Ghostfinders 02 - Ghost of a Smile

my shields and barriers as though they weren’t even there,” said Happy. “And no, JC, I’m still not picking up anything else. That wasn’t telepathy. It didn’t feel anything like telepathy.”
    “The power,” said Kim. “The sheer power . . .”
    “If they’re that powerful, we’d better not keep them waiting,” said JC. “In we go, children. Best foot forward and try not to show me up.”
    He pushed the doors open and strode straight in, and the others followed right after him.
    JC kept walking, even though he wasn’t sure where he was any more. He could feel the pressure, the sheer presence of the New People, even before he could see them. An overwhelming impact, as though their simple existence had stamped itself onto reality so completely, it was hard to feel anything else. He finally stumbled to a halt, stopped in his tracks by the sheer alien strangeness of the situation. A fierce, unnatural light with no obvious source suffused everything, a light painful even to his altered eyes, and a great Sound filled the air, without beginning or end. JC felt it in his bones and in his soul as much as heard it. He knew that he was in the presence of something unknown, and perhaps even unknowable.
    The others had stopped with him. Happy and Melody and Kim huddled close together for the simple comfort of human contact. They all had their eyes screwed up against the light, and the sound and the heavy presence of a place not meant for human kind. Kim seemed as much affected as any of the living.
    “We shouldn’t be here,” Happy whispered, like a child in a cathedral. “We don’t belong in a place like this.”
    “Chin up, my children,” said JC, as clearly and calmly as he could manage. “Yes, I would have to say that we are in the presence of things unknown . . . But that’s the job, when you work for the Carnacki Institute.”
    “I resign,” said Happy.
    “Shut up, Happy,” said JC.
    He took off his sunglasses and looked around. In this new place his eyes hardly glowed at all. It was as though the golden light was nothing compared to the harsher light of what had been the top floor of Chimera House. JC nodded slowly, and put his shades back on.
    “We have a job to do,” he said flatly, “And we’re going to do it together. Because it’s our duty, and our responsibility, to the Institute and perhaps all Humanity. And because we’re the best damn team in the Institute, and we don’t back down from anything. Right?”
    “Right,” said Happy.
    “Damned right,” said Melody.
    “If I weren’t already dead, I think I’d be very worried,” said Kim. “But yes, of course you’re right. Let’s do it.”
    They all moved slowly forward, pushing against the presence of the New People, like swimmers breasting a heavy tide.
    The light seemed to fall away some as they moved on, revealing the substance and details of the place in which they found themselves. Huge abstract shapes loomed up everywhere, weird mutated structures that watched and observed. Great pyramids with massive unblinking eyes; jagged energies crackling up and down the air like slow lightning; blurred uncertain shapes that had the feel of living things. Wherever JC looked there were colours he couldn’t name, objects with too many details for the human eye to encompass, and nightmare forms on the edge of his vision that shrieked of bad intent . . . And always, everywhere, the feeling of potential doors, or even trap-doors, that led Somewhere Else. Doors to let things In as well as Out . . .
    The New People were waiting for them. Four of them. Standing inhumanly still in the middle of everything, untouched and untroubled by the world around them. The world they’d made, or perhaps a world that appeared to accommodate who and what they were now. Often it seemed that there were more than four of them, dozens or even hundreds, in infinite ranks, superpeople in a superposition, everywhere at once. Their number and location was constantly changing, and yet at the same time there were only four, standing before JC and his group, waiting. JC squeezed his eyes hard shut, and then opened them again, but it didn’t help. He wasn’t sure what he was seeing was actually happening, or whether it was his mind trying to make sense of an impossible situation.
    He couldn’t look at the New People directly; none of his group could. They shone too brightly, they were too real, too overpoweringly there. Stamped on this world like an