Ghostfinders 03 -Ghost of a Dream

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 offstage, 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 driftedbackwards, 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