Ghost of a Dream

SEVEN OFFENSIVE CLOTHING

JC stood at the very front of the stage, looking out over the empty auditorium and bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet. He was enjoying this case so far. Lots of clues, lots of entertaining weird shit, and, best of all, he had no idea what the hell was going on. JC always enjoyed a challenge. Something fiendishly complicated, and horribly fiendish, to test his smarts and his courage. JC never felt more alive than when jousting with death. More so these days because he had nothing else. Kim had been his reason for living; and with her gone, he had to find something else to fill his thoughts, to keep him from thinking about her.

He’d seen her here. In the theatre. That had to mean something.

“So,” said Lissa, coming forward to stand right beside him, “here we are, alone on the stage together, just the two of us. That has to mean something…Why did you choose me as your partner and send everyone else away, I wonder?”

“Almost certainly not for the reason you’re thinking,” said JC, turning unhurriedly around to smile at her. “Now that Benjamin and Elizabeth are gone, let us take the opportunity to talk about them behind their backs. How well do you know them?”

Lissa shrugged briefly. “They hired me to be in their play, for really good money. What more do I need to know?”

“You must have made some inquiries before you agreed to take on the role,” said JC. “You must have heard something…”

“Well, one always hears things, sweetie. No-one loves a good gossip more than the acting profession. For us, adoration and backbiting are but two sides of the same coin. I did hear that this play was jinxed…A lot of people in my business wouldn’t touch it with a disinfected barge-pole. And not simply because it died the death in its first and only run. The original male lead in the play, all those years ago, was supposed to be one Alistair Gravel. Except he didn’t get to be the lead, did he?”

JC nodded. “I remember Benjamin and Elizabeth saying he died, in an accident.”

“Which is very interesting,” said Lissa. “Because I was told Alistair Gravel up and disappeared. Vanished, between one rehearsal and the next. And he was never found again, dead or alive. Not one trace of him anywhere, in the last twenty years, which is a bit odd, sweetie, for such an up-and-coming, talented young actor. Wouldn’t you say?”

JC considered her thoughtfully. “You didn’t take this role because your agent advised you to, did you?”

Lissa laughed softly. “No. I came here because I wanted to find out what really did happen to my uncle Alistair. I grew up listening to stories about his mysterious disappearance, so when my agent got the offer, to be in a play so unlucky they have to attach a rabbit’s foot to every script to get people to read it…I jumped at the chance. My agent still isn’t talking to me. I think dear Benjamin and Elizabeth know a lot more than they’re saying. I think they know what happened here, all those years ago. If we can persuade them to talk.”

JC raised an eyebrow. “‘We,’ dear lady?”

“You want to know what’s behind the haunting in this theatre,” said Lissa, with an artless toss of her head. “And it’s my belief that all these spooky manifestations are directly connected to the missing Alistair Gravel.”

“Seems likely,” said JC, in his best I’m giving away nothing at this time voice. “Every haunting, every bad place, has its starting point—its beginning, in some dramatic moment. And its power source. Ghosts…are all about unfinished business.” He looked steadily at Lissa. “Do you think your missing uncle Alistair is the ghost here? That he’s behind everything that’s happening?”

“Seems likely,” said Lissa. “Robbed of his chance for fame and glory at the very last moment? Struck down on the brink of stardom? Has to be.”

“Do you think Benjamin and Elizabeth killed him?” said JC.

“Now why would they do that?” said Lissa. “He was their friend. Their very good friend.”

“People have sacrificed good friends before, for success,” said JC.

“But there was no success,” said Lissa. “The play that was supposed to do so much for everyone, ruined the lives of everyone associated with it. Still, I’ll bet you good money that Benjamin and Elizabeth know the truth. Whatever it is.”

She turned to JC, stopping before him just that little bit short of uncomfortably close, and smiled dazzlingly.

“Why did you ask me to stay with you, then send all the others away?”

“Because,” said JC, staring into her eyes, “I wanted to talk to you, alone. And see how well we’re doing…Getting right to the heart of the matter, without interruptions. I don’t trust Benjamin and Elizabeth any more than you do. It’s obvious they’re hiding secrets, things they won’t talk about except with each other. That’s why I sent them off with Happy.”

