Ghost of a Dream

by Simon R. Green

  Bright lights were flashing everywhere now, everything kicking off at once; and one by one, the monitor screens turned themselves on, showing Melody images of things that weren’t there. Brief glimpses of other worlds than this. One screen showed the inside of some vast stone temple, from an age before any known history, lit by strange, phosphorescent glows from long creepers of moss, crawling slowly across the floor and walls, and draping themselves around massive stone carvings of long-forgotten gods with horrid insect faces.

  The screen next to it showed a dark, drifting, underwater scene, of some sunken city wrapped in seaweed and studded with pulsing mushroom growths. Strange, unpleasant-looking fish darted this way and that, carrying their own eerie light with them, while huge glass submarines glided past, full of hunched humanoid creatures made out of kelp.

  Another screen showed the theatre lobby, soaked and splashed with blood and gore. JC and Happy stared out of the screen, standing together, their clothes and flesh ripped and torn. They were both dead, but they shuffled slowly forward on broken feet, staring out of the screen at Melody with dark bloody holes where their eyes had been, their mutilated faces full of a terrible silent accusation.

  The monitor screens all shut down at once, showing nothing. Melody was breathing harshly and scowling so fiercely her face hurt. Either something was wrong with her instruments or something was very wrong with the world. And, since a quick glare around showed the lobby was still there, untouched and unchanged, it had to be her machines. She honestly didn’t know what to do. If she started running major diagnostics on everything, she’d still be here running them when JC and Happy came back to tell her the case was over. Checking them all for outside influences would take hours. Though that had to be what this was. Something from Outside was messing with her. First those nightmare posters on the walls, and now this. Someone was messing with her head, trying to make her doubt herself, and now they wanted her to doubt her instruments. Melody took a deep breath and shut all her instruments down. Everything. The lights went out, the monitor screens went blank, and every single piece of highly sophisticated technology was suddenly still and silent. Melody hated to do it, but if she couldn’t trust what her equipment was telling her, then it was no damned good at all.

  It was all very quiet in the lobby now. The lighting was bright and steady, the shadows blessedly unmoving, and the air was dry and still, as though nothing had happened, and this was just another day. Melody snarled silently at that thought, and rubbed at her aching forehead. Too much thinking is bad for you, her mother always said. It’ll give you lines. Though her mother never was much of a one for thinking, anyway, or she’d never have married Melody’s father. Bad cess to the man, wherever he might be. Melody made herself concentrate on the matter at hand. Her hands weren’t as steady as they should have been, and her back muscles ached unmercifully from the endless tension. The stress was getting to her; and that wasn’t like her. She never let the world upset her; she made it a matter of principle to always upset the world.

  But now she felt very much on her own, without her instruments to lean on. Alone and vulnerable. Melody sniffed loudly. She knew what to do about that. She crouched and reached into the arms cabinet, feeling for the machine-pistol; but her fingers couldn’t find it. She knelt so she could look right into the cabinet, but there was nothing in it. Nothing at all. She stared into the dark space. She couldn’t believe it. She swept her hand back and forth inside the cabinet, banging it against the inside walls; but every single one of her weapons was gone. She straightened up and moved quickly up and down her instrument racks, checking all the other, more secret, defensive caches she maintained in her set-up; and they were empty, too. All her weapons were gone, including all the ones nobody else was supposed to know about. Including her team-mates.

  She slowly turned around in a complete circle, taking in the empty, innocent-seeming lobby. Her back muscles crawled, in anticipation of the attack she probably wouldn’t know anything about until it was too late. Her hands clenched into fists. She could feel cold sweat on her face. And then she caught a glimpse of someone, out of the corner of her eye, watching her. She spun round to look straight at him, but there was no-one there. She caught another glimpse of the watching, smiling stranger, out of the corner of her other eye. She spun around again; and again there was nobody there. She was breathing really hard now, ready to jump on anyone and beat the truth out of them, about what was really going on. She caught another glimpse, and another, from this side and from that, but no matter which way she looked, or how fast she turned, she couldn’t catch him. Only the briefest of glimpses; quick impressions of a man watching her, smiling at her, enjoying her agitation. And every time she saw him, he was that little bit closer, closing in on her. She spun round and round, eyes wide open, then stopped herself with an effort. She stood very still, hands clenched painfully tight at her sides, fighting to get her frantic breathing and heart rate back under control. She let her head hang down, squeezed her eyes shut, and refused to open them again.

