Ghostfinders 03 -Ghost of a Dream

details.
    “Good-quality material,” she said, finally. “High-end workmanship. But…”
    “But?” said JC. “But what?” He held a Napoleon uniform up against himself, to see how he’d look in it, then reluctantly put it back again.
    “But,” Lissa said firmly, “a lot of the details are
wrong
. Mixed periods in the same outfit, wrong kinds of pockets and trimmings, out-of-period materials, important bits and pieces missing…No professional costumier would make mistakes like this. This…is more like someone faking it. Producing costumes good enough to fool the eye but only from a distance. Amateur night. These clothes look like costumes, JC; but they aren’t.”
    JC looked across at Lissa. She stepped back from the costumes to look them over, hands on hips, glaringferociously. She looked…suspicious, and JC had to wonder why. Nothing else she’d encountered in the theatre had provoked this reaction.
    “All these costumes must mean something,” he said, standing back with her so he could study the rows of clothes with a sceptical eye. “They must be important. Or why bring us all this way just to see them?”
    “We could always play dress-up,” said Lissa, but JC could tell that her heart wasn’t in it.
    “If we assume that Benjamin and Elizabeth didn’t arrange for these costumes to be here…” he said slowly.
    “And I think we can assume that,” said Lissa, very firmly.
    “Then someone else must have,” said JC, talking right over her. “Which in turn implies that we’re not the only people interested in this theatre. And this haunting. We’re not the only people in this building. Which would explain a lot.”
    Lissa glared about her, looking seriously unsettled. “There can’t be anyone else here. There just can’t. I’d know. I’d feel it…” She realised JC was considering her silently and scowled back at him. “I’m very sensitive to my surroundings!”
    “A lot of people are,” JC said soothingly. “Or believe they are. But one of the first things you learn in the Ghost Finding business is that you can’t always trust your instincts. Things, and people, aren’t necessarily always what they seem, in a haunting situation. The dead play by their own rules.”
    “But what would the dead want with a whole bunch of not-particularly-accurate costumes?” said Lissa, bluntly.
    A slow, heavy rustle passed through the ranks of hanging costumes, like a breeze through forest branches. Hanging clothes twitched and shook, singly and in groups. Sleeves bent and twisted, jackets expanded and relaxed as though someone was breathing in them, and trousers bent at the knee, again and again, as though dreaming of running. Everywhere, costumes were heaving and flexing, as though bothered by unquiet thoughts.
    “Back away, Lissa,” JC said quietly.
    He glanced back and found that Lissa had already backed all the way up to the closed door, unable to tear her gaze away from the slowly moving costumes. There was a new, uneasy feeling in the room, harsh and oppressive: a sharp tension on the air, anticipating bad things to come. JC glared about him. The feeling of being watched was back again, but colder, more intense. As though someone knew something bad was about to happen and meant to enjoy it.
    “It’s a trap,” Lissa said tonelessly. “We’ve been lured into a trap.”
    “Don’t get twitchy,” said JC. “It’s all gone weird, agreed, but…it’s only a bunch of clothes. There’s no-one else here but us, living or dead. Look at them; they’re…bits of cloth on wire hangers!” He looked back at Lissa, to see how she was taking it, and thought she looked more puzzled than scared. “Come on!” he said, encouragingly. “How much of a threat can clothes be?”
    As he was saying that, all the costumes shrugged off their hangers and moved away from the cold, metal racks, standing upright on their own. They stood in silent ranks, empty and uninhabited. The clothing rails were forced tothe very back of the room, pushed back through the ranks of standing clothes, so an army of empty costumes could confront JC and Lissa with nothing to get in their way. No heads rose from the empty collars, no hands emerged from the empty sleeves, and the slack trousers and leggings hovered a few inches above the floor, with no trace of a foot, or even a shoe. Only costume after costume, standing together in row upon row, turning slowly and silently to orientate themselves on JC, with a