“Because he’s a telepath?” murmured Lissa, her face so close to JC’s now that he could feel her warm breath on her face. Her perfume, rich and flowery, filled his head.

“If only it were that easy,” said JC, steadily. “No, Happy doesn’t read the minds of the living if he can help it. He has enough trouble keeping other people’s thoughts outside his head so he can hear himself think. No, that’s not it. He’s…surprisingly easy to talk to, and confide in. You’d be surprised how many people will let their guard down and open up when faced with someone clearly so much more battered and broken than they.”

“Well then,” said Lissa, the brief puffs of air in the two syllables hitting him right in the mouth. “No ulterior motives? No other reason for wanting to be here alone, with me?”

JC took a single step backwards, separating them. “Don’t you point those bosoms at me, sweetie. I have a girl-friend.”

“I won’t tell if you won’t.”

“She’d know,” said JC. “And so would I. It took me a long time to find the love of my life, my Kim; and I won’t do anything that might risk losing her again.”

“I don’t see her around anywhere,” said Lissa. “Is she a part of your team? Why isn’t she here now?”

“How do you know she isn’t?” said JC. “Kim’s dead.”

Lissa’s smile disappeared. “Okay; that’s quite spooky.”

“Yes,” said JC. “It is.”

Lissa looked at him steadily. “Why do you always wear sunglasses? It’s not a style thing, is it?”

“No,” said JC.

“There’s something not quite right about your eyes,” said Lissa. “I could tell that from the first moment I met you. Take off your shades, JC. Let me look into your eyes.”

“Really not a good idea, Lissa…”

“Please. I need to see, to be sure…Do it for me, JC.”

And without quite knowing why, JC reached up and removed his sunglasses. He expected Lissa to cry out and turn away. Everyone else did. His eyes weren’t human eyes any more. But Lissa stood there, very still, staring back into his fiercely blazing eyes, apparently unaffected by a Gorgon gaze that had sent other people running for their lives and their sanity.

“Oh, wow…” said Lissa, very quietly. “I had no idea…”

The golden light from JC’s altered eyes bathed her face in sunshine, and she wasn’t in the least dazed or distressed. She looked more…dazzled. Her face soaked up the light, and she didn’t once blink or wince or look aside. She bathed in the golden glow, smiling happily, her eyes full of a simple, unaffected wonder.

“What do you see, Lissa?” said JC.

“It’s like looking into Heaven,” said Lissa, softly. And then she turned her head away, but not before JC caught a glimpse of a terrible sadness in her eyes. She walked away, her arms tightly crossed, hugging herself, then stopped abruptly and looked out over the auditorium.

“This is why actors love the stage,” she said, without looking around. “Because it’s always here for us when we need it.”

JC put his sunglasses back on. He wasn’t sure what had just happened. He could have gone after Lissa, but he didn’t. Because you don’t have to be a telepath to know when people need their space. Still, there was a lot more to this eager young actress than met the eye.

“There’s something different about you, Lissa,” he said.

“Got that right,” said Lissa, still not looking around. “Really. You have no idea.”

“You haven’t told me the whole truth about why you’re here, have you?”

Lissa laughed, briefly. “A girl has to have some secrets, sweetie.”

“What do you think really happened to your uncle Alistair?” JC asked bluntly.

Lissa looked out over the empty rows of seats, and when she finally spoke, her voice was unaccountably weary. “Oh, I’m pretty sure he’s dead. Like dear Benjamin and Elizabeth said. And I think they’re probably the only ones left now who know the whole story. What really happened. I’m here…because I want the truth to come out. All of it.”

JC considered the matter for a moment. “Why would Benjamin and Elizabeth tell us Alistair was dead, that he died in a tragic accident all those years ago…when they must have known everyone else believes he’s missing?”

“Maybe they didn’t mean to say it,” said Lissa, turning around, at last, to smile at JC. “Maybe there’s something about this place that makes people speak the truth. Whether they mean to or not.”

“You haven’t been scared by anything that’s happened here, have you?” said JC. “I saw you, when that dead thing was dragging itself across the stage…You didn’t blink an eye. It didn’t bother you one bit.”

