“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.”