A very modern taxi took the Ghost Finders straight from the railway station to the Haybarn Theatre, situated right in the middle of the city centre. It was a grey, overcast day, with lowering clouds and the threat of thunder. The taxi had Thank You For Not Smoking signs plastered all over the interior, along with half a dozen little pine-tree deodorant things, and the interior still smelled like something large and unpleasant had recently been very ill in it. The driver had a great deal to say about the immigration situation, none of it helpful, and ignored all attempts to shut him up, including Please shut up or I will have to kill you from Happy, who then had to be physically restrained by Melody and JC.
When the taxi finally arrived at its destination, Happy volunteered to pay the driver. He fumbled crumpled notes and assorted change from his pockets while Melody hauled her precious scientific equipment out of the taxi’s boot, and JC wandered over to stare thoughtfully at the exterior of the Haybarn Theatre. Happy slapped a bunch of well-worn notes into the driver’s hand and carefully added the right amount of change. The driver looked at his hand, then glared at Happy.
“What? No tip?”
“Okay,” said Happy. “Here’s a tip. Wash your mind out with soap, and try to at least slow down for the red lights. Now piss off sharpish, or I’ll set my girl-friend on you.”
“I heard that!” said Melody, slamming the taxi’s boot shut with unnecessary force. “Don’t make me come over there!”
“See what I mean?” said Happy, smiling calmly at the driver.
The taxi departed at speed. Happy wandered over to watch Melody load her assorted high tech on the collapsible trolley.
“Is that it?” he said, after a while.
“The rest of my equipment, all the really important stuff, that I specially ordered in advance, is apparently en route in a separate van,” said Melody. “Under armed guard. For insurance reasons.”
“I’m sure it’ll all turn up,” said Happy. “Eventually…”
“They’re not fooling me!” Melody said loudly. “They’re trying to see how little tech I can work with! I cannot be expected to do deep research on dead things with such limited resources! I’d have better luck catching ghosts by running after them with a bloody-big enchanted butterfly-net!”
“I think I saw one of those in the Boss’s office, one time,” said JC, not looking around. “On the wall, behind her desk, right next to the enchanted grenade-launcher.”
“I wish I thought you were joking,” said Happy.
He and Melody moved forward to stand on either side of JC, and they all took their time studying the exterior face of the Haybarn Theatre. None of them was particularly impressed. Time and the weather had not been kind to the brick and stone though it was surprisingly free of graffiti. Unlike most of the surrounding office buildings. Apart from the Haybarn’s name, still spelled out in cold grey neon tubing, above the closed main doors, there was nothing obvious to mark the old building as a theatre. All the colour and glamour had been stripped away long ago, and now it looked like any other old-fashioned building, silent and unoccupied.
“Has this place really been empty for twenty years?” JC said finally. “I mean, this is prime location, if nothing else. Right in the middle of the business section. The land alone must be worth a fortune…”
“Maybe the building has a reputation, as a bad place,” said Happy. “Last thing a developer wants is a poltergeist running wild in the lanes of his supermarket. Or restless spirits grinning out of the changing-room mirrors in a women’s fashion outlet.”
“There’s no mention of anything like that in the briefing files,” said Melody. “No trouble at all until the renovations started. Are you picking up anything yet, Happy? Any bad vibrations?”
“There’s a curry house not far away,” said Happy.
“You can’t be hungry already, not after everything you stuffed down yourself on the train!”
“Working for the Carnacki Institute is like serving in the Army,” Happy said solemnly. “Eat when you can, sleep where you can, because you never know when you might get another chance…” He sniffed loudly. “I’m not getting anything from this building, which is a bit odd. I mean, this place has to be at least a century old. I should be getting something…”
Melody looked at JC. “Do you have any idea who this important friend of Catherine Latimer’s might be, the one we’re doing this for?”
“She didn’t say anything,” said JC. “But then, she never does.”
“Are we supposed to go in through the front doors, or should we go round the back and enter through the stage door?” said Happy.