Lissa shrugged easily. “Oh, I’ve always loved ghost-train rides, sweetie. You couldn’t keep me off them when I was younger. Takes a lot to spook me…”

JC heard a familiar voice say his name. He looked off stage, and there she was, standing in the wings—Kim. Smiling at him. JC smiled back at her, and a great wave of warmth and relief washed through him. It felt like he’d put down a great weight. And that he hadn’t realised how heavy it was until he could put it down at last. She was here again, here with him; and that had to mean something. Lissa looked at JC, looked to where he was looking, then back at him. She frowned, slightly.

“JC, what are you looking at?”

“This is my girl-friend Kim,” said JC. “I told you she was keeping an eye on me.”

Lissa took a few steps forward, so she could stare right into the wings, then turned back to JC. “I don’t see anything…”

“Kim is a ghost,” JC said calmly. “That’s how we met. She’s the only real ghost in the Ghost Finders. My team-mate, my soul-mate, and my one true love. I thought I’d lost her, but she came back to me. Apparently to be my guardian angel in times of peril.”

“JC, really, I can’t see anybody,” said Lissa. “There’s no-one there!”

“You have to learn to see with better eyes,” said JC. He grinned and tapped his sunglasses significantly with the tip of one finger. “It’s a larger world we live in than most people know or would want to know. Packed full, with the living and the dead. Because sometimes even death can’t keep some people apart.”

“You are seriously freaking me out here, JC,” said Lissa.

JC strode across the stage, towards the wings. Kim waited till he’d almost reached her, then she drifted backwards, still smiling, leading him on. JC plunged into the wings after her, and Lissa trotted unhappily along behind him.

“I really don’t like where this is going, JC.”

Kim led JC backstage, then down into the narrow corridors at the rear of the theatre, and into the deeper recesses of the old building. Always staying just ahead of JC, no matter how hard he tried to catch up. Lissa bustled along beside him, determined to keep up, shooting dark glances in all directions and muttering to herself. JC didn’t pay much attention to his surroundings, except to note that he didn’t think he’d been this way before. He kept trying to talk to Kim: Are you all right? Are you still being held against your will or have you broken free? Why won’t you speak to me? But Kim never answered him; instead, she smiled back at him. Sometimes encouragingly; sometimes sadly. But never a word. She drifted steadily backwards before him, her feet hovering a few inches above the floor.

“Can I say,” said Lissa, a bit brusquely and half out of breath, “that I am getting seriously weirded out by this one-sided conversation? There’s no-one there, JC! I can see the whole length of this corridor quite clearly, and we are the only things in it! Trust me on this!”

“Try to keep up, Lissa,” said JC, not unkindly. “My Kim may be dead, but she is definitely not departed. She is a ghost, and not everyone can see ghosts.”

“I saw that crawling man!”

“Yes,” said JC. “So you did. Interesting, that.”

Kim finally slowed to a stop before one particular closed door and hovered there. She rose and fell slowly in mid air, her long red hair streaming away to both sides as though she were underwater. She looked entirely solid, but JC knew that if he reached out to her, there wouldn’t be anything there. He loved her, but he’d never been able to touch her. Lissa looked from him to the closed door and back again.

“Is she still there? From the soppy look on your face, I’m assuming she still is. What’s behind that door? What’s she saying?”

“She isn’t saying anything,” said JC, sharply.

Lissa sniffed loudly. “No name on the door, nothing to indicate what’s behind it. Doesn’t look any different from all the other doors we passed to get here. Looks like a store-room to me. Do we go in?”

JC looked at Kim. She drifted to one side and gestured at the door; and it swung slowly back to reveal the room beyond.

“Heads up!” said Lissa. “That door opened on its own!”

“That was Kim,” said JC. “Come on…”

He started towards the open door, then stopped as he realised that Lissa was hanging back.

“You’re not really thinking of going in there, are you?” said Lissa. “There could be anything in there. And in this theatre, anything covers a hell of a lot of ground!”

“Kim brought me here,” said JC. “She must have her reasons…”

But when he looked at Kim to confirm this, she wasn’t there. JC flinched as though he’d been hit. A cold hand closed around his heart and squeezed like it would never let go. It was actually harder for him to deal with Kim’s absence now that she was coming and going in his life. Lissa followed his gaze.

“Am I to take it, from that wounded, tragic look on your face, that ghost girl isn’t with us any more?”

