Everyone managed some kind of smile if not actually a laugh.
“Scratch an old actor, find an anecdote,” said Lissa, and Elizabeth glared at her.
“Did anything ever…happen down here?” said JC. “Anything significant?”
Benjamin and Elizabeth looked at each other. “No,” said Elizabeth.
“Nothing,” said Benjamin.
And then they both looked at JC, as though defying him to contradict them. Which, thought JC, was interesting…
A great roar of angry sound blasted through the whole understage area, filling the place from end to end. Huge, deafening, overpowering; a fierce and vicious sound, like the outrage of an angry god. As though something had given rage and fury a voice and let it loose. Everyone put their hands to their ears and squeezed their eyes shut, whether they wanted to or not. It was an instinctive, protective thing; and it didn’t help at all. The roar went on and on, beating at them like some living creature but continuing on long past the point where any living thing could have sustained it. The sheer anger and malice in the terrible sound was almost palpable.
Benjamin held Elizabeth tightly in his arms, cradling her head to his chest. “Leave her alone!” he shouted into the face of the roar. “Leave her alone, you bastard!”
JC yelled at everyone, straining to be heard above the appalling sound. “Stick together! Don’t let it separate us!”
He forced his eyes open, a bit at a time, but even with his augmented vision he still couldn’t see anyone, or anything. There was only the sound and the rage within it.
And then it stopped. No falling away, no quietening down; it simply broke off abruptly, without even leaving an echo behind it. For a long moment, everyone stood where they were, opening their eyes and lowering their hands from their heads, all of them suddenly limp with relief. The end of the sound was like the ending of a physical assault. It had beaten and battered them like some unseen bully; and now it felt good, so good, that it was over. One by one, they all started to relax and look around them. Benjamin and Elizabeth let go of each other and stepped back to look each other over, make sure everything was all right. So did Happy and Melody.
They were all of them shaken, amateur and professional alike, by the sheer fury in the sound. And, it seemed to JC, a very human fury. He strode back and forth across the wide-open area, glaring into shadowy nooks and crannies, finding nothing. He didn’t like being caught by surprise. He looked back at the others, and was surprised to see Lissa standing on her own, calm and quiet and apparently entirely unaffected by what she’d been through. She didn’t look scared, or shaken; she stared straight ahead of her, her face calm and quiet and completely empty. As though she couldn’t be bothered if there wasn’t an audience…JC stopped and considered her thoughtfully. Shock, perhaps? He started towards her, then Benjamin suddenly spoke up.
“Hold it; where’s Old Tom?”
Everyone stopped where they were and looked quickly about them; but there was no trace of the old caretaker anywhere. They all called his name; but there was no response. And even with the single light bulb and the many concealing shadows, there was nowhere in the understage area where he could have hidden himself.
“Where could he have gone?” said Elizabeth. “There’s no way he could have gone back up that creaky iron stairway without us noticing.”
“Is there any other exit?” said JC.
“Not that I know of,” said Benjamin, looking vaguely about him.
“Maybe something…reached out, and took him,” said Lissa.
Her voice was very small. Almost lost. For a moment everyone stood still, then Benjamin snorted loudly.
“Just because we don’t know of any other exit doesn’t mean there isn’t one! Come on, you all heard the man—There’s a way to everywhere, and I know all of them. I don’t believe he ever was a caretaker; he’s a journalist who’s done some research. That moustache never did look real to me.”
“He could be back up on the stage,” said Lissa. “Where it’s light…”
JC led the way back to the iron stairway.
* * *
Back on the open stage again, they all called repeatedly for Old Tom; but there was still no reply. The brightly lit stage was something of a relief, even a comfort, after the claustrophobic gloom of the understage area. It might not actually be any safer on the stage; but at least here they could all see nothing coming towards them.
“He’s got to be around here somewhere,” said Benjamin, with more hope than certainty. “He can’t have come to any harm. We’d have heard.”
