The taxi had Thank You For Not Smoking signs plastered all over the interior, along with half a dozen little pine-tree deodorant things, and the interior still smelled like something large and unpleasant had recently been very ill in it. The driver had a great deal to say about the immigration situation, none of it helpful, and ignored all attempts to shut him up, including
When the taxi finally arrived at its destination, Happy volunteered to pay the driver. He fumbled crumpled notes and assorted change from his pockets while Melody hauled her precious scientific equipment out of the taxi’s boot, and JC wandered over to stare thoughtfully at the exterior of the Haybarn Theatre. Happy slapped a bunch of well-worn notes into the driver’s hand and carefully added the right amount of change. The driver looked at his hand, then glared at Happy.
“What? No tip?”
“Okay,” said Happy. “Here’s a tip. Wash your mind out with soap, and try to at least slow down for the red lights. Now piss off sharpish, or I’ll set my girl-friend on you.”
“I heard that!” said Melody, slamming the taxi’s boot shut with unnecessary force. “Don’t make me come over there!”
“See what I mean?” said Happy, smiling calmly at the driver.
The taxi departed at speed. Happy wandered over to watch Melody load her assorted high tech on the collapsible trolley.
“Is that it?” he said, after a while.
“The rest of my equipment, all the really important stuff, that I specially ordered in advance, is apparently en route in a separate van,” said Melody. “Under armed guard. For insurance reasons.”
“I’m sure it’ll all turn up,” said Happy. “Eventually…”
“They’re not fooling me!” Melody said loudly. “They’re trying to see how little tech I can work with! I cannot be expected to do deep research on dead things with such limited resources! I’d have better luck catching ghosts by running after them with a bloody-big enchanted butterfly-net!”
“I think I saw one of those in the Boss’s office, one time,” said JC, not looking around. “On the wall, behind her desk, right next to the enchanted grenade-launcher.”
“I wish I thought you were joking,” said Happy.
He and Melody moved forward to stand on either side of JC, and they all took their time studying the exterior face of the Haybarn Theatre. None of them was particularly impressed. Time and the weather had not been kind to the brick and stone though it was surprisingly free of graffiti. Unlike most of the surrounding office buildings. Apart from the Haybarn’s name, still spelled out in cold grey neon tubing, above the closed main doors, there was nothing obvious to mark the old building as a theatre. All the colour and glamour had been stripped away long ago, and now it looked like any other old-fashioned building, silent and unoccupied.
“Has this place really been empty for twenty years?” JC said finally. “I mean, this is prime location, if nothing else. Right in the middle of the business section. The land alone must be worth a fortune…”
“Maybe the building has a reputation, as a bad place,” said Happy. “Last thing a developer wants is a poltergeist running wild in the lanes of his supermarket. Or restless spirits grinning out of the changing-room mirrors in a women’s fashion outlet.”
“There’s no mention of anything like that in the briefing files,” said Melody. “No trouble at all until the renovations started. Are you picking up anything yet, Happy? Any bad vibrations?”
“There’s a curry house not far away,” said Happy.
“You can’t be hungry already, not after everything you stuffed down yourself on the train!”
“Working for the Carnacki Institute is like serving in the Army,” Happy said solemnly. “Eat when you can, sleep where you can, because you never know when you might get another chance…” He sniffed loudly. “I’m not getting anything from this building, which is a bit odd. I mean, this place has to be at least a century old. I should be getting something…”
Melody looked at JC. “Do you have any idea who this important friend of Catherine Latimer’s might be, the one we’re doing this for?”
“She didn’t say anything,” said JC. “But then, she never does.”
“Are we supposed to go in through the front doors, or should we go round the back and enter through the stage door?” said Happy.
“Hell with that,” JC said firmly. “I do not use the back door. Except sometimes as an exit in times of high peril.”
Melody moved forward and tried the front doors. They both opened easily before her. “Not even locked,” she said. “That can’t be right. Not in this day and age.”
“Someone is expecting us,” said Happy.
“A sign from Above!” JC said merrily. “Inwards and onwards, my children! Danger and excitement await us!”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you’d been at my pills,” said Happy.
“We are going in!” said JC.
“You first,” said Happy.
“Of course!” said JC.
“Hold it,” said Melody, and it was a measure of their professionalism that both men stopped immediately and looked at her.
“What?” said Happy.
“We’re supposed to wait here,” said Melody. “Because we’re being joined by the two actor-producers responsible for renovating this place.”
“Oh, wonderful,” said Happy. “Passengers! Why are we going to put up with these civilians, exactly?”
“Because they know the history of this theatre,” Melody said patiently. “And, they know all about the haunting. If it is a haunting and not a bunch of grown men jumping at shadows. I blame those
Happy looked innocently at JC. “Do we really have to put up with this? You know they’re going to get in the way and make the job ten times harder.”
“Yes, we do have to put up with them,” said JC. “The Boss said so. And you don’t say no to the Boss if you like having your organs on the inside. In fact, she was most insistent about making these actors a part of our investigation. Do try and keep them alive.”
“You try,” Melody said immediately. “I am going to be busy trying to follow electromagnetic fluctuations and orgone spikes with an old barometer and a bent penny.”
JC looked at Happy, who shrugged briefly. “She’s suffering from equipment withdrawal.”
“Ah, to hell with this,” said JC. “I am not standing around here waiting for thespians to turn up. The traffic’s deafening, the air’s so polluted you could shake hands with it, and the rain’s coming on. Besides, I don’t wait for anyone. It’s bad for the reputation. I am going in. Tally ho, Ghost Finders!”
He barged straight through the main doors and disappeared inside. Happy and Melody looked at each other and shrugged pretty much simultaneously. Happy held a door open, and Melody hauled her trolley full of equipment up the raised steps and into the theatre.
JC was already striding round and round the oversized lobby, head held high, looking at everything with keen interest. His ice-cream white suit seemed almost to glow in the gloom. JC lurched abruptly to a halt, hands stuffed deep into his pockets, looking and listening and sniffing the air, getting a feel for the place. The lobby was big enough to be impressive without being imposing, made to hold crowds waiting for the curtain to go up; but it was dim and dusty now, with more than its fair share of shadows. All the windows were boarded up.
Melody hauled her trolley into the exact centre of the lobby, looked briefly around her, sniffed loudly when nothing immediately dangerous presented itself, and began assembling her various bits and pieces. Happy stood alone, some distance away from the others, looking cautiously about him. The lobby floor was bare, and so were the walls. Though there were a few large empty wooden frames, here and there, that had presumably once held bright and gaudy posters, advertising past triumphs and tragedies. The lobby looked…depersonalised, anonymous. As though all the glamour and character and history had been deliberately removed, long ago. Several doors led off from the lobby, going who knew where because all the signs and directions were gone. All the doors were very