  Come on, girl. You can do better than this. You’ve been trained to withstand Outside influences. Trained to keep other people from messing with your mind. So focus! You can do this!

  Her breathing slowed, and her thoughts settled. Her back muscles unclenched, and so did her fists. Her mind calmed and cleared, as well-rehearsed mental shields slammed down and locked firmly into place. And when she finally lifted her head again, opened her eyes, and looked around her, the lobby was very definitely empty. Melody sniffed loudly and shook herself roughly, like a dog shaking off a bad dream. She took out her mobile phone. She had to reach Happy and JC, let them know what was happening. Let them know there was someone else in the theatre with them. But there was no signal. Even though she was sure there had been, before. She shook the phone hard, and a voice from the phone said her name. Melody… That and nothing more. She checked the phone again, but there still wasn’t any signal. Not a single bar. So where was the voice coming from? The voice from the phone said her name again. A soft, self-satisfied voice, like a purring cat. Like someone used to having the advantage over other people.

  “Hello, Melody,” said the calm, malicious, masculine voice. “Tell me. After all these years of hunting ghosts, are you finally ready to become one? You won’t like being dead, you know. No-one ever does. The truth always comes as such a terrible shock; and then they cry and they cry and they cry…”

  “Who is this?” Melody said harshly, looking down at the phone in her hand, clutching it so tightly her fingers ached.

  “You spent all this time looking for me, and you don’t even know my name. How sad is that? Of course, it wouldn’t have helped. I have a lovely new name now, to go with my new and very special nature. I’m the one who took your Kim away. Snatched her right out of that dead man’s head and dragged her off, kicking and screaming…”

  “Who are you?” said Melody.

  “I serve The Flesh Undying. Ah, you know that name, at least. And I am here for you, little girl. Do you want your precious machines back? What would you give me to have them all working properly again? To be able to depend on what they told you? Hmm?”

  “I don’t make deals,” said Melody.

  “Have them back anyway,” said the voice. “I want you fully armed. I want this to be something like a fair fight. It’s no fun otherwise.”

  The phone shut itself down. Melody glared at it. “I really must get a Fuck off and die app.”

  And then she jumped slightly, despite herself, as her machines came alive again. All her instruments were back on-line, all her short- and long-range sensors were reporting in, and everything seemed to be working perfectly; sane and calm and reliable again. Melody put her phone away and moved slowly and methodically from one set of readings to the next. Brightly coloured LEDs blinked reassuringly back at her, everywhere she looked. She checked the arms cabinet, and the machine-pistol was back in place, as though it had never been away, along with everything else. She
ran one hand caressingly over the gun, but she didn’t take it out. She didn’t want the owner of the voice thinking she was afraid of him.

  Her head came up sharply, as she heard footsteps approaching from outside. Slow, steady, apparently perfectly normal footsteps, barely audible above the muted traffic noise from the street. Heading straight for the main entrance doors.

  “Oh come on!” Melody said loudly. “Not that trick again! Getting really tired of that! It didn’t work last time, and it won’t work now!”

  The entrance doors crashed open, and he came in.

  Something new and terrible had come to the Haybarn Theatre. Something that was not what it appeared to be.

