Ghost of a Dream (17 page)

“Is it real?” JC said urgently. “Is that thing really there? Physically present?”

“Not physically present, as such,” Happy said immediately. “And it’s definitely not what’s left of Old Tom, if that’s what you were about to ask. I’m finally getting something…but don’t ask me what. There’s a strong sense of
presence
, but…whether we’re looking at a ghost, or a manifestation, or a stone tape memory…is beyond me. I can’t see! There’s so much power here, JC…It’s swamping the aether and saturating all the psychic channels!”

“You made that bit up!” said Melody.

“There’s so much power, I can’t tell what’s what!” Happy said stubbornly. “It’s like staring into the sun, with different radios blasting into each ear…This whole building is soaked in some kind of overwhelming presence. A real
genius loci
…”

JC glared at Happy for a long moment, then turned away to give the crawling figure his full attention. It had dragged itself half-way across the stage, shaking and shuddering with effort, heading straight for them.

“All right, Happy,” said JC. “Go and talk to it.”

“
What?
You go and talk to it!” Happy said immediately. “Whatever that is, it doesn’t look like it’s got anything to say that I would want to hear.”

“For once, I am in complete agreement with Happy,” said Melody. “I may be a big brave Ghost Finder, but that thing is officially creeping the hell out of me.”

“Damn right,” said Happy. “You couldn’t drive me an inch closer to that thing with a whip and a chair and an electric cattle prod.”

“Stay here,” said JC.

“You got it, boss,” said Melody.

JC slowly walked forward and took up a position right in front of the crawling figure, blocking its way. It stopped, and slowly raised its bloody face to JC. The dangling eyeball rolled slowly back and forth across the crimson cheekbone. JC knelt before the figure, lowering his face so that it was on a level with the thing before him.

“Can I do anything to help?” he said. “Who are you? What do you need? Who did this to you?”

On the last question, the figure raised one hand and pointed a single finger past JC, at Benjamin and Elizabeth. Blood dripped thickly from the pointing, accusing finger. Everyone turned to look at Benjamin and Elizabeth; and when they looked back again, the crawling figure was gone. And so was the long, bloody trail it had left behind it. There wasn’t a single trace remaining to show that the awful thing had ever been there. Lissa giggled suddenly, and perhaps a bit hysterically.

“My agent is so going to hear about this…”

Elizabeth looked hard at her, and Lissa turned her back on Elizabeth. JC joined Benjamin and Elizabeth.

“Did that figure mean anything to you?” he said.

“No,” said Benjamin. “Nothing.”

“Then why did it point to you two?” Lissa said loudly, having moved some distance away. “Why did it point
only at you? What do you know that you’re not telling the rest of us? You’re the ones who’ve got a history with this theatre! What did you do here, twenty years ago?”

“This is nothing to do with us!” Elizabeth said sharply. “Nothing!”

Happy moved in quietly beside JC. “The figure may be gone, but I’m still getting that strong sense of
presence
. Something’s still here with us.”

JC scowled about him, frustrated. “I hate it when there’s nothing solid to get a grip on, literally or metaphorically. But it does seem to me that a lot of what’s been happening here doesn’t mean anything. As though…we’re stuck in the middle of someone else’s game.”

“Unfinished business?” said Melody.

“Almost certainly,” said JC.

“Doesn’t this all strike you as more…dramatic than anything the renovators described?” said Melody.

“As though it was saving the best stuff for us,” said Happy.

“Or some of us,” said JC. “The question has to be, who is this aimed at, us, or the civilians?”

“I need my instruments,” said Melody.

“There must be something, something specific, in this building that’s powering this haunting,” said JC. “Something must have happened here, and in a sense is still happening, to make this theatre a bad place.” He looked steadily at Benjamin and Elizabeth. “Has there ever been a murder in this theatre? Or perhaps some major accident? A fire? Some sort of catastrophe?”

“No,” said Elizabeth, immediately.

“Nothing at all,” said Benjamin.

“Right!” said JC, clapping his hands together hard, then rubbing them briskly. “I have had enough of this. We need to split up and search this place thoroughly. See if we can find Old Tom, see if he’s behind any of this…And see if anyone else has got into the building. If not, we need to turn this place upside down and shake it to see what falls out. Search everywhere, people, for something that will make sense of all this. Presumably, we’ll know it when we see it. Come along, my children, we need clues, we need evidence. Happy, you go with Benjamin and Elizabeth. Look after them and try very hard to keep them alive.”

“Who, me?” said Happy.

“Lissa, you stick with me,” said JC. “Melody, I want you back in the lobby. Fire up your equipment and scan this whole building to within an inch of its life.”

“You do know,” said Lissa, “that in nearly every horror movie, when people split up and go off in different directions, it nearly always turns out to be a really bad idea?”

“Ah,” said JC. “But I and my associates are professional supernatural arse-kickers, and very experienced in these matters. We don’t take any shit from the Hereafter.”

“I want to go home,” said Happy.

Happy stood alone at the edge of the stage, looking out over the vast and empty auditorium. As someone who mostly preferred not to be noticed, even by the people he was working with, the whole concept of standing on a stage and being stared at by an audience made no sense to him at all. He’d never even been to a theatre to watch a play. Or a cinema. Happy didn’t like crowds, even when he was part of one. It was hard enough keeping the voices outside his head under normal conditions. Put too many people together in one place, and it was like the whole world wanted to force their way into Happy’s thoughts.

