A threnody of broken gasps and cries reaches his ear, a hit single of co-mingled despair and shock. There is nothing but darkness around him. Sounds reach him through the thick velvet nothingness.

The voices are all small. Some are angry; others simply broken, damned. Locked in. No escape from his hands.

Some of the voices are his own. "You're so much prettier than your mother." "Don't be afraid." "It's a secret, OK? Just you and me. No-one else."

A shuddering chorus of angry denials, screams, shouts shakes him like a train rumbling by, right over the grave of his still-living corpse.

He remembers crows cawing on the heath as he walked to school when he was a child. No matter how fast he walked, he could never outdistance them. He felt that same way now. They will always be there.

The voices crowd in on him now. They threaten to suffocate him, drown him out forever. They crush his mind and he screams.

The eye holes have grown bigger. There is a tear at one corner of the mouth. The mask is not what it was. And what if one day it should come to pieces in your hands, as you struggle to put it on? People would see your true face.

He awakes in the theatre. In an aisle seat. The dust and dryness of the old place fill his mouth and nose. There is someone at his side. Startled, he gasps, and turns his head. She is standing, leaning forward. "You fell asleep," she says, reaching out her hand to him. "Come on, you're due on stage."

"O-on stage? Me ... ?" He allows himself to be helped to his feet and towards the waiting spotlight. As they move forward, the empty auditorium around them seems to fill up. The same shadowy faces, the same whispering as in his dream. The same barely suppressed anger and pain.

She tugs at his hand. Nods. Smiles. "Yes. Come on. They're all expecting you."

He allows himself to be dragged forward. "But where did you ...?" he begins to ask. His words don't seem to matter as they head towards the steps leading up to the stage. He has to prepare for his impromptu performance, trying to remember all the little tricks that made him so popular back then.

He almost trips as she pulls him up the short flight of steps. "Slow down, please."

Once on stage everything seems very different. The flats are punctured and razored in long tears, rattling in the merest breeze. Antique, dessicated vermin crunch beneath the soles of anyone unwise enough to venture onto this ghost-crowded stage. Secret pacts made in the dark are briefly revived, reverberating around and beneath the seats, echoing down the bricked-up corridors of misplaced lust.

He feels uneasy. Outside the theatre looked brand new, nothing like this near-derelict husk. "I-I just want to see the manager. You see, nobody's booked me. I've just come out of hospital this morning. Nobody's said ..."

She holds up a hand, smiles reassuringly. "Don't worry. The owner will be along very soon. Then it will all become clear."

He stands awkwardly, like a schoolboy who has been waiting outside the headmaster's office for most of his life. He becomes so used to the silence that when she speaks it is like a gunshot.

"Did you hear them? Did you dream of them? Even your own daughter. You bastard!"

He turns to look at her, startled. "What? What did you say?"

With a few strides she is at his side. "You heard me, you filthy old bastard." There is a darkness in her eyes that scares him. How could she possibly know anything about his ... tastes? They'd spent just one night together.

When in doubt plead for mercy, that's what his mother taught him. Not that it had done her any good once his father had emptied the bottle. But he can't think of any other way out right now.

"Look. I don't know what you're talking about. Please - I'm just not up to this right now. I've only just got out of the hospital." His words seem to elicit no pity from her, so he adds, slowly: "I had an accident. I was lucky to survive." At that, a slow cruel smile creeps along her lips. The smile seems to plant an image in his mind.

The accident. Is it an accident when someone pushes you, trying to silence your tongue, your words smashing apart on a hard concrete floor at the end of a long fall down a stairwell? An accident. That was what he'd called it, but now ...

She stands before him, shaking her head. "No accident. I was sent to fetch you." A flicker of understanding passes through his mind, but before he can grasp its meaning, she grasps his chin and forces him to look at her.

Then the girl with platinum hair removes her mask and he sees the truth at last. Hope falls, reeling headlong into a deep pit. He hasn't seen her since they took her away. He hasn't been allowed to.

"You! B - but we ... ," he begins. "Not for the first time!" she hisses, anger nearly strangling her words at birth.

He draws in his breath sharply. "But how are you here? You're still alive."

