“This whole show was for your benefit, my dears. I wanted to prove to you…what a great actor I was. Far more talented than that conceited movie star, bad cess to his name. He ruined your play. I hope you told everybody about his toupee…Good. I brought you back here so I could have a little fun with you, and to say good-bye, properly. Because we never got the chance. But the performance is over now. Ring down the curtains and get on with your lives. Go ahead with your play. All is forgiven. I always said…it was a bloody good play.”
“So there was never any real threat here?” said JC. “Never any real danger, to anyone?”
“Of course not,” said Alistair. “It was all me, putting on a show. Oh, it’s been so much fun, my dears, to have an audience again!”
“But why go to such lengths, to create things to scare the crap out of us?” said Benjamin.
“Because I owed you both a good scare, like the one you gave me,” said Alistair. “And, perhaps, a little punishment. But it was all perfectly harmless scars. Think of it as a good old-fashioned ghost-train ride. I always loved those…”
“Oh bloody hell, not another one,” muttered Happy.
“Hold everything,” said Melody. “What about the dead homeless guy?”
“What about him?” said Alistair. “He broke in one evening and died of a heart attack in his sleep. Nothing to do with me.”
“Excuse me!” said the Faust, very loudly. “Will you all please shut the hell up and pay attention to me!” He glared around at them all until he was sure he’d got everyone’s attention again. “Do you really think I give a damn about some twenty-year-old sob story and some half-arsed ghost who can’t take a hint and piss off to the afterworlds where he belongs? Life is for the living, and the flesh is all that matters.”
Happy smirked at Melody. “He’s talking to you.”
“What? Him? That scrawny piece of shit in the off-the-peg suit?” said Melody. “Look at the state of him—no two pounds of the man hanging straight. I’d rather sleep with the dummy the suit came from. He couldn’t keep up with me, anyway…”
“Not many can,” said Happy.
“This is true,” said Melody. “Now stop fishing for compliments.”
“You’ll have to excuse them,” JC said to the increasingly frustrated Faust. “They’re just being themselves. But they do have a point. For all your fine words, what can you hope to do against trained operatives like us? We only had to give your Phantom thing a hard look, and it fell apart on us.”
“The Phantom of the Haybarn was only a bit of fun,” said the Faust. “Now it’s time to get serious. The best way to overcome an enemy is to make them a part of you. Even if you’re clearly not worthy…So, I’m going to eat you all up with spoons.”
He gestured languidly at the trap-Door, lying forgotten on the other side of the stage, and a great fountain of corpse white flesh erupted up out of the dark opening. It reached almost to the high ceiling—a tower of pulsing, expanding and contracting flesh…before finally falling back again to slap onto the stage and spread out in a great pulsating pool. It moved slowly but inexorably across the stage towards the actors and the Ghost Finders, in sudden spurts and rushes. More and more of the stuff burst up out of the trap-Door, spilling out in all directions, forming a thick carpet of flesh on the stage. It rose and pressed forward like a slow-motion wave, throwing out sudden extremities, straining hungrily out for prey. Flesh, without form or limit, called up by the Faust and driven on by his will: an endless supply of living tissue, come to eat up everything set before it and make them a part of it.
JC had frozen in place like all the others, but he broke the spell first and gestured quickly for everyone else to back away from the advancing, hungry tide. But they’d barely started moving before more of the shapeless mass burst out of the other wings, spilling across the stage towards them. More welled out from behind the drawn curtains at the back of the stage, and a sudden white wave leapt up over the front of the stage. The actors and Ghost Finders pressed close together, surrounded on all sides by a slow-moving sea of hungry flesh. It boiled and seethed, rising and falling in sudden surges; and as it drew nearer, JC could see narrow traceries of blue veins in the white material. It was alive in its own way. JC didn’t need to ask the Faust what this stuff would do when it finally reached its prey. He could feel its hunger pulsing on the air. It was here to swallow them all up, render them down, and absorb every last bit of them into itself.
Flesh at its most basic, all appetite and menace, here to serve The Flesh Undying.
