Ghostfinders 03 -Ghost of a Dream

might relax a little aroundHappy and unburden their souls to him where they probably wouldn’t talk to JC, or to her. People often felt sorry for Happy and told him all manner of things they’d never tell another soul, so he’d stop looking at them with those big, soulful, puppyish eyes. Personally…Melody doubted it. Benjamin and Elizabeth had secrets they only shared with each other. Anyone could see that.
    She wasn’t worried about Happy. Wasn’t worried at all. The actors would look after him.
    She moved back and forth before her control boards, swaying sensuously, checking sensor displays and energy readouts, fine-tuning things here and there and having a perfectly wonderful time. Everything in the lobby seemed entirely normal, all conditions as expected. Not even a hint of a cold spot, or an energy spike; no electromagnetic fluctuations; and not even a murmur on the EVP dead-radio channels. Melody looked cheerfully round the lobby…and then something caught her eye. There were posters on the lobby walls. Large, colourful posters, leftovers from the theatre’s past triumphs. There were half a dozen of them, scattered around the lobby, and Melody had to turn around in a complete circle to take them all in, in turn. Melody’s good temper was gone in a moment, her smile replaced by a slowly deepening scowl. Because she couldn’t for the life of her remember whether the posters had been there before. She hadn’t noticed them when she first entered the lobby, or when she was putting her instruments together; but then she often didn’t notice unimportant details like that. Unless someone pointed them out to her or she had nothing else to look at.
    Melody came out from behind her carefully arranged semi-circle of equipment and walked right up to the poster in front of her to take a closer look. The poster was a good five feet tall and maybe two or three feet wide, a clear, firm image on good-quality paper, with colours so bright and shiny they bordered on gaudy. The image before her was a portrait of a handsome young woman in a full-length wedding gown of a spotless white so dazzling it was almost painful to the eye. The bride had thrown her filmy veil back over her long jet-black hair, to reveal a grinning, sparkling-eyed face. She was hurrying down a long, curving staircase, perhaps half-way down…looking out at the viewer. Melody frowned. It was a pleasant enough image; but what was it for? Was it on display to promote a play, or a character, or some forthcoming production? There were no words anywhere on the portrait, not even a title—nothing to indicate its purpose.
    Melody moved on to the next poster, on her left. Just as big and as colourful, this second picture showed an old-fashioned, even traditional image, of a clipper sailing-ship, far out at sea, dashing through the waves with sails full of wind and a proud prow raised high into the air. There was no name anywhere on the ship. Uniformed sailors were captured in traditional poses and occupations, all over the ship. Several were set high up in the rigging, pointing out ahead, at something only they could see. Dark blue waves rose out of the ocean, bonneted with foam, and overhead the sky was a clear and empty blue under a perfect summer sun. Again, there was no lettering or information anywhere on the poster. It seemed to Melody that you mightexpect to see a painting like this on some office wall but not in a lobby. So why was it here? Strange…
    She moved on, around the exterior of the lobby, vaguely aware she was drifting always to the left, anti-clockwise; widdershins. Anywhen else, anywhere else, that thought might have worried her. But here she only had eyes and thoughts for the fascinating posters.
    The next portrait was of a quartet of fine young fellows, dressed in the formal clothing of the early twentieth century. They stood companionably together, filling the whole portrait, toasting the viewers with brimming glasses of red wine. All four young men looked very smart and very handsome, young gentlemen out on the town, perhaps, smiling winningly at the viewer. Melody decided…that she didn’t care for them. She deliberately turned away from them and moved on.
    The fourth portrait showed a pleasant young woman in a fashionable evening gown, complete with long evening gloves, all in the same faintly disturbing shade of buttercup yellow. The young woman stood beside a half-open door, pulling it back to receive someone. She looked very