Ghost of a Dream

to get their attention.

“Has either of you ever seen anything like this before?”

“Of course not!” said Benjamin.

“We would have said!” said Elizabeth. “What is that thing?”

Happy and Melody stood close together, studying the slowly crawling figure with professional interest. They might not like the look of it, but they’d seen a lot worse, in their time. JC looked across at Lissa. She was standing very still, staring, wide-eyed; but once again, not nearly as scared as JC would have expected. Most civilians, with no experience of ghosts and monsters, would have screamed or run or even fainted dead away. Lissa looked…as though she’d been expecting this. Or something like it. But that could wait. First things first. JC turned back to Happy.

“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.

FIVE STARDUSTY MEMORIES

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