“Where have you been?” said JC; but Kim smiled sadly at him.
She gestured at the sunglasses in his hand, then looked right into his eyes in a meaningful way. JC nodded slowly, looked around him at the fog, and said, very distinctly, “I can still see the platform.” The fog rolled back before him, giving up its hold on the station, unable to withstand the otherworldly glare of his eyes. It slowly faded away and disappeared, as though it had lost its grip on the world. JC looked around for Kim; but she was already walking away, back down the platform. By the time the fog was completely gone, so was she. As though she had never been there.
“I’ll find you,” said JC. “I’ll never stop looking.”
JC didn’t waste time with regrets. He hurried over to where Melody was still lying facedown on the platform, one hand over the edge, grimly hanging on to Happy. JC knelt and grabbed Happy’s other hand, and, between them, he and Melody hauled Happy back up to the platform. Happy scrambled up onto his feet, breathing hard, then retreated quickly away from the edge. Melody went with him, while JC took his time getting back onto his feet, brushing fussily at his marvellous ice-cream white suit.
“What the hell did you hear,” Melody said to Happy, “to make you go rushing off like that?”
“A steam-whistle,” said Happy. “Like a howl out of Hell, getting closer by the moment.”
Melody nodded, then turned away to look back at JC. “Before you ask. Yes, I saw her, too.”
“Saw who?” Happy said immediately. “What did I miss?”
“Kim,” said Melody. “She was back. She helped save us from the fog, then disappeared again.”
“She looked exactly the way she did when I first saw her,” said JC. “Down in the Underground.”
“Everyone else has a guardian angel,” growled Happy. “Trust you to be different and have a guardian ghost. Did she say anything to you, like where she’s been all this time? Who was holding her; how she broke free?”
“No,” said JC. “She didn’t say a word. But at least now I know…she’s not lost. Not gone. She’s…out there, somewhere.”
“Then where’s she been all this time?” said Happy; but JC wasn’t listening. He looked across at Laurie, standing stiffly in the candle-lit doorway. JC considered him thoughtfully for a long moment, then looked across at the ghost of Dr. Todd, back where he used to be, staring into the darkness of the tunnel-mouth. JC moved away from both of them and gestured for Happy and Melody to join him.
The three Ghost Finders stood close together, speaking in quiet voices.
“The train is coming back,” said JC. “We can’t hope to stop it, so I say we do all we can to encourage it and keep all the weird shit limited to this one location.”
“Good idea, oh great boss and leader,” said Happy. “You get on with that while I sprint for the nearest horizon. Be sure and send me a nice postcard when it’s all over and let me know how it turned out.”
“Unfortunately, I can’t do this without you,” said JC. “So stay where you are, or I’ll nail your feet to the platform. Or maybe I’ll only nail the one and watch you walk round and round in circles.”
Happy scowled at him. “You would, too, wouldn’t you? Bully. All right. What do you want me to do, and I know I’m going to hate it.”
“I will use my amazing eyes to find the weak spot in reality,” said JC. “And then you will use your amazing mutant mind to force it all the way open. Lance the boil before it bursts.”
“You have such a way with words,” said Happy. “And all of them bad.”
“You really think that’s going to work?” said Melody.
“Oh yes,” said JC. “The train wants to come home. The Ghost Caller wants to come home. They’ve been Away too long. All we have to do is open the door a crack, and they’ll force it open the rest of the way, from the other side.”
“I’m more worried about what might come through with them,” said Melody.
“I should have been a plumber, like Mother wanted,” Happy said miserably. “Always good money, in plumbing.”
In the end, it really was that simple. JC and Happy stood together on the platform, concentrating on the dark tunnel-mouth, while Melody hurried back into the Station building, gathered up her precious instruments, and hauled them out onto the platform. Laurie watched interestedly, but he had apparently observed enough of Melody in action not to make the mistake of offering to help. The ghost of Dr. Todd ignored them all, still orientated unwaveringly on the tunnel-mouth. JC and Happy gave him plenty of room. It was cold on the platform, but the natural cold of an evening shading into night, not the unnatural chill Dr. Todd had brought to the Station room. Presumably he didn’t feel the need for any more energy; and JC and Happy were quite content for him to go on feeling that way.
JC took off his sunglasses and stared meaningfully into the tunnel-mouth. The deep dark shadows seemed to stir uneasily under the touch of his augmented gaze. Happy stood half-crouching behind JC, concentrating, reaching out with his mind. Feeling for something that strictly speaking wasn’t actually there yet.
“You’re right, JC. There’s definitely something…almost there. A dimensional door with something very powerful pushing up against the other side. There is a light at the end of the tunnel but not necessarily in a good way.”
“Something’s coming,” JC agreed, smiling confidently. “So close now, even I can feel it. Melody! Can you tell me what direction it’s coming from?”
“According to my instruments,” said Melody, breathlessly, as she slammed the last bit of high tech into place, “whatever it is, it’s coming from every direction at once! Forget spatial coordinates; this is coming from Outside our reality. Still, if I were the betting kind, which I’m not, but if I were…the odds do favour its coming through that tunnel-mouth. Completing the journey the train began all those years ago. The Universe has a fondness for circles and neatness. But JC, I have to tell you…it’s not only the train that’s coming. Something really powerful is hitching a ride with it, something so big, so intense it’s overloading all my sensors!”
“Yes,” said Happy, almost absently, all his concentration focused on the tunnel opening. “I can See it, I can Hear it…Like a bright Light, like a great Voice…”
“The Ghost Caller,” said JC.
“The Light is shining very brightly now,” said Happy, in a far-away voice. “I don’t like it. That’s not a proper Light. And it’s not a good Voice. It wants to tell me things. Things I don’t want to know…”
“Is it calling you?” said JC, quickly.
“No,” said Happy, almost reluctantly. “It doesn’t care about me. I’m just in the way. Its attractions are not for the living. I think both the Light and the Voice are lies, lures…It calls to the dead, to trick them away from the true Light and the true Voice…”
“Okay,” said JC, surprisingly gently. “That’s enough of that. Come home, Happy. Come back to me, or I’ll have Melody come and bring you back.”
“I’m back!” said Happy, scowling at JC. “I can look after myself, you know.”
“Really,” said JC. “You do amaze me. Have we done enough to open the door?”
“Oh yeah,” said Happy, scowling at the dark tunnel opening. “All I had to do was pry at the edges, and the train did the rest. The train and what’s coming with it. Still not too late to gather up our skirts and run, you know.”
“We don’t run,” said JC. “We are the Ghost Finders, and we don’t take any shit from the Hereafter.”
“What’s this we stuff, white man?” said Happy.
“It’s close!” said Melody, staring raptly at her sensor readings. “And I mean, really close. My instruments are going crazy! In fact, one of them melted…I’m getting really weird energy spikes, other-dimensional radiations…Time and gravity and…and temperature readings that don’t make any sense in our world…Holy crap!”