Simon Green - Ghost of a Dream

“Do you want us to call you a taxi?” said Benjamin. “You could always go back to your hotel and wait there, till this is all over. We have to be here; but you shouldn’t have to put up with this.”

Lissa’s chin came up. She straightened her back and shrugged off Elizabeth’s arm, almost rudely. “No. I’m not going. Nothing’s scaring me off.”

Benjamin gave her his professional smile. “Brave girl.”

Happy moved in close beside JC. “Look at the stage,” he said quietly. “There’s a layer of dust. See? If you look behind us, you can see all our footsteps, crossing the stage from the wings to here. But there are no footsteps in the dust before us, not a mark anywhere between us and the far wings. Which leads me to believe that there never was anything here. No physical presence, at all. Just the sound of footsteps…”

“Could be an echo out of Time,” said Melody. “Sounds from the Past. Stone tape memory, past events impressed on the surroundings, playing back in the Present.”

“Why are we still calling it a stone tape?” Happy said suddenly. “Shouldn’t we be calling it a stone CD, these days? Or even a stone download…”

“Concentrate, Happy,” murmured JC. “That was no echo. Those sounds had a deliberate aim in mind. A purpose…”

“How very theatrical,” said Melody; and then they all looked at each other for a long moment.

JC looked across the stage at Benjamin and Elizabeth. “Is this the kind of…event you were expecting?”

“Well, sort of,” said Benjamin. “You have to understand; we never experienced anything first-hand.”

“And I have to say,” said Elizabeth, slowly, “that the whole thing seemed to me more menacing than scary. Almost…a threat. We should never have come back here, Benjamin.”

“We had to,” said Benjamin. “We owed it to the play.”

And then they all froze in place again as they heard something moving about, under the stage. They all looked down, listening hard, concentrating. Some distance underneath the stage, somebody was walking back and forth, loudly whistling a merry tune. JC stamped hard on the stage; but the whistling didn’t stop, or even interrupt itself for a moment. JC looked sharply at the actors and Old Tom.

“Is there supposed to be anyone else in the building?”

“No, sir,” said Old Tom. “No-one. I’d have been told.”

“No-one whistles in the theatre!” Elizabeth said sharply. “It’s bad luck!”

“Anyone recognise the tune?” said Happy. There was a general shaking of heads.

JC looked at Old Tom. “What’s down there, under this stage? Is there any way to reach it?”

“Of course, sir,” said Old Tom. “That’s the understage area, easy to get to. There’s a way to everywhere, and I know them all. Follow me, ladies and gents!”

The way down turned out to be an old iron stairway that spiralled around as it descended into the gloom of the understage area. The stairway didn’t feel properly attached or supported, worn loose through many years of hard use; and it swayed dangerously and made loud, complaining noises as Old Tom led the way down, one careful step at a time. Though whether his pace was due to the infirmities of old age or sensible caution, JC couldn’t tell. He stuck right behind Old Tom, peering down into the gloomy depths in search of the phantom whistler. Happy came next though he didn’t want to. Melody had to drive him down ahead of her, with fierce encouragement and appalling language that the actors pretended not to hear as they brought up the rear.

The whistled tune cut off abruptly the moment Old Tom and JC emerged from the bottom of the stairway. The understage area was completely empty. Nothing to see, nothing to hear, not even the faintest echo. The light from a single hanging naked light bulb spread a grubby yellow glare across a wide-open space much bigger than the stage above. Everyone relaxed. With no phantom whistler, no footsteps, and nothing in any way unnatural, the open area seemed safe enough. Benjamin made a point of smiling easily around him.

“Well, this place brings back memories! Remember when we were playing the leads in the Restoration comedy, She Stoops to Conquer ?”

“Oh God, it’s another anecdote,” muttered Happy. “I think I’d rather have a ghost…”

“Of course I remember!” said Elizabeth, seizing the moment to lighten the mood. “We had a real pit band, you see, in the open area before the stage, to play real Georgian music; but at the end of the play, they had to leave the pit and come up onto the stage to accompany the final banquet scene. At the end of which, I would walk forward, the curtains would close behind me, and I would deliver the long closing speech straight to the audience. This was to give the other actors time to race off stage and change into their final costumes for the final walkdown. But it also meant the pit-band had to hurry down here, via that awful old stairway, charge across the understage area, and re-emerge in the pit in time to play music for the walkdown. Well, to begin with, all went well. But by the end of the run, I was belting through the lines so we could all get off stage and get to the bar that much earlier; which meant the poor pit band had to run like fun to get to the pit in time. Many the night I heard muffled curses drifting up from down here, yelling to me to slow down…”

Everyone managed some kind of smile if not actually a laugh.

“Scratch an old actor, find an anecdote,” said Lissa, and Elizabeth glared at her.

“Did anything ever…happen down here?” said JC. “Anything significant?”

Benjamin and Elizabeth looked at each other. “No,” said Elizabeth.

“Nothing,” said Benjamin.

And then they both looked at JC, as though defying him to contradict them. Which, thought JC, was interesting…

A great roar of angry sound blasted through the whole understage area, filling the place from end to end. Huge, deafening, overpowering; a fierce and vicious sound, like the outrage of an angry god. As though something had given rage and fury a voice and let it loose. Everyone put their hands to their ears and squeezed their eyes shut, whether they wanted to or not. It was an instinctive, protective thing; and it didn’t help at all. The roar went on and on, beating at them like some living creature but continuing on long past the point where any living thing could have sustained it. The sheer anger and malice in the terrible sound was almost palpable.

Benjamin held Elizabeth tightly in his arms, cradling her head to his chest. “Leave her alone!” he shouted into the face of the roar. “Leave her alone, you bastard!”

JC yelled at everyone, straining to be heard above the appalling sound. “Stick together! Don’t let it separate us!”

He forced his eyes open, a bit at a time, but even with his augmented vision he still couldn’t see anyone, or anything. There was only the sound and the rage within it.

And then it stopped. No falling away, no quietening down; it simply broke off abruptly, without even leaving an echo behind it. For a long moment, everyone stood where they were, opening their eyes and lowering their hands from their heads, all of them suddenly limp with relief. The end of the sound was like the ending of a physical assault. It had beaten and battered them like some unseen bully; and now it felt good, so good, that it was over. One by one, they all started to relax and look around them. Benjamin and Elizabeth let go of each other and stepped back to look each other over, make sure everything was all right. So did Happy and Melody.

They were all of them shaken, amateur and professional alike, by the sheer fury in the sound. And, it seemed to JC, a very human fury. He strode back and forth across the wide-open area, glaring into shadowy nooks and crannies, finding nothing. He didn’t like being caught by surprise. He looked back at the others, and was surprised to see Lissa standing on her own, calm and quiet and apparently entirely unaffected by what she’d been through. She didn’t look scared, or shaken; she stared straight ahead of her, her face calm and quiet and completely empty. As though she couldn’t be bothered if there wasn’t an audience…JC stopped and considered her thoughtfully. Shock, perhaps? He started towards her, then Benjamin suddenly spoke up.