I swear to God, your entire life is a double entendre,” said JC. “And far too much for my innocent ears. Let us get up and let us go; the job isn’t anywhere near finished yet.”
    They strode up the remaining stairs two steps at a time, burst through the usual swing doors, then stopped right where they were. All the lights were turned off. It was hard to see anything. The only illumination came from outside, amber shafts of street lighting falling through the glass windows that made up most of the far wall. The situation reminded JC of the abandoned factory, and not in a good way. Most of the light was soaked up by a thick, heavy darkness that gave every indication of being very real and very solid. JC gestured sharply for the others to stay exactly where they were. The whole floor felt wrong to him, in so many ways.
    “What’s that smell?” Happy said quietly. “Can all of you smell that? It’s hot and wet and . . . swampy. I’m getting rotting vegetation, murky jungle, and something quiet definitely animal. Like being inside an enclosure at the zoo. Damn, that smells bad . . .”
    “The air is hot and damp,” said Melody. “Beyond damp—saturated with moisture. I was in the Amazon rain forest, as a student, and this is a lot like that . . . but inside a building? At least the ghostlight was only supposed to be fog. This feels very much like the real thing.”
    “The ghostlight was created,” said JC. “So was this. You were right, Happy, someone’s been messing with reality, playing games with the building and everyone in it. Someone or something has overwritten local conditions to make new worlds, inside the building. Test runs, perhaps? Tread carefully, children. We are in unknown territory.”
    “Let me try the light switches,” said Melody. “Shed some illumination on what’s going down here.”
    “Don’t,” said a Voice, from deep in the darkness. “We like it this way.”
    JC strained his vision against the dark, searching for the source of the Voice. The sound of it had been harsh and brutal and inhumanly deep. Like a beast from the most savage part of the jungle that had taught itself to speak, the better to terrify its prey. Something moved, in the shadows. Huge and broad, radiating animal grace and power, and hard brute force. Old, old instincts yammered at the back of JC’s mind, screaming for him to run. He shook himself hard and slapped all the light switches beside the door.
    Half a dozen fluorescent lights flickered into life up on the ceiling, enough to reveal a vast tract of tropical jungle spread out before him, where the rest of the floor should have been. It seemed to stretch away forever, as though the end of the floor had become a gateway to another world. Massive trees with huge, dark trunks, and long branches drooping under the weight of heavy foliage. Dark green leaves with heavy veins and serrated edges. Hanging vines and creepers, and great pools of dark, steaming water. Thick, unfamiliar vegetation, filling in the gaps between the trees. Technicolor flowers with huge pulpy petals. The harsh buzzing of insects and the shrill cries of unknown birds.
    A crimson light suffused the massive jungle, blazing blood-red from some hidden source, pointing out all the savage details of a setting that had no business inside a London office building. The rich red light made it appear like a living slaughterhouse, where red in tooth and claw was business as usual. The blood-red jungle was a place of death and suffering, and didn’t care who knew it.
    “They made this for us,” said the Voice, from deep in the bloody shadows. “The New People. Wasn’t that nice of them? They called it all into being with the wave of a hand. So to speak. They can do things like that—play with the structure and substance of the world like a child building sand-castles.”
    Every word was clear, the meaning obvious, but still the Voice grated on the ear and on the soul, vicious and savage and brutal as any beast. For all its human speech, there was nothing human in it. JC stepped forward, making a point of looking down his nose at the jungle, his whole posture suggesting he was entirely unimpressed.
    “Come out where I can see you,” he said. “I don’t talk to people who hide in the shadows.”
    There was a pause, then a slow roll of laughter, a cruel and utterly malicious sound. “Don’t be