Melody ignored him, crouching at her duplicate’s side. The dupe looked up at her sadly.
“I’m sorry. He made me too well. I really thought I was me. I mean, you…And now I’m dying. I’m scared, Melody.”
“Don’t be,” said Melody. “I’m here with you.” She glared across at the Faust. “You worthless piece of shit. Don’t let her suffer like this. Do something!”
“I am!” said the Faust. “I’m enjoying it! More than one way to skin a cat, or break a spirit.”
Melody sat down on the floor beside the dying dupe and took her in her arms. She held her tightly, while the dupe shook and shuddered, slowly breaking up, losing basic coherence as ectoplasm leaked from everywhere at once. Melody didn’t know what to do. She’d never felt so helpless. But when the machines can’t help you, all that’s left is to be human. And care.
“I’m so cold…” said the dupe. Her eyes weren’t tracking any more.
“Hush,” said Melody. “Hush. It’s all right. I’m here.”
Ectoplasm boiled off the dupe’s body, rising like a thin white mist, dispersing quickly on the still lobby air. Melody could feel the dupe’s form growing soft and vague in her arms. The dupe grabbed at Melody’s hand with her own. Melody took hold of it firmly, and it fell apart in her fingers. The dupe’s face fell in, collapsing. The eyes and the mouth were the last to go. The dupe’s lips moved.
“Melody. Make him pay.”
And then she burst. Great splashes of ectoplasm soaked Melody from top to toe. Her arms were full of a chalky, white, liquid mass, quickly falling apart into mists, which dispersed in the air and were gone. Melody was left sitting on the floor with empty arms. Her clothes were dry, all traces of ectoplasm gone. She got up, clambering awkwardly to her feet, and looked at the Faust with cold, cold eyes. He smiled easily back at her.
“So,” he said. “Are we having fun yet?”
“What are you?” she said. “Isn’t there anything human left inside you?”
“Why should I settle for anything so small, so limited? I am the Faust. I’m everything that ever scared you, little girl, in one easy, soul-destroying package! Can I get a halleluiah?”
Melody brought up her machine-pistol, and opened fire. The Faust stood sportingly still before her, soaking up every bullet that hit him. He didn’t so much as flinch while the bullets hit him, over and over again. The bullets punched into him, but he took no damage, and he didn’t bleed. Even the holes in the front of his nice suit healed themselves instantly. When Melody finally gave up, stopped shooting, and lowered her gun, the Faust coughed obligingly and spat the bullets out onto the palm of his hand. He let them drop, to jump and rattle loudly on the lobby floor.
“I’m not soft, everyday flesh like you, little girl. Not any more. I am the new flesh, the better flesh, The Flesh Undying in the world of mortal men. The clue is in the name, really…”
“I’ll kill you,” said Melody. “I will find a way to kill you.”
The Faust ignored her, his perfect brow creased with a hint of concentration. “Door!” he said, finally.
And a Door appeared in the lobby, appearing suddenly and silently out of nowhere. It looked like an ordinary everyday door except that it was hanging high up on the air, below the lobby ceiling. Entirely horizontal, facedown.
“I think something terribly theatrical is needed here,” said the Faust. “I think this calls for…the Phantom of the Haybarn!”
The Door dropped open, hanging down, and something dropped out of it like a bag of garbage. A dark shape that hit the floor of the lobby hard. But it didn’t break, and it didn’t cry out. Melody quickly covered it with her machine-pistol; and the Faust chuckled. At first, Melody couldn’t make out what it was—a hunched figure, crouching on the floor, hidden under a heavy black cape. It rocked back and forth, swaying this way and that; and then it rose suddenly upright and spun around to glare at Melody.
A tall, stoop-shouldered creature, dressed in all the finery of the late nineteenth century, wrapped in a night-black opera cloak. Half his face was hidden behind a grubby, blood-stained mask. The features that could be seen were a sickly yellow colour, as though disfigured by a skin disease. And the eyes…were exactly like the Faust’s. Dark eyes, shark eyes. The creature’s filthy gloved hands dripped fresh blood, which smoked and stained the lobby floor. The Phantom of the Haybarn—a corrupted dream, a living nightmare. He stank of filth and blood and rotting meat.
“What a pretty thing you are,” said the Faust. “My very own Phantom, for this tawdry little theatre. Go forth, my child, my own. Be bad. Be scary. Tear this place apart and everyone in it.”
The Phantom lurched forward, heading for Melody. He looked human enough, but he didn’t move like a man. He swayed and lurched, as though something inside him was broken. He laughed breathlessly, and as he reached out to Melody, she could see that splintered claws had burst through the end of his gloves. He wanted to do things to her. Horrible things. And Melody knew he would take a long time with her before he finally let her die. She was also pretty sure the machine-pistol wouldn’t stop him.
So she did the sensible thing. She strode right up to the Phantom, kicked him so hard in the balls she lifted him right off the ground, ran past him, and fled through the swing doors, into the warren of theatre corridors beyond. She smiled as she heard choked, agonised sounds behind her; the Phantom, trying to force air back into his lungs.
She was already deep into the maze of corridors when she heard him coming after her.
The Faust nodded once and turned away, quietly satisfied at having ticked one small thing off his list. He looked up at the Door, still hanging open, hovering below the ceiling. He waved it away with a brief dismissive gesture, and the Door disappeared. The Faust looked quickly around the empty lobby, then he disappeared, too.
* * *
For a moment there was peace and quiet in the theatre lobby, then a figure stirred in the shadows. From where he had been watching all this time, unsuspected and unobserved, Old Tom, the caretaker, emerged into the light, shuffling out across the lobby floor. He stopped and looked at the doors where Melody and the Phantom had made their exit; and then he looked thoughtfully at the spot where the Faust had disappeared.
