over to join him. JC took a moment to notice that Lissa was giving Old Tom her full attention although she didn’t seem nearly as affected as everyone else. JC filed that thought away for future reference and stepped forward to face Old Tom.
“Who are you?” said JC.
“What are you?” said Happy, from a distance.
Old Tom stepped out onto the stage, into the bright light. The flesh of his face had sunk in deeply, right back to the bone, becoming desiccated, mummified. The face of some long-forgotten corpse, brought to light at last. Dark lips had drawn back from yellow teeth in a never-ending smile. The only life left in him burned in his eyes, shining brightly from his dead face.
“I am the unquiet dead,” he said grandly. “The unquiet past, determined to be heard at last.”
“Damn,” said Benjamin. “He’s one of us! He’s an actor! We’re the only ones who talk like that.”
“Ah,” said Old Tom. “But not just any actor.”
“You’ve put on a pretty good show, so far,” said JC. “All the thrills and chills of a ghost train; but no-one was ever in any danger of getting hurt. So what’s really going on here? What’s this all about?”
“Why don’t the dead lie still in this empty palace of broken dreams?” said Old Tom. He pointed a single skeletal finger at Benjamin and Elizabeth, still huddled together. “Ask them. They know.”
And then he faded away, melting into thin mists that blew away and were gone. Even though there wasn’t a breath of a breeze, anywhere on the stage. JC, then Happy and Melody, and finally Lissa, turned to look at Benjamin and Elizabeth.
“It’s time to tell the truth,” said JC, not unkindly.
“Past time, I’d say,” said Lissa.
Benjamin and Elizabeth consulted each other silently, with one of their long looks that meant so much, but only to each other. And only then did they both nod briefly, in agreement. They held on to each other’s hands, like lost children comforting each other in a dark forest, and turned to face the Ghost Finders, and Lissa.
“It’s all my fault,” said Benjamin. “Alistair Gravel didn’t disappear. He didn’t go away. I killed him.”
“It was an accident!” Elizabeth said immediately. “We were arguing, at the top of the stairs. Raised voices, shouting into each other’s faces, lots of arm-waving. Benjamin shoved Alistair in the chest. And he fell, backwards.”
“I’d forgotten where we were,” said Benjamin. “And I never meant to shove him that hard. By the time we got to the foot of the stairs, he was dead.”
“What were you arguing about?” said JC.
“The play, of course,” said Elizabeth. “The bloody play.”
“Twenty years ago, we wrote the play for Alistair to star in,” said Benjamin. “It was a good play. I mean, really good. Everybody said so. We all knew it was our best chance for fame and glory, to break out of this very small pond and make real names for ourselves. But, we were having trouble raising funding. Until Frankie Hazzard came forward. Mister big-name movie star. He wanted a starring role in the theatre, to give himself some credibility. Someone sent him a copy of our play, and he wanted in. Wanted to star in it. And with his name attached, suddenly there was no problem getting all the money we needed, and then some.”
“But Alistair would have none of it,” said Elizabeth. “He refused to be pushed aside and replaced. This was his big chance, too, and he knew it. He said…he’d contributed so much to the play already, in rehearsal, that he’d sue us if we tried to go ahead without him. We did offer to pay him off, but he wasn’t interested. He insisted on his right to play the lead.”
“We argued,” said Benjamin. “I pushed him, and he fell. And he died.”
He couldn’t speak for a moment, holding back tears.
“We hid the body,” Elizabeth said finally. “Rather than have a scandal that would interfere with the play’s production. And success. We did it all for success.”
“It was my idea, not Elizabeth’s!” said Benjamin. “I couldn’t let her stand trial, and go to jail, just for being there. For something that was all my fault.”
“It wasn’t your fault!” said Elizabeth. “It was an accident! A stupid accident. He fell.”
“We buried him beneath the understage area,” said Benjamin. “He’s still there. No-one ever found him or found out what we’d done. To our oldest friend.”
“Our dearest friend,” said Elizabeth.
“We kept the secret, all these years.”
“Of what we did, for success.”
“Except, there wasn’t any,” said Benjamin. “Frankie Hazzard insisted on major changes in the play. Rewrite after rewrite, that messed up everything. He changed everything that mattered, took all the best lines, and gave them to himself…”
“And every time we objected, he threatened to walk,” said Elizabeth. “And take the play’s funding with him. We had no doubt he’d do it if he couldn’t have his own way. And we were all in too deep, by then.”
“We were desperate to get the play on,” said Benjamin. “After everything we’d done, everything we’d lost…if there was no play, then it had all been for nothing.”
“And in the end, it was,” said Elizabeth. “The changes ruined our play. When we did finally get it on, it died in under two weeks.”
“Frankie Hazzard didn’t give a damn,” said Benjamin. “He walked away. On to his next big movie project.”
“We got the blame,” said Elizabeth. “Frankie Hazzard was a star. Everybody loved him. So how could it be his fault? No, said the critics, and the commentators, it had to be our play, our lousy words, that buried the production.”
“We killed our oldest and dearest friend and covered it up, for fame and glory,” said Benjamin. “And we didn’t get the fame, and we didn’t get the glory. It was all for nothing. And nothing was ever the same after that.”
“We left the Haybarn,” said Elizabeth. “We didn’t have to. The owners still believed in us, we’d made them a lot of money. Far as they were concerned, we were still a good draw. Locally. But we couldn’t stay. Not after what we’d done. Not knowing that Alistair was buried here.”
“And anyway,” said Benjamin, “it was no fun any more, without him. We left. Our careers…never really happened. We kept busy, but…the spark was gone.”
“I sometimes wonder,” said Elizabeth, “whether deep down, we felt we didn’t deserve to succeed.”
“This is all very touching, I’m sure,” said Melody, loud enough to make everyone jump. “But why are we all standing around chatting, when I already told you the Phantom is on his way here to kill us all!”
“Because he isn’t here yet,” said JC. “And this…is the job. The mission. We came to the Haybarn Theatre to discover the reason behind the haunting, so we could…resolve matters. Now we know, perhaps we can make peace between the various parties.”
“Now we know what’s been powering all these visions and manifestations,” said Happy. “Twenty years of unfinished business. Lying there in his grave, dreaming and plotting, gathering his strength…Is there anything stronger than thwarted dreams and ambitions? The loss of the life Alistair Gravel should have had?”
JC stepped forward, to face Elizabeth and Benjamin. She looked tired, beaten down. He looked even worse. But he still had enough left in him to hold Elizabeth protectively as he stared at JC.
“What now?” he said.
“Why did you decide to come back here, after all these years?” said JC. “To revive a play that had only ever brought you pain?”
Benjamin and Elizabeth looked at each other.
“I don’t know,” said Benjamin, frowning. “The idea…came to me, one night.”
“Yes,” said Elizabeth. “The twentieth anniversary was coming up, and even though Benjamin and I never discussed it, we both knew it was much on our minds.”
“And when we did finally discuss it, we couldn’t get the idea out of our heads,” said Benjamin. “I contacted the theatre’s owners, and they said…they’d been waiting to hear from us.”
“It never occurred to me to question any of this before,” said Elizabeth. “But now I come to think about it…”
“You were called back here,” said JC. “Summoned, by a spirit of great power. But why? To tell you both that you had never been forgiven? To punish you?”
