Ghost of a Dream

by Simon R. Green

  “We can make more money…” said Benjamin.

  “This isn’t about the money!” said Elizabeth. “This was never about money! I want our play! I won’t be stopped, and I won’t be beaten. I won’t be driven out of here, by the living or the dead or our own damned past!”

  Benjamin smiled suddenly. “That’s my girl.”

  And this time, when they looked at each other, Happy could see exactly what they saw in each other.

  They all looked around sharply again as they heard footsteps approaching. Outside, in the corridor, slow and heavy footsteps that didn’t even try to seem human were heading their way. The sound came clearly through the closed door, as though carried on something more than the air. Each step more than naturally heavy, like something pressing down on the world, imposing its presence through a sheer act of will. The same kind of footsteps they’d heard before, up on the stage.

  Elizabeth clutched at Benjamin. “Not again. I can’t stand it again. Make it go away.”

  Benjamin looked at Happy. “If Old Tom was the ghost, what’s that?”

  “I think…” said Happy, “that Old Tom was a mask for the real ghost to hide behind. As though he was putting on a performance. Old Tom may be gone now, but the threat is still here.”

  He moved forward, to face the closed dressing-room door. It worried him that he couldn’t remember exactly when it had closed, or who had closed it. Outside, in the corridor, the footsteps were drawing slowly, chillingly, closer.

  “Lock the door!” said Elizabeth. “Keep the bastard out!”

  “Do you have a key?” said Happy.

  “Of course we don’t have a key!” said Benjamin. “The renovators had all the keys. When they left, they gave them to the caretaker…Oh God.”

  “Do something!” said Elizabeth shrilly.

  “You really think locking a door will keep a ghost out?” said Happy, incredulously. “They’re famous for walking through doors! And walls…”

  “You’re the expert!” said Benjamin. “There must be something you can do!”

  “There’s no other way out of here,” said Elizabeth. “We’re trapped!”

  “Yes, I had noticed that, thank you!” said Happy.

  He didn’t want to be there. Being in charge, making decisions, doing something, that had always been JC’s role. But Happy was the only Ghost Finder in the room, which made him the man on the spot. Part of him wanted to open the door, run blindly, and hope the actors could keep up. Another part wanted to pull open the door, point at the actors, and shout They’re the ones you want! Not me! But Happy had always been a man of many parts, and he’d spent a long time learning how to decide which of the voices inside his head he was going to listen to. One of the reasons he became a Ghost Finder, though he’d never admit it to JC or Melody, was that he wanted to become a better person. If only because being a coward didn’t half take it out of you. JC had put him in charge of the actors and told him not to let them get killed; so it was up to him to do something. And since his usual tactics of screaming and crying and hiding behind other people weren’t really options here, that left…doing the right thing.

  He thought of the pill bottles he still carried secreted about his person. He could knock back a swift cocktail of reds and blues and yellows, and all the problems would go away. Or they’d still be here, but at least he wouldn’t care any more. Or care what happened to the actors. Happy smiled sadly. He couldn’t do that. Because he sort of liked Benjamin and Elizabeth, for being as larger than life as he’d always thought actors should be; because he didn’t like seeing anyone bullied by ghosts; and because he was damned if he’d let JC down. The man who’d believed in him enough to make him part of his team, despite all the warnings. The man who believed that Happy could be a better person.

  Happy needed someone to believe that on the days that he didn’t.

  He walked up to the closed door and scowled at it without touching it. The idea that you could run right at something that scared you, instead of running away, was a new one to Happy. He closed his hands into fists to stop them shaking. The heavy footsteps came right up to the other side of the door and stopped. Everything was still and quiet. The only sound was the heavy breathing of the three people in the dressing-room as they stood very still, listening.

  “Has it gone?” said Elizabeth. “It disappeared, the last time it stopped, on the stage.”

  “That’s right,” said Benjamin. “The footsteps stopped, and it was over.”