“No,” said JC. “She disappeared. She does that.”

“So that makes two of us who can’t see her,” said Lissa.

JC ignored her, thinking hard as he studied the open door. “Why would she bring me here, then vanish? Unless there’s something…significant in this room. Something I need to see…She only appeared before when I was in danger. My guardian-angel ghost. Am I in danger here? Or do I need to see what’s in this room to avoid some future danger?”

“He’s talking, but he’s not talking to me,” said Lissa.

JC shot her a sudden grin. “I’m going in. To kick a few things around, start some trouble, see what I can stir up. You can stay out here if you want.”

“Sweetie,” said Lissa, “I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

They both plunged through the doorway, ready for anything. They found themselves in a fairly large room, packed from wall to wall with row upon row of theatrical costumes, hanging on metal stands. Hundreds of the things, a massive peacock display of styles and colours. There was nothing else in the room, no tables or chairs, not even a mirror on the wall in which to admire one’s new costume. Bare, plastered walls, no window, only a single naked light bulb hanging down, filling the room with an unflattering, almost forensic light. JC looked at Lissa.

“Do you have any idea what these costumes are doing here?”

“Nothing to do with me, sweetie,” said Lissa. She looked the costumes over and sniffed loudly to show how unimpressed she was. “I have to say, I don’t like the look of them. There’s something…off about those costumes.”

“Presumably Benjamin and Elizabeth ordered them, for the play.”

“I hardly think so,” said Lissa. “Rehearsals aren’t due to start until after the renovations are completed. Why hire and ship in expensive costumes before the new paint’s even dry? Besides, the play is set very firmly, not to say remorselessly, in the present day. I mean, look at all this! There are enough costumes here for a dozen plays or one light opera revival! Everything from Shakespeare to Restoration comedy, Victorian formal wear to military uniforms. I don’t like this, JC. They shouldn’t be here…And I don’t think we should, either.”

“Kim brought me here…”

“So you keep saying! But I never saw a damned thing! Forget your ghostly girl-friend…Trust a ghost hunter to have a dead girl-friend, which now that I think about it, is decidedly icky…You’ll be telling me you sleep in a coffin next.”

“Never on a first date,” said JC.

“Oh, I feel so much safer now,” said Lissa.

They shared a smile and looked around them. The costumes stared silently back.

“There must be some good reason for us to be here,” JC said stubbornly. “And since the only things here are the costumes…I suppose we should inspect them. Maybe there’ll be a note in a pocket or something…”

He stepped up to the first row, and briskly checked out the clothes, one at a time. Lissa moved reluctantly forward while making it very clear she didn’t want any part of it. She wouldn’t touch anything until she’d watched JC man-handle a whole bunch of them without suffering any ill effects. And then she sighed heavily and pulled out a costume here and there, looking it over carefully and checking the details.

“Good-quality material,” she said, finally. “High-end workmanship. But…”

“But?” said JC. “But what?” He held a Napoleon uniform up against himself, to see how he’d look in it, then reluctantly put it back again.

“But,” Lissa said firmly, “a lot of the details are wrong. Mixed periods in the same outfit, wrong kinds of pockets and trimmings, out-of-period materials, important bits and pieces missing…No professional costumier would make mistakes like this. This…is more like someone faking it. Producing costumes good enough to fool the eye but only from a distance. Amateur night. These clothes look like costumes, JC; but they aren’t.”

JC looked across at Lissa. She stepped back from the costumes to look them over, hands on hips, glaring ferociously. She looked…suspicious, and JC had to wonder why. Nothing else she’d encountered in the theatre had provoked this reaction.

“All these costumes must mean something,” he said, standing back with her so he could study the rows of clothes with a sceptical eye. “They must be important. Or why bring us all this way just to see them?”

“We could always play dress-up,” said Lissa, but JC could tell that her heart wasn’t in it.

“If we assume that Benjamin and Elizabeth didn’t arrange for these costumes to be here…” he said slowly.

“And I think we can assume that,” said Lissa, very firmly.

“Then someone else must have,” said JC, talking right over her. “Which in turn implies that we’re not the only people interested in this theatre. And this haunting. We’re not the only people in this building. Which would explain a lot.”

