“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.
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Ghost of a Dream g-3 Page 24