On the few occasions when he did let his mental defences down, to look on the hidden world and all it contained, then reality became a very crowded thing indeed. With no room in it at all for a small, unhappy thing
like him. It’s one thing to know the world is infinite and quite another to be able to see it for yourself. Happy only had an ego as a form of self-defence, so the idea that someone could give a damn about him, like JC…or perhaps even love him, like Melody…was a whole new concept to him. Happy worried that if people could notice him, then maybe the whole hungry world might, too.

If anyone had ever suggested to Happy that he was a hero, for fighting the good fight as a Ghost Finder, he would have been honestly surprised. Maybe even shocked. He had done some amazing things in his time, it was true, but only because the only other option had been dying horribly.

The pills made things so much easier. His little helpers; his chemical crutch to lean on; something to make him brave when he didn’t have it in him. Melody could put his demons to rest, she could hold him in the early hours and make him feel safe in the dark; but she couldn’t make him brave. Happy still hadn’t got the hang of that. So it bothered him that JC had put the two actors in his care and expected him to keep them safe. That was JC’s job, not his. JC knew all there was to know about being brave. And cocky, and arrogant…Surely, JC hadn’t dumped the actors on him so he could go off with the lovely Lissa and impress her with how brave he was? No; JC wasn’t that small. That was Happy. He smiled slightly, looked out over all the empty rows of seats, and wondered what it would feel like to be applauded.

Behind him, Benjamin cleared his throat, politely. He didn’t need to. Happy knew where everyone was, all the time. Even with all his mental shields in place, Happy
could tell where everyone was, by the way their presence pressed against his shields. The world always wanted in…Happy looked back. Benjamin and Elizabeth were standing together, looking at him uncertainly. Happy turned around and gave them both his best professional smile, the one he’d copied from JC.

“Relax,” he said because he thought he should. “Everything’s going to work out fine. I am a professional Ghost Finder. I do this for a living.”

“Where do you think we should start looking, Happy?” said Elizabeth.

“Beats the hell out of me,” said Happy with a certain gloomy affability. “It’s your theatre. Your past, your history. Whatever’s going on does seem to be linked to your time here, twenty years ago. Apart from the stage…which part of this theatre would you say was most important to the two of you?”

Elizabeth and Benjamin looked at each other, and something passed between them that they clearly didn’t feel like sharing with him. Happy could have reached inside their heads and dug it out, but he didn’t. This was partly because the Carnacki Institute had pounded it into him, in a number of very firm ways, that doing so was
wrong
, and that if they caught him at it again, they would lobotomise him with a rusty ice-pick (and Happy didn’t think they were in the least bit joking, or even exaggerating), but also…Because opening his mind that much, in a place like this, definitely qualified as a Really Bad Idea. The psychic seas of the Haybarn Theatre were choppy and disturbed and full of killer sharks. So Happy waited patiently for Benjamin and Elizabeth to finish not
saying the things they didn’t want to say out loud, in front of him, and finally Elizabeth nodded, almost imperceptibly, and Benjamin sighed heavily.

“Well, you said it yourself, darling; the best times we ever had were backstage. So I think our best bet would be to go check out the dressing-rooms, those shabby little corners full of dreams and ambition, terror and exhilaration, adrenaline rushes and panic attacks. And home to some of the best after-play parties ever. All human life was there…”

“You always were the eloquent one, darling,” said Elizabeth.

“Yes…” said Happy. “Strong emotions are good—exactly what we need. They always evoke the best memories and the most significant ghosts. Ghosts are memories, and vice versa. Are these dressing-rooms a long way away from the stage?”

“Yes,” said Benjamin.

“Oh good,” said Happy. “Let us go, right now.”

“You’re not very brave for a Ghost Buster, are you?” said Elizabeth.

“Brave gets you killed in this business,” said Happy, quite seriously. “I prefer to hang around at the back, out of harm’s way, shouting helpful advice while the big, brave, alpha types throw themselves forward into an early grave. There’s nothing like being able to see ghosts, to make you very determined never to become one. I have been in this business a while now, and I stay alive through a combination of applied caution and a complete willingness to turn and run like fun at a moment’s notice, and I suggest you do the same. If you can keep up with me.
Show me these dressing-rooms. Maybe I can pick up some useful mental impressions from them.”

“After twenty years?” said Elizabeth.

“Time means nothing to the dead,” said Happy. “The Past is always with us, not least because most people never learn to put it down properly.”

Benjamin and Elizabeth led the way down from the stage, then strode briskly up the long, narrow central aisle of the auditorium. They hurried along, chatting easily to each other, while Happy slouched along behind them, bringing up the rear. He didn’t mind that they weren’t talking to him; he honestly wouldn’t have known what to say if they had. Happy wasn’t one for small talk, or most other people skills. And then he stopped, half-way up the aisle, to look back at the stage.

JC hadn’t budged an inch. He was still holding his position at centre stage, smiling broadly, and discoursing loudly on something important. Though, to her credit, Lissa didn’t seem to be nearly as impressed with JC as JC clearly thought she ought to be.

Melody was already heading off the stage, going in search of her precious scientific equipment back in the lobby. She didn’t look back at Happy, even for a moment. Happy was used to that. He knew he was only really real for Melody when he was right in front of her. Or sometimes behind, depending on her mood…