Simon Green: Ghost of a Dream

“Told you,” said Melody. “The Phantom of the Haybarn.”

“Okay,” said Happy. “That is seriously ugly, with a really big side order of disgusting and distressing. But I have to say, although I’m quite definitely sensing its presence, I’m not picking up any thoughts from it. As such. That’s not a person. More like a projection from some other mind, further away.”

Melody said, “It’s a creation of the Faust. He made it. Right there in front of me. It’s bits of flesh, shaped by his will and intent.”

“Flesh?” said Happy. “Oh ick.”

“Not an actual creation, then,” said JC. “Not a living thing. Good to know this Faust has his limits.”

“It’s still butt ugly,” sniffed Happy.

“Go on,” said Melody. “I’m pretty sure it can hear you. Go ahead and annoy the insanely powerful murderous creature, why don’t you?”

“Shutting up now,” said Happy. “And hiding behind you until further notice.”

“I don’t think that…thing, that Phantom, is anything to do with the games Alistair has been playing,” said Benjamin.

“Of course not,” said Elizabeth. “Alistair had more style. Not to mention taste. His imagination was never that…grubby.”

“You never put on a production of The Phantom of the Opera ?” said JC. “Nothing this creature could have been derived from?”

“Oh please,” said Elizabeth, crushingly. “We were theatre people, not music-hall.”

“Snob,” said Benjamin fondly.

“So this is nothing to do with our dead actor and his twenty-year-old grudge,” said JC. “This isn’t about you; this is about us. An old enemy of ours has followed us here.” He smiled slowly, and it was not a good smile. “The Faust is really nothing more than a party crasher; and it’s up to us to give him the boot. I say first we take down this second-rate Phantom, then we go find the Faust and kick his nasty arse until he agrees to tell us things we need to know.”

“Sounds good to me, boss,” said Happy, from behind Melody. “You go right ahead and get all violent on the dangerous psychopath in the cape. I’ll watch your back. From a distance.”

“We have to make the Faust talk,” said JC with a cold and deliberate patience. “He knows the truth about Kim. Where she’s been, what’s happened to her. You think it’s a coincidence she showed up here the same time as him?”

They all looked at Kim, standing still and silent in her spotlight. Like a ghost impaled on a shimmering pin. She looked only at JC, with calm, steady eyes. As though she was waiting for something.

“Is there anything you can do to help us, Kim?” said JC. “No. Then you stay here while I go have words with the Phantom.”

“Some guardian-angel ghost,” muttered Happy.

“I heard that!” said JC.

The Phantom came tearing through the auditorium towards the stage. He didn’t bother with the open aisle down the middle; instead, he tore a path right through the ranked rows of seats, in a casual, brutal display of strength. Insanely powerful, he smashed through the bolted-down seats as though they were made of paper, throwing broken pieces aside. The impacts didn’t slow him, and he took no obvious pain or damage. He hit the chairs like a runner breasting an endless series of tapes, his arms flailing wildly. The savage sounds of destruction echoed through the vast auditorium, bouncing back from the walls, the sounds of something destroying everything in its path because it couldn’t be bothered to go around.

“Show-off!” JC said loudly, to make it clear that he wasn’t in any way impressed. He looked down his nose at the rapidly approaching creature and suddenly smiled. “Everyone knows how to stop the Phantom of the Opera…”

He strode right up to the edge of the stage and stepped off without slowing. He landed easily then stood there and waited for the Phantom to come to him. He even smiled and nodded and made encouraging gestures to the creature to hurry it up. The Phantom snarled at him, his eyes glowing yellow as urine in the gloom of the auditorium. He finally smashed through the last row of seats, and slammed to a halt right in front of JC. Stooped by a curved back, half-crouched like an animal ready to spring but not even breathing hard, for all his exertions. He smiled a horrid smile, with no humour in it, no human emotion at all, and held up his gloved hands, so JC could see the splintered claws that had thrust through the ends of the fingertips. JC sniffed loudly.

“Am I supposed to be impressed? I’ve crapped scarier-looking objects than you.”

The Phantom lunged forward, clawed hands raised. JC stepped forward at the very last moment and tore off the Phantom’s mask. It clung stickily for a moment, then ripped away in his hand. The Phantom stopped dead. But instead of revealing the expected disfigured face, which the Phantom of the Opera would have immediately stopped to hide…there was nothing there. Nothing at all behind the grubby half-mask. The left side of the Phantom’s head was…missing. The right half of the face and head ended abruptly in a twisted mess of gnarled and fused tissues. One glowing yellow eye, a nose bisected right down the middle, and half a mouth, still smiling its nasty smile. Up close, the half-face smelled of rotting meat.

JC felt something move in his hand. He looked down. The half-mask still had a yellow eye in it, looking up at him through its hole, glaring madly. The mask itself felt like skin, like flesh, in his hand, living materials moulded into shape by the Faust’s will. It pulsed in his grasp. JC wanted to grimace with disgust, but he couldn’t allow himself to show weakness. He crushed the mask in his grasp, then whipped off his sunglasses with his other hand, to give the Phantom the full benefit of his unearthly glare. The Phantom flinched and turned his half-face away from the golden glow, but he didn’t fall back by so much as a step. Instead, he slowly turned his half-face back, to match the glowing glare with his own inhuman gaze. And then he took one slow deliberate step towards JC.

“Happy!” JC said loudly. “Really could use a little assistance down here!”

Happy came forward to the edge of the stage, looked down at the drop, and the Phantom, and hesitated. Melody came up behind him and pushed him off. Happy let out a loud cry and landed in a heap beside JC. He quickly scrambled back onto his feet, checked quickly to make sure everything was undamaged, then moved reluctantly forward to stand beside JC. Because once you’d been thrown in the deep end, you might as well go kick the snot out of the sharks. Happy was always quite prepared to be brave—once it was clear there was no other alternative. He hit the Phantom with his hardest, strongest blast of telepathic disbelief. The Phantom slammed to a halt as though he’d hit a brick wall. JC glared his golden glare. Happy concentrated on his disbelief till he felt that his head would burst open. The Phantom opened his mouth to say something, then fell apart. Unable to hold himself together in the face of such focused opposition.

The night-black cape dropped off his shoulders, running away like some thick, inky liquid. The legs collapsed, and the arms fell off. The squirming trunk hit the floor hard and fell in upon itself, melting down and running away in thick rivulets. The clothes dissolved along with the body, as though they were all part of the same thing. It slumped down like a melting candle, then dissipated into thick white mists that quickly disappeared on the still air. The half-face was the last to go, lying in a white pool on the floor, still glaring silently and malevolently up at JC and Happy, the mouth still working right till the very end, when it disappeared suddenly, like a bad dream.

JC felt something squirm in his hand. He looked down to find that the mask had become a thick sticky liquid, dripping through his closed fingers. He opened his hand and shook the stuff away. JC pulled a face and rubbed his hand clean on the back of Happy’s jacket. Happy knew better than to say anything. They both studied the floor carefully, but there wasn’t even a stain left to mark the Phantom’s passing.