“You’re not one of mine,” Old Tom said finally. “So whose little ghost are you, I wonder? It doesn’t matter. You won’t get to spoil anything; I’ll see to that. I’ve still got a show to put on.”
And then he disappeared. And the lobby was finally empty and quiet.
NINE
OLD TRUTHS, COME HOME TO ROOST
Melody ran headlong through the narrow theatre corridors, not once looking back. She didn’t need to look back to know that the Faust’s Phantom was still hot on her trail. She could feel his presence behind her, feel his hot gaze on her back, feel his rotten breath on her neck…She pounded down the dimly lit corridors, arms pumping at her sides, not even trying to pace herself. She had to get to the others, had to tell them about the Faust…because they only thought they were dealing with a haunting. They didn’t know there was a monster in the house. In the end, she had to look back over her shoulder, because she couldn’t stand the tension any more; and, of course, he wasn’t there. Never had been. She made herself run a little faster anyway. She hoped she was going in the right direction. All the corridors looked the same to her. She felt like a mouse running a maze, with a cat at every exit. She took a sharp left turn without slowing and pounded down another long corridor that looked like all the others.
The Phantom burst out of a side passage and slammed right into her, lifting her off her feet as though she weighed nothing and throwing her hard against the far wall. She cried out miserably at the impact and tried to struggle; but he held her easily with one hand at her throat, her feet kicking helplessly several inches above the floor. She made herself fight him, flailing wildly; but her human strength was nothing compared to the Phantom’s. He pushed his masked face right into hers, smiling nastily with
the revealed half of his face. Up close, the grubby mask smelled of rotting leather, while his half-face smelled of rotting flesh.
“You can’t outrun me, my sweet,” he said, and his voice was a low, hissing thing, full of venom. “I’ll always be able to run faster than you because I’m a made thing, not bound by human limitations. I was made to run down my prey, then do awful and unforgivable things to it. I was made to make you suffer, and to enjoy it. And I will! It’s good to have a purpose in life.”
Melody brought up her machine-pistol, stuck the barrel right under his jaw, and pulled the trigger. The sound of the gun was shockingly loud, and Melody cried out despite herself at the terrible sound and the blinding glare. The sheer velocity of the bullets slammed the Phantom’s head back. The repeated impacts broke his hold on Melody and drove him backwards. Melody half collapsed into a crouch before she got her strength and balance back, but she kept firing. The Phantom lurched and swayed this way and that, but she moved the gun with him. The bullets punched right through his formal clothes and cape, but he didn’t cry out, and he didn’t bleed. Melody quickly realised that the Phantom could heal as easily as the Faust who made him.
A sudden silence fell across the corridor as Melody ran out of bullets. The Phantom smiled at her. She looked blankly at the gun in her hand, as though it had betrayed her, and she shook the pistol for a moment, as though that would do anything. She had more clips for the gun, but they were all back in the lobby, in the arms cabinet. She looked at the Phantom, smiling at her like a shark that’s scented blood in the water; and she smiled back at him. He didn’t like that. He started towards her, and she went for him, throwing the empty gun into his face. He snatched the machine-pistol out of mid air and crumpled the metal in his inhuman grasp. And while he was preoccupied doing that, Melody punted him good and hard between the legs. The Phantom dropped to his knees, mouth stretched wide as he tried to force a scream through his constricted throat. Melody punched him once, in the side of the head, just to be sure, then ran on.
The Faust really shouldn’t have made you in his own image, she thought, as she ran. Given you two hostages to fortune…And you really should have been expecting that. Not terribly bright, this Phantom of the Haybarn.
* * *
She rounded the next corner at speed, and there, waiting for her was Old Tom, the caretaker. She stumbled to a halt, and he smiled benignly at her. He didn’t seem in the least surprised to see her. She struggled to get her harsh breathing back under control, so she could warn him about the Phantom; but he was already talking.
“You don’t want to go this way, miss. You want to go down there, round that corner, then it’s second on the right. Take you straight to the main stage area, that will. You can’t miss it.”
“Get out of here!” Melody said finally.
“What?”
“Get out of here! Get out of the theatre! There’s bad people here. Dangerous people.”
Old Tom smiled and shook his head. “Bless you, miss, I’m not in any danger. No-one’s going to hurt Old Tom. You follow the directions I gave you, and you’ll be fine.”
He pointed out the direction to her. Melody looked, and when she looked back, he was gone. Not a trace of him anywhere. Melody scowled briefly, gathered up her strength, and ran down the corridor.
* * *
She finally saw a familiar set of swing doors up ahead of her, burst through them without slowing, and found herself back in the main auditorium. She stumbled down the central aisle, leaning on end chairs as she went, for support. Up on the stage, JC and Happy, Benjamin and Elizabeth and Lissa, were all standing together and arguing loudly. They broke off to look out at her, caught off guard by her sudden entrance. She stopped, and slumped down onto a padded chair for a moment, to get her breath back. She always felt a little safer when JC and Happy were around, though, of course, she’d never tell them that. It took encountering something like Faust and his Phantom to get her to admit it to herself. She glanced quickly behind her; but there wasn’t the slightest sound or sight of the Phantom. Yet. She forced herself up out of her chair and glared indiscriminately at everyone on the stage.
“You stay right where you are! I’m coming up! And I don’t care what you’re arguing about; I’ve had a far worse time than you have, so my problems are bound to be much worse than yours, so I am entitled to be in a very bad mood!”
“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.
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