Ghostfinders 03 -Ghost of a Dream

painfully fast in his chest.
    “Kim?” he said. “Is it really you?”
    She smiled at him, her eyes shining. She was hovering a few inches above the floor, rising and falling slowly. She looked like she wanted to say something; but she didn’t.
    “What are you doing here, Kim?” said JC. “Am I in danger again? Are you? How did you get away…? Or, is someone still holding you?”
    She didn’t respond to any of his questions, but her gaze never wavered, fixed entirely on him.
    “Please…” said JC. “Tell me who’s got you, where you are, and I will come and get you! I will!”
    She smiled sadly at him. JC reached out to her, and she backed away from him, drifting slowly down the endless, dark corridor. JC started forward after her, only to slam face-first into the wall before him. The door was gone, with no trace left behind to show it had ever been there. JC beat at the wall with his fist, once, then tiredly leaned forward to rest his forehead against the cold, implacable surface. He took a deep breath, stood upstraight, squared his shoulders, and turned away from the wall to find Melody and Happy both staring at him.
    “I saw Kim again,” he said.
    Happy and Melody looked quickly around the empty lobby, then back at JC, who shrugged briefly.
    “I’m not picking up anything,” Happy said carefully. “If a ghost had manifested here, even popped in for a moment, I’m sure I would have sensed it.”
    “Nothing on my instruments, either,” said Melody. “Are you sure you saw…something?”
    “Don’t look at me like that,” said JC. “It was Kim. I saw her. Spoke to her…”
    He turned away from what he saw in their faces, his back stiff and straight, hands clenched into fists at his sides. Happy moved over to stand with Melody at her instrument panels. Lights came and went on her monitor screens, signifying nothing.
    “She was there, at the railway station,” Happy said tentatively.
    “Was she?” Melody said quietly. “The image we saw looked like her, but it never said a word; and normally you can’t get a word in edge-ways with ghost girl. It’ll take more than a brief look-alike image to convince me. So I have to wonder if someone is playing mind-games. With us in general, and JC in particular. Showing him what he wants to see, to distract him from what’s really important.”
    “Oh great,” said Happy. “Fantastic. That’s all I need, something else to be paranoid about.”
    “Unfortunately, you’re not as paranoid as you used to be, sweetie,” said Melody. “There really are dangerous forces in the universe out to get you.”
    “Life was so much simpler when I was merely mentally ill and chemically deranged,” said Happy, glumly. “Now every case we go into feels like a trap.”
    “That’s situation normal where the Ghost Finders are concerned,” said Melody.
    “I want danger money,” said Happy.
    “We are getting danger money.”
    “I want more danger money.”
    “It’s nice to want things,” Molly said briskly. “I saw the sweetest French Maid outfit in an Anne Summer’s, the other day.”
    “I told you,” said Happy. “I’m not wearing it.”
    “You can be very unadventurous sometimes,” said Melody.
    They looked across at JC, on the far side of the lobby. His head was bowed, and he was frowning, lost in thought. He might have been a thousand miles away. Unreachable. Happy shrugged, uneasily.
    “Do we know where the homeless guy died?” he said. “Was it here? Because I’m not picking up anything to suggest a recent death, natural or otherwise. In fact, I’m not picking up anything. Just…dead air.”
    “Ho ho ho,” said Melody, concentrating on her instrument readouts. “Telepath humour. It’s all in the mind.”
    Happy scowled, moved away, and lowered his mental shields, slowly and methodically opening himself up to his surroundings. Nothing happened until he was completely open and defenceless; and then everything hit him at once. The lobby was suddenly packed full of people, men and women, from all times and fashions, milling back and forth, overlapping and passing through eachother. Memories, ghosts, of all the people who’d ever been in the theatre lobby. A hundred thousand audiences, all of them talking at once, a terrible clamour of raised voices from out of the Past, filling Happy’s head to bursting. He clapped both hands to his ears, a practiced psychological trick to keep voices outside his head; but it didn’t help.