“It’s just struck me!” said Elizabeth. “No-one’s been hurt, have they? I mean, yes, of course, it’s all been very scary…but it’s all threats and menaces. Nothing that could actually do us harm.”
“Then where’s Old Tom?” said Lissa. “What happened to him?”
The stage lights flared up suddenly, blazing into blue-white incandescence, then went out, all at once. Darkness fell across the stage, and everyone huddled together. Individual lights blazed up, here and there, sudden flares and flashes…and then the bulbs began to explode, one after another. Everyone on stage flinched away from flying slivers of glass, but none of it came close enough to hurt anyone. A heavy, ponderous gloom filled the stage, only held back by brief surges from individual lights. JC grabbed Happy by the shoulder, and he shrieked loudly. JC shook him hard till he stopped.
“What’s happening here, Happy? Talk to me! What’s behind all this?”
“I don’t know!” said Happy. “I’m not picking up anything! And since I sure as hell bloody well should be picking up something, someone or something must be deliberately blocking me. Which isn’t easily done…” Happy took a deep breath to calm himself, thinking it through. “It’s all tricks, JC! Shock and awe, smoke and mirrors, all of it designed to distract us, draw our attention away from what really matters. But don’t ask me what this is all about…I can’t sense a damned thing. It’s like being deaf and blind and wrapped in poisoned cotton wool, all at once.”
“You are seriously underperforming on this case, Happy,” said JC. He looked at Melody, who immediately shook her head.
“No use looking at me. You know I can’t tell a damned thing without my instruments. I should never have left them behind. You’re the leader! You do something!”
“There’s nothing to do,” said JC. “Happy’s right, for once. This is all ‘sound and fury, signifying nothing.’ Carefully orchestrated bits of theatrical business. Someone’s putting on a show.”
Suddenly, all the house lights came up. Steady, dependable light filled the whole of the vast auditorium and spilled out across the stage, pushing back the darkness. JC looked quickly back and forth across the rows of raked seating, but every seat in the house was empty. The normal, everyday electric light was peaceful and reassuring, and everyone began to relax again. JC looked at Benjamin and Elizabeth.
“Could someone be overseeing all this business with the lights from the lighting control room?”
“I don’t see how,” said Elizabeth. “It hasn’t been wired up properly yet. And even if Old Tom isn’t who he claimed to be, and he was only here to mess with us, he couldn’t have got all the way to the lighting booth in time.”
“Unless he isn’t working on his own,” said Lissa.
JC turned to Happy. “Are you sure you’re not getting anything?”
Happy looked past JC, swallowed hard, and said, “Uh, JC, I am quite definitely seeing something now.”
JC turned around quickly, to follow his gaze, and everyone else looked, too. A horribly emaciated figure, dressed only in rags and tatters and dark splashes of dried blood, was lying full length on the stage by the far wings, facedown, pulling itself laboriously forward by digging its broken fingers into the wood of the stage. The figure crawled slowly forward, in sudden, painful lurches, leaving a long, heavy trail of blood behind it. The head came up slowly, to reveal a ravaged face: a mask of blood with one dark, empty ey
e socket and a single eyeball hanging down onto the cheekbone from the other. The mouth was gone, the lips torn raggedly away, to reveal blood-stained teeth bared in an endless, horrid grin. The figure hauled itself along, every movement a slow, agonised effort, full of desperate determination. The sound of broken fingertips scratching and scraping across the wooden stage filled the horrified hush on the stage.
Benjamin and Elizabeth clung tightly together, all the colour fallen out of their faces. They didn’t want to look at the awful figure, but they couldn’t bring themselves to look away. JC snapped his fingers at them several times, to get their attention.
“Has either of you ever seen anything like this before?”
“Of course not!” said Benjamin.
“We would have said!” said Elizabeth. “What is that thing?”