She slides the wide gold bangles from her wrists and holds them out to him. They bear the ugly deep scars of fatal wounds. They hadn't told him - he hadn't even been allowed that.

"D-dead," he breathes, in a voice as hollow as his every promise.

"I don't want to see your disgusting fucking face! Put on the mask, he's coming; the ultimate audience, the final critic."

He looks up and the small theatre is suddenly full. There must be hundreds of them. None of their faces are clear. There is a light in his eyes but he can still make out that they are all children.  Every seat is filled by a small figure, just like the children's matinees he used to perform at. Some are smaller than others but they are all silent. All gazing at him.

He looks behind him. She is standing there like some wardress, ready to punish any infraction of the unguessed-at rules. He realises that he is dressed in his old stage clothes, now spotted with mould and hanging in tattters.

A bang at the back of the theatre makes him peer into the darkness. A door has just slammed. The figure who has entered strides forward purposefully. As he passes each row of seats, the figures of the phantom children evaporate into nothing, leaving not even a wisp behind.

Now the man has reached the front row. His appearance causes the ragged figure on stage to gasp and back away in fright, only to be intercepted by the girl and forced back to his former place.

To some the man would seem smartly dressed, to others it would appear overdone. Gloved and hatted. His movements are slightly too precise, as if considered by an actor, calculated for maximum effect. But the face itself is hardly finished. The gloved hands appear imprecise and clumsy.

The shabby figure on the stage does not dare turn around again but does not want to look at his 'audience' either. He stares into the painful glare of the spotlight, praying for blindness. He can feel her hate-filled gaze upon him. "The stage is yours, old man. This is your time. Give us one of your standards. Sing 'Light As a Feather'," she instructs.

She looks at the solitary seated figure. "For your pleasure, sir," she says, indicating the pathetic figure in rags stood before her. The man nods enthusiastically. With a wave from him, the tiny orchestra pit suddenly becomes peopled by musicians.

Every member of the small orchestra looks emaciated and terrified. Their sharp elbows poke through the faded cloth of their striped clothing. The leader, hollow-eyed, looks up at the figure on stage for a moment before turning to his companions. Bows begin to scrape dryly, the horns emit a few spare, wheezy notes.

It is a tune he is familiar with, he thinks, though it is hard to make it out at first, given this near funereal rendition.

The sudden impact of her shoe in his back reminds him he is expected to perform. Afraid to begin, yet more afraid of what might happen if he doesn't, he begins to croak out the first line of his most famous song. His voice catches, and he stands shamefaced while his body shakes with a coughing spasm.

The solitary punter looks up. In a voice rough and rusty he asks, "What's this? Has the actor forgotten his lines ... the singer, his song? No!"

More afraid than ever of the consequences of failure, the tattered performer begins again. The orchestra begins scraping away once more. His dry old vocal cords begin to grind out the words.

"When we're - togethe-e-er, I (cough) feel as light as - a - feathe-e-er, My heart is - " The words stop as his chest fills with pain, his throat with the dust of desolation and disappointment. Falling to his knees, he struggles to keep his spine straight for a few seconds, then falls flat on his face, choking.

She steps forward, looking down at him with glee as he jerks with pain, his eyes rolling back. When he is finally still, she clasps her hands together in front of her. She kicks the limp body just once. The impact dislodges the mask he has worn all his life, revealing the ugliness and corruption it has covered for too long.

From the front row, the call of "Encore! Encore!" is spat through brown, sharpened teeth. The solitary audience member's gunshot-loud clapping sends clouds of dust up into the air, drifting slowly towards the stage to rain down upon the collapsed figure lying there.

The punter stands, picking up the expensive-looking coat laid across the seat beside him, and turns to leave. He glances once over his shoulder at the heap upon the stage, the man's daughter standing over him, trembling, hands clasped in prayer to some imaginary god of revenge and redemption. Both victims. He grins in malicious satisfaction, enjoying the symmetry. As he walks towards the exit, he yells over his shoulder: "Your finest moment!"

The heavy door swings shut with a final thud as he leaves the theatre. He spares a single glance at the poster beside the door. Across it a cheaply printed two-colour red-and-white banner reads 'Tonight - and every night!'