The dog turned its head, sniffing, and a sign wavered into view through the car fumes: Elvis Presley Boulevard.

Hey! We're goin' to Graceland! Mengell's words were alive in the darkness, a moving geometrical shape. Looks like we got an audience with the King.

There was a moment of silence.

I wonder why the stiffs came here? Mengell said.

Maybe it's a place of pilgrimage for the dead, too. Voight's words thrummed. Maybe it reminds them of when they were alive.

She gave the dog another push, and it moved on until it came to a road-block. A line of police cars had been set up in front of the gate, burly sunburned officers strutting around like roosters. As the dog slunk under the barricade they caught sight of Graceland through the fence, a big ante-bellum mansion hemmed in by lawn and shrubbery.

There was an unexpected spasm in the darkness. A switchblade of unease flickered through the dog's mind. It was scared. Something out there wasn't right.

I don't think this mutt wants to be here, Mengell said.

We must be getting close to the soulform.

She urged the dog on, feeling it grow more frightened with every step. 'the smell was near now. There was a shape to it. A taste like hot metal. Voight looked through the dog's eyes and saw they were in a graveyard.

Realisation hit like a shock of cold water.
A graveyard. The Presley family plot. This was where the dead people had gathered. She almost laughed at Low obvious it all was.

What's that? Mengell asked sharply.

Where?
On the right. Just above the trees. Looks like something on fire...
Voight turned the dog's head and the sight swivelled into view. Past the shrubs and headstones the air was alive with force. A snowstorm, a rainbow, a thunderhead feverish with black lightning.
I think we've found the soulform, she muttered slowly'
That was when they struck.
She heard them before she saw them. A nasal harpsichord twang; the rasp of rusty hinges. Then they were there, the dead people, a dozen of them diving like ospreys.
They've seen us! she tried to shout, but it was too late. There was a fusillade of coppery pain as the spirits hit.
They snapped up mouthfuls of flesh, and sent the dog spinning off its feet.

Get us out! Mengell yelled. We're sitting ducks in here! Voight was trying, struggling to coax the algorithm from the background chatter of thoughts. Another wave of pain and she almost lost it. Then it was there, the shape of it in her mind and they left the dog's head in a string of mathematics. The world wavered up around them as their bodies re-formed.

Mengell gave a strangled yelp, and Voight turned round in time to see a rope of ectoplasm snaked round his face. The dog lay abandoned at his feet, curled into a foetal ball, and a wall of acrid smoke momentarily blocked him from view. Mengell was yelling now, flailing at the ghosts as they billowed around him. For some reason they seemed to be interested in his hair. His Elvis quiff rippled as the spirits looped through it, ribbons of ectoplasm that seemed to be trying to knot themselves around him, parcel him up in sticky white strands. Colours flickered around Mengell's head, licked at his face, throwing up a halo of light.
'What the hell are they doin' to me?' he screamed 'They've got hold of my hair!'

And suddenly she knew why. Why Elvis, why the dead, why the morbid fascination with hair.

Years ago, while she'd still been alive, Voight had read a book called The Deviant Scalp. It was inspired by the tragic real-life story of Mimi Saunders, the legendary Hollywood hair stylist of the '20s and '30s, who'd worked her magic on stars like Valentino, Ivor Novello, Fatty Arbuckle and Sidney Greenstreet. A large number of her clients had subsequently fallen ill, wracked by headaches and nosebleeds, haunted by terrible premonitions.

According to the book, Mimi Saunders had inadvertently stumbled upon on an ancient magical formula. The lost geometry of hair. The hair styles acted like tuning forks, absorbing spiritual harmonics from the aether and raising them to a higher vibratory level. The energy would pool, settle back into its past shape to form a crude ectoplasmic copy. A reflection of someone's life. A ghost.

Voight hadn't taken it seriously at the time, but now she wasn't so sure. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more the whole thing seemed to make a crazy kind of sense.

Elvis was the butch boy king of rock and roll, western civilisation's first date. And his hair style was one of the key icons of the twentieth century. It was weighed down with values, meanings, significance. A conceptual magnet. The dead had been drawn to his grave like scrap-metal, reeled in by the promise of life-after-life, by the dynamo of charisma.

A bellow of rage interrupted Voight's thoughts, and she suddenly remembered Mengell. When she turned to look she saw he'd taken the offensive. He was scooping dark time from empty air, shards of entropy glittering in his hand like flintheads. He flung them at the wraith and the spirits flew apart like rags, burning with black fire, dousing the air with a smell like liquorice. They arrowed off above the trees, back towards the soulform, white blood cells returning to base.

'Now that was weird.' Mengell swept up a hand, smoothed his hair hack into place. 'You think they'll come back?'

'It doesn't matter,' Voight said. 'We have to go after them. We have to sort this mess out before the disturbance reaches Vegas.'

'Or?'

'Or we can both forget our bonuses this year,' she said.

M ary Beth heard the hungry snap of scissors and forced herself to sit still. She caught a glimpse of her own terrified reflection in the mirror in front of her. Lipstick smudged. Mascara running. Saw her hair said checking standing up from her head in a spindly hollow beehive, like a cage or a mitre.
Worse, something was starting to happen. The air had darkened around her head, grown tender as a bruise. It split audibly, a ghastly tearing sound, and a thick luminous fluid began to seep out of empty space. Mary-Beth watched in silence as it took shape. Streaming out, splitting off, the shadow of a barium meal. Spine opening like a fern, ribcage arching up, ectoplasmic flesh draped over bones. A wedge of quiff; thrusting pelvis; that familiar sneer...

Was it possible? Could it really be who she thought it was?