“Hell with that,” JC said firmly. “I do not use the back door. Except sometimes as an exit in times of high peril.”
Melody moved forward and tried the front doors. They both opened easily before her. “Not even locked,” she said. “That can’t be right. Not in this day and age.”
“Someone is expecting us,” said Happy.
“A sign from Above!” JC said merrily. “Inwards and onwards, my children! Danger and excitement await us!”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you’d been at my pills,” said Happy.
“We are going in!” said JC.
“You first,” said Happy.
“Of course!” said JC.
“Hold it,” said Melody, and it was a measure of their professionalism that both men stopped immediately and looked at her.
“What?” said Happy. “What?”
“We’re supposed to wait here,” said Melody. “Because we’re being joined by the two actor-producers responsible for renovating this place.”
“Oh, wonderful,” said Happy. “Passengers! Why are we going to put up with these civilians, exactly?”
“Because they know the history of this theatre,” Melody said patiently. “And, they know all about the haunting. If it is a haunting and not a bunch of grown men jumping at shadows. I blame those Most Haunted shows on television.”
Happy looked innocently at JC. “Do we really have to put up with this? You know they’re going to get in the way and make the job ten times harder.”
“Yes, we do have to put up with them,” said JC. “The Boss said so. And you don’t say no to the Boss if you like having your organs on the inside. In fact, she was most insistent about making these actors a part of our investigation. Do try and keep them alive.”
“You try,” Melody said immediately. “I am going to be busy trying to follow electromagnetic fluctuations and orgone spikes with an old barometer and a bent penny.”
JC looked at Happy, who shrugged briefly. “She’s suffering from equipment withdrawal.”
“Ah, to hell with this,” said JC. “I am not standing around here waiting for thespians to turn up. The traffic’s deafening, the air’s so polluted you could shake hands with it, and the rain’s coming on. Besides, I don’t wait for anyone. It’s bad for the reputation. I am going in. Tally ho, Ghost Finders!”
He barged straight through the main doors and disappeared inside. Happy and Melody looked at each other and shrugged pretty much simultaneously. Happy held a door open, and Melody hauled her trolley full of equipment up the raised steps and into the theatre.
JC was already striding round and round the oversized lobby, head held high, looking at everything with keen interest. His ice-cream white suit seemed almost to glow in the gloom. JC lurched abruptly to a halt, hands stuffed deep into his pockets, looking and listening and sniffing the air, getting a feel for the place. The lobby was big enough to be impressive without being imposing, made to hold crowds waiting for the curtain to go up; but it was dim and dusty now, with more than its fair share of shadows. All the windows were boarded up.
Melody hauled her trolley into the exact centre of the lobby, looked briefly around her, sniffed loudly when nothing immediately dangerous presented itself, and began assembling her various bits and pieces. Happy stood alone, some distance away from the others, looking cautiously about him.
The lobby floor was bare, and so were the walls. Though there were a few large empty wooden frames, here and there, that had presumably once held bright and gaudy posters, advertising past triumphs and tragedies. The lobby looked…depersonalised, anonymous. As though all the glamour and character and history had been deliberately removed, long ago. Several doors led off from the lobby, going who knew where because all the signs and directions were gone. All the doors were very firmly closed.
Everything seemed peaceful enough; but Happy wasn’t fooled. There was a definite air of…something. An atmosphere of something not easily named.
JC moved quickly from one door to another, opening each one in turn and shouting a cheerful Hello! into the gloom beyond. But there was never any response. JC shut each door firmly, in turn, just in case. He finally came back to join Melody and Happy, rubbing his hands briskly together. Happy pointed out the Ticket Office, which had been boarded shut.
“There’s something very sad about that,” he said. “A real sense that the party is over; everyone get your coats and go home.”
“Softy,” said Melody, not unkindly, not even looking up from fitting her various bits of tech together and hitting them if they didn’t cooperate fast enough for her liking.
