Ghostfinders 03 -Ghost of a Dream

growing more and more powerful, determined to have its revenge! What’s out there? You tell me! You made it!”
    “Please,” said Benjamin. “Please help us. Don’t let him get to Elizabeth.”
    Happy scowled at the reverberating door, his heart hammering like the frenzied knocking. It sounded like all the monsters that ever were, determined to get in, and get him.
    I can do this,
thought Happy, trying hard to make himself believe it.
I ain’t afraid of no ghost. I faced down Fenris Tenebrae, and the New People. And I’m damned if I’ll chicken out in front of strangers. They’re relying on me. Bit of a new feeling, that. Not sure if I like it, but…
    He cranked up his nerve to the sticking point, grabbed the shaking door handle, and hauled the door open. He cried out something incoherent, ready to hit whatever was there with the strongest and most concentrated blast of disbelief he had…But there was no-one on the other side of the door. Happy stepped quickly out into the corridor and looked up and down; but there was nothing but shadows and silence, and a feeling…That there had been something there a moment before. Something bad. The light in the corridor was calm and steady, and so were the shadows, and Happy…wondered what the hell was going on. He would have liked to believe he’d driven the thing away, by confronting it; but that…didn’t feel right.
    He stepped back into the dressing-room. Benjaminand Elizabeth, backed up in the far corner, looked at him pitifully. Elizabeth was trying to be brave; and Benjamin was standing in front of her, shielding her. Happy smiled and nodded quickly to them, and they almost collapsed in relief.
    “Whatever that was, it isn’t there any more,” said Happy. “But it’s getting closer. And stronger. If I’m going to protect you, you have to tell me the truth about what really happened here, twenty years ago.”
    “I’d rather die,” said Elizabeth.
    Happy nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. It could come to that.”

SIX

LOBBY DISPLAY
    Back in the lobby, Melody happily bustled around her precious machines, firing up her scientific equipment, checking that everything was as it should be, and having a merry old time. She always enjoyed putting things in order, making sure they were working right, crossing off things on her list and running through her rituals. She liked machines as opposed to people because, with machines, you only had to punch the instructions in once. Melody understood machines. Whereas people, usually men, remained mostly a mystery. Melody had never had any problems having sex with men; it was the talking to them afterwards that gave her problems. One of the reasons she enjoyed Happy so much was that he was delightfully uncomplicated. He divided the entire world into things that he liked and things that scared him; and as long as Melody was careful as to which category sheput herself into, she always knew where she was with Happy.
    She patched in the short-range sensors, fed extra power to the long-range sensors, and smiled happily as the readouts flickered calmly before her. This was the part of any Ghost Finders mission that she enjoyed the most, being left alone to set up and calibrate her marvellous machines, without the others hanging around making what they presumably thought were helpful comments. She didn’t feel alone, or vulnerable, in the lobby because she was never alone when she was with her equipment. Her machines made her feel safe and protected because she knew she could always rely on them. Machines rarely let her down, and on the rare occasions when they did, she either fixed them or hit them until they didn’t. People, on the other hand, were always surprising her, and rarely in a good way.
    She thought of JC, off on his own somewhere with the lovely Lissa, and smiled briefly. JC might think he was impressing Lissa, but Melody was fairly confident Lissa wasn’t the kind who impressed easily. Melody knew a fellow hard-hearted professional when she saw one. In fact, JC would do well to watch out for himself.
    Melody’s thoughts then turned to Happy, off on his own with the two actors; and she didn’t smile at all. She wasn’t at all sure why JC had put Happy together with the oh-so-theatrical Benjamin and Elizabeth. Happy did have some good qualities if you were prepared to dig deep enough to find them; but leadership and responsibility definitely weren’t on the list. It was always possible JC thought the actors