  Happy didn’t know what to say. Reassurance was another of those people skills that he usually left to JC. It didn’t feel like it was over…but now that the footsteps had stopped, it was hard to remember why they’d scared him so much. Footsteps weren’t so bad, after all. Just sounds. The crawling thing on the stage—that had been bad. With all the blood, and the eye hanging out. But it had been in no condition to hurt anyone. What was so scary about the footsteps…was that there was nothing to see. They could have been made by anyone, or anything. The threat and the menace were all in the anticipation…

  When Happy was still a child, before his powers kicked in, he was afraid of the dark. And what scared him then was that he couldn’t see what it was that scared him. There could be anything in the dark, anything at all. Imagination filled in the details, in the worst way possible. Of course, Happy grew up to be a major-league telepath and discovered that he had good reason to be scared of what was hiding in the dark. Another reason he became a Ghost Finder: to find a way to strike back at the things in the dark. So no-one else would have to know, and be scared, like he was.

  “I can’t hear anything,” said Elizabeth. “Is that good? Has he gone?”

  Something knocked on the other side of the door, loud and hard—great crashing knocks that made the door jump and tremble in its frame. Something outside wanted them to know it was there. Something that wanted in. It must know the door wasn’t locked, so it must want, or need, to be invited in…It knocked again and again and again, hammering on the door with vicious force, barely pausing between each knock.

  “Don’t let him in!” screamed Elizabeth.

  “What is that?” Benjamin yelled at Happy. “What’s out there? You’re supposed to be the mind-reader! What can you see?”

  “I can’t tell!” said Happy. “I’m trying, but…I can’t see anything! Something’s hiding it from me. Something big and powerful that’s been waiting here for twenty years, growing more and more powerful, determined to have its revenge! What’s out there? You tell me! You made it!”

  “Please,” said Benjamin. “Please help us. Don’t let him get to Elizabeth.”

  Happy scowled at the reverberating door, his heart hammering like the frenzied knocking. It sounded like all the monsters that ever were, determined to get in, and get him.

  I can do this, thought Happy, trying hard to make himself believe it. I ain’t afraid of no ghost. I faced down Fenris Tenebrae, and the New People. And I’m damned if I’ll chicken out in front of strangers. They’re relying on me. Bit of a new feeling, that. Not sure if I like it, but…

  He cranked up his nerve to the sticking point, grabbed the shaking door handle, and hauled the door open. He cried out something incoherent, ready to hit whatever was there with the strongest and most concentrated blast of disbelief he had…But there was no-one on the other side of the door. Happy stepped quickly out into the corridor and looked up and down; but there was nothing but shadows and silence, and a feeling…That there had been something there a moment before. Something bad. The light in the corridor was calm and steady, and so were the shadows, and Happy…wondered what the hell was going on. He would have liked to believe he’d driven the thing away, by confronting it; but that…didn’t feel right.

  He stepped back into the dressing-room. Benjamin and Elizabeth, backed up in the far corner, looked at him pitifully. Elizabeth was trying to be brave; and Benjamin was standing in front of her, shielding her. Happy smiled and nodded quickly to them, and they almost
collapsed in relief.

  “Whatever that was, it isn’t there any more,” said Happy. “But it’s getting closer. And stronger. If I’m going to protect you, you have to tell me the truth about what really happened here, twenty years ago.”

  “I’d rather die,” said Elizabeth.

  Happy nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. It could come to that.”

  SIX

  LOBBY DISPLAY

  Back in the lobby, Melody happily bustled around her precious machines, firing up her scientific equipment, checking that everything was as it should be, and having a merry old time. She always enjoyed putting things in order, making sure they were working right, crossing off things on her list and running through her rituals. She liked machines as opposed to people because, with machines, you only had to punch the instructions in once. Melody understood machines. Whereas people, usually men, remained mostly a mystery. Melody had never had any problems having sex with men; it was the talking to them afterwards that gave her problems. One of the reasons she enjoyed Happy so much was that he was delightfully uncomplicated. He divided the entire world into things that he liked and things that scared him; and as long as Melody was careful as to which category she put herself into, she always knew where she was with Happy.