Lissa glared about her, looking seriously unsettled. “There can’t be anyone else here. There just can’t. I’d know. I’d feel it…” She realised JC was considering her silently and scowled back at him. “I’m very sensitive to my surroundings!”

“A lot of people are,” JC said soothingly. “Or believe they are. But one of the first things you learn in the Ghost Finding business is that you can’t always trust your instincts. Things, and people, aren’t necessarily always what they seem, in a haunting situation. The dead play by their own rules.”

“But what would the dead want with a whole bunch of not-particularly-accurate costumes?” said Lissa, bluntly.

A slow, heavy rustle passed through the ranks of hanging costumes, like a breeze through forest branches. Hanging clothes twitched and shook, singly and in groups. Sleeves bent and twisted, jackets expanded and relaxed as though someone was breathing in them, and trousers bent at the knee, again and again, as though dreaming of running. Everywhere, costumes were heaving and flexing, as though bothered by unquiet thoughts.

“Back away, Lissa,” JC said quietly.

He glanced back and found that Lissa had already backed all the way up to the closed door, unable to tear her gaze away from the slowly moving costumes. There was a new, uneasy feeling in the room, harsh and oppressive: a sharp tension on the air, anticipating bad things to come. JC glared about him. The feeling of being watched was back again, but colder, more intense. As though someone knew something bad was about to happen and meant to enjoy it.

“It’s a trap,” Lissa said tonelessly. “We’ve been lured into a trap.”

“Don’t get twitchy,” said JC. “It’s all gone weird, agreed, but…it’s only a bunch of clothes. There’s no-one else here but us, living or dead. Look at them; they’re…bits of cloth on wire hangers!” He looked back at Lissa, to see how she was taking it, and thought she looked more puzzled than scared. “Come on!” he said, encouragingly. “How much of a threat can clothes be?”

As he was saying that, all the costumes shrugged off their hangers and moved away from the cold, metal racks, standing upright on their own. They stood in silent ranks, empty and uninhabited. The clothing rails were forced to the very back of the room, pushed back through the ranks of standing clothes, so an army of empty costumes could confront JC and Lissa with nothing to get in their way. No heads rose from the empty collars, no hands emerged from the empty sleeves, and the slack trousers and leggings hovered a few inches above the floor, with no trace of a foot, or even a shoe. Only costume after costume, standing together in row upon row, turning slowly and silently to orientate themselves on JC, with a horrid sense of purpose.

“You had to ask, didn’t you?” said Lissa. “How dangerous can they be? Look at them!”

A subtle frisson of horror ran through JC as he remembered an old childhood terror. Of how discarded clothes can look on a chair at night, or hanging from a door; of how they could seem to come alive…or look very much as though they might. In the dark of a child’s bedroom. As a young child, JC had wondered whether clothes ever felt angry at being worn and used and moved around under someone else’s control. Made to go places and do things and make movements…that they wouldn’t have chosen to, themselves. On their own. And sometimes he’d wondered whether, when the clothes were finally taken off and laid aside and left to their own devices till morning…whether they might not someday rise and take their revenge?

“Lissa,” JC said quietly, not taking his eyes off the rows and rows of silently watching clothes stacked before him. “I think this might be a good time to get the hell out of here.”

“About time!” said Lissa.

She went over to open the door, then stopped and looked at it.

“Who closed the door, JC? I didn’t close the door.”

“Don’t sweat the small shit, Lissa,” said JC. “Let’s get out of here.”

Lissa reached for the door handle, then stopped again as she realised JC wasn’t coming back to join her. “JC, come on! I’m not leaving without you!”

“It’s all right,” said JC. “I know what to do. I’ve been trained to deal with shit like this.”

“Like this?” said Lissa.

“Well, maybe not quite like this,” said JC. “I’m thinking this is probably some kind of large-scale poltergeist activity…But either way, I can’t run off and leave this happening. Someone might get hurt.” He squared his shoulders and took a step forward, to confront the standing costumes. “Listen up!” he said loudly. “I am JC Chance, Ghost Finder in good standing. Licenced to kick supernatural arse. What do you want, clothes?”

