“My machines didn’t detect anything, either,” said Melody. “But then, I never knew the right questions to ask them. If it walks like a person and talks like a person…”
“We should have been on our guard,” said Happy. “Especially after what happened at the railway station…”
“Don’t be too hard on yourselves,” said JC, cutting in quickly before Benjamin and Elizabeth could start asking awkward questions about the railway station and really confuse the issue. “I’m the one with the special all-seeing eyes, and I didn’t see a damned thing I wasn’t supposed to…But to be able to manifest that strongly, to walk around like one of us, or rather two of us, Lissa and Old Tom…there must be something in this theatre, some unusual source of power, to make these ghosts so much stronger than they had any right to be.”
The lights dimmed suddenly all across the stage. Dark shadows gathered. And then a single spotlight stabbed down from above, marking out one small part of the stage in a circle of shimmering light. And from out of the darkness and into the spotlight walked the ghost girl, Kim. She took up her position in the pool of brilliant light, standing tall and proud and serene, and smiled dazzlingly at everyone. She looked exactly the same as she had before, dressed in exactly the same way as when she’d been murdered, down in Oxford Circus Tube Station…when JC first met her. He started toward her, then made himself stop. He looked fiercely at the others.
“You can all see her this time?”
“Certainly looks like her,” said Happy. “But…I’m not getting anything from her, JC. I can’t even sense her presence, never mind her personality. And normally, she blazes in my mind like a balefire at midnight. Are you sure this isn’t another illusion?”
“You haven’t been picking up much of anything recently, Happy,” said JC, not unkindly.
“Don’t think I hadn’t noticed,” growled Happy. “Something, or more probably Someone, has been deliberately blocking me. And so thoroughly, and so subtly, I didn’t even notice. Until now. After what happened here, I thought it was Alistair Gravel who’d been misdirecting me with his scary visions, so I wouldn’t see through the Old Tom disguise he was wearing…but now I’m not so sure. This Faust you met, Melody; how long has he been here? How much of what we’ve seen and experienced could be down to him? And if he can make things, physical things like the Phantom, then maybe…”
“That looks like our Kim,” said Melody. “But why isn’t she saying anything? Normally, you can’t shut her up.”
“Could Alistair Gravel be behind her?” said Happy.
“How would he know about her?” said Melody.
“He’s dead!” said Happy. “The dead know all kinds of things they’re not supposed to!”
“Or maybe, just maybe, she really is my guardian-angel ghost,” said JC. “Come to save us all in our hour of need.”
He moved slowly forward, his footsteps loud and clear and echoing on the open stage. Kim smiled happily at him but made no move to leave the spotlight and come to him. JC stopped, carefully, right at the edge of the shimmering light. It was her face, every detail exactly right. He should know. He’d spent enough time staring at it. He spoke softly to Kim, doing his best to be persuasive without pressuring her.
“Why are you here, Kim? Can you tell me? Can you tell me anything? Something, anything, so I can be sure this is you.”
But she looked at him, smiling sadly, her eyes fixed on his, saying nothing. JC reached out a hand to her, and Kim immediately fell back a step. Her smile disappeared, and she looked at him warningly, admonishingly. JC stayed where he was. He wanted it to be her. Needed it to be her. But he didn’t trust anything in the Haybarn Theatre any more. Not even himself. He raised a hand to his sunglasses, to take them off and look at her directly with his altered eyes, then he stopped and spun round as the swing doors at the back of the auditorium smashed open, and the Phantom of the Haybarn came crashing through them.
Everyone turned to look. Both swing doors were blasted right off their hinges, thrown away to either side, by the sheer force of the Phantom’s arrival. He struck a pose in front of the great dark gap he’d made, letting everyone on the stage get a good look at him. Stooped, half-crouching like an animal, resplendent in Victorian finery and a night-dark opera cape with blood-red lining. He should have looked like a gentleman, like a civilised man from a civilised time; instead he looked more like some creature from the wild places, a beast that had been raised up to walk like a man but left none of its savagery behind. Murder was in his every move, death in his smile, horror in his rotting half-face and grubby half-mask. He laughed silently at them all, like some terrible predator from the jungle night.
“Told you,” said Melody. “The Phantom of the Haybarn.”
“Okay,” said Happy. “That is seriously ugly, with a really big side order of disgusting and distressing. But I have to say, although I’m quite definitely sensing its presence, I’m not picking up any thoughts from it. As such. That’s not a person. More like a projection from some other mind, further away.”
Melody said, “It’s a creation of the Faust. He made it. Right there in front of me. It’s bits of flesh, shaped by his will and intent.”
“Flesh?” said Happy. “Oh ick.”
“Not an actual creation, then,” said JC. “Not a living thing. Good to know this Faust has his limits.”
“It’s still butt ugly,” sniffed Happy.
“Go on,” said Melody. “I’m pretty sure it can hear you. Go ahead and annoy the insanely powerful murderous creature, why don’t you?”
“Shutting up now,” said Happy. “And hiding behind you until further notice.”
“I don’t think that…thing, that Phantom, is anything to do with the games Alistair has been playing,” said Benjamin.
“Of course not,” said Elizabeth. “Alistair had more style. Not to mention taste. His imagination was never that…grubby.”
“You never put on a production of The Phantom of the Opera?” said JC. “Nothing this creature could have been derived from?”
“Oh please,” said Elizabeth, crushingly. “We were theatre people, not music-hall.”
“Snob,” said Benjamin fondly.
“So this is nothing to do with our dead actor and his twenty-year-old grudge,” said JC. “This isn’t about you; this is about us. An old enemy of ours has followed us here.” He smiled slowly, and it was not a good smile. “The Faust is really nothing more than a party crasher; and it’s up to us to give him the boot. I say first we take down this second-rate Phantom, then we go find the Faust and kick his nasty arse until he agrees to tell us things we need to know.”
“Sounds good to me, boss,” said Happy, from behind Melody. “You go right ahead and get all violent on the dangerous psychopath in the cape. I’ll watch your back. From a distance.”
“We have to make the Faust talk,” said JC with a cold and deliberate patience. “He knows the truth about Kim. Where she’s been, what’s happened to her. You think it’s a coincidence she showed up here the same time as him?”
They all looked at Kim, standing still and silent in her spotlight. Like a ghost impaled on a shimmering pin. She looked only at JC, with calm, steady eyes. As though she was waiting for something.
“Is there anything you can do to help us, Kim?” said JC. “No. Then you stay here while I go have words with the Phantom.”
“Some guardian-angel ghost,” muttered Happy.
“I heard that!” said JC.
The Phantom came tearing through the auditorium towards the stage. He didn’t bother with the open aisle down the middle; instead, he tore a path right through the ranked rows of seats, in a casual, brutal display of strength. Insanely powerful, he smashed through the bolted-down seats as though they were made of paper, throwing broken pieces aside. The impacts didn’t slow him, and he took no obvious pain or damage. He hit the chairs like a runner breasting an endless series of tapes, his arms flailing wildly. The savage sounds of destruction echoed through the vast auditorium, bouncing back from the walls, the sounds of something destroying everything in its path because it couldn’t be bothered to go around.