Alistair Gravel lifted his ghostly feet and sat cross-legged in mid air, perfectly poised, looking down at the flesh moving jerkily below him with a curled lip of cold distaste. The flesh ignored him. Perhaps because it could tell he wasn’t real, that he had no physical presence to absorb.
Happy glared about him, scowling at the gleaming, pulsing mass. “Okay. This is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen. And I’ve been around.”
“Are you picking up anything, from this…stuff?” said JC, looking quickly about him for anything that might serve as an exit and not finding one.
“Yes,” said Happy. “It’s not an illusion. Unfortunately. It’s really physically here even though I do wish ever so much that it wasn’t. It’s alive, and it’s hungry. Don’t let even the smallest part of it touch you.”
“Way ahead of you there,” said Melody.
“It’s like that movie, with Steve McQueen,” said Elizabeth, clinging tightly to Benjamin while trying hard to sound brave.
“Hush, dear,” said Benjamin. “You’re showing your age.”
“Oh come on, darling. Who remembers anything about that awful remake? Benjamin, it really is getting awfully close…”
“Stay close to me, love. Stick close to me.”
By now, they’d all been herded together in the middle of the stage while the flesh urged slowly forward on all sides at once. It was almost half a foot deep, and growing taller and thicker all the time, as more and more of the sickening stuff burst up out of the trap-Door. It advanced in sudden leaps and spurts, throwing up into the air sticky projections, projections that fell back to be absorbed and vanish into the main mass. The flesh oozed straight past the Faust without touching or bothering him, and he smiled happily at his victims, huddled together before him.
Benjamin looked urgently at JC over Elizabeth’s shoulder as she hid her face against his chest. “You and Happy destroyed the Phantom! You’re the professionals here! Can’t you do anything?”
“I am,” said JC. “I’m thinking.”
“What?” said Benjamin. “You’re thinking?”
“Yes,” said JC. “The Phantom was flesh but a small thing. There doesn’t seem to be any end to this…”
“Where’s it all coming from?” said Happy.
“From The Flesh Undying, I assume,” said JC. “Directly or indirectly. It would appear the name is more literally descriptive than we realised. I’d been hoping it was a metaphor…Still, spirit trumps flesh every time. Because flesh begins and ends in life, while spirit transcends life…So, to counter this much flesh, we need more spirits. Logic. Alistair Gravel! Come on down! This is your theatre, your place of power. We need a helping hand here, and you need to put a stop to this unwelcome intrusion. If you really have forgiven your friends, and don’t want them to die…”
“Of course I don’t!” said Alistair. “But what can I do?”
“We need spirits, darling!” Elizabeth said, turning away from Benjamin without leaving his arms to stare desperately at Alistair. “Spirits like you, to throw against this awful Faust person. Can you oblige?”
“Glad to,” said Alistair. “Sorry if I’m a bit slow, my dears, but this is all new to me. And rather more than one poor ghost can handle. Fortunately, I’m not alone here.” He lowered his legs to stand on the stage, right in the middle of the fleshy sea. The pulsing white mass cringed back from him, repulsed by his very nature. Alistair sneered at the Faust. “H
ow do you think I achieved all my many illusions, and manifestations? My power comes from the theatre: a place of dreams and dramas, created by the living to be timeless. So that the Past and the Present and the Future could always be with us. Visions and fantasies become eternal truths, on this stage. History becomes legend; ordinary men and women become immortal. The Haybarn is full of the spirits of performances long past and audiences long gone. They’re all still here, in spirit, because they loved this place too much to ever leave it completely.
“So rise up, dear friends! Let us fill the stalls with our English dead, and drive out this soulless, heartless wretch and the mess he’s made of our glorious stage! Rise up, you players all! ‘The play’s the thing!’”
Suddenly, the whole stage was full of costumed men and women. Packed from front to back and wing to wing. With lords and ladies, character roles and spear-carriers, and every actor who ever created magic for an audience…with words and gestures and perhaps a knowing look. Whole armies from Shakespeare, crowds of comic actors and proud tragedians, uncounted heroes and villains, and any number of attendant lords proud to swell a scene. Drawn back to the stage, by the pride and glory of their ancient profession, to set their great hearts and hard-learned lessons against the simple, spiteful malice of the Faust.