There was no response. JC wasn’t exactly surprised. There wasn’t anyone in the clothes to answer. But the more he looked at the various costumes, the spookier they seemed. The lack of heads, of faces, was particularly disturbing. How can you hope to negotiate with, or even threaten, something that has no head to listen with? The more he looked, the more he found to unsettle him. The clothes had no eyes; but they could still see him. Still know exactly where he was. Every single outfit was orientated on him. And none of them had any of the bulges, or fullness, that you’d expect from the bodies that should be inhabiting them. The sleeves were flat, and the legs didn’t bend. These weren’t clothes worn by invisible men; they were clothes, moving under their own impulses. Animated, not inhabited. He couldn’t decide whether that was worse, or not.

He said as much to Lissa, who nodded stiffly. “It’s worse. We’re definitely not alone in this theatre. Someone else is in here with us, doing this.”

She broke off abruptly, as the costumes lurched forward. Row upon row of the things, advancing on JC and Lissa. There was a horrid sense of purpose, of open menace, in their jerky, deliberate movements. Materials rubbed together in a rough susurrus, as though the clothes were whispering to each other. They bustled against each other in their eagerness; but there wasn’t the sound of a single footstep.

“Definitely time to get the hell out of Dodge,” said JC.

He turned his back on the slowly advancing clothes as an act of defiance and hurried over to join Lissa at the door. She was looking blankly at the moving costumes as though hypnotised, as though she couldn’t believe it was happening. JC grabbed the door handle and rattled it hard; but it wouldn’t turn. He stepped back and charged forward, putting his shoulder to the door; but while the heavy wood jumped and rattled loudly in its frame, it wouldn’t open.

“That isn’t going to work!” Lissa said angrily, snapped out of her daze. “The door opened inwards; remember?”

“Now you tell me,” muttered JC, rubbing at his bruised shoulder. “Do you see anything in here we can use to break down the door?”

“No. Nothing. You think maybe that’s deliberate? Because I sure as hell do. I told you this was a trap!”

“Try not to lose it just yet, Lissa,” said JC. “There are still options.” He moved to stand between her and the advancing costumes. “You can’t let this get to you. A lot’s happened since we entered this theatre, but even though some of it was seriously spooky, and even downright disturbing on occasion…there was never a time when we were in any real danger. I’m trained to notice things like that. Somebody has been doing their level best to scare us, but not once in any way that put our lives at risk.”

“I don’t think that’s true any more,” said Lissa. “Things have changed. This feels different. Dangerous.”

“Come on!” said JC. “What can a bunch of old clothes do? Pelt us with mothballs? Beat us to death with their embroidered cuffs?”

He stepped forward again, closing with the clothes, and raised one hand to whip off his sunglasses, to see if he could stop them with the glare from his altered eyes. The costumes rushed forward and threw themselves on JC, ignoring Lissa completely. As though she wasn’t important, as though she wasn’t even there. The clothes hit JC hard, driving him backwards and wrapping themselves around him in layer upon layer, squeezing tight. JC tried to fight them, but there was nothing there to fight. The clothes simply gave when he tried to hit them and stretched when he tried to rip and tear them. They dropped upon him in wave after wave, closing tighter and tighter around him, pinning his arms to his sides with inhuman strength, like so many constricting snakes.

The clothes whipped JC’s feet out from under him, and he fell backwards. He hit the floor hard, driving all the breath from his body. And once he was down, he couldn’t get up again. The clothes wrapped him up like a mummy, his legs strapped together, his arms helpless at his sides…He fought and struggled, threw all his strength against the enveloping costumes; but they were stronger than he was. Lissa fought desperately to tear the clothes off him, but even though clothing ripped and tore under her hands, she couldn’t do enough damage to tear even one piece of clothing away. The costumes ignored her, piling onto JC in layer after layer, burying him underneath them.

He thrashed around on the floor, throwing his weight this way and that, but it was becoming harder and harder to get his breath as the clothes compressed his chest. And then a single silk shirt dropped down across his face, slapping into place, moulding itself tightly across his features, filling his mouth and nostrils so he couldn’t get any air at all. One last breath was forced out of him; and he couldn’t draw another one in.