Happy and Melody stood close together, studying the slowly crawling figure with professional interest. They might not like the look of it, but they’d seen a lot worse, in their time. JC looked across at Lissa. She was standing very still, staring, wide-eyed; but once again, not nearly as scared as JC would have expected. Most civilians, with no experience of ghosts and monsters, would have screamed or run or even fainted dead away. Lissa looked…as though she’d been expecting this. Or something like it. But that could wait. First things first. JC turned back to Happy.
“Is it real?” JC said urgently. “Is that thing really there? Physically present?”
“Not physically present, as such,” Happy said immediately. “And it’s definitely not what’s left of Old Tom, if that’s what you were about to ask. I’m finally getting something…but don’t ask me what. There’s a strong sense of presence, but…whether we’re looking at a ghost, or a manifestation, or a stone tape memory…is beyond me. I can’t see! There’s so much power here, JC…It’s swamping the aether and saturating all the psychic channels!”
“You made that bit up!” said Melody.
“There’s so much power, I can’t tell what’s what!” Happy said stubbornly. “It’s like staring into the sun, with different radios blasting into each ear…This whole building is soaked in some kind of overwhelming presence. A real genius loci…”
JC glared at Happy for a long moment, then turned away to give the crawling figure his full attention. It had dragged itself half-way across the stage, shaking and shuddering with effort, heading straight for them.
“All right, Happy,” said JC. “Go and talk to it.”
“What? You go and talk to it!” Happy said immediately. “Whatever that is, it doesn’t look like it’s got anything to say that I would want to hear.”
“For once, I am in complete agreement with Happy,” said Melody. “I may be a big brave Ghost Finder, but that thing is officially creeping the hell out of me.”
“Damn right,” said Happy. “You couldn’t drive me an inch closer to that thing with a whip and a chair and an electric cattle prod.”
“Stay here,” said JC.
“You got it, boss,” said Melody.
JC slowly walked forward and took up a position right in front of the crawling figure, blocking its way. It stopped, and slowly raised its bloody face to JC. The dangling eyeball rolled slowly back and forth across the crimson cheekbone. JC knelt before the figure, lowering his face so that it was on a level with the thing before him.
“Can I do anything to help?” he said. “Who are you? What do you need? Who did this to you?”
On the last question, the figure raised one hand and pointed a single finger past JC, at Benjamin and Elizabeth. Blood dripped thickly from the pointing, accusing finger. Everyone turned to look at Benjamin and Elizabeth; and when they looked back again, the crawling figure was gone. And so was the long, bloody trail it had left behind it. There wasn’t a single trace remaining to show that the awful thing had ever been there. Lissa giggled suddenly, and perhaps a bit hysterically.
“My agent is so going to hear about this…”
Elizabeth looked hard at her, and Lissa turned her back on Elizabeth. JC joined Benjamin and Elizabeth.
“Did that figure mean anything to you?” he said.
“No,” said Benjamin. “Nothing.”
“Then why did it point to you two?” Lissa said loudly, having moved some distance away. “Why did it point only at you? What do you know that you’re not telling the rest of us? You’re the ones who’ve got a history with this theatre! What did you do here, twenty years ago?”
“This is nothing to do with us!” Elizabeth said sharply. “Nothing!”
Happy moved in quietly beside JC. “The figure may be gone, but I’m still getting that strong sense of presence. Something’s still here with us.”
JC scowled about him, frustrated. “I hate it when there’s nothing solid to get a grip on, literally or metaphorically. But it does seem to me that a lot of what’s been happening here doesn’t mean anything. As though…we’re stuck in the middle of someone else’s game.”
“Unfinished business?” said Melody.
“Almost certainly,” said JC.
“Doesn’t this all strike you as more…dramatic than anything the renovators described?” said Melody.
“As though it was saving the best stuff for us,” said Happy.
“Or some of us,” said JC. “The question has to be, who is this aimed at, us, or the civilians?”