Great in spirit, no matter how small they may have been in life, because deep down every one of them knew that everything they did on the stage was not for them but for their audiences.
And there they were, too, all the audiences that ever were, countless bodies filling the ranked rows of seats in the vast auditorium. A sea of faces, come in celebration of the magic they saw made before them every night, of the lifting of the spirit and the awakening of the heart, that the actors made possible. Come to stand against the empty heart of the Faust.
Actors stood together on the stage, row upon row and rank upon rank, packed so tightly they overlapped each other. And together, they advanced upon the Faust. The audience stood up, as one, and charged the stage, rushing forward in a great tide. The dead actors and the dead audiences fell upon the Faust, and all his vicious flesh was no match for their spirits.
The glistening sea of flesh withered at their touch, unable to cope with so much spirit in one place. It fell back from them, dissipating and disappearing, surging back to the trap-Door. In moments, it was all gone. The ghosts swarmed past Benjamin and Elizabeth and the Ghost Finders, not even seeing them, all their attention focused on the Faust. Benjamin and Elizabeth looked on, wide-eyed and wondering, recognising a face here and there. Even though the ghosts didn’t see them. They were not here for the living. The ghostly actors and audiences surrounded the Faust, circling him, round and round and round; while he turned his face away, this way and that, crying out…faced with something beyond his powers and his experience. All he knew was the selfishness of flesh. All the arrogance and confidence had been beaten out of him, and he had nothing to replace them with.
Alistair Gravel came forward, and an aisle opened up before him so that he could walk unhurriedly through the army of ghosts he’d called up, to confront the Faust. Alistair came forward, and the Faust spun around to face him, confused and half-mad. The two men stared at each other—the dead man not yet departed and the living man who’d only thought himself so much more.
“There’s more to life than flesh,” Alistair said finally. “Here, in this theatre, generations of actors and audiences have celebrated all the glories of the human heart and soul. Monday to Friday, twice on Saturdays. The theatre celebrates all the things…that life is for. The things more important than life, that make being human worthwhile. The great Dream of Humanity. What is flesh in the face of that?”
“Don’t get cocky, little ghost,” said the Faust, breathless with shock, glaring desperately about him. “There’s more to power than sheer strength of numbers. All of you together are no match for me! I’m the Faust! I’m not just flesh; I am the force that gives flesh form and meaning and appetite. I’m alive; and you’re dead!”
“And that…is why it will take both body and spirit, the living and the dead working together, to stop you,” said Kim Sterling, the ghost girl.
They all looked round at the unexpected voice, and another aisle opened up among the massed spirits on the stage so that Kim could walk through them, to stand before JC. She smiled at him, and, after a moment, JC smiled back at her.
“You always did know how to make an entrance, Kim.”
“Hello, love,” said Kim. “Miss me?”
“You know I did,” said JC. “I almost died without you. Where have you been, all this time? That was you, at the railway station, wasn’t it?”
“Of course,” said Kim. “You didn’t think I’d leave, walk off and abandon you, did you? But answers will have to wait. There is business to be done here. The Faust must be dealt with. Nasty little thing that he is. We have to do this together, JC. Your flesh and my spirit against the simple brutal thing that is the Faust. Are you ready, my love?”
“Always,” said JC.
“Brace yourself,” said Kim.
She walked forward, into JC’s body, until she overlapped him completely, combining her ghostly self with his physical form. Joining the two of them together, into a whole far more than the sum of its parts. JC cried out, in shock and pain and awe, as his whole body glowed with the same golden glare as his eyes. And both the living and the dead had to turn their faces aside, away from that blinding, brilliant, otherworldly light.
