through the opening, accompanied by the singing of a heavenly choir and the sound of massed bugles. The Faust rose smoothly, as though riding an elevator, standing tall and proud and erect, until he was a good foot or more above the open trap-Door. And it became clear that he was standing on nothing. He smiled happily about him, like some visiting dignitary bestowing his grace on the unworthy, and stepped lightly down onto the stage. The brilliant light snapped off, leaving everyone else blinking for a moment. The heavenly choir and the massed bugles shut down in mid phrase. The Faust beamed about him.
“If you’re going to make an entrance, make an entrance! That’s what I always say. I am the Faust, and I’ll be your murderer tonight. I do hope nobody’s going to be bothersome…That small thing you destroyed was only flesh, after all. Nothing more. And I’ve been given dominion over all such things by my lord and master, The Flesh Undying. Ah me; I do so love to see the look on people’s faces when they hear his glorious name. And know that all hope is gone, the game is over, and the sentence is death. Because that is, after all, the only fitting fate for his enemies.”
“You were right,” JC said to Melody. “He does like to talk, doesn’t he?”
Benjamin and Elizabeth looked at the Faust. Anywhen else, they’d probably have been impressed. But after everything they’d been through and experienced so far, he was merely another unpleasant visitation. They looked to the Ghost Finders for some sort of explanation, in a not-terribly-hopeful way.
“Long story,” Melody said briskly. “And you really wouldn’t want to know, anyway. Settle for knowing that this completely up-himself personage is the only really dangerous thing in this theatre.”
“How very harsh,” murmured the Faust. “Frankly, I’d expected a better class of dialogue, in the theatre.”
JC, Happy, and Melody stepped forward to confront the Faust. Benjamin and Elizabeth backed off a little and let them do it. They knew when they were way out of their depth. JC took another step forward, and the Faust came forward to meet him. They circled each other, like two tigers meeting in a clearing. Two powerful, arrogant beings who had more in common than either of them would ever have admitted.
“What are you?” said JC.
“I am what I’ve made of myself,” said the Faust. “Can you say the same? I doubt it. What are you, Mr. Chance, except another overworked and underpaid civil servant, working for a government department…never knowing what’s really going on behind the scenes.”
JC smiled. “You really don’t know me, do you?”
“I chose my master!” said the Faust. “I gave myself to The Flesh Undying. Like the man said, we all have to serve someone. Whom do you serve, really? A Boss? A cause? Or are you only another pitiful little functionary, doing a job to fill in all those long, dreary hours till you die? I have given my life to something greater.”
“You gave it to a monster,” said JC. “Something that only came here because it was kicked out of its own dimension. It fell through a hole in the sky like a lump of shit because its own kind couldn’t stand to have it around any longer. It doesn’t care about you. It doesn’t care about anything. It’ll tear this whole world apart to get home again.”
“What do I care?” said the Faust. “As long as he takes me with him. I never cared much for this world, anyway. Certainly it never cared much for me. And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, the secret origin of the Faust! Death and damnation to all the world, and everyone in it, because they didn’t love me the way they should have! That’ll show them. I have been given command over flesh. The new flesh, the bad flesh—I can summon anything through my Door and mould it to my will and need. Call up any shape and form and throw it at my master’s enemies.”
“You may have the flesh,” said JC, stopping his circling abruptly, so the Faust had to stop, too. JC gave him his best confident grin. “Hell with the flesh; I have the spirit at my command. Meet my secret weapon.” He stepped back and gestured at Kim, still watching from her spotlight. “Meet my very own guardian-angel ghost! Get him, Kim!”
“Sorry,” said the Faust. “But that’s not her.”
He snapped his fingers, and the shimmering spotlight blinked out. Kim smiled and shrugged briefly at JC, then slumped forward into a melting mass, like a candle in an oven. She collapsed into a pool of sticky white flesh that drained away through the cracks in the stage floor-boards; then she was gone.
JC swayed sickly on his feet, as though he’d been hit. His heart lurched in his chest, and he had to fight to get his breath. He tried to say something and couldn’t. He’d been so sure it was her, come back to him at last, to save him as he’d saved her, down in the Underground. He’d believed in her because he needed it to be her. But it wasn’t her, never had been her, not his Kim. He stared at the place where she’d been, then slowly turned his head to look at the Faust. And a wiser man would have been very careful about what he said next.
“Another of my little tricks,” the Faust said easily. “I sent her to you, to keep an eye on you. To take you where I wanted you to go, to lead you around by the nose and mess with your head, for the fun of it. Some say the greatest trick God ever pulled was to make us believe love is real. It does make people like you so much easier to manipulate.”
“You bastard,” said JC. “You bastard.”
Melody looked uneasily at JC, then raised her voice to attract the Faust’s attention. “So that was you at the railway station as well?”
The Faust looked at her. “What? What railway station? Can we stick to the point, please?”
“You see?” Melody said to JC. “He doesn’t know anything about a railway station. So what we saw there…”
“Yes,” said JC, straightening up and squaring his shoulders again. “I see.” He looked steadily at the Faust. “I saw Kim at that railway station. So she…was nothing to do with you. Which means, if nothing else, that you’re not nearly as knowledgeable as you claim to be.”
The Faust shrugged briskly. “It doesn’t make any difference. You are alone and powerless before me. Exactly the way I like it.”
“Actually, no,” said JC. “I have more than enough spirit to throw at you.” He turned his back on the Faust and beamed at the others. “Getting to the heart of this haunting has been like peeling an onion. Every time you peel off a layer, you find there’s another underneath. Nearly everything we’ve seen and encountered here has been part of one big extravagant show. But the time for distractions is over. Unless you want to see your beloved theatre destroyed…Step forward and take a bow, Alistair Gravel!”
There was a pause, then the sound of loud, heavy footsteps emerged from the wings and advanced a short distance across the stage, with no-one making them. They were followed by a crawling dead man, bloody and ruined, dragging himself across the stage by his broken fingers. A young Benjamin and a young Elizabeth emerged from the wings after him, strolling happily forward, arm in arm. Followed by a smiling Lissa and a quietly grinning Old Tom, the caretaker. They all stood together in a group, ignoring the dumbfounded Faust and nodding easily to Benjamin and Elizabeth and the Ghost Finders. The crawling dead man rose abruptly to his feet, popped his dangling eye back into his socket, and stood calmly with the others. And then they all stepped forward as one and took a deep bow. The performance was at an end. They straightened up, grinned briefly, and disappeared, all of them at once, like blown-out candles. And from out of the wings strode one young man in his twenties, with a very familiar face. He grinned easily about him and took a quick bow of his own.
Alistair Gravel.
“It was
“It was him,” said JC. “It was always him.”
“Even Lissa?” said Melody.
“Yes,” said JC. “I have something to discuss with Alistair Gravel, about that.”
“Why?” Happy said immediately. “What happened?”
“Nothing happened,” said JC, firmly.
Benjamin and Elizabeth stared at Alistair. They didn’t seem scared, or even upset. Slowly, they smiled and relaxed, pleased to see an old friend again, after too long apart. Elizabeth sniffed back tears and wrung her hands together, while Benjamin put a supporting arm across her shoulders. He looked…as though a great weight had finally been lifted off him.
“Oh please,” said Elizabeth. “Please let it be him. Let it really be him.”
“It is,” said Benjamin. “I can tell. Can’t you tell?”
“Yes,” said Elizabeth. “Oh yes…”
