but even though clothing ripped and tore under her hands, she couldn’t do enough damage to tear even one piece of clothing away. The costumes ignored her, piling onto JC in layer after layer, burying him underneath them.
He thrashed around on the floor, throwing his weight this way and that, but it was becoming harder and harder to get his breath as the clothes compressed his chest. And then a single silk shirt dropped down across his face, slapping into place, moulding itself tightly across his features, filling his mouth and nostrils so he couldn’t get any air at all. One last breath was forced out of him; and he couldn’t draw another one in.
The door smashed in as Old Tom, the caretaker, came crashing into the room. Lissa yelled for him to help her, and the two of them ripped the silk shirt away from JC’s face and tore it into ribbons. JC dragged in a great breath of air, struggling against the clothes again with renewed strength. Lissa and Old Tom attacked the enveloping costumes with their bare hands, ripping and tearing at them; and the clothes collapsed and went limp. Lissa and Old Tom rocked JC back and forth as they pulled the no-longer-resisting costumes away from him, pulling them off him, layer by layer, until JC could finally find the strength and leverage to break free.
He struggled back up onto his feet, tearing at the last few clothes with an almost hysterical strength, desperate to get them off him. When they finally fell away from him and sprawled unmoving on the floor, he kicked at them viciously, breathing hard. And then he was back in control again, himself again, standing still and forcing his breathing back under control. He smiled easily at Lissa and Old Tom as they stood uncertainly before him.
“Well!” JC said brightly. “That was different. Hello again, Old Tom. Where have you been? We couldn’t find you anywhere.”
“Oh, here and there, sir,” said Old Tom, as vaguely diffident as ever. “I was talking to that scientific young lady of yours, in the lobby.”
JC waited, until it was clear he wasn’t going to get any more, then he looked thoughtfully at the distressed clothes lying on the floor. He prodded a few with the tip of his shoe, to be sure; but there was no response.
“You don’t want to go playing with the costumes, sir,” said Old Tom, reproachfully. “You’ll damage them. Clothes like that are expensive.”
“Do you know how they got here?” said JC.
“No, sir,” said Old Tom. “I’m the caretaker; I don’t do costumes. That’s a whole other department. More than my job’s worth to mess with things that are none of my concern.”
JC had already stopped listening, half-way through the old caretaker’s response. He was thinking. Why would Kim have brought him here, into a trap, to be attacked? This had to be deliberate. Wait until he was separated from Happy and Melody, then bring him to a room with no escape, where his death would be waiting.
“Why would Kim bring me here?” he said, and only realised he’d said it aloud when Lissa snorted loudly.
“What did she say to bring you here?”
“She didn’t say anything,” said JC.
“Then there’s your answer. How do you know it was really your Kim?” said Lissa. “We’ve all seen all kinds of illusions in the theatre, things and people that weren’t what they appeared to be.”
“But like you said, this was different,” said JC. “This wasn’t just scary; someone meant for me to die here.”
“Someone else is here in the theatre with us,” said Lissa. “Someone who isn’t supposed to be here.”
JC nodded brusquely to Old Tom. “Thanks for your help. Have you seen anyone else? Anyone who isn’t authorised to be here?”
“No, sir.”
JC looked at him thoughtfully. “How did you know Lissa and I were in trouble?”
“I didn’t, sir,” said Old Tom. “I was checking out the corridors, looking for you, to pass on a message. And then I heard you two crashing about in here, where no-one had any business being, and I thought I’d better take a look.”
“A message?” said Lissa. “Who from, exactly?”
“From Mr. Happy, Mr. Benjamin, and Miss Elizabeth,” said the old caretaker, a bit importantly. “They want you, and Miss Melody, to rejoin them on the old stage, as soon as possible.”
“Go back to the main stage?” said JC. “What on earth for?”
Old Tom shrugged. “They didn’t say, sir, and it wasn’t my business to ask. Will there be anything else, sir? Then I’ll be off. Lots of work still to do.”
He smiled about him vaguely and went back out into the corridor. Lissa looked at JC, who stayed where he was, frowning hard, thinking.
“Something’s not quite right,” said JC.
“Oh, I couldn’t agree more,” said Lissa. “That moustache really doesn’t suit him.”
“Why didn’t Melody ring me if she knew I was needed?” said JC. He took out his phone and checked, but there were no missed calls.
“Why didn’t Happy yell at you with his mind?” said Lissa.
“Because I put a lot of time and effort into training him not to do that except for real life-endangering emergencies,” said JC. “Still…”
“Oh, to hell with it,” said Lissa. “Let’s go see what they want. I’m sick to death of this room. Never wanted to come in here anyway.”
JC nodded slowly and started to follow Lissa out of the room and into the corridor. At the last moment, he stopped in the doorway as a thought struck him. The costumes only attacked him. Not Lissa. Not even when she was tearing at them, to save him. Odd, that…
He looked around the room. There were no clothes, no costumes. Even the clothing racks were gone. He saw only a bare and empty room, full of dust and shadows.
EIGHT
IN THE FLESH
Still in the theatre lobby, and getting more than a little tired of it, Melody frowned over her scientific equipment like a mother with a sick child. She moved back and forth, doing her level best to coax and persuade the various instruments into telling her something she actually wanted to know. But, as far as all her screens, sensors, and scientific readings were concerned, everything in the lobby was wonderful. Nothing out of the ordinary was happening, and all was quiet on the supernatural front. Melody stood over her machines, scowling heavily and tugging at her lower lip as she gave the matter some thought and wondered whether she should get out the operating manual or a really big hammer. Because she knew for a fact that something was wrong with the lobby.
And that was when all her readouts started going crazy, right in front of her eyes. The first to go was the temperature gauge. The display started climbing, and wouldn’t stop. According to the figure before her, the temperature in the lobby was already at jungle heat and rising so fast it was heading for the stratosphere. If it really was as hot in the lobby as the gauge was making out, the machine would be melting, and Melody would be crisp and aromatic and ready to serve. And then the reading dropped, just as rapidly, and they kept on dropping. Shooting down past normal levels and into sub-zero temperatures that would seriously upset a polar bear. Melody felt a sudden nostalgic twinge for the old-style thermometer, with mercury in it, where if you didn’t like the reading you were getting, you could tap the thing with a fingertip until it changed. You didn’t have that luxury with an electronic readout. She was about to try hitting the thing anyway, on general principles, when the readout rose sharply again, all the way back to normal, and steadied itself.
While Melody was still trying to get her head around what had happened, all her warning alarms went off at once. The sirens were deafeningly loud in the enclosed space of the lobby, and Melody moved quickly from one readout to the next, all of which seemed convinced that she was surrounded and under attack from any number of heavily armed hostiles. The short-range sensors were picking up guns, energy weapons, Objects of Power, and all kinds of dangerous radiations, while the motion trackers showed dozens of hostile presences, circling round and round her instrument station. As far as her defences were concerned, Melody was under attack from the walking dead, demonic forces, and bloody big aliens in hobnailed boots. The machines were going crazy, warning her about
