Simon Green - Ghost of a Dream

JC looked across at Lissa. She stepped back from the costumes to look them over, hands on hips, glaring ferociously. She looked…suspicious, and JC had to wonder why. Nothing else she’d encountered in the theatre had provoked this reaction.

“All these costumes must mean something,” he said, standing back with her so he could study the rows of clothes with a sceptical eye. “They must be important. Or why bring us all this way just to see them?”

“We could always play dress-up,” said Lissa, but JC could tell that her heart wasn’t in it.

“If we assume that Benjamin and Elizabeth didn’t arrange for these costumes to be here…” he said slowly.

“And I think we can assume that,” said Lissa, very firmly.

“Then someone else must have,” said JC, talking right over her. “Which in turn implies that we’re not the only people interested in this theatre. And this haunting. We’re not the only people in this building. Which would explain a lot.”

Lissa glared about her, looking seriously unsettled. “There can’t be anyone else here. There just can’t. I’d know. I’d feel it…” She realised JC was considering her silently and scowled back at him. “I’m very sensitive to my surroundings!”

“A lot of people are,” JC said soothingly. “Or believe they are. But one of the first things you learn in the Ghost Finding business is that you can’t always trust your instincts. Things, and people, aren’t necessarily always what they seem, in a haunting situation. The dead play by their own rules.”

“But what would the dead want with a whole bunch of not-particularly-accurate costumes?” said Lissa, bluntly.

A slow, heavy rustle passed through the ranks of hanging costumes, like a breeze through forest branches. Hanging clothes twitched and shook, singly and in groups. Sleeves bent and twisted, jackets expanded and relaxed as though someone was breathing in them, and trousers bent at the knee, again and again, as though dreaming of running. Everywhere, costumes were heaving and flexing, as though bothered by unquiet thoughts.

“Back away, Lissa,” JC said quietly.

He glanced back and found that Lissa had already backed all the way up to the closed door, unable to tear her gaze away from the slowly moving costumes. There was a new, uneasy feeling in the room, harsh and oppressive: a sharp tension on the air, anticipating bad things to come. JC glared about him. The feeling of being watched was back again, but colder, more intense. As though someone knew something bad was about to happen and meant to enjoy it.

“It’s a trap,” Lissa said tonelessly. “We’ve been lured into a trap.”

“Don’t get twitchy,” said JC. “It’s all gone weird, agreed, but…it’s only a bunch of clothes. There’s no-one else here but us, living or dead. Look at them; they’re…bits of cloth on wire hangers!” He looked back at Lissa, to see how she was taking it, and thought she looked more puzzled than scared. “Come on!” he said, encouragingly. “How much of a threat can clothes be?”

As he was saying that, all the costumes shrugged off their hangers and moved away from the cold, metal racks, standing upright on their own. They stood in silent ranks, empty and uninhabited. The clothing rails were forced to the very back of the room, pushed back through the ranks of standing clothes, so an army of empty costumes could confront JC and Lissa with nothing to get in their way. No heads rose from the empty collars, no hands emerged from the empty sleeves, and the slack trousers and leggings hovered a few inches above the floor, with no trace of a foot, or even a shoe. Only costume after costume, standing together in row upon row, turning slowly and silently to orientate themselves on JC, with a horrid sense of purpose.

“You had to ask, didn’t you?” said Lissa. “How dangerous can they be? Look at them!”

A subtle frisson of horror ran through JC as he remembered an old childhood terror. Of how discarded clothes can look on a chair at night, or hanging from a door; of how they could seem to come alive…or look very much as though they might. In the dark of a child’s bedroom. As a young child, JC had wondered whether clothes ever felt angry at being worn and used and moved around under someone else’s control. Made to go places and do things and make movements…that they wouldn’t have chosen to, themselves. On their own. And sometimes he’d wondered whether, when the clothes were finally taken off and laid aside and left to their own devices till morning…whether they might not someday rise and take their revenge?

“Lissa,” JC said quietly, not taking his eyes off the rows and rows of silently watching clothes stacked before him. “I think this might be a good time to get the hell out of here.”

“About time!” said Lissa.

She went over to open the door, then stopped and looked at it.

“Who closed the door, JC? I didn’t close the door.”

“Don’t sweat the small shit, Lissa,” said JC. “Let’s get out of here.”

Lissa reached for the door handle, then stopped again as she realised JC wasn’t coming back to join her. “JC, come on! I’m not leaving without you!”

“It’s all right,” said JC. “I know what to do. I’ve been trained to deal with shit like this.”

“Like this ?” said Lissa.

“Well, maybe not quite like this,” said JC. “I’m thinking this is probably some kind of large-scale poltergeist activity…But either way, I can’t run off and leave this happening. Someone might get hurt.” He squared his shoulders and took a step forward, to confront the standing costumes. “Listen up!” he said loudly. “I am JC Chance, Ghost Finder in good standing. Licenced to kick supernatural arse. What do you want, clothes?”

There was no response. JC wasn’t exactly surprised. There wasn’t anyone in the clothes to answer. But the more he looked at the various costumes, the spookier they seemed. The lack of heads, of faces, was particularly disturbing. How can you hope to negotiate with, or even threaten, something that has no head to listen with? The more he looked, the more he found to unsettle him. The clothes had no eyes; but they could still see him. Still know exactly where he was. Every single outfit was orientated on him. And none of them had any of the bulges, or fullness, that you’d expect from the bodies that should be inhabiting them. The sleeves were flat, and the legs didn’t bend. These weren’t clothes worn by invisible men; they were clothes, moving under their own impulses. Animated, not inhabited. He couldn’t decide whether that was worse, or not.

He said as much to Lissa, who nodded stiffly. “It’s worse. We’re definitely not alone in this theatre. Someone else is in here with us, doing this.”

She broke off abruptly, as the costumes lurched forward. Row upon row of the things, advancing on JC and Lissa. There was a horrid sense of purpose, of open menace, in their jerky, deliberate movements. Materials rubbed together in a rough susurrus, as though the clothes were whispering to each other. They bustled against each other in their eagerness; but there wasn’t the sound of a single footstep.

“Definitely time to get the hell out of Dodge,” said JC.

He turned his back on the slowly advancing clothes as an act of defiance and hurried over to join Lissa at the door. She was looking blankly at the moving costumes as though hypnotised, as though she couldn’t believe it was happening. JC grabbed the door handle and rattled it hard; but it wouldn’t turn. He stepped back and charged forward, putting his shoulder to the door; but while the heavy wood jumped and rattled loudly in its frame, it wouldn’t open.

“That isn’t going to work!” Lissa said angrily, snapped out of her daze. “The door opened inwards; remember?”