Ghostfinders 03 -Ghost of a Dream

and a great fountain of corpse white flesh erupted up out of the dark opening. It reached almost to the high ceiling—a tower of pulsing, expanding and contracting flesh…before finally falling back again to slap onto the stage and spread out in agreat pulsating pool. It moved slowly but inexorably across the stage towards the actors and the Ghost Finders, in sudden spurts and rushes. More and more of the stuff burst up out of the trap-Door, spilling out in all directions, forming a thick carpet of flesh on the stage. It rose and pressed forward like a slow-motion wave, throwing out sudden extremities, straining hungrily out for prey. Flesh, without form or limit, called up by the Faust and driven on by his will: an endless supply of living tissue, come to eat up everything set before it and make them a part of it.
    JC had frozen in place like all the others, but he broke the spell first and gestured quickly for everyone else to back away from the advancing, hungry tide. But they’d barely started moving before more of the shapeless mass burst out of the other wings, spilling across the stage towards them. More welled out from behind the drawn curtains at the back of the stage, and a sudden white wave leapt up over the front of the stage. The actors and Ghost Finders pressed close together, surrounded on all sides by a slow-moving sea of hungry flesh. It boiled and seethed, rising and falling in sudden surges; and as it drew nearer, JC could see narrow traceries of blue veins in the white material. It was alive in its own way. JC didn’t need to ask the Faust what this stuff would do when it finally reached its prey. He could feel its hunger pulsing on the air. It was here to swallow them all up, render them down, and absorb every last bit of them into itself.
    Flesh at its most basic, all appetite and menace, here to serve The Flesh Undying.
    Alistair Gravel lifted his ghostly feet and sat cross-legged in mid air, perfectly poised, looking down at the flesh moving jerkily below him with a curled lip of cold distaste. The flesh ignored him. Perhaps because it could tell he wasn’t real, that he had no physical presence to absorb.
    Happy glared about him, scowling at the gleaming, pulsing mass. “Okay. This is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen. And I’ve been around.”
    “Are you picking up anything, from this…stuff?” said JC, looking quickly about him for anything that might serve as an exit and not finding one.
    “Yes,” said Happy. “It’s not an illusion. Unfortunately. It’s really physically here even though I do wish ever so much that it wasn’t. It’s alive, and it’s hungry. Don’t let even the smallest part of it touch you.”
    “Way ahead of you there,” said Melody.
    “It’s like that movie, with Steve McQueen,” said Elizabeth, clinging tightly to Benjamin while trying hard to sound brave.
    “Hush, dear,” said Benjamin. “You’re showing your age.”
    “Oh come on, darling. Who remembers anything about that awful remake? Benjamin, it really is getting awfully close…”
    “Stay close to me, love. Stick close to me.”
    By now, they’d all been herded together in the middle of the stage while the flesh urged slowly forward on all sides at once. It was almost half a foot deep, and growing taller and thicker all the time, as more and moreof the sickening stuff burst up out of the trap-Door. It advanced in sudden leaps and spurts, throwing up into the air sticky projections, projections that fell back to be absorbed and vanish into the main mass. The flesh oozed straight past the Faust without touching or bothering him, and he smiled happily at his victims, huddled together before him.
    Benjamin looked urgently at JC over Elizabeth’s shoulder as she hid her face against his chest. “You and Happy destroyed the Phantom! You’re the professionals here! Can’t you do anything?”
    “I am,” said JC. “I’m thinking.”
    “What?” said Benjamin. “You’re
thinking
?”
    “Yes,” said JC. “The Phantom was flesh but a small thing. There doesn’t seem to be any end to this…”
    “Where’s it all coming from?” said Happy.
    “From The Flesh Undying, I assume,” said JC. “Directly or indirectly. It would appear the name is more literally descriptive than we realised. I’d been hoping it was a metaphor…Still, spirit trumps flesh every time. Because flesh begins and ends in life, while spirit transcends life…So, to counter this much flesh, we