  She patched in the short-range sensors, fed extra power to the long-range sensors, and smiled happily as the readouts flickered calmly before her. This was the part of any Ghost Finders mission that she enjoyed the most, being left alone to set up and calibrate her marvellous machines, without the others hanging around making what they presumably thought were helpful comments. She didn’t feel alone, or vulnerable, in the lobby because she was never alone when she was with her equipment. Her machines made her feel safe and protected because she knew she could always rely on them. Machines rarely let her down, and on the rare occasions when they did, she either fixed them or hit them until they didn’t. People, on the other hand, were always surprising her, and rarely in a good way.

  She thought of JC, off on his own somewhere with the lovely Lissa, and smiled briefly. JC might think he was impressing Lissa, but Melody was fairly confident Lissa wasn’t the kind who impressed easily. Melody knew a fellow hard-hearted professional when she saw one. In fact, JC would do well to watch out for himself.

  Melody’s thoughts then turned to Happy, off on his own with the two actors; and she didn’t smile at all. She wasn’t at all sure why JC had put Happy together with the oh-so-theatrical Benjamin and Elizabeth. Happy did have some good qualities if you were prepared to dig deep enough to find them; but leadership and responsibility definitely weren’t on the list. It was always possible JC thought the actors might relax a little around Happy and unburden their souls to him where they probably wouldn’t talk to JC, or to her. People often felt sorry for Happy and told him all manner of things they’d never tell another soul, so he’d stop looking at them with those big, soulful, puppyish eyes. Personally…Melody doubted it. Benjamin and Elizabeth had secrets they only shared with each other. Anyone could see that.

  She wasn’t worried about Happy. Wasn’t worried at all. The actors would look after him.

  She moved back and forth before her control boards, swaying sensuously, checking sensor displays and energy readouts, fine-tuning things here and there and having a perfectly wonderful time. Everything in the lobby seemed entirely normal, all conditions as expected. Not even a hint of a cold spot, or an energy spike; no electromagnetic fluctuations; and not even a murmur on the EVP dead-radio channels. Melody looked cheerfully round the lobby…and then something caught her eye. There were posters on the lobby walls. Large, colourful posters, leftovers from the theatre’s past triumphs. There were half a dozen of them, scattered around the lobby, and Melody had to turn around in a complete circle to take them all in, in turn. Melody’s good temper was gone in a moment, her smile replaced by a slowly deepening scowl. Because she couldn’t for the life of her remember whether the posters had been there before. She hadn’t noticed them when she first entered the lobby, or when she was putting her instruments together; but then she often didn’t notice unimportant details like that. Unless someone pointed them out to her or she had nothing else to look at.

  Melody came out from behind her carefully arranged semi-circle of equipment and walked right up to the poster in front of her to take a closer look. The poster was a good five feet tall and maybe two or three feet wide, a clear, firm image on good-quality paper, with colours so bright and shiny they bordered on gaudy. The image before her was a portrait of a handsome young woman in a full-length wedding gown of a spotless white so dazzling it was almost painful to the eye. The bride had thrown her filmy veil back over her long jet-black hair, to reveal a grinning, sparkling-eyed face. She was hurrying down a long, curving staircase, perhaps half-way down…looking out at the viewer. Melody frowned. It was a pleasant enough image; but what was it for? Was it on display to promote a play, or a character, or some forthcoming production? There were no words anywhere on the portrait, not even a title—nothing to indicate its purpose.

  Melody moved on to the next poster, on her left. Just as big and as colourful, this second picture showed an old-fashioned, even traditional image, of a clipper sailing-ship, far out at sea, dashing through the waves with sails full of wind and a proud prow raised high into the air. There was no name anywhere on the ship. Uniformed sailors were captured in traditional poses and occupations, all over the ship. Several were set high up in the rigging, pointing out ahead, at something only they could see. Dark blue waves rose out of the ocean, bonneted with foam, and overhead the sky was a clear and empty blue under a perfect summer sun. Again, there was no lettering or information anywhere on the poster. It seemed to Melody that you might expect to see a painting like this on some office wall but not in a lobby. So why was it here? Strange…

  She moved on, around the exterior of the lobby, vaguely aware she was drifting always to the left, anti-clockwise; widdershins. Anywhen else, anywhere else, that thought might have worried her. But here she only had eyes and thoughts for the fascinating posters.

