Voices From Beyond (A Ghost Finders Novel) Read Online Free PDF Page B

equipment in its usual semi-circular formation, while everyone else was concentrating on the television. Her fingers darted from one keyboard to the next, bringing everything on-line. Monitor screens glowed brightly, information flowing in endless rows across her various displays.
    “This room is a good twenty degrees colder than it should be,” she said calmly. “And I’m getting some really weird electromagnetic readings.”
    “What sort of weird?” said JC.
    “Like you’d understand even if I did explain it to you,” said Melody. “All you need to know is, they are way off the scale. Happy was right; this room is soaked with information, old and new. And . . . I’m getting signs of something that might be an interdimensional doorway.”
    “What?” said the professor. “What are you talking about?”
    “There are places in the world where the hard and certain can become soft and malleable,” JC said carefully. “Places where different worlds, or dimensions, can rub up against each other; and the walls of reality get worn thin. Sometimes, local operating conditions . . . break down, overwhelmed and replaced by the natural laws of other dimensions. And then you get an opening, a door between realities. Between here, and Somewhere Else. And then . . . Something Else can break through, from There into Here. This is rarely a good thing.”
    “You really expect me to believe such unscientific nonsense?” the professor said angrily. “This isn’t what I called you people for! I need practical help, not . . . pseudo-scientific bullshit!”
    “If the doorway opens again, it will make a believer out of you in one hell of a hurry,” said JC. “Happy, take another look at what’s going on inside the students’ heads. Dig deep. See if there’s any trace of them left that we can use to call them home.”
    “Sorry, JC,” said Happy. “When I said their heads were empty, I meant completely cleaned out. Nothing left but the autonomous nervous system, to keep the body going. We’re not only talking about their minds; their souls have been snatched, too.”
    “What can you tell us about the room, Happy?” said Melody, her gaze darting from one monitor screen to another. “I’m picking up all kinds of readings, but none of them make any sense.”
    Happy frowned, concentrating; and then he winced. “This room is supersaturated with information. Layer upon layer, from recent events to the far past. Going back . . . decades. This isn’t the first time something bad has happened here.”
    JC looked thoughtfully at the professor, who suddenly didn’t want to meet his gaze. JC walked right up to him, and the professor started to back away, only to find Happy suddenly standing behind him, blocking his way.
    “Tell me, Professor Volke,” said JC. “Why choose this particular location for your little psychological experiment? Is this your home? Or perhaps the home of one of your students?”
    “Martin leased this house, a few months back,” said the professor, reluctantly. “And when he told me about it, I remembered I’d heard of this address before. I remembered a story . . . of a haunting, or some kind of supernatural disturbance, from years ago. Back in the early eighties, when I was a child. There was a report on the local news about it. Scared the crap out of me at the time. That’s what gave me the idea to hold my séance here. But I checked! I did my research! This house has been quiet for years. Decades . . . No reports of anything out of the ordinary. Nothing since that original story from the eighties.”
    “Did you tell your students about any of this?” said JC.
    “No,” said the professor. “I didn’t think it necessary. They didn’t need to know. It might have affected their responses and reactions, compromised the experiment. Look! We have to get the students back! Something like this could lay me open to all kinds of lawsuits! Ruin my career!”
    “I’m more concerned about helping