Ghost of a Dream g-3

by Simon R. Green

  “I don’t see her around anywhere,” said Lissa. “Is she a part of your team? Why isn’t she here now?”

  “How do you know she isn’t?” said JC. “Kim’s dead.”

  Lissa’s smile disappeared. “Okay; that’s quite spooky.”

  “Yes,” said JC. “It is.”

  Lissa looked at him steadily. “Why do you always wear sunglasses? It’s not a style thing, is it?”

  “No,” said JC.

  “There’s something not quite right about your eyes,” said Lissa. “I could tell that from the first moment I met you. Take off your shades, JC. Let me look into your eyes.”

  “Really not a good idea, Lissa…”

  “Please. I need to see, to be sure…Do it for me, JC.”

  And without quite knowing why, JC reached up and removed his sunglasses. He expected Lissa to cry out and turn away. Everyone else did. His eyes weren’t human eyes any more. But Lissa stood there, very still, staring back into his fiercely blazing eyes, apparently unaffected by a Gorgon gaze that had sent other people running for their lives and their sanity.

  “Oh, wow…” said Lissa, very quietly. “I had no idea…”

  The golden light from JC’s altered eyes bathed her face in sunshine, and she wasn’t in the least dazed or distressed. She looked more…dazzled. Her face soaked up the light, and she didn’t once blink or wince or look aside. She bathed in the golden glow, smiling happily, her eyes full of a simple, unaffected wonder.

  “What do you see, Lissa?” said JC.

  “It’s like looking into Heaven,” said Lissa, softly. And then she turned her head away, but not before JC caught a glimpse of a terrible sadness in her eyes. She walked away, her arms tightly crossed, hugging herself, then stopped abruptly and looked out over the auditorium.

  “This is why actors love the stage,” she said, without looking around. “Because it’s always here for us when we need it.”

  JC put his sunglasses back on. He wasn’t sure what had just happened. He could have gone after Lissa, but he didn’t. Because you don’t have to be a telepath to know when people need their space. Still, there was a lot more to this eager young actress than met the eye.

  “There’s something different about you, Lissa,” he said.

  “Got that right,” said Lissa, still not looking around. “Really. You have no idea.”

  “You haven’t told me the whole truth about why you’re here, have you?”

  Lissa laughed, briefly. “A girl has to have some secrets, sweetie.”

  “What do you think really happened to your uncle Alistair?” JC asked bluntly.

  Lissa looked out over the empty rows of seats, and when she finally spoke, her voice was unaccountably weary. “Oh, I’m pretty sure he’s dead. Like dear Benjamin and Elizabeth said. And I think they’re probably the only ones left now who know the whole story. What really happened. I’m here…because I want the truth to come out. All of it.”

  JC considered the matter for a moment. “Why would Benjamin and Elizabeth tell us Alistair was dead, that he died in a tragic accident all those years ago…when they must have known everyone else believes he’s missing?”

  “Maybe they didn’t mean to say it,” said Lissa, turning around, at last, to smile at JC. “Maybe there’s something about this place that makes people speak the truth. Whether they mean to or not.”

  “You haven’t been scared by anything that’s happened here, have you?” said JC. “I saw you, when that dead thing was dragging itself across the stage…You didn’t blink an eye. It didn’t bother you one bit.”

  Lissa shrugged easily. “Oh, I’ve always loved ghost-train rides, sweetie. You couldn’t keep me off them when I was younger. Takes a lot to spook me…”

  JC heard a familiar voice say his name. He looked off stage, and there she was, standing in the wings—Kim. Smiling at him. JC smiled back at her, and a great wave of warmth and relief washed through him. It felt like he’d put down a great weight. And that he hadn’t realised how heavy it was until he could put it down at last. She was here again, here with him; and that had to mean something. Lissa looked at JC, looked to where he was looking, then back at him. She frowned, slightly.

  “JC, what are you looking at?”

  “This is my girl-friend Kim,” said JC. “I told you she was keeping an eye on me.”