“Is that really all you’re going to use?” JC said innocently because he liked to live dangerously.
Melody slammed down a sciencey thing and glared at him. “This is deliberate!” she said fiercely. “It’s all part of downsizing; if they prove I can do the job with a minimum of equipment, then that’s all they’ll let me have.”
“So what are you going to do?” said Happy. “Deliberately sabotage a mission to prove the accountants wrong?”
“Don’t think that hasn’t occurred to me,” growled Melody.
“I think I’ll go and hide somewhere safe until you’re in a better mood,” said Happy.
“We’re not going to be here that long,” said Melody.
While the two of them were preoccupied, JC spotted a door on the far wall that he would have sworn hadn’t been there a moment earlier. He moved slowly over to stand before it. He looked the door up and down, and it looked like all the other doors. He reached out very carefully, very cautiously, and tried the door handle. It turned easily under his hand, almost invitingly, and he pushed the door open. It swung weightlessly back before him, revealing a deep, dark gloom.
“JC?” The voice came from deep inside the gloom; and he recognised it immediately.
“Yes, Kim,” he said. “I’m here.”
He stepped forward into the dark, and there was Kim, standing right before him. Glowing so brightly, she threw back the gloom. JC stood very still, careful not to do anything that might frighten her away. His breath caught in his throat, and he could feel his heart hammering painfully fast in his chest.
“Kim?” he said. “Is it really you?”
She smiled at him, her eyes shining. She was hovering a few inches above the floor, rising and falling slowly. She looked like she wanted to say something; but she didn’t.
“What are you doing here, Kim?” said JC. “Am I in danger again? Are you? How did you get away…? Or, is someone still holding you?”
She didn’t respond to any of his questions, but her gaze never wavered, fixed entirely on him.
“Please…” said JC. “Tell me who’s got you, where you are, and I will come and get you! I will!”
She smiled sadly at him. JC reached out to her, and she backed away from him, drifting slowly down the endless, dark corridor. JC started forward after her, only to slam face-first into the wall before him. The door was gone, with no trace left behind to show it had ever been there. JC beat at the wall with his fist, once, then tiredly leaned forward to rest his forehead against the cold, implacable surface. He took a deep breath, stood up straight, squared his shoulders, and turned away from the wall to find Melody and Happy both staring at him.
“I saw Kim again,” he said.
Happy and Melody looked quickly around the empty lobby, then back at JC, who shrugged briefly.
“I’m not picking up anything,” Happy said carefully. “If a ghost had manifested here, even popped in for a moment, I’m sure I would have sensed it.”
“Nothing on my instruments, either,” said Melody. “Are you sure you saw…something?”
“Don’t look at me like that,” said JC. “It was Kim. I saw her. Spoke to her…”
He turned away from what he saw in their faces, his back stiff and straight, hands clenched into fists at his sides. Happy moved over to stand with Melody at her instrument panels. Lights came and went on her monitor screens, signifying nothing.
“She was there, at the railway station,” Happy said tentatively.
“Was she?” Melody said quietly. “The image we saw looked like her, but it never said a word; and normally you can’t get a word in edge-ways with ghost girl. It’ll take more than a brief look-alike image to convince me. So I have to wonder if someone is playing mind-games. With us in general, and JC in particular. Showing him what he wants to see, to distract him from what’s really important.”
“Oh great,” said Happy. “Fantastic. That’s all I need, something else to be paranoid about.”
“Unfortunately, you’re not as paranoid as you used to be, sweetie,” said Melody. “There really are dangerous forces in the universe out to get you.”
“Life was so much simpler when I was merely mentally ill and chemically deranged,” said Happy, glumly. “Now every case we go into feels like a trap.”
“That’s situation normal where the Ghost Finders are concerned,” said Melody.
“I want danger money,” said Happy.
“We are getting danger money.”
“I want more danger money.”
“It’s nice to want things,” Molly said briskly. “I saw the sweetest French Maid outfit in an Anne Summer’s, the other day.”