JC and Kim advanced on the Faust, and the ghosts fell back as something moved through them, shining like a star fallen to the earth. The Faust cried out. He couldn’t look away, couldn’t back away, held where he was by the power in that light. JC and Kim stopped, right before the Faust, and dropped one heavy hand onto his shoulder. And the Faust cried out again, in agony and horror, as his whole body shook and shattered under that unbearable touch.
He crumbled and fell apart, collapsing in upon himself like the artificial construct he was, like a statue struck by a hundred hammers. He fell into pieces, which melted and ran away, dissipating into streaky mists that hung heavily on the still air, before reluctantly disappearing. His face hung on stubbornly, hanging together on the top of the pile till the very last, through some awful act of will, his glaring eyes fixed on JC and Kim. When he spoke, at the last, his voice seemed to come from far and far-away.
“I won’t go,” he said. “I can’t go, not yet. Not till I’ve had my say. One last chance to strike at you, JC, and hurt you. I have enough strength left for that.”
“Stamp on him, JC,” said Happy. “Shut the bastard up. He doesn’t have anything to say that you need to hear.”
“No,” said JC and Kim, with both their voices. “He knows things.”
“I didn’t sell my soul for power,” said the Faust’s face, already drifting away at the edges. “I sold my body to be free from the limitations of the flesh, and of the spirit. For a better soul, not trapped within the body. Already my master is calling me away, to a place where you can’t reach me. Where he will set me up again, as something new and even more powerful. The new flesh, the bad flesh. You’ll see! Oh, don’t look so disappointed, JC. We’ll meet again. After all, we have so much in common. Because you’re no more real than I am!”
“What are you talking about?” said JC.
“You haven’t been real since the Outside reached down and touched you in the Underground! Don’t you get it, JC? You died down there, on that demon train; and the Outside brought you back!”
“Why?” said JC and Kim. “Why would it do that?”
“For its own purposes, of course. That’s why you can love a ghost girl when most living men can’t stand to be around them. That’s why you can hold her within you now, and use her power, to do this to me! That’s why you were drawn together…That’s why…”
His voice trailed away, his gaze fixed on something only he could see. And a look of utter horror passed over his crumbling face. When he spo
ke again his voice was full of shock and panic, and a terrible, agonised betrayal.
“No! No, Master! You promised me! You promised me…”
His voice broke into a heart-rending scream of loss and deception; and then his face collapsed into undifferentiated flesh, melting and running away into the open trap-Door, which swallowed him up, slammed shut after him, and disappeared. Kim stepped forward, out of JC, and for a long moment they both looked at where the trap-Door had been before they turned to look at each other.
“Do you believe him?” said Kim.
“I don’t know,” said JC. “I don’t know what to believe. Does it matter?”
“We found each other,” said Kim. “Living or dead, nothing else will ever matter as much.”
“Hello,” said Happy. “Where’s everybody gone?”
Everyone looked around them. The ghosts were gone, all the actors and their audiences, returned to their rest. The stage was empty, the auditorium full of broken chairs again. Happy and Melody stood together, and Benjamin and Elizabeth stood very close together. Alistair Gravel stood to one side, studying JC and Kim thoughtfully.
“I declare this case officially closed,” said JC. “The Haunting of the Haybarn Theatre is over. If that’s all right with you, Alistair?”
“Oh yes. Certainly!” said Alistair. “Job done as far as I’m concerned.”
JC smiled fondly at Kim. “My guardian-angel ghost. Always arriving just in the nick of time.”
“I can’t stay, JC,” said Kim.
“What? Why not?” said JC. “You have to! Or do they…Does someone still have a hold over you?”
“No,” said Kim. “They never did. They never had me, JC. I had to disappear, but I can’t tell you why. Not yet. I saw something, then, and…Come after me, JC. Come and find me. And when you do, all will become clear. The real job, the real mission, isn’t over yet. Come find me, JC. I’ll be waiting for you.”
She placed one ghostly hand against his cheek; and he could almost feel it, like a cool breeze passing by. But by the time he’d raised a hand to place over hers, she was already gone. Disappeared in a moment, as though she had never been there. JC nodded slowly, at some hidden thought, or decision, then he turned away and walked back across the stage, to join the others.
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