  Lissa took a few steps forward, so she could stare right into the wings, then turned back to JC. “I don’t see anything…”

  “Kim is a ghost,” JC said calmly. “That’s how we met. She’s the only real ghost in the Ghost Finders. My team-mate, my soul-mate, and my one true love. I thought I’d lost her, but she came back to me. Apparently to be my guardian angel in times of peril.”

  “JC, really, I can’t see anybody,” said Lissa. “There’s no-one there!”

  “You have to learn to see with better eyes,” said JC. He grinned and tapped his sunglasses significantly with the tip of one finger. “It’s a larger world we live in than most people know or would want to know. Packed full, with the living and the dead. Because sometimes even death can’t keep some people apart.”

  “You are seriously freaking me out here, JC,” said Lissa.

  JC strode across the stage, towards the wings. Kim waited till he’d almost reached her, then she drifted backwards, still smiling, leading him on. JC plunged into the wings after her, and Lissa trotted unhappily along behind him.

  “I really don’t like where this is going, JC.”

  * * *

  Kim led JC backstage, then down into the narrow corridors at the rear of the theatre, and into the deeper recesses of the old building. Always staying just ahead of JC, no matter how hard he tried to catch up. Lissa bustled along beside him, determined to keep up, shooting dark glances in all directions and muttering to herself. JC didn’t pay much attention to his surroundings, except to note that he didn’t think he’d been this way before. He kept trying to talk to Kim: Are you all right? Are you still being held against your will or have you broken free? Why won’t you speak to me? But Kim never answered him; instead, she smiled back at him. Sometimes encouragingly; sometimes sadly. But never a word. She drifted steadily backwards before him, her feet hovering a few inches above the floor.

  “Can I say,” said Lissa, a bit brusquely and half out of breath, “that I am getting seriously weirded out by this one-sided conversation? There’s no-one there, JC! I can see the whole length of this corridor quite clearly, and we are the only things in it! Trust me on this!”

  “Try to keep up, Lissa,” said JC, not unkindly. “My Kim may be dead, but she is definitely not departed. She is a ghost, and not everyone can see ghosts.”

  “I saw that crawling man!”

  “Yes,” said JC. “So you did. Interesting, that.”

  Kim finally slowed to a stop before one particular closed door and hovered there. She rose and fell slowly in mid air, her long red hair streaming away to both sides as though she were underwater. She looked entirely solid, but JC knew that if he reached out to her, there wouldn’t be anything there. He loved her, but he’d never been able to touch her. Lissa looked from him to the closed door and back again.

  “Is she still there? From the soppy look on your face, I’m assuming she still is. What’s behind that door? What’s she saying?”

  “She isn’t saying anything,” said JC, sharply.

  Lissa sniffed loudly. “No name on the door, nothing to indicate what’s behind it. Doesn’t look any different from all the other doors we passed to get here. Looks like a store-room to me. Do we go in?”

  JC looked at Kim. She drifted to one side and gestured at the door; and it swung slowly back to reveal the room beyond.

  “Heads up!” said Lissa. “That door opened on its own!”

  “That was Kim,” said JC. “Come on…”

  He started towards the open door, then stopped as he realised that Lissa was hanging back.

  “You’re not really thinking of going in there,
are you?” said Lissa. “There could be anything in there. And in this theatre, anything covers a hell of a lot of ground!”

  “Kim brought me here,” said JC. “She must have her reasons…”

  But when he looked at Kim to confirm this, she wasn’t there. JC flinched as though he’d been hit. A cold hand closed around his heart and squeezed like it would never let go. It was actually harder for him to deal with Kim’s absence now that she was coming and going in his life. Lissa followed his gaze.

  “Am I to take it, from that wounded, tragic look on your face, that ghost girl isn’t with us any more?”

  “No,” said JC. “She disappeared. She does that.”

  “So that makes two of us who can’t see her,” said Lissa.

  JC ignored her, thinking hard as he studied the open door. “Why would she bring me here, then vanish? Unless there’s something…significant in this room. Something I need to see…She only appeared before when I was in danger. My guardian-angel ghost. Am I in danger here? Or do I need to see what’s in this room to avoid some future danger?”

