Ghostfinders 03 -Ghost of a Dream

gun with him. The bullets punched right through his formal clothes and cape, but he didn’t cry out, and he didn’t bleed. Melody quickly realised that the Phantom could heal as easily as the Faust who made him.
    A sudden silence fell across the corridor as Melody ran out of bullets. The Phantom smiled at her. She looked blankly at the gun in her hand, as though it had betrayed her, and she shook the pistol for a moment, as though that would do anything. She had more clips for the gun, but they were all back in the lobby, in the arms cabinet. She looked at the Phantom, smiling at her like a shark that’s scented blood in the water; and she smiled back at him. He didn’t like that. He started towards her, and she went for him, throwing the empty gun into his face. He snatched the machine-pistol out of mid air and crumpled the metal in his inhuman grasp. And while he was preoccupied doing that, Melody punted him good and hard between the legs. The Phantom dropped to his knees, mouth stretched wide as he tried to force a scream through his constricted throat. Melody punched him once, in the side of the head, just to be sure, then ran on.
    The Faust really shouldn’t have made you in his own image,
she thought, as she ran.
Given you two hostages to fortune…And you really should have been expecting that. Not terribly bright, this Phantom of the Haybarn.

    She rounded the next corner at speed, and there, waiting for her was Old Tom, the caretaker. She stumbled to ahalt, and he smiled benignly at her. He didn’t seem in the least surprised to see her. She struggled to get her harsh breathing back under control, so she could warn him about the Phantom; but he was already talking.
    “You don’t want to go this way, miss. You want to go down there, round that corner, then it’s second on the right. Take you straight to the main stage area, that will. You can’t miss it.”
    “Get out of here!” Melody said finally.
    “What?”
    “Get out of here! Get out of the theatre! There’s bad people here. Dangerous people.”
    Old Tom smiled and shook his head. “Bless you, miss, I’m not in any danger. No-one’s going to hurt Old Tom. You follow the directions I gave you, and you’ll be fine.”
    He pointed out the direction to her. Melody looked, and when she looked back, he was gone. Not a trace of him anywhere. Melody scowled briefly, gathered up her strength, and ran down the corridor.

    She finally saw a familiar set of swing doors up ahead of her, burst through them without slowing, and found herself back in the main auditorium. She stumbled down the central aisle, leaning on end chairs as she went, for support. Up on the stage, JC and Happy, Benjamin and Elizabeth and Lissa, were all standing together and arguing loudly. They broke off to look out at her, caught off guard by her sudden entrance. She stopped, and slumpeddown onto a padded chair for a moment, to get her breath back. She always felt a little safer when JC and Happy were around, though, of course, she’d never tell them that. It took encountering something like Faust and his Phantom to get her to admit it to herself. She glanced quickly behind her; but there wasn’t the slightest sound or sight of the Phantom. Yet. She forced herself up out of her chair and glared indiscriminately at everyone on the stage.
    “You stay right where you are! I’m coming up! And I don’t care what you’re arguing about; I’ve had a far worse time than you have, so my problems are bound to be much worse than yours, so I am entitled to be in a very bad mood!”
    “Never knew you when you weren’t!” murmured JC.
    “I heard that!”
    “You were meant to.”
    Melody strode down the main aisle, round the side, and up onto the stage, while everyone else stood exactly where they were and looked at her. Melody had that effect on people, sometimes. If only because they knew silent, fuming rage when they saw it. She finally stomped across the stage to confront Happy, who gave her his best
What have I done now?
look.
    “Why don’t you answer your phone?” snarled Melody.
    Happy blinked at her a few times. “It hasn’t rung. Did you try and call me? You never call me when we’re out in the field. You said constant communication was a sign of weakness.”
    Melody growled deep in her throat and shook her head in frustration. Happy considered her for a moment and took a tentative step forward.
    “Something’s happened,” he said. “Something bad. I don’t