Ghostfinders 03 -Ghost of a Dream

teeth deep into the neck of the young man beside him, who smiled foolishly out at Melody. The other two had come forward, advancing on the poster, as though they could see Melody watching them. Their split-fingered hands reached out to claw their way through the poster and into her world.
    In the fourth poster, the headless young woman had stepped forward, out of her doorway. She was holding up her severed head with one hand, thrusting it out at the poster, at Melody. So the head could look right into Melody’s eyes. The severed head was screaming silently, endlessly, eyes wide with an unbearable horror. Blood fell from the severed neck in a dribbling stream.
    In the fifth poster, in the wintry country scene, the dark figure was almost at the end of the narrow lane. He was running full tilt as though planning to break through, smash right through the poster, by sheer speed and impact. He was still only a dark figure, roughly human in shape, limbs flailing wildly…but the dimensions were all wrong. As though he was a man from some other world, close enough to ours to be disturbing in its differences.
    And in the sixth, and final, poster…the huge, stuffed fox head shook and twisted on its wall plaque, laughing and howling soundlessly. It was so much closer now, its whiskered snout protruding right out of the poster, as though it had forced itself half-out of its world and half-intoMelody’s, through sheer force of vicious intent. It snapped its jaws at her. The sharp teeth were red with fresh blood from some recent kill, and the head was so close now that Melody could smell its rank, damp, musky scent.
    She looked into the fox’s mad, feral eyes and snarled right back at it. The fox hesitated, caught between moments, not expecting that. Melody stamped one foot hard, to force the floor to feel solid under her foot, and clenched her hands into fists until her nails dug painfully into her palms, and both hands ached from the effort. She laughed harshly into the fox’s face, then deliberately turned her back on it, and all the posters, and walked stiffly back to her scientific instruments. She set herself behind them, where she belonged, and looked down at what her readouts were telling her. She concentrated on every little bit of information, holding every light and number with her gaze, refusing to let them change in any way. Because if they said something was real, then it was. And if they didn’t, then it wasn’t. Her mind might betray her, but not her instruments.
    “I trust my readings!”
she said loudly.
“I trust my machines and what they tell me about the world, and if they say you’re not real…You’re not real!”
    She looked from one monitor screen to the next, from one readout to the next, concentrating. And bit by bit her head cleared, as her machines told her the lobby was perfectly normal. Her head stopped swimming, her legs became firm again, and the fever snapped off as though someone had thrown a switch. Melody wiped clammy sweat from her face with her sleeve and finally lifted herhead and looked around the lobby. There were no posters on the walls. Never had been. If there had, of course she would have noticed them, and remembered them. There were a few empty wooden frames, here and there, where old posters might once have been; but that was all. Melody grinned nastily around her and patted the tops of her machines fondly, like they were pets that had remembered their training.
    “Good boys. I can always depend on you when some sneaky bastard is playing games with my head.”
    She leaned forward, braced herself on top of her instruments with both hands, and let her head hang down for a moment, slowly bringing her ragged breathing back under control. Bringing herself back under control through sheer strength of will. She felt like she’d gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson, with an anvil on her back. But after a few moments, she brought her head back up proudly and sneered around the empty lobby, showing her teeth in a nasty grin.
    “That the best you can do? It’ll take more than that to break me, you bastards!”
    One by one, slowly and unhurriedly and without any fuss, the lights in the lobby began to go out. Melody swore briefly and checked her readouts. None of her sensors were indicating anything out of the ordinary, but the lobby lights were quite definitely dimming and going out. Faulty wiring in the lobby? Melody shook her head quickly. That was grabbing at straws, and she knew