“Never knew you when you weren’t!” murmured JC.
“I heard that!”
“You were meant to.”
Melody strode down the main aisle, round the side, and up onto the stage, while everyone else stood exactly where they were and looked at her. Melody had that effect on people, sometimes. If only because they knew silent, fuming rage when they saw it. She finally stomped across the stage to confront Happy, who gave her his best What have I done now? look.
“Why don’t you answer your phone?” snarled Melody.
Happy blinked at her a few times. “It hasn’t rung. Did you try and call me? You never call me when we’re out in the field. You said constant communication was a sign of weakness.”
Melody growled deep in her throat and shook her head in frustration. Happy considered her for a moment and took a tentative step forward.
“Something’s happened,” he said. “Something bad. I don’t have to look inside your head to know that. What was it? What could possibly spook you this much? Are you all right, Melody?”
“No,” she said. And then she managed a small smile. “But I do feel a lot better for being here, with you.”
“Yelling at me is very therapeutic,” said Happy, solemnly. “A lot of people have told me that. After they calmed down.”
Melody looked around her. “What’s everybody doing back here?”
“That is what we were…discussing, when you made your dramatic entrance,” said JC. “Old Tom brought Lissa and me a message. Ostensibly from Happy, saying we all needed to meet back here. Urgently. Only when Lissa and I arrived, it was to find Happy and his two actors waiting here for us, demanding to know why I’d called them back.”
“Old Tom is a ghost,” said Happy. “Or more properly, a ghost in disguise. I saw him disappear into a pool of darkness.”
“I said he was too broad a character to be true,” said Benjamin. “A performance of a caretaker; not the real thing.”
“We were always very suspicious of him,” said Elizabeth. “But only because we thought he was a journalist in disguise.”
“Never even occurred to us that he might be the ghost haunting this theatre, said Benjamin. “I mean, walking around with us, pretending to be real, like us…That is so creepy, the hairs on the back of my neck are tying themselves in knots.”
“Sly,” said Elizabeth. “Underhanded. I mean, you don’t expect spirits to sneak around and take advantage of you.”
“He told Lissa and me that Happy wanted us here, urgently,” said JC.
Happy shook his head quickly. “Not me, boss. Nothing to do with me.”
“I had gathered that,” said JC.
“We’re here because we found a note pinned to the wall,” said Happy. “Apparently from you, telling me to get the actors back here sharpish.”
“And you didn’t think to phone me first, to check?” said JC.
“No signal,” said Happy. “And no, I didn’t try to reach out to you with my mind. After watching Old Tom melt away to nothing, I didn’t trust the atmosphere in this place; and I certainly wasn’t going to drop any of my mental shields. It’s not safe here, JC. For Old Tom to pass as human like that, up close and personal, with none of us suspecting a thing…that’s almost unheard of. Maintaining something like that takes a hell of a lot of power.”
“Have you still got the note?” said JC.
“Sure,” said Happy.
But when he rummaged in his pocket, it wasn’t there. Happy smiled weakly at JC and tried all his other pockets, sometimes more than once; but the note was gone.
“Someone wanted us all here,” said JC. “Old Tom…or whatever that really is, hiding behind the appearance of Old Tom.”
“A kindly old duffer who no-one would look at twice,” said Happy. “So clearly harmless, no-one ever suspected a thing. Good disguise.”
“Excuse me!” Melody said loudly. “But I do have something very urgent and extremely dangerous to discuss!”
JC smiled at her easily. “Of course you do. Very well, Melody; what brings you back here? In such an excited and sweaty state?”
“Something is chasing me,” Melody said bluntly. “Trying to kill me; and then all of you.”
“How very stupid of it,” murmured JC. “Where…”
Melody gestured back at the swing doors, at the rear of the auditorium; and everybody looked. The doors didn’t move. It was all very still and very quiet. Everyone looked at Melody again.
“Who is it?” said JC. “Who’s after you?”
“The Phantom of the Haybarn,” said Melody.
“You have got to be fucking kidding,” said Happy.
He sniggered, until Melody shut him up with a cold glare. She filled them all in on her encounter with the Faust, and his creation, the Phantom. She made it as clear as she could for the actors, while still being careful to refer only obliquely to The Flesh Undying. Some things civilians were better off not knowing. JC and Happy got what she was talking about immediately and shared several thoughtful and meaningful looks. Benjamin and Elizabeth, and Lissa, mostly looked confused. Melody finally ran down, and they all looked at the swing doors again.
