Ghostfinders 03 -Ghost of a Dream

right half of the face and head ended abruptly in a twisted mess of gnarled and fused tissues. One glowing yellow eye, a nose bisected right down the middle, and half a mouth, still smiling its nasty smile. Up close, the half-face smelled of rotting meat.
    JC felt something move in his hand. He looked down. The half-mask still had a yellow eye in it, looking up at him through its hole, glaring madly. The mask itself felt like skin, like flesh, in his hand, living materials moulded into shape by the Faust’s will. It pulsed in his grasp. JC wanted to grimace with disgust, but he couldn’t allow himself to show weakness. He crushed the mask in his grasp, then whipped off his sunglasses with his other hand, to give the Phantom the full benefit of his unearthly glare. The Phantom flinched and turned his half-face away from the golden glow, but he didn’t fall back by so much as a step. Instead, he slowly turned his half-faceback, to match the glowing glare with his own inhuman gaze. And then he took one slow deliberate step towards JC.
    “Happy!” JC said loudly. “Really could use a little assistance down here!”
    Happy came forward to the edge of the stage, looked down at the drop, and the Phantom, and hesitated. Melody came up behind him and pushed him off. Happy let out a loud cry and landed in a heap beside JC. He quickly scrambled back onto his feet, checked quickly to make sure everything was undamaged, then moved reluctantly forward to stand beside JC. Because once you’d been thrown in the deep end, you might as well go kick the snot out of the sharks. Happy was always quite prepared to be brave—once it was clear there was no other alternative. He hit the Phantom with his hardest, strongest blast of telepathic disbelief. The Phantom slammed to a halt as though he’d hit a brick wall. JC glared his golden glare. Happy concentrated on his disbelief till he felt that his head would burst open. The Phantom opened his mouth to say something, then fell apart. Unable to hold himself together in the face of such focused opposition.
    The night-black cape dropped off his shoulders, running away like some thick, inky liquid. The legs collapsed, and the arms fell off. The squirming trunk hit the floor hard and fell in upon itself, melting down and running away in thick rivulets. The clothes dissolved along with the body, as though they were all part of the same thing. It slumped down like a melting candle, then dissipated into thick white mists that quickly disappeared on the still air. The half-face was the last to go, lying ina white pool on the floor, still glaring silently and malevolently up at JC and Happy, the mouth still working right till the very end, when it disappeared suddenly, like a bad dream.
    JC felt something squirm in his hand. He looked down to find that the mask had become a thick sticky liquid, dripping through his closed fingers. He opened his hand and shook the stuff away. JC pulled a face and rubbed his hand clean on the back of Happy’s jacket. Happy knew better than to say anything. They both studied the floor carefully, but there wasn’t even a stain left to mark the Phantom’s passing.
    “What
was
that?” said Happy.
    “Get back up here!” Melody said sharply, from the stage.
    JC and Happy turned and raced around to the steps that led back up to the stage. JC got there first, by a short head, then the two of them ran out onto the stage and looked to where everyone else was looking. Another Door had appeared, at the far side of the stage; a trap-Door, full of darkness. JC looked quickly at Benjamin and Elizabeth, but they were already shaking their heads.
    “Hasn’t been a trap-door in this stage for decades,” said Benjamin.
    “Not since that nasty business with the Panto Dame,” said Elizabeth.
    And then they all cried out and turned their heads away for a moment as a blindingly bright light blazed up out of the trap-Door, like a spotlight in reverse. There was nothing shimmering about this one; it was a stark and brutal light, harsh and unforgiving, casting deep darkshadows all around it. And then the Faust rose majestically through the opening, accompanied by the singing of a heavenly choir and the sound of massed bugles. The Faust rose smoothly, as though riding an elevator, standing tall and proud and erect, until he was a good foot or more above the open trap-Door. And it became clear that he was standing on nothing. He smiled happily about him, like some visiting