Read Forces from Beyond for Free Online

methodical, scientific thinking, but that wasn’t enough to cope with the bigger, stranger, more-than-human world she’d been plunged into. She could see Space and Time and other dimensions she didn’t even have concepts for—the living and the dead and so many other things that were both and neither, all of them screaming . . . as she experienced first-hand all the horror and despair Happy lived with every day. As he died a little more, every day. The only thing that kept him sane, kept him going, was an almost inhuman act of iron will and self-control. And now he was losing even that, day by day and pill by pill. Happy was going under for the third time, feeling the water fill his throat inch by inch.
    Melody had finally found a way to see inside Happy’s head; and what she’d found there was killing her, too. Happy saw it happening, saw it eating her alive, so he reached out to her in the only way left to him.
    He embraced her telepathically, joined with her on every level there was. He calmed her racing thoughts, taught her how to keep the bad things at bay. How to survive when you’re hanging on by your fingernails. He loved her; and that made him strong enough to carry the heavy burden of his life for as long as he had to. Melody held him, and he held her, and they were together. For whatever time they had left.
    Happy broke the mental link, and they both fell back into their own heads. They stood facing each other, looking into each other’s eyes. Melody was back in control again; and, surprisingly, so was he.
    “You’re back!” said Melody. “I can feel it. You burned up all your pills helping me; but you’re still stable.”
    “Yes,” said Happy. “In saving you, it seems I’ve saved myself. How about that? Your sanity jump-started mine. It won’t last, of course. There’s no miracle cure for what I’ve done to myself. But at least I can be me again, for a while.”
    “You’re still dying,” said Melody.
    “Everyone needs something to look forward to,” said Happy.
    “You can’t die,” said JC. “I can’t lose you. You’re my team. You’re all I’ve got.”
    “You’ve got me,” said Kim.
    He looked at her with calm, unflinching despair. “I gave up my life to do this job; and what has it got me? What good is it, to be a Ghost Finder solving other people’s problems, if I can’t solve my own? If I can’t help you? If I can’t save the one woman who means more to me than anything else. Please don’t go, Kim. You’re all that keeps me going.”
    “You’re all that keeps me . . . me,” said Kim. “When I had to leave you for a time, on the Boss’s orders, it almost destroyed me. Being a ghost is like enduring endless sensory deprivation. You’re all that keeps me focused. Away from you I became vague, uncertain. You’re my anchor, JC, my reason for being. You’re the only thing that holds me to this world. But . . . you can’t move on as long as I’m still here, holding you back. So because I love you, I have to give you up . . .”
    She was already starting to fade.
    “No!” said JC. “Don’t go, Kim! Don’t you dare give up on us!”
    “If you love them, let them go,” said Kim. Her voice sounded far away. “You deserve better than this, JC.”
    “Please . . . Kim . . .”
    “I’m scared to stay,” said the ghost girl. “And scared to go . . .”
    “You don’t have to be frightened,” JC said steadily. “And you don’t have to go alone. If you’re going, I’m going with you. I’d rather die than live on without you.”
    And, just like that, Kim snapped back into sharp focus again; smiling tremulously at him.
    “There is still hope,” said JC. “We give each other hope. That’s what love is.”
    All four of them stopped and looked around the room. Something had changed. They could feel it.
    “Okay . . .” said Melody. “Let me be the first to say,
What the hell was that?
What just happened here?”
    “I feel like