“I need my instruments,” said Melody.
“There must be something, something specific, in this building that’s powering this haunting,” said JC. “Something must have happened here, and in a sense is still happening, to make this theatre a bad place.” He looked steadily at Benjamin and Elizabeth. “Has there ever been a murder in this theatre? Or perhaps some major accident? A fire? Some sort of catastrophe?”
“No,” said Elizabeth, immediately.
“Nothing at all,” said Benjamin.
“Right!” said JC, clapping his hands together hard, then rubbing them briskly. “I have had enough of this. We need to split up and search this place thoroughly. See if we can find Old Tom, see if he’s behind any of this…And see if anyone else has got into the building. If not, we need to turn this place upside down and shake it to see what falls out. Search everywhere, people, for something that will make sense of all this. Presumably, we’ll know it when we see it. Come along, my children, we need clues, we need evidence. Happy, you go with Benjamin and Elizabeth. Look after them and try very hard to keep them alive.”
“Who, me?” said Happy.
“Lissa, you stick with me,” said JC. “Melody, I want you back in the lobby. Fire up your equipment and scan this whole building to within an inch of its life.”
“You do know,” said Lissa, “that in nearly every horror movie, when people split up and go off in different directions, it nearly always turns out to be a really bad idea?”
“Ah,” said JC. “But I and my associates are professional supernatural arse-kickers, and very experienced in these matters. We don’t take any shit from the Hereafter.”
“I want to go home,” said Happy.
FIVE
STARDUSTY MEMORIES
Happy stood alone at the edge of the stage, looking out over the vast and empty auditorium. As someone who mostly preferred not to be noticed, even by the people he was working with, the whole concept of standing on a stage and being stared at by an audience made no sense to him at all. He’d never even been to a theatre to watch a play. Or a cinema. Happy didn’t like crowds, even when he was part of one. It was hard enough keeping the voices outside his head under normal conditions. Put too many people together in one place, and it was like the whole world wanted to force their way into Happy’s thoughts.
On the few occasions when he did let his mental defences down, to look on the hidden world and all it contained, then reality became a very crowded thing indeed. With no room in it at all for a small, unhappy thing like him. It’s one thing to know the world is infinite and quite another to be able to see it for yourself. Happy only had
an ego as a form of self-defence, so the idea that someone could give a damn about him, like JC…or perhaps even love him, like Melody…was a whole new concept to him. Happy worried that if people could notice him, then maybe the whole hungry world might, too.
If anyone had ever suggested to Happy that he was a hero, for fighting the good fight as a Ghost Finder, he would have been honestly surprised. Maybe even shocked. He had done some amazing things in his time, it was true, but only because the only other option had been dying horribly.
The pills made things so much easier. His little helpers; his chemical crutch to lean on; something to make him brave when he didn’t have it in him. Melody could put his demons to rest, she could hold him in the early hours and make him feel safe in the dark; but she couldn’t make him brave. Happy still hadn’t got the hang of that. So it bothered him that JC had put the two actors in his care and expected him to keep them safe. That was JC’s job, not his. JC knew all there was to know about being brave. And cocky, and arrogant…Surely, JC hadn’t dumped the actors on him so he could go off with the lovely Lissa and impress her with how brave he was? No; JC wasn’t that small. That was Happy. He smiled slightly, looked out over all the empty rows of seats, and wondered what it would feel like to be applauded.
Behind him, Benjamin cleared his throat, politely. He didn’t need to. Happy knew where everyone was, all the time. Even with all his mental shields in place, Happy could tell where everyone was, by the way their presence pressed against his shields. The world always wanted in…Happy looked back. Benjamin and Elizabeth were standing together, looking at him uncertainly. Happy turned around and gave them both his best professional smile, the one he’d copied from JC.
“Relax,” he said because he thought he should. “Everything’s going to work out fine. I am a professional Ghost Finder. I do this for a living.”
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