  The next portrait was of a quartet of fine young fellows, dressed in the formal clothing of the early twentieth century. They stood companionably together, filling the whole portrait, toasting the viewers with brimming glasses of red wine. All four young men looked very smart and very handsome, young gentlemen out on the town, perhaps, smiling winningly at the viewer. Melody decided…that she didn’t care for them. She deliberately turned away from them and moved on.

  The fourth portrait showed a pleasant young woman in a fashionable evening gown, complete with long evening gloves, all in the same faintly disturbing shade of buttercup yellow. The young woman stood beside a half-open door, pulling it back to receive someone. She looked very smart, almost aristocratic, and very pretty, with bobbed blonde hair, innocent blue eyes, and a flashing smile. Whoever she was greeting, she was clearly very pleased to see them. So why did Melody think the woman in the portrait looked scared?

  The next portrait was a winter-time country scene. A long, narrow lane sweeping between two fields piled high with a fresh covering of snow. There were no other details. No trees, no stone walls to mark the fields’ boundaries, no animals or animal tracks to be seen anywhere on the fields. No snow in the narrow lane; only a beaten earthen track. And up above, a grey and lowering sky with a threat of thunder and maybe an approaching storm. Melody leaned in close. She could almost feel the bitter cold of that winter day on her face. And there, off in the distance, right at the far end of the narrow lane, a small, dark figure, trudging down the lane, toward the viewer. So far off he was little more than a dark shape. There was a sense of…anticipation about the scene. As though if you watched it long enough, something might happen. Melody slowly turned her head away and moved on.

  The sixth and final portrait was a close-up of a stuffed fox’s head, mounted on a wall plaque, set high on some anonymous wall. The fox’s head was huge, filling the portrait, depicted in amazin
g detail. Melody could make out every individual strand of hair in the russet grey fur. The eyes weren’t the usual glass marbles you’d expect to find in a stuffed animal; instead, they looked dark and alive and full of a terrible fury. The lips were drawn back on the muzzle in an endless snarl, revealing sharp, vicious teeth.

  Melody moved away and found herself back where she’d started, facing the first poster. She slowly turned around on the spot, still widdershins, letting the posters fly past her eyes in a circle. She didn’t even glance at her precious equipment. She only had time for the posters. What were they? What were they for? Advertisements, perhaps, for long-forgotten products? But if that was the case, why were there no words anywhere, no information, no details on the products the posters were promoting? Could they be…perhaps pieces of art, produced by patrons of the theatre, donated to cheer the place up? No. Whatever these images might be, they weren’t cheerful. Melody didn’t like them. Didn’t like any of them.

  She was about to return to the safety and security of her instruments when she stopped abruptly and looked again at the first poster. Something was wrong. Something was different about the image before her. She slowly moved forward, drawn almost against her will, staring intently at the poster. The young bride in her wedding gown was now standing at the very bottom of the long, curving stairway. Not in the middle, where she had been. As though she’d walked all the way down while Melody had walked around the lobby, making her circuit of the posters. And the expression on the bride’s face had changed. She was still smiling out of the poster at the viewer, but now it was a hard and nasty, openly malicious, grin. Her teeth were broken, all sharp and jagged points. Her eyes were narrowed and fixed on Melody.

  Melody made herself move on, drifting almost listlessly left, to the next poster. To see if that had changed, too. And, of course, it had. The clipper ship was sinking. As though it had hit something, unseen and unsuspected in the time it had taken Melody to come around to it again. The sunny skies were gone, replaced by a raging squall. The masts were all broken, the sails split and torn, the rigging in tatters. The ship was already half-under, and uniformed sailors were throwing themselves into the dark and choppy waters.