  He came swaggering into the lobby, head held high and hands thrust deep into trouser pockets, bringing with him all the arrogant assured cockiness that JC used to have. He wore a very smart and expensive coal grey suit, complete with a waistcoat of many colours. He had slicked-back jet-black hair and dark, unblinking eyes. Eyes as cold and inhuman as a shark’s and just as hungry. He had a smile like Satan’s, a smile that never stopped. He sauntered around the lobby and then slammed to a halt right in front of Melody, on the other side of her wall of instruments. Everything about him looked perfect. Impossibly, inhumanly perfect. He was heavily built, though muscle and bulk rather than fat. A huge, overpowering, physical presence. The kind that makes you feel it would be dangerous to look away, not because he was a clear and present danger but because he was always going to be the most important thing in the room; and you might miss something important.

  His face might have been classically handsome if there’d only been some character in it; but though everything was in the right place, in all the right proportions, it looked more like a mask. With those eyes, and that smile. Melody made a point of sneering at him, on general principles, to let him know she didn’t impress that easily.

  “Hello, Melody,” he said, and it was the soft purring voice she’d heard coming out of her phone. The voice of a man who’d never lost a fight and wasn’t about to start now. “I am the Faust. Horror without end, amen. I made a deal with The Flesh Undying. Didn’t sell my soul, in return for the pleasures of the flesh. Rather, I sold my flesh in return for a better soul. Have you any idea what it is you and your fellow Ghost Finders are up against? I gave up ownership of my flesh, to The Flesh Undying, to be its presence in the world; and in return, it promised me I’d never have to die. How cool is that? And now, I am so much more than I used to be. And so much more powerful, of course. Ah, the things I can do…”

  “Like to make speeches, don’t you?” said Melody.

  The Faust shrugged easily. “Comes with the job. And the territory.”

  He turned his back on her and strode off to saunter around the lobby again, taking it all in and looking it all over as though he were planning on buying it, then destroying it, then pissing on the ruins because he could. He ended up back before Melody and sneered equably at her ranks of scientific equipment.

  “There is something to be said for improvisation in the face of jeopardy, I suppose. Look at it…Something old, something borrowed, something cobbled together at the last minute. None of it of any real use against something like me.” He cocked his great head on one side and considered her happily. “Did you enjoy my posters? My little mental movies? Nothing like a good video nasty, I always say.”

  “You put that shit in my head?” said Melody.

  “No,” said the Faust. “Everything you saw came from inside your head. All the things you’re afraid of, little girl.”

  “If you were as powerful as you claim, you’d have killed me by now,” said Melody.

  The Faust smiled and waggled one finger at her, roguishly. “Now where’s the fun in that?”

  “Are you responsible for the haunting here?” said Melody. “All the weird shit we’ve been seeing?”

  “I just got here,” said the Faust. “I don’t know what’s going on in this dreary little playhouse; and I don’t care. I didn’t come here for the ghosts; I’m here for the Ghost Finders. Not because you present any real danger to The Flesh Undying, you understand, because you don’t. But there is the smallest possibility that you might become a nuisance. Eventually…So I’m going to destroy you now. Leave three new ghosts to moan and wander in this dusty old theatre. If it wasn’t haunted before, it will be.”

  “Getting really tired of hearing you talk,” said Melody. “In fact, hold that pose. I’ve got a bloody big gun here, somewhere.”

  “What shall I start with?” said the Faust. “Something suitably theatrical, I think. What’s the point of murder without a little style? Let us call up the dust of ages and set it to work.”

  He gestured languidly with one meaty hand, and all the dust in the lobby, left untroubled and untouched for twenty years and more, rose everywhere. It sprang up from the floor and jumped off the walls and ceiling to dance madly on the lobby air, forming and re-forming into stretching shapes that bordered on meaning, before abruptly condensing into two dark grey, vaguely human figures. Soft but substantial living shadows…and where their faces should have been, the old traditional masks of Comedy and Tragedy. Endlessly laughing, endlessly crying. The ancient symbols of Drama, topping tall and spindly bodies, stretched and stylised, almost art deco. They danced and capered around the Faust, fawning and bobbing their heads, cringing under his shark’s gaze and devil smile.

