Ghostfinders 03 -Ghost of a Dream

dignitary bestowing his grace on the unworthy, and stepped lightly down onto the stage. The brilliant light snapped off, leaving everyone else blinking for a moment. The heavenly choir and the massed bugles shut down in mid phrase. The Faust beamed about him.
    “If you’re going to make an entrance, make an entrance! That’s what I always say. I am the Faust, and I’ll be your murderer tonight. I do hope nobody’s going to be bothersome…That small thing you destroyed was only flesh, after all. Nothing more. And I’ve been given dominion over all such things by my lord and master, The Flesh Undying. Ah me; I do so love to see the look on people’s faces when they hear his glorious name. And know that all hope is gone, the game is over, and the sentence is death. Because that is, after all, the only fitting fate for his enemies.”
    “You were right,” JC said to Melody. “He does like to talk, doesn’t he?”
    Benjamin and Elizabeth looked at the Faust. Anywhen else, they’d probably have been impressed. But after everything they’d been through and experienced so far, he was merely another unpleasant visitation. Theylooked to the Ghost Finders for some sort of explanation, in a not-terribly-hopeful way.
    “Long story,” Melody said briskly. “And you really wouldn’t want to know, anyway. Settle for knowing that this completely up-himself personage is the only really dangerous thing in this theatre.”
    “How very harsh,” murmured the Faust. “Frankly, I’d expected a better class of dialogue, in the theatre.”
    JC, Happy, and Melody stepped forward to confront the Faust. Benjamin and Elizabeth backed off a little and let them do it. They knew when they were way out of their depth. JC took another step forward, and the Faust came forward to meet him. They circled each other, like two tigers meeting in a clearing. Two powerful, arrogant beings who had more in common than either of them would ever have admitted.
    “What are you?” said JC.
    “I am what I’ve made of myself,” said the Faust. “Can you say the same? I doubt it. What are you, Mr. Chance, except another overworked and underpaid civil servant, working for a government department…never knowing what’s really going on behind the scenes.”
    JC smiled. “You really don’t know me, do you?”
    “I chose my master!” said the Faust. “I gave myself to The Flesh Undying. Like the man said, we all have to serve someone. Whom do you serve, really? A Boss? A cause? Or are you only another pitiful little functionary, doing a job to fill in all those long, dreary hours till you die? I have given my life to something greater.”
    “You gave it to a monster,” said JC. “Something thatonly came here because it was kicked out of its own dimension. It fell through a hole in the sky like a lump of shit because its own kind couldn’t stand to have it around any longer. It doesn’t care about you. It doesn’t care about anything. It’ll tear this whole world apart to get home again.”
    “What do I care?” said the Faust. “As long as he takes me with him. I never cared much for this world, anyway. Certainly it never cared much for me. And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, the secret origin of the Faust! Death and damnation to all the world, and everyone in it, because they didn’t love me the way they should have! That’ll show them. I have been given command over flesh. The new flesh, the bad flesh—I can summon anything through my Door and mould it to my will and need. Call up any shape and form and throw it at my master’s enemies.”
    “You may have the flesh,” said JC, stopping his circling abruptly, so the Faust had to stop, too. JC gave him his best confident grin. “Hell with the flesh; I have the spirit at my command. Meet my secret weapon.” He stepped back and gestured at Kim, still watching from her spotlight. “Meet my very own guardian-angel ghost! Get him, Kim!”
    “Sorry,” said the Faust. “But that’s not her.”
    He snapped his fingers, and the shimmering spotlight blinked out. Kim smiled and shrugged briefly at JC, then slumped forward into a melting mass, like a candle in an oven. She collapsed into a pool of sticky white flesh that drained away through the cracks in the stage floor-boards; then she was gone.
    JC swayed sickly on his feet, as though he’d been hit. His heart lurched in his chest, and he had to fight to get his breath. He tried to say something and couldn’t.