“Why?” said JC and Kim. “Why would it do that?”
“For its own purposes, of course. That’s why you can love a ghost girl when most living men can’t stand to be around them. That’s why you can hold her within you now, and use her power, to do this to me! That’s why you were drawn together…That’s why…”
His voice trailed away, his gaze fixed on something only he could see. And a look of utter horror passed over his crumbling face. When he spoke again his voice was full of shock and panic, and a terrible, agonised betrayal.
“No! No, Master! You promised me! You promised me…”
His voice broke into a heart-rending scream of loss and deception; and then his face collapsed into undifferentiated flesh, melting and running away into the open trap-Door, which swallowed him up, slammed shut after him, and disappeared. Kim stepped forward, out of JC, and for a long moment they both looked at where the trap-Door had been before they turned to look at each other.
“Do you believe him?” said Kim.
“I don’t know,” said JC. “I don’t know what to believe. Does it matter?”
“We found each other,” said Kim. “Living or dead, nothing else will ever matter as much.”
“Hello,” said Happy. “Where’s everybody gone?”
Everyone looked around them. The ghosts were gone, all the actors and their audiences, returned to their rest. The stage was empty, the auditorium full of broken chairs again. Happy and Melody stood together, and Benjamin and Elizabeth stood very close together. Alistair Gravel stood to one side, studying JC and Kim thoughtfully.
“I declare this case officially closed,” said JC. “The Haunting of the Haybarn Theatre is over. If that’s all right with you, Alistair?”
“Oh yes. Certainly!” said Alistair. “Job done as far as I’m concerned.”
JC smiled fondly at Kim. “My guardian-angel ghost. Always arriving just in the nick of time.”
“I can’t stay, JC,” said Kim.
“What? Why not?” said JC. “You have to! Or do they…Does someone still have a hold over you?”
“No,” said Kim. “They never did. They never had me, JC. I had to disappear, but I can’t tell you why. Not yet. I saw something, then, and…Come after me, JC. Come and find me. And when you do, all will become clear. The real job, the real mission, isn’t over yet. Come find me, JC. I’ll be waiting for you.”
She placed one ghostly hand against his cheek; and he could almost feel it, like a cool breeze passing by. But by the time he’d raised a hand to place over hers, she was already gone. Disappeared in a moment, as though she had never been there. JC nodded slowly, at some hidden thought, or decision, then he turned away and walked back across the stage, to join the others.
“You can’t believe anything the Faust said,” said Happy. “The Devil always lies.”
“Except when a truth can hurt you more,” said Melody.
“Really not helping here,” murmured Happy.
“I’m not dead,” said JC. “I’m not. I’d know.”
“There’s all kinds of tests I could run,” offered Melody.
“I don’t think so,” said JC. “I think…we’re in unknown territory, here.” He started to raise one hand to his sunglasses, then stopped himself. He smiled, briefly. “I breathe, I have a pulse, I’m solid; I still get up in the middle of the night to take a pee…That’s real enough for me.”
“The Faust didn’t actually say you were dead,” Happy said carefully. “He said…you might have been, but the Outside brought you back. To life. Think of it as a Really Near Death Experience.”
“Brought back, to serve its purposes,” said JC. “Nothing at all to worry about there.”
“Maybe it knew about The Flesh Undying,” said Melody. “Maybe it needed some powerful agent of its own, in this world, to fight it.”
“And it chose you!” said Happy. “Could have been worse. Could have been me.”
“Kim has all the answers,” JC said firmly. “We have to find her.”
“Of course we will,” said Melody. “We’re the Ghost Finders.”
“Tally-ho,” said Happy.
“Excuse me,” said Benjamin. “But are we supposed to understand any of that?”
“No,” said JC. “Don’t worry about any of it. If you like sleeping at nights.”
“I thought not,” said Elizabeth.
The two actors moved away from the Ghost Finders, to talk with Alistair Gravel. They hugged each other again—not like old friends meeting, more like saying good-bye.
“It’s been so good, to see you again,” said Elizabeth.
“You know I never meant to hurt you, Alistair,” said Benjamin.
“Of course I know,” said Alistair. “I’ve always known.”
“Then why did you wait so long, to call us back?” said Elizabeth.
“It’s not easy, being a ghost,” said Alistair. “It took me years to raise the power to do the job properly. My return had to be…dramatic. As was my death.”
“You always were an old ham,” said Benjamin.
“What do you mean—old?” said Alistair.
They laughed lightly together. Three friends again.
“Go on with your show,” said Alistair. “And I’ll go on…to the bigger show that’s waiting.”
Elizabeth looked at him searchingly. “You can see it?”
“I seem…to sense it,” said Alistair. “Okay, that’s it. No more hanging around. I’m off. Break a leg, my dears.”
“Do you want your body buried properly?” said Benjamin.
“No,” said Alistair. “Leave me where I am. Where I’ve always felt I belonged.”
He turned away and disappeared, like a turned-off light. Gone, finally. They could all feel the difference in the atmosphere: like an actor who’s finished his last scene and walked off stage.
They walked back through the auditorium. Up the central aisle, surrounded by broken chairs and shattered rows, courtesy of the Phantom of the Haybarn. Benjamin and Elizabeth were already quietly discussing how the hell they were going to sell this to the insurance people. The whole place seemed quiet, calm, at peace with itself.
When they arrived at the great gap where the swing doors had been, JC hung back, to let the others go through ahead of him. He stopped, to look back at the stage. And there, in a single spotlight from nowhere at all, the Lady in White and the Headless Panto Dame were waltzing silently together.
Because the show, the great Dream of Humanity, must always go on.