  “Here is Drama, come to do my will,” said the Faust. “Two small and pitiful things, but mine own. Because I don’t see why I should get my hands dirty, dealing with something as small and insignificant as you, little girl. So…Go and get her, you nasty little things. Make a mess.”

  The two grey figures tore themselves away from adoring the Faust and danced towards Melody, throwing wild, extravagant shapes as they pirouetted in rapid circles around her and her equipment. Dark liquid monsters of inhuman suppleness and horrible malice, soaked in menace and vicious intent. Melody sneered right back at them, holding her ground, refusing to be impressed or intimidated.

  “Get the hell away from my machines!” she said coldly.

  “Dust is the mortal enemy of computers, is it not?” said the Faust. “Ah, what it is, to put the iron in irony!”

  The dark grey figures froze in place while he spoke. He waved them on with a languid hand, and they surged forward. Melody grabbed the machine-pistol from out of its resting place and opened fire. She raked the gun steadily back and forth, blowing great holes through the leaping, darting figures; but it didn’t harm them, and it didn’t stop them. They were, after all, only dust. The bullets tore right through to chew up the wall behind them. Plaster cracked and wood chips blew. To hell with the theatre owners, thought Melody, and kept firing. They can bill me… The dusty grey figures didn’t even slow or hesitate as they pressed forward; and then suddenly Melody stopped firing and lowered her gun. The dusty figures stopped where they were, regarded her suspiciously, and looked back at the Faust. He found the energy to raise one inquiring eyebrow in Melody’s direction, and she smiled nastily back.

  “It occurs to me,” she said, “that I am wasting perfectly good ammunition that I might have a better use for later. Let the dust come. My machines are top-of-the-line, and can look after themselves. And the dust can’t hurt me. Since those things are really nothing more than the left-overs from an old vacuum cleaner.”

  “Ah,” said the Faust happily. “But I have made them so much more. You can drown in dust, if there’s enough of it. And they…are all the dust there is. They will fill you up from the inside out, little girl; and I shall stand right here and watch while they do it and laugh and laugh.”

  “Yeah?” said Melody. “Watch this.”

  She leaned forward and hit one big red button, and the two grey figures were gone in a moment, blasted apart by an unseen force. Nothing more than millions of dust motes, scattered across the lobby. They hung on the air in a thin, dusty mist, slowly settling, falling back to the floor. No trace remained o
f the smiling, scowling faces. Melody smiled brightly at the Faust.

  “Localised electromagnetic pulse,” she said smugly. “Blasting out from my carefully isolated machines so as not to disturb them, and so limited in scope it didn’t even affect the lobby’s electric lighting. But more than enough to see off your dusty attack dogs.”

  The Faust sighed loudly. “I tried to do it quickly and cleanly, I tried to deal with you in a civilised manner, but no…you had to be difficult. It seems I have no choice but to go all Old School on you, little girl.”

  “Stop calling me that!” said Melody.

  “Why?” said the Faust. “It’s all you are, really. Whereas I am The Flesh Undying, incarnate. I have been given power over flesh, all flesh…Even yours. Want to come out and play, little girl?”

  He took one measured step closer and extended one oversized hand. Melody raised her machine-pistol threateningly, but the Faust ignored her. He gestured imperiously, a harsh, beckoning movement, and Melody lurched on her feet as she felt him draw something out of her. She tried to say something and couldn’t, held in place where she was. The machine-pistol dropped from her unfeeling fingers, and her hands rose on the air before her, pulled forward by an unseen force. Long, thin tendrils of some white, spongy substance extended slowly from her fingertips, stretching away from her, hanging unsupported on the air like long white chalk-marks. She shook her hands, trying to break off whatever it was, but the white streaks clung to her, growing longer and thicker. They inched away from her fingertips, across the empty air, growing longer and thicker…Melody’s hands tingled heavily with pins and needles, but more like the loss of vital warmth than the return of circulation. She opened her mouth to yell or scream or curse, and more of the white stuff erupted out of her mouth, stretching her jaws wide with its presence. Still more jumped out of her eyes and nostrils, to shoot out across the air.