“I told you,” said Happy. “I’m not wearing it.”
“You can be very unadventurous sometimes,” said Melody.
They looked across at JC, on the far side of the lobby. His head was bowed, and he was frowning, lost in thought. He might have been a thousand miles away. Unreachable. Happy shrugged, uneasily.
“Do we know where the homeless guy died?” he said. “Was it here? Because I’m not picking up anything to suggest a recent death, natural or otherwise. In fact, I’m not picking up anything. Just…dead air.”
“Ho ho ho,” said Melody, concentrating on her instrument readouts. “Telepath humour. It’s all in the mind.”
Happy scowled, moved away, and lowered his mental shields, slowly and methodically opening himself up to his surroundings. Nothing happened until he was completely open and defenceless; and then everything hit him at once. The lobby was suddenly packed full of people, men and women, from all times and fashions, milling back and forth, overlapping and passing through each other. Memories, ghosts, of all the people who’d ever been in the theatre lobby. A hundred thousand audiences, all of them talking at once, a terrible clamour of raised voices from out of the Past, filling Happy’s head to bursting. He clapped both hands to his ears, a practiced psychological trick to keep voices outside his head; but it didn’t help. There were too many of them, layer upon layer of people pressed upon people…Voices determined to be heard.
And slowly, one by one, then in small groups, heads turned to look at him. Faces focused on him, becoming aware of his presence. They could see Happy because they weren’t memories, they were dead. Ghosts of people who’d died in the lobby, or the theatre, or returned there because it had special memories for them. They drifted slowly, implacably, towards Happy, passing inexorably through all the other presences in their way. Drawn to him like moths, to the bright light of his living soul. Happy looked about him desperately, but everywhere he looked there were more, coming right at him, their dead faces distorted by an awful, endless hunger.
Happy slammed down all his shields at once, forcing his me
ntal defences back into place, until every last bit of his telepathy was shut down and he was as blind to the world as everyone else. Until he couldn’t have seen a ghost even if it walked right up to him and glared into his face. Or, at least, he hoped so. He stood very still, breathing hard. He could feel cold sweat on his face. When he finally lowered his hands, they shook violently. Happy looked quickly around the lobby. JC was still wrapped up in himself, but Melody was looking at him steadily. She came out from behind her instruments, walked over to Happy, and put her arms around him. She held him close, while he hung on to her like a drowning man. She patted his back gently, giving him the warmth of her body to drive out the cold of the dead. Giving him her steady presence to anchor him in the world again.
“Bad one?” she said, her voice carefully calm and neutral.
“Bad enough,” he said, when he could find his voice. “My own fault. I should have known better than to lower my guard in a place bound to be soaked in people and memories. Still…”
“Yes?” said Melody.
Happy took his arms away from her, and she immediately let go of him and stepped back. Beyond a certain point, Happy didn’t like to be fussed over.
“That…didn’t just happen,” said Happy. “That felt much more like an ambush. Which means we’re not alone here. Someone, or Something, targeted me.”
Melody studied his face carefully. “You need some of your little chemical helpers, don’t you?”
“No,” said Happy. “I’m stronger than that, now. I don’t need them. You showed me that.”
“But you still want them,” said Melody.
“Oh, God, yes, I want them,” said Happy. “Luckily, I want you more.”
“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” said Melody. “I really wish it was true.”
And then they looked round sharply, as the main doors slammed open and their theatrical guests arrived. A man and a woman, both well into their forties, both clearly fighting for every inch, both of them that little bit too deliberately glamorous. Because they felt it was expected of them. They stopped directly inside the doors, realised they had an audience, and immediately fell into flattering publicity poses without even realising they were doing it. There was a pause, as everyone looked at everyone else, then JC strode briskly forward to stand with Happy and Melody, to present a unified front in the face of civilian outsiders. The two actors looked the Ghost Finders over and gave no impression of being in any way impressed.
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