  “He’s talking, but he’s not talking to me,” said Lissa.

  JC shot her a sudden grin. “I’m going in. To kick a few things around, start some trouble, see what I can stir up. You can stay out here if you want.”

  “Sweetie,” said Lissa, “I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

  * * *

  They both plunged through the doorway, ready for anything. They found themselves in a fairly large room, packed from wall to wall with row upon row of theatrical costumes, hanging on metal stands. Hundreds of the things, a massive peacock display of styles and colours. There was nothing else in the room, no tables or chairs, not even a mirror on the wall in which to admire one’s new costume. Bare, plastered walls, no window, only a single naked light bulb hanging down, filling the room with an unflattering, almost forensic light. JC looked at Lissa.

  “Do you have any idea what these costumes are doing here?”

  “Nothing to do with me, sweetie,” said Lissa. She looked the costumes over and sniffed loudly to show how unimpressed she was. “I have to say, I don’t like the look of them. There’s something…off about those costumes.”

  “Presumably Benjamin and Elizabeth ordered them, for the play.”

  “I hardly think so,” said Lissa. “Rehearsals aren’t due to start until after the renovations are completed. Why hire and ship in expensive costumes before the new paint’s even dry? Besides, the play is set very firmly, not to say remorselessly, in the present day. I mean, look at all this! There are enough costumes here for a dozen plays or one light opera revival! Everything from Shakespeare to Restoration comedy, Victorian formal wear to military uniforms. I don’t like this, JC. They shouldn’t be here…And I don’t think we should, either.”

  “Kim brought me here…”

  “So you keep saying! But I never saw a damned thing! Forget your ghostly girl-friend…Trust a ghost hunter to have a dead girl-friend, which now that I think about it, is decidedly icky…You’ll be telling me you sleep in a coffin next.”

  “Never on a first date,” said JC.

  “Oh, I feel so much safer now,” said Lissa.

  They shared a smile and looked around them. The costumes stared silently back.

  “There must be some good reason for us to be here,” JC said stubbornly. “And since the only things here are the costumes…I suppose we should inspect them. Maybe there’ll be a note in a pocket or something…”

  He stepped up to the first row, and briskly checked out the clothes, one at a time. Lissa moved reluctantly forward while making it very clear she didn’t want any part of it. She wouldn’t touch anything until she’d watched JC man-handle a whole bunch of them without suffering any ill effects. And then she sighed heavily and pulled out a costume here and there, looking it over carefully and checking the details.

  “Good-quality material,” she said, finally. “High-end workmanship. But…”

  “But?” said JC. “But what?” He held a Napoleon uniform up against himself, to see how he’d look in it, then reluctantly put it back again.

  “But,” Lissa said firmly, “a lot of the details are wrong. Mixed periods in the same outfit, wrong kinds of pockets and trimmings, out-of-period materials, important bits and pieces missing…No professional costumier would make mistakes like this. This…is more like someone faking it. Producing costumes good enough to fool the eye but only from a distance. Amateur night. These clothes look like costumes, JC; but they aren’t.”

  JC looked across at Lissa. She stepped back from the costumes to look them over, hands on hips, glaring ferociously. She looked…suspicious, and JC had to wonder why. Nothing else she’d encountered in the theatre had provoked this reaction.

  “All these costumes must mean something,” he said, standing back with her so he could study the rows of clothes with a sceptical eye. “They must be important. Or why bring us all this way just to see them?”

  “We could always play dress-up,” said Lissa, but JC could tell that her heart wasn’t in it.

  “If we assume that Benjamin and Elizabeth didn’t arrange for these costumes to be here…” he said slowly.

  “And I think we can assume that,” said Lissa, very firmly.

  “Then someone else must have,” said JC, talking right over her. “Which in turn implies that we’re not the only people interested in this theatre. And this haunting. We’re not the only people in this building. Which would explain a lot.”