The door smashed in as Old Tom, the caretaker, came crashing into the room. Lissa yelled for him to help her, and the two of them ripped the silk shirt away from JC’s face and tore it into ribbons. JC dragged in a great breath of air, struggling against the clothes again with renewed strength. Lissa and Old Tom attacked the enveloping costumes with their bare hands, ripping and tearing at them; and the clothes collapsed and went limp. Lissa and Old Tom rocked JC back and forth as they pulled the no-longer-resisting costumes away from him, pulling them off him, layer by layer, until JC could finally find the strength and leverage to break free.

He struggled back up onto his feet, tearing at the last few clothes with an almost hysterical strength, desperate to get them off him. When they finally fell away from him and sprawled unmoving on the floor, he kicked at them viciously, breathing hard. And then he was back in control again, himself again, standing still and forcing his breathing back under control. He smiled easily at Lissa and Old Tom as they stood uncertainly before him.

“Well!” JC said brightly. “That was different. Hello again, Old Tom. Where have you been? We couldn’t find you anywhere.”

“Oh, here and there, sir,” said Old Tom, as vaguely diffident as ever. “I was talking to that scientific young lady of yours, in the lobby.”

JC waited, until it was clear he wasn’t going to get any more, then he looked thoughtfully at the distressed clothes lying on the floor. He prodded a few with the tip of his shoe, to be sure; but there was no response.

“You don’t want to go playing with the costumes, sir,” said Old Tom, reproachfully. “You’ll damage them. Clothes like that are expensive.”

“Do you know how they got here?” said JC.

“No, sir,” said Old Tom. “I’m the caretaker; I don’t do costumes. That’s a whole other department. More than my job’s worth to mess with things that are none of my concern.”

JC had already stopped listening, half-way through the old caretaker’s response. He was thinking. Why would Kim have brought him here, into a trap, to be attacked? This had to be deliberate. Wait until he was separated from Happy and Melody, then bring him to a room with no escape, where his death would be waiting.

“Why would Kim bring me here?” he said, and only realised he’d said it aloud when Lissa snorted loudly.

“What did she say to bring you here?”

“She didn’t say anything,” said JC.

“Then there’s your answer. How do you know it was really your Kim?” said Lissa. “We’ve all seen all kinds of illusions in the theatre, things and people that weren’t what they appeared to be.”

“But like you said, this was different,” said JC. “This wasn’t just scary; someone meant for me to die here.”

“Someone else is here in the theatre with us,” said Lissa. “Someone who isn’t supposed to be here.”

JC nodded brusquely to Old Tom. “Thanks for your help. Have you seen anyone else? Anyone who isn’t authorised to be here?”

“No, sir.”

JC looked at him thoughtfully. “How did you know Lissa and I were in trouble?”

“I didn’t, sir,” said Old Tom. “I was checking out the corridors, looking for you, to pass on a message. And then I heard you two crashing about in here, where no-one had any business being, and I thought I’d better take a look.”

“A message?” said Lissa. “Who from, exactly?”

“From Mr. Happy, Mr. Benjamin, and Miss Elizabeth,” said the old caretaker, a bit importantly. “They want you, and Miss Melody, to rejoin them on the old stage, as soon as possible.”

“Go back to the main stage?” said JC. “What on earth for?”

Old Tom shrugged. “They didn’t say, sir, and it wasn’t my business to ask. Will there be anything else, sir? Then I’ll be off. Lots of work still to do.”

He smiled about him vaguely and went back out into the corridor. Lissa looked at JC, who stayed where he was, frowning hard, thinking.

“Something’s not quite right,” said JC.

“Oh, I couldn’t agree more,” said Lissa. “That moustache really doesn’t suit him.”

“Why didn’t Melody ring me if she knew I was needed?” said JC. He took out his phone and checked, but there were no missed calls.

“Why didn’t Happy yell at you with his mind?” said Lissa.

“Because I put a lot of time and effort into training him not to do that except for real life-endangering emergencies,” said JC. “Still…”

“Oh, to hell with it,” said Lissa. “Let’s go see what they want. I’m sick to death of this room. Never wanted to come in here anyway.”

JC nodded slowly and started to follow Lissa out of the room and into the corridor. At the last moment, he stopped in the doorway as a thought struck him. The costumes only attacked him. Not Lissa. Not even when she was tearing at them, to save him. Odd, that…

He looked around the room. There were no clothes, no costumes. Even the clothing racks were gone. He saw only a bare and empty room, full of dust and shadows.