Simon Green - Ghost of a Dream

She finally saw a familiar set of swing doors up ahead of her, burst through them without slowing, and found herself back in the main auditorium. She stumbled down the central aisle, leaning on end chairs as she went, for support. Up on the stage, JC and Happy, Benjamin and Elizabeth and Lissa, were all standing together and arguing loudly. They broke off to look out at her, caught off guard by her sudden entrance. She stopped, and slumped down onto a padded chair for a moment, to get her breath back. She always felt a little safer when JC and Happy were around, though, of course, she’d never tell them that. It took encountering something like Faust and his Phantom to get her to admit it to herself. She glanced quickly behind her; but there wasn’t the slightest sound or sight of the Phantom. Yet. She forced herself up out of her chair and glared indiscriminately at everyone on the stage.

“You stay right where you are! I’m coming up! And I don’t care what you’re arguing about; I’ve had a far worse time than you have, so my problems are bound to be much worse than yours, so I am entitled to be in a very bad mood!”

“Never knew you when you weren’t!” murmured JC.

“I heard that!”

“You were meant to.”

Melody strode down the main aisle, round the side, and up onto the stage, while everyone else stood exactly where they were and looked at her. Melody had that effect on people, sometimes. If only because they knew silent, fuming rage when they saw it. She finally stomped across the stage to confront Happy, who gave her his best What have I done now? look.

“Why don’t you answer your phone?” snarled Melody.

Happy blinked at her a few times. “It hasn’t rung. Did you try and call me? You never call me when we’re out in the field. You said constant communication was a sign of weakness.”

Melody growled deep in her throat and shook her head in frustration. Happy considered her for a moment and took a tentative step forward.

“Something’s happened,” he said. “Something bad. I don’t have to look inside your head to know that. What was it? What could possibly spook you this much? Are you all right, Melody?”

“No,” she said. And then she managed a small smile. “But I do feel a lot better for being here, with you.”

“Yelling at me is very therapeutic,” said Happy, solemnly. “A lot of people have told me that. After they calmed down.”

Melody looked around her. “What’s everybody doing back here?”

“That is what we were…discussing, when you made your dramatic entrance,” said JC. “Old Tom brought Lissa and me a message. Ostensibly from Happy, saying we all needed to meet back here. Urgently. Only when Lissa and I arrived, it was to find Happy and his two actors waiting here for us, demanding to know why I’d called them back.”

“Old Tom is a ghost,” said Happy. “Or more properly, a ghost in disguise. I saw him disappear into a pool of darkness.”

“I said he was too broad a character to be true,” said Benjamin. “A performance of a caretaker; not the real thing.”

“We were always very suspicious of him,” said Elizabeth. “But only because we thought he was a journalist in disguise.”

“Never even occurred to us that he might be the ghost haunting this theatre, said Benjamin. “I mean, walking around with us, pretending to be real, like us…That is so creepy, the hairs on the back of my neck are tying themselves in knots.”

“Sly,” said Elizabeth. “Underhanded. I mean, you don’t expect spirits to sneak around and take advantage of you.”

“He told Lissa and me that Happy wanted us here, urgently,” said JC.

Happy shook his head quickly. “Not me, boss. Nothing to do with me.”

“I had gathered that,” said JC.

“We’re here because we found a note pinned to the wall,” said Happy. “Apparently from you, telling me to get the actors back here sharpish.”

“And you didn’t think to phone me first, to check?” said JC.

“No signal,” said Happy. “And no, I didn’t try to reach out to you with my mind. After watching Old Tom melt away to nothing, I didn’t trust the atmosphere in this place; and I certainly wasn’t going to drop any of my mental shields. It’s not safe here, JC. For Old Tom to pass as human like that, up close and personal, with none of us suspecting a thing…that’s almost unheard of. Maintaining something like that takes a hell of a lot of power.”

“Have you still got the note?” said JC.

“Sure,” said Happy.

But when he rummaged in his pocket, it wasn’t there. Happy smiled weakly at JC and tried all his other pockets, sometimes more than once; but the note was gone.

“Someone wanted us all here,” said JC. “Old Tom…or whatever that really is, hiding behind the appearance of Old Tom.”

“A kindly old duffer who no-one would look at twice,” said Happy. “So clearly harmless, no-one ever suspected a thing. Good disguise.”

“Excuse me!” Melody said loudly. “But I do have something very urgent and extremely dangerous to discuss!”

JC smiled at her easily. “Of course you do. Very well, Melody; what brings you back here? In such an excited and sweaty state?”

“Something is chasing me,” Melody said bluntly. “Trying to kill me; and then all of you.”

“How very stupid of it,” murmured JC. “Where…”

Melody gestured back at the swing doors, at the rear of the auditorium; and everybody looked. The doors didn’t move. It was all very still and very quiet. Everyone looked at Melody again.

“Who is it?” said JC. “Who’s after you?”

“The Phantom of the Haybarn,” said Melody.

“You have got to be fucking kidding,” said Happy.

He sniggered, until Melody shut him up with a cold glare. She filled them all in on her encounter with the Faust, and his creation, the Phantom. She made it as clear as she could for the actors, while still being careful to refer only obliquely to The Flesh Undying. Some things civilians were better off not knowing. JC and Happy got what she was talking about immediately and shared several thoughtful and meaningful looks. Benjamin and Elizabeth, and Lissa, mostly looked confused. Melody finally ran down, and they all looked at the swing doors again.

“We are in deep shit, people,” said Happy. “This isn’t just a haunting any more. I say we get the hell out of here, napalm the theatre, then salt the ashes afterwards. It’s the only way to be sure.”

And then he broke off abruptly. All of them turned around as the sound of quiet, mocking laughter drifted across the stage from the far wings. And there, standing half in the shadows and half in the light, smiling easily, was Old Tom, the caretaker. Except he was standing taller and straighter now…and he didn’t look like someone who’d take orders from other people. He looked like the man in charge. Benjamin and Elizabeth stared at him, then moved to stand close together. Happy started forward, to put himself between the two actors and danger…and then he remembered that JC was here, so he didn’t have to be the hero any longer. That was JC’s job. With a certain amount of relief, Happy fell back and hid behind Benjamin and Elizabeth, out of harm’s way. Melody moved over to join him. JC took a moment to notice that Lissa was giving Old Tom her full attention although she didn’t seem nearly as affected as everyone else. JC filed that thought away for future reference and stepped forward to face Old Tom.

“Who are you?” said JC.

“What are you?” said Happy, from a distance.

Old Tom stepped out onto the stage, into the bright light. The flesh of his face had sunk in deeply, right back to the bone, becoming desiccated, mummified. The face of some long-forgotten corpse, brought to light at last. Dark lips had drawn back from yellow teeth in a never-ending smile. The only life left in him burned in his eyes, shining brightly from his dead face.