Simon Green - Ghost of a Dream

“You put that shit in my head?” said Melody.

“No,” said the Faust. “Everything you saw came from inside your head. All the things you’re afraid of, little girl.”

“If you were as powerful as you claim, you’d have killed me by now,” said Melody.

The Faust smiled and waggled one finger at her, roguishly. “Now where’s the fun in that?”

“Are you responsible for the haunting here?” said Melody. “All the weird shit we’ve been seeing?”

“I just got here,” said the Faust. “I don’t know what’s going on in this dreary little playhouse; and I don’t care. I didn’t come here for the ghosts; I’m here for the Ghost Finders. Not because you present any real danger to The Flesh Undying, you understand, because you don’t. But there is the smallest possibility that you might become a nuisance. Eventually…So I’m going to destroy you now. Leave three new ghosts to moan and wander in this dusty old theatre. If it wasn’t haunted before, it will be.”

“Getting really tired of hearing you talk,” said Melody. “In fact, hold that pose. I’ve got a bloody big gun here, somewhere.”

“What shall I start with?” said the Faust. “Something suitably theatrical, I think. What’s the point of murder without a little style? Let us call up the dust of ages and set it to work.”

He gestured languidly with one meaty hand, and all the dust in the lobby, left untroubled and untouched for twenty years and more, rose everywhere. It sprang up from the floor and jumped off the walls and ceiling to dance madly on the lobby air, forming and re-forming into stretching shapes that bordered on meaning, before abruptly condensing into two dark grey, vaguely human figures. Soft but substantial living shadows…and where their faces should have been, the old traditional masks of Comedy and Tragedy. Endlessly laughing, endlessly crying. The ancient symbols of Drama, topping tall and spindly bodies, stretched and stylised, almost art deco. They danced and capered around the Faust, fawning and bobbing their heads, cringing under his shark’s gaze and devil smile.

“Here is Drama, come to do my will,” said the Faust. “Two small and pitiful things, but mine own. Because I don’t see why I should get my hands dirty, dealing with something as small and insignificant as you, little girl. So…Go and get her, you nasty little things. Make a mess.”

The two grey figures tore themselves away from adoring the Faust and danced towards Melody, throwing wild, extravagant shapes as they pirouetted in rapid circles around her and her equipment. Dark liquid monsters of inhuman suppleness and horrible malice, soaked in menace and vicious intent. Melody sneered right back at them, holding her ground, refusing to be impressed or intimidated.

“Get the hell away from my machines!” she said coldly.

“Dust is the mortal enemy of computers, is it not?” said the Faust. “Ah, what it is, to put the iron in irony!”

The dark grey figures froze in place while he spoke. He waved them on with a languid hand, and they surged forward. Melody grabbed the machine-pistol from out of its resting place and opened fire. She raked the gun steadily back and forth, blowing great holes through the leaping, darting figures; but it didn’t harm them, and it didn’t stop them. They were, after all, only dust. The bullets tore right through to chew up the wall behind them. Plaster cracked and wood chips blew. To hell with the theatre owners, thought Melody, and kept firing. They can bill me… The dusty grey figures didn’t even slow or hesitate as they pressed forward; and then suddenly Melody stopped firing and lowered her gun. The dusty figures stopped where they were, regarded her suspiciously, and looked back at the Faust. He found the energy to raise one inquiring eyebrow in Melody’s direction, and she smiled nastily back.

“It occurs to me,” she said, “that I am wasting perfectly good ammunition that I might have a better use for later. Let the dust come. My machines are top-of-the-line, and can look after themselves. And the dust can’t hurt me. Since those things are really nothing more than the left-overs from an old vacuum cleaner.”

“Ah,” said the Faust happily. “But I have made them so much more. You can drown in dust, if there’s enough of it. And they…are all the dust there is. They will fill you up from the inside out, little girl; and I shall stand right here and watch while they do it and laugh and laugh.”

“Yeah?” said Melody. “Watch this.”

She leaned forward and hit one big red button, and the two grey figures were gone in a moment, blasted apart by an unseen force. Nothing more than millions of dust motes, scattered across the lobby. They hung on the air in a thin, dusty mist, slowly settling, falling back to the floor. No trace remained of the smiling, scowling faces. Melody smiled brightly at the Faust.

“Localised electromagnetic pulse,” she said smugly. “Blasting out from my carefully isolated machines so as not to disturb them, and so limited in scope it didn’t even affect the lobby’s electric lighting. But more than enough to see off your dusty attack dogs.”

The Faust sighed loudly. “I tried to do it quickly and cleanly, I tried to deal with you in a civilised manner, but no…you had to be difficult. It seems I have no choice but to go all Old School on you, little girl.”

“Stop calling me that!” said Melody.

“Why?” said the Faust. “It’s all you are, really. Whereas I am The Flesh Undying, incarnate. I have been given power over flesh, all flesh…Even yours. Want to come out and play, little girl?”

He took one measured step closer and extended one oversized hand. Melody raised her machine-pistol threateningly, but the Faust ignored her. He gestured imperiously, a harsh, beckoning movement, and Melody lurched on her feet as she felt him draw something out of her. She tried to say something and couldn’t, held in place where she was. The machine-pistol dropped from her unfeeling fingers, and her hands rose on the air before her, pulled forward by an unseen force. Long, thin tendrils of some white, spongy substance extended slowly from her fingertips, stretching away from her, hanging unsupported on the air like long white chalk-marks. She shook her hands, trying to break off whatever it was, but the white streaks clung to her, growing longer and thicker. They inched away from her fingertips, across the empty air, growing longer and thicker…Melody’s hands tingled heavily with pins and needles, but more like the loss of vital warmth than the return of circulation. She opened her mouth to yell or scream or curse, and more of the white stuff erupted out of her mouth, stretching her jaws wide with its presence. Still more jumped out of her eyes and nostrils, to shoot out across the air.

Melody was losing something; or rather, something was being taken from her. She could feel it. The long, chalky, white tendrils were slowly coming together on the air before her, forming one huge pallid mass.

All these years I’ve been a Ghost Finder, Melody thought dazedly, and the first time I get to see some ectoplasm, it’s mine.

The white shape was almost human now. Standing upright, with arms and legs and a rough head bulging up from its shoulders. It slowly straightened up, on the other side of the wall of machines, and snapped into focus. Entirely human in shape and form, an exact duplicate of Melody, down to the smallest detail. Including her clothes. The dupe shook her head slowly, then glared at Melody.

“What the hell are you doing, behind my equipment? Get out of there!”

Melody’s first reaction was, My voice doesn’t sound like that. Followed by, Why did I ever think those glasses suited me?