Happy gave up on trying to get a word in edge-ways, stepped forward, and prodded Old Tom hard in the chest. His finger rebounded from the grubby overall, and Old Tom actually stopped talking, to stare at Happy reproachfully. Happy didn’t even try to explain. Old Tom might actually be there, might be physically present; but he still didn’t feel right. There was something…off about the old caretaker, something all his cheerful nonsense couldn’t quite cover up. So Happy braced himself and lowered his mental shields long enough to check out the figure before him. And found, to his shock and surprise, that, as far as his telepathy was concerned…there was no-one there.
All the calm good humour dropped out of Old Tom’s face, and suddenly he didn’t look real any more. Didn’t look human, any more. Happy stumbled backwards, shouting to Benjamin and Elizabeth to stay behind him, not looking back because he didn’t want to take his eyes off the thing that had pretended to be Old Tom, even for a moment.
“It’s not him! That’s not Old Tom, or a caretaker, or anything human! I don’t think it’s even alive!”
Benjamin surprised Happy then by surging forward past Happy to grab the front of Old Tom’s uniform with both hands. He thrust his face right into the caretaker’s and shook him angrily.
“Who are you? What are you, really? What’s going on? Why are you doing this to us?”
Old Tom gave him a slow smile, not even raising his hands to defend himself. When he spoke, he didn’t sound like Old Tom any more.
“You know why, Benjamin. So does she. You’ve always known.”
“Leave her alone!” said Benjamin. “Don’t you dare hurt her!”
“You haven’t changed, have you?” said Old Tom.
His hands came up, inhumanly quickly, and grabbed Benjamin’s wrists. He tore the actor’s hands away from his coat. And then he threw Benjamin back—so hard that the actor slammed up against the far wall of the dressing-room. He hit hard enough to drive all the air from his lungs, and his legs buckled. Elizabeth was quickly there, to hold him and hold him up. Old Tom laughed at them both, an ugly, scary, accusing sound.
Happy stepped forward, again putting himself between the apparition and the actors. He really didn’t want to be there, but he couldn’t let this go on. If only because it was his job to detect ghosts, and Old Tom had fooled him completely. Happy might not be brave, but he had his pride, and there were limits. Even for him. He scowled, concentrating, and hit Old Tom hard with a telepathic blast of pure disbelief. The old caretaker looked suddenly surprised, and his appearance seemed to ripple, like a slow wave on the surface of a lake, disturbed by a breeze. A great dark pool of shadow formed around the caretaker’s feet, then, standing stiffly upright all the while, Old Tom began to sink slowly into the darkness. The feet first, then the ankles, then dropping slowly and steadily up to his knees. The darkness consumed him, swallowing him up, inch by inch, then foot by foot. His back stayed straight, his hands stayed at his sides, and he never stopped smiling at Benjamin and Elizabeth. It was not a good smile. He ignored Happy completely, his harsh and unforgiving gaze fixed on the two actors as they huddled together at the rear of the dressing-room.
“Who are you?” said Benjamin; and his voice was like a frightened child’s.
“Poor Tom’s a cold,” said Old Tom, still smiling, dropping down into the dark pool. Soon he was only a head and shoulders, and then only a head, and then that too was gone, smiling to the last. The dark pool gathered itself in, shrinking to a few inches in diameter, then that, too, was gone, as though it had disappeared down some unknown sink-hole. The linoleum on the floor seemed entirely untouched and unaffected. Happy strode over and stamped on the place, hard; but it was just a floor. He knelt and ran his fingers over the buckled linoleum; but he couldn’t feel anything, with his fingertips or his mind. He stayed crouched, staring at the floor, thinking hard.
That took real power. The appearance, and the disappearing trick. Power and strength accumulated over twenty years…Had something really been waiting here, all this time, never showing itself, waiting for these two to return? Waiting for its chance to…What? Is this about revenge? What did these two do? What did they sacrifice in order for their precious play to be a success? And why didn’t it work?
Happy rose slowly to his feet. His knees cracked loudly, a sharp sound in the quiet. He looked at Benjamin and Elizabeth. Benjamin was crying quietly, his shoulders jerking as real tears bumped down his face. No presence now, no charisma, no dignity. He was just a man, remembering something unbearable. Elizabeth held him close, cradling his head to her bosom, rocking him like a child. Her face was completely empty, her eyes far-away. After a while, they realised that Happy was watching them. Elizabeth murmured to Benjamin, and he stood up straight and rubbed the tears from his face with the back of his hand. He took a deep breath and stopped himself crying with an almost brutal act of self-control. He looked defiantly at Happy, silently challenging him to say anything, while Elizabeth stood at his side, regarding Happy with cold, wary eyes.
“So,” said Benjamin. “He wasn’t a caretaker, and he wasn’t a journalist. He was a ghost.”
“Looks like it,” said Happy.
“I never thought he was a caretaker,” said Elizabeth. “Far too broad a character.”
So, thought Happy. That’s the way we’re going to play it, is it? All right. But you’re going to have to talk to me eventually.
“It was an amazingly strong and coherent manifestation,” he said. “Solid to the touch. Real enough that none of us suspected his true nature. That’s not easy to pull off.”
“I was sure he wasn’t what he seemed to be,” said Benjamin. “But it never even occurred to me that he wasn’t real. Are ghosts usually like that?”
“Sometimes,” said Happy. “I told you, ghosts love to pull tricks on the living. They’re people, after all. With problems and pasts that won’t let them rest, won’t allow them to move on. They can pass as one of us because in many ways they still are.” He looked thoughtfully at Benjamin and Elizabeth. “Did Old Tom seem in any way…familiar, to you? Was there anything about him that suggested…someone you might have known before?”
“The last caretaker I remember from here was Jerry Clarke,” said Benjamin. “About our age, and camp as a row of tents in Tent Land. Nothing like Old Tom.”
That’s not what I asked, thought Happy.
“What does the ghost want with us?” said Elizabeth. “Why won’t he leave us alone?”
“You’d know that better than I,” said Happy. But they both fixed him with their stubborn gaze, so Happy sighed quietly and moved on. “The Past has a hold on the dead, as well as the living. Particularly when it involves unfinished business. Now, you two can lie to me all you want about what really happened here twenty years ago. I’m easy to lie to. But that won’t protect you from what’s here in the theatre. Something here has waited twenty years for revenge. Something has not forgotten or forgiven.”
Benjamin and Elizabeth looked at each other, excluding Happy completely.
“We could leave,” Benjamin said tentatively. “We could walk out of here, and never come back.”
“We can’t go,” said Elizabeth. “We’ve sunk everything we have into getting our play off the ground again. This is our last chance, to make it the success it should have been. We’re not young any more. Not old, not yet. But I can see old from where I am. We’re running out of time…to be an overnight success.”