“We are in deep shit, people,” said Happy. “This isn’t just a haunting any more. I say we get the hell out of here, napalm the theatre, then salt the ashes afterwards. It’s the only way to be sure.”
And then he broke off abruptly. All of them turned around as the sound of quiet, mocking laughter drifted across the stage from the far wings. And there, standing half in the shadows and half in the light, smiling easily, was Old Tom, the caretaker. Except he was standing taller and straighter now…and he didn’t look like someone who’d take orders from other people. He looked like the man in charge. Benjamin and Elizabeth stared at him, then moved to stand close together. Happy started forward, to put himself between the two actors and danger…and then he remembered that JC was here, so he didn’t have to be the hero any longer. That was JC’s job. With a certain amount of relief, Happy fell back and hid behind Benjamin and Elizabeth, out of harm’s way. Melody moved 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?”
“No,” said Melody, caught up in the discussion despite herself. “That’s not it. The ghost put on a really scary show, but it’s clear no-one was ever supposed to get hurt…”
“Old Tom was a mask,” said Happy. “A disguise, for Alistair Gravel. A dead actor, playing a part.”
“I always said that caretaker was too broad a character,” said Elizabeth.
“The moustache didn’t help,” said Benjamin. “Alistair always was too fond of the make-up box.”
“So this has all been about Alistair Gravel,” said JC. “Watching us, as Old Tom. I understand everything, now.”
“Well, not everything,” said Lissa.
They all turned to look at her, and she smiled at them dazzlingly.
“Nothing in this theatre is necessarily what it seems,” she said sweetly. “And not everyone is who they appear to be.”
And she slowly and silently faded away.
TEN
YOU’VE GOT TO GET INTO THE SPIRIT OF THINGS
The living men and women stood close together on the Haybarn Theatre stage, staring wide-eyed and open-mouthed at the spot where Lissa had been standing. Or, at least, at where the thing they thought had been Lissa had been standing. They moved instinctively closer to each other, feeling the need for mutual support. Real people doing real human things, in the face of something long dead and only pretending to be human. A basic need for human warmth and human presence, to counter the cold of the grave and a close encounter with mortality. They needed to look into each other’s eyes and see someone they knew looking ba
ck. Actors might be used to dealing with people who aren’t who they appear to be, and Ghost Finders might be used to dealing with things that aren’t what they seem to be; but that only makes it that much harder to handle, knowing how completely you’ve been fooled.
Not all that surprisingly, JC was the first to get his mental feet back under him.
“Happy!” he said sharply, and the telepath jumped and gave JC his full attention.
“Yes, boss?”
“Is everyone else here real? Really real?”
“Way ahead of you,” said Happy. “I scanned everyone still on this stage the moment after Lissa did her disappearing act. Everyone left is who they appear to be. As far as I can tell. Something in this theatre has been messing with my head, and my abilities, ever since I got here.”
“How can we be sure about you?” Elizabeth said bluntly.
“Oh, trust me,” said JC. “No-one else could be that annoying.”
“You want me to prod you with a finger?” said Happy.
“Later, dear,” said Melody.
JC looked steadily at Benjamin and Elizabeth. “You knew Lissa. And you never suspected anything?”
“We never met her before!” said Elizabeth, immediately. “Not in the flesh…”
“I talked to her on the telephone a few times,” said Benjamin. “We knew her work, obviously, that’s why we hired her. But most of our contacts went through her agent. So when she turned up here, early, but looking exactly the way we expected her to, well…We never thought! Why would we?”
“So that was never the real Lissa,” said Happy. “All this time we’ve had two ghosts walking around with us, pretending to be people…And I never suspected anything!”
“My machines didn’t detect anything, either,” said Melody. “But then, I never knew the right questions to ask them. If it walks like a person and talks like a person…”
“We should have been on our guard,” said Happy. “Especially after what happened at the railway station…”
“Don’t be too hard on yourselves,” said JC, cutting in quickly before Benjamin and Elizabeth could start asking awkward questions about the railway station and really confuse the issue. “I’m the one with the special all-seeing eyes, and I didn’t see a damned thing I wasn’t supposed to…But to be able to manifest that strongly, to walk around like one of us, or rather two of us, Lissa and Old Tom…there must be something in this theatre, some unusual source of power, to make these ghosts so much stronger than they had any right to be.”
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