  Lissa glared about her, looking seriously unsettled. “There can’t be anyone else here. There just can’t. I’d know. I’d feel it…” She realised JC was considering her silently and scowled back at him. “I’m very sensitive to my surroundings!”

  “A lot of people are,” JC said soothingly. “Or believe they are. But one of the first things you learn in the Ghost Finding business is that you can’t always trust your instincts. Things, and people, aren’t necessarily always what they seem, in a haunting situation. The dead play by their own rules.”

  “But what would the dead want with a whole bunch of not-particularly-accurate costumes?” said Lissa, bluntly.

  A slow, heavy rustle passed through the ranks of hanging costumes, like a breeze through forest branches. Hanging clothes twitched and shook, singly and in groups. Sleeves bent and twisted, jackets expanded and relaxed as though someone was breathing in them, and trousers bent at the knee, again and again, as though dreaming of running. Everywhere, costumes were heaving and flexing, as though bothered by unquiet thoughts.

  “Back away, Lissa,” JC said quietly.

  He glanced back and found that Lissa had already backed all the way up to the closed door, unable to tear her gaze away from the slowly moving costumes. There was a new, uneasy feeling in the room, harsh and oppressive: a sharp tension on the air, anticipating bad things to come. JC glared about him. The feeling of being watched was back again, but colder, more intense. As though someone knew something bad was about to happen and meant to enjoy it.

  “It’s a trap,” Lissa said tonelessly. “We’ve been lured into a trap.”

  “Don’t get twitchy,” said JC. “It’s all gone weird, agreed, but…it’s only a bunch of clothes. There’s no-one else here but us, living or dead. Look at them; they’re…bits of cloth on wire hangers!” He looked back at Lissa, to see how she was taking it, and thought she looked more puzzled than scared. “Come on!” he said, encouragingly. “How much of a threat can clothes be?”

  As he was saying that, all the costumes shrugged off their hangers and moved away from the cold, metal racks, standing upright on their own. They stood in silent ranks, empty and uninhabited. The clothing rails were forced to the very back of the room, pushed back through the ranks of standing clothes, so an army of empty costumes could confront JC and Lissa with nothing to get in their way. No heads rose from the empty collars, no hands emerged from the empty sleeves, and the slack trousers and leggings hovered a few inch
es above the floor, with no trace of a foot, or even a shoe. Only costume after costume, standing together in row upon row, turning slowly and silently to orientate themselves on JC, with a horrid sense of purpose.

  “You had to ask, didn’t you?” said Lissa. “How dangerous can they be? Look at them!”

  A subtle frisson of horror ran through JC as he remembered an old childhood terror. Of how discarded clothes can look on a chair at night, or hanging from a door; of how they could seem to come alive…or look very much as though they might. In the dark of a child’s bedroom. As a young child, JC had wondered whether clothes ever felt angry at being worn and used and moved around under someone else’s control. Made to go places and do things and make movements…that they wouldn’t have chosen to, themselves. On their own. And sometimes he’d wondered whether, when the clothes were finally taken off and laid aside and left to their own devices till morning…whether they might not someday rise and take their revenge?

  “Lissa,” JC said quietly, not taking his eyes off the rows and rows of silently watching clothes stacked before him. “I think this might be a good time to get the hell out of here.”

  “About time!” said Lissa.

  She went over to open the door, then stopped and looked at it.

  “Who closed the door, JC? I didn’t close the door.”

  “Don’t sweat the small shit, Lissa,” said JC. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Lissa reached for the door handle, then stopped again as she realised JC wasn’t coming back to join her. “JC, come on! I’m not leaving without you!”

  “It’s all right,” said JC. “I know what to do. I’ve been trained to deal with shit like this.”

  “Like this?” said Lissa.

  “Well, maybe not quite like this,” said JC. “I’m thinking this is probably some kind of large-scale poltergeist activity…But either way, I can’t run off and leave this happening. Someone might get hurt.” He squared his shoulders and took a step forward, to confront the standing costumes. “Listen up!” he said loudly. “I am JC Chance, Ghost Finder in good standing. Licenced to kick supernatural arse. What do you want, clothes?”