The theatre is a harsh mistress who doesn’t care how many hearts she breaks or how much you love her.
Judy gave up acting to be a singer. Phil gave it all up to work in the family business. Andy had one big hit on television, then didn’t work for years because they said he was type-cast. And poor old Rob…he got tired of banging his head against a brick wall, trying to get noticed, for one chance to show everyone how talented he was…and disappeared back into the everyday world.
“We were all going to see our names in lights, in the West End,” said Benjamin. “Not our real names, of course.”
Happy looked at them both. “You mean…you’re not really Benjamin Darke and Elizabeth de Fries?”
“Well, hardly, darling,” said Elizabeth. “I was christened Elizabeth Flook, and he was Bennie Darren. You can’t put names like that up in lights.”
“Though Alistair really was Alistair Gravel,” said Benjamin. “The lucky bastard…”
As Elizabeth looked from face to face in the photo, she looked older than ever. “We were so close, then, all of us, and such good friends. But…you lose touch with people so easily as you move from job to job, and city to city, from theatre to television to film…and back again.”
“We’ve always preferred the theatre, though, haven’t we, darling?” said Benjamin. “It is good to be back.”
It seemed to Happy that Benjamin was trying to convince himself as much as Elizabeth.
“You’ve got some nerve, coming back here after all these years,” said a new but still-familiar voice. It was Elizabeth’s voice; but she hadn’t said it. The voice came out of the photo, as the young Elizabeth turned her face to glare out at her older self, her eyes dark and blazing, her red mouth a flat and bitter line. The young Benjamin turned his head to scowl out of the photo at his older self; and he looked grim, even dangerous. The young Alistair Gravel, sitting between them, didn’t move at all, and neither did any of the other actors in the photo.
“You ran away and left us,” said the young Benjamin. “Abandoned your dreams, blew off all your hope and ambitions, and settled for what you could get.”
“We were going to be someone!” said the young Elizabeth. “All the great things we were going to achieve! Set the British theatre on fire!”
“All the things we planned,” said the young Benjamin. “And you threw them all away, in pursuit of that stupid play.”
“It wasn’t like that!” said Elizabeth. She and Benjamin stood close together, frozen in place, their gaze fixed on their younger selves in the photo. But Elizabeth didn’t sound scared, or even intimidated, by what was happening. Her voice was harsh, even strident.
“Wasn’t it?” said the young Benjamin. “You can’t hide from the truth here. Darling. Not here, not in this place. Where it all went so horribly wrong.”
“What is this?” said Happy. “What are you talking about?”
They ignored him, the young and the old.
“Did you really think you could come back here and start again?” said the young Elizabeth.
“After what you did here?” said the young Benjamin. “After the awful thing you did, for fame and glory…”
“It wasn’t like that!” said Elizabeth. Her face was pale and drawn, but her voice was still hard and steady. “You know it wasn’t like that!”
“And even after what you did, you didn’t get the fame, or the glory,” said the young Elizabeth.
“But what you did here, all those years ago, has never been forgotten,” said the young Benjamin.
“And you have never been forgiven,” said the young Elizabeth. “Time to pay the piper. Darling.”
“Tell him,” said the young Benjamin. “Tell the poor little Ghost Finder what you did. And how it was all for nothing, in the end.”
The two young people lurched forward suddenly, long-clawed hands bursting out of the photo, good-looking faces stretching and distorting, becoming monstrous, devilish. Benjamin and Elizabeth cried out and fell back, Benjamin putting himself between Elizabeth and what was coming for them. Happy looked at them, then looked back at the mirror; and the photo was gone. Nothing to show it had ever been there. Happy took a deep breath, to settle himself, and looked at Benjamin and Elizabeth. They were clinging to each other like small children frightened by a thunderstorm.
“What the hell was that all about?” said Happy.
“Nothing,” said Elizabeth. All inflection was gone from her voice, all the colour from her face. Her eyes were wide, and her whole body was stiff with shock; but she still wouldn’t give an inch. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”
“It’s a trick,” said Benjamin. His face was empty and his voice was flat; but he couldn’t hide the fact that he’d been hit, and hit hard.
“It’s getting too late in the day to cling to that old line,” said Happy, as harshly as he could. “JC said all along something bad must have happened here to make this theatre a bad place. Something really bad, something you did. Because all of this only started up again when you came back. Something’s been waiting here for you, for twenty years…because of what you did. The crawling figure pointed to you, and only you. Your own faces in the photo accused you of some old crime, some old betrayal. So what did you do? I need to know!”
“No you don’t,” said Elizabeth, flatly.
“None of this has anything to do with us,” said Benjamin.
And then the door behind them suddenly swung open, and they all jumped. Elizabeth shrieked and clutched at Benjamin with both hands. He let out a short, choked cry, his back pressed up against the wall. Happy was startled, but also angry at himself for not having noticed that the door had closed. He moved quickly to put himself between his two charges and the new threat because he knew that was what JC would want him to do. Even though it didn’t feel in any way natural; and he didn’t have a clue what he was going to do.
They all relaxed, and let out their breaths in long, ragged sighs, as they recognised Old Tom, the caretaker. He stood in the open doorway with his vague smile and watery eyes, seeming even more stoop-shouldered than ever in his long brown overall and flat cap. He blinked at them bashfully.
“Only me, lady and gents! Didn’t mean to startle anyone…Just checking that everything’s as it should be…”
“Where the hell have you been?” said Happy, glad to have someone he could take out his frustrations on. “We’ve been looking for you everywhere!”
Old Tom regarded him vaguely. “I thought I heard someone moving about, when we were down in the understage area. And I thought, that’s not right, there’s not supposed to be anyone else here. So I went out through the rear exit—you know, the one at the back…And I had a good look around. But there wasn’t anyone there. So I came back. But you’d all gone, and the understage area was empty. So I had a good look around there, too, made sure everything was as it should be, then I came up on stage. Except by the time I got there, you’d all gone again! You really shouldn’t all go running off on your own, you know. Not safe, on your own. The old theatre isn’t as forgiving as she once was. Anything could happen. I remember when…”
Happy gave up on trying to get a word in edge-ways, stepped forward, and prodded Old Tom hard in the chest. His finger rebounded from the grubby overall, and Old Tom actually stopped talking, to stare at Happy reproachfully. Happy didn’t even try to explain. Old Tom might actually be there, might be physically present; but he still didn’t
All the calm good humour dropped out of Old Tom’s face, and suddenly he didn’t look real any more. Didn’t look human, any more. Happy stumbled backwards, shouting to Benjamin and Elizabeth to stay behind him, not looking back because he didn’t want to take his eyes off the thing that had pretended to be Old Tom, even for a moment.
“It’s not him! That’s not Old Tom, or a caretaker, or anything human! I don’t think it’s even alive!”
Benjamin surprised Happy then by surging forward past Happy to grab the front of Old Tom’s uniform with both hands. He thrust his face right into the caretaker’s and shook him angrily.
“Who are you? What are you, really? What’s going on?
