Read Online Ghost of a Dream by Simon R. Green - Free Book Online

with Melody about providing Happy with some kind of experimental tech support. Some kind of machine, to keep the bad stuff outside Happy’s head. But Melody had been forced to admit she’d already tried everything she could think of, and she could think of some pretty extreme things. Not one of them had worked. She’d failed Happy and failed herself. She wasn’t used to that. JC and Melody hadn’t told Happy any of this. They didn’t want him to give up hope. Because Happy needed hope more than anything.
    And Happy wasn’t the only one.
    “This…Ghost Caller,” JC said to Melody. “Is it something I could use, to call Kim back to me?”
    “Not a good idea, JC,” Melody said quietly. “The Ghost Caller was, by all accounts, anything but subtle. You can’t choose whom you want to call. There’s an On/Offswitch, to open and close a Door. And God alone knows what might be waiting on the Other Side.”
    “Hold everything,” said Happy, turning back to face them. “Didn’t I hear something recently about an Apocalypse Door? A Door to give you direct access to the Hereafter? Am I remembering that right? Could that be something like our Ghost Caller?”
    “Not really,” JC said patiently. “The Apocalypse Door allowed you to open the Gates of Hell. It was destroyed by the Droods.”
    “Why would anyone…?” said Laurie.
    “Don’t go there,” said JC.
    “The Ghost Caller doesn’t give you access to the Hereafter,” said Melody. “It sends out an open call to the restless dead. Of which there has never been any shortage…” She thought for a moment, then sniffed loudly. “What we could really use is a Ghost Repellent. Something to send ghosts away.”
    “Some kind of spray, perhaps,” Happy said brightly. “Something in a can—Ghost Away! I’d pay good money for a can of that.”
    JC gave Melody a look, and she resumed telling Dr. Todd’s story.
    “It seems that Julien Advent took the Ghost Caller away from Dr. Todd, despite his strong and even violent objections. And put the device on a train, under guard, to be taken to a place of safety. Where it could be studied, and, if necessary, dismantled. The files don’t say where this would have taken place…Probably the original Dark Heir Headquarters, down in Cornwall. That was the main repository, back then, our very own Area 51, forall the really dangerous weird shit that the world wasn’t ready for. Is it Area 51, the Americans use, these days? I get mixed up, there are so many stories…”
    “It’s Area 52,” said Happy, unexpectedly. “Situated in the Antarctic Circle, up past the McMurdo Sound. So if anything should go suddenly and unpleasantly and explosively wrong, there’s no-one around to be killed, maimed, or nastily transformed. Except a few penguins.”
    “There aren’t any penguins in the Antarctic,” said Melody.
    Happy glared at her. “They had some moved in, for camouflage.”
    “You’ve been working your way through the forbidden files I downloaded, haven’t you?” said Melody. “Good boy. There will be treats later.”
    “Young rebels in love,” said JC. “The horror, the horror…Get on with the story, Melody. It’s getting late.”
    “Later than you think,” said Laurie. The others looked at him, but he had nothing more to say.
    “Anyway,”
said Melody. “Pressing on. Enter Dr. Todd, again. It seems he was now so scared of the Ghost Caller, and what it could do, that he wanted it gone. Destroyed, or at the very least, made safe. Apparently he didn’t trust what Her Majesty’s Government of that time might do with it. So he made a deal with Someone, or Something, presumably the same Power that made the Ghost Caller for him in the first place, and had them send the Ghost Caller…Away. You have to understand, though, all of this is conjecture, put together after the fact. No-one knows anything for sure.”
    “Oh, I think we can make some pretty good guesses,”said JC. “The Ghost Caller was placed