Free Mind the Gap by Christopher Golden Page B

and tinny at first, then growing in volume. A plinking piano, a jaunty violin, a tooting horn…and then a sudden chorus of wolf whistles and lecherous howls so loud that Jazz felt surrounded.
    “Oh, Jesus,” she whispered, and clapped her hands to her ears.
    Frantic, she whipped around, shining her torch into the shadows on both sides of the old track. With the light shining, she saw nothing at all, but when she swung the torch away, she saw spectral images in the darkness left behind. The piano player, the violinist, and the trumpeter, who swayed his hips to get a laugh. And the audience roared.
    Jazz spun and saw them there, rows and rows of them, applauding. They were dressed not in the thirties’ garb of the spirits she’d encountered before but the clothing of an earlier era. Still wartime, though. Always wartime. The music hall had phantom walls and curtains, a stage, and above her hung a ghostly chandelier.
    For a moment the whole room flickered and became a tavern full of men locked in serious debate, and on the plate-glass window at the front she could read the reversed lettering of the name of the place—the Seven Tankards and Punch Bowl. Then the moment passed, the tavern blurred, and the music hall returned, accompanied by laughter and those wolf whistles.
    Voices called out a name. “Marie!”
    “Marry me, Marie!”
    “Get yer knickers off, Marie!”
    But the voices weren’t addressing Jazz. She could see in the faces of that spectral audience—many of them in uniform—that their focus was on the stage. Jazz turned just in time to see the tall blond woman sashay suggestively onto the stage. A microphone awaited her. She ran her fingers down the smooth contours of her body, over the sparkling material of her dress.
    And she sang.
    “I didn’t like you much before you joined the army, John,” Marie cooed, “but I do like yer cockie now you’ve got your khaki on.”
    The audience erupted with hoots and applause.
    Jazz fell to her knees and slapped her hands over her ears. She squeezed her eyes closed tightly. The sound of her own breathing filled her head, and her heart thundered in her chest.
    When she felt fingers on her shoulder, she screamed.
    Scrambling away, she rose to a crouch, ready to flee. Blinking, she saw that the apparitions had gone. She had left her torch on the tracks a dozen feet away, and the light shone off into the darkness.
    Cadge stood staring at her, torch trained on her, his eyes wide with concern.
    “Get that light out of my face,” she said, but couldn’t manage the scolding tone she’d attempted.
    He lowered the torch, and they stood staring at each other in its diffused glow.
    “You hear them too,” he said.
    Jazz cocked her head, staring at him doubtfully. “What are you saying? You heard that?”
    Cadge moistened his lips. He hesitated a moment as though afraid to confess, but at last he nodded. “A song, this time. And cheering. It’s always different. Almost always.”
    Torn between relief that she wasn’t mad and astonishment at this confirmation, she stared at him. “Are we the only ones?”
    The boy glanced away, shifting nervously. “Harry hears ’em, I think. Just echoes, he says. Echoes of old times. But he told me never to mention it to the others. They’ll think I’m a nutter.”
    “Echoes,” Jazz whispered. Then she narrowed her eyes and studied him. “You see them too?”
    Cadge gave a small shrug. “Sometimes. Like bits of fog. Used to think my eyes were going, the way things would blur. Once…once I thought I saw a face.”
    Jazz swallowed and found her throat dry. He might have heard the phantoms lost down there in the tunnels, the ghosts of old London that had manifested to her twice since her descent, but it was obvious Cadge could not see them the way she did.
    She didn’t tell him that. Not yet. But she wondered about Harry. If he heard them, maybe he saw them too.
    “So, echoes?” she said.
    “Like memories,” Cadge said.