Ways to See a Ghost (20 page)

But in the glittering dark, she could see Angel’s face, as thin and clear as glass.

“She’s there!” Isis shouted. Gray blind-fumbled their hands towards Angel’s tiny fingers. “There, there!”

“Isis!” cried Angel. “I here!”

They all touched. Isis, Angel, Gray.

“Oh…” breathed Gray, wide-eye staring at the
flesh-walls
surrounding them.

And Isis had her hands back, holding tightly to Angel, working to pull her out through the gap they’d torn in the Devourer. Except Angel wasn’t coming free, she was only
stretching. And this time it wasn’t just her feet that were caught inside the monster.

“Come
on
,” grunted Isis, heaving with her whole weight.

A flickering, dancing light whizzed past them.

“What was that?” said Gray.

Isis shook her head, it didn’t matter. “Help me!” she snapped at him, as the oily layers sucked around Angel, drawing her back into the slithering dark.

Another light popped out past them, then another. In the brief moments of brightness, Isis noticed the blue of her own fingernails, the bloodless white of her arms. Ice was glittering on Gray’s hair and eyebrows.

“Leaves!” he cried. “They look like leaves!”

My feast.

The words dropped as stones into Isis’s memory.

“My feast,” she said. The tentacles had found their way in.

She turned to Gray. “I can’t hold it off…” Her words began to slur as dark sludge flowed across her mind. With every breath she was losing herself, her fingers slackening, letting go of Angel’s.

Gripping tightly, Gray held Isis’s hands over Angel’s, keeping them all together. “Tell me what to do, Isis. I don’t know what to do!”

She watched him blankly. Angel started sinking back into the murk.

“It biting me!” screamed the little ghost. Her cry splintered through the sludge. Isis gasped, almost freezing her lungs, and yanked hard at Angel.

Angel was out a little further, but she was turning thin and glassy, disappearing in front of them.

I won’t give up my feast.

“What can we do?” Gray asked Isis. But it was Angel, insubstantial as spider silk, who answered by opening her arms, still holding hands with Isis and Gray.

“Let them all out,” she said.

Angel had pulled their linked arms into a wide circle, and wherever they touched the Devourer, its flesh scuttled back, as if stung. A huge hole was forming in its flank, and a light whooshed out, then another. Swirling past, blindingly bright. Some looked like leaves, flying straight up into the night. Others were more human in form, phantoms and spectres fleeing out into the fields.

Nonononononononononononono

The ghost-eater screamed in Isis’s mind. Unbearable, relentless.

But she kept her place, holding hands with Angel and
Gray, as the trickle of light turned into a torrent. She couldn’t see Gray through the glare. Her hair was floating and her clothes were flapping in the frozen wind made by the golden leaves and other ghostly forms pouring out through their arms. For a moment Isis saw a mouldy plume of green dust, but it was instantly carried away by the light surging all around them, blazing upwards. Her arms ached with the strain of holding onto the others, and she felt Gray’s fingers start to slip out of hers.

“Don’t let go!” she screamed. His answer was a shout as his fingers left hers, and he was thrown out of the blinding river of light. Isis waved her hand in the air, trying to reach him, but it was Angel’s fingers she caught. Gripping onto her tightly, holding them together as phantoms shot past their faces. Lights, leaves and the bewildering shimmer of a ghost-forest poured out between them. An impossible waterfall raged up into the sky. At its top, trees blossomed and filled the air with gold.

Let go! Run away!

The Devourer shrieked at Isis, tearing through her memories like it was ripping pages from a book. But it made no difference, she was too numb to let go. She’d spent too long surrounded by the frozen body of the
Devourer. Her arms were turning from white to pale blue, her heart failing as the blood cooled in her veins. She held onto Angel as ghosts of all kinds poured out of the Devourer, almost tearing it to shreds. Its billowing body shrivelled like plastic burning in a fire, falling off Isis to lie at her feet, waving feeble tendrils.

And now there was just Isis, holding hands with Angel.

Above them, light blazed in the night sky. A huge sphere, a new sun.

Isis felt her heart beat, but only once.

“Do you remember?” she whispered, her ice-crusted lips stiffening into silence.

Do you remember how we held hands like this, back when you were alive? How we spun ourselves into dizzy, laughing circles?

The little ghost nodded, her eyes wide. “Stay, Isis!” she pleaded. “Stay.”

And she wanted to answer, but the ice was too thick on her face. Dimly, she noticed the bright wheat falling into circles, and shapes of people in the field. Then her eyes froze over, dazzling the world into a kaleidoscope of stars.

Her heart stopped.

“Isis!” Gray was calling her name from somewhere,
but she didn’t answer. She was only a leaf rustling in the forest, only the speck of a bird circling into a wide and empty sky.

It was like an electric shock or something. When all the light blasted out of the ghost-eater, I got thrown clean off. I landed with a thump, somewhere down in the wheat. I think I was knocked out for a few seconds. And I’d let go of Isis, so I couldn’t see the Devourer or Angel, or anything.

Just Isis, lighting up the field. Light pouring out between her hands, like she was made of it.

I tried to stand up, but I was shivering so hard I could hardly move. My legs and arms were all rubbery and useless with it.

“Isis!” I shouted at her, but she didn’t notice, didn’t move. I heaved at myself, and stumbled to her on dead legs. She was shimmering, sparkling, like she was made of glass
or something. But it wasn’t glass, it was ice, covering her from head to foot. Her hair glittered; every part of her shone back the light still rushing out of her. She was dazzling. She was a winter fountain.

“Isis?” I could feel the cold off her, shaking me into shivers. “Are you all right?”

Under the ice, her skin was starting to crack, like she was drying out or something.

“Isis?” I reached out, touching her hand.

She was still holding onto Angel, so my fingers caught both of theirs. And I could see then.

The light pouring out through their hands was a golden tree, as tall as the sky. Like Stu said, the ghost of any species is millions of lives over millions of years, and this one was free again, going up and up into the night, wider than the world. Gathering up the stars.

At their feet, the Devourer looked all shrivelled and tiny, not scary any more. A blue-black sag with wings, flopping about on the ground.

I kicked at it, and it scuffled away. Flapping a little, skidding above the plants towards Philip Syndal, who was just standing up out of the crop, hand to his head. He screamed when he saw it, and started running. It shot
right into him, and he fell down. I didn’t see him after that.

“Stay!” Angel cried. I thought she meant me.

Then I looked back and Angel was gone, the shining tree was gone.

There was just me and Isis in the field, with the rustle and crack of the wheat, and the sighing of the wind. And a massive, boiling sphere of light, right over our heads, pulsing white-hot, and each pulse getting a bit bigger.

“Oh no,” I whispered. I’d never been anywhere near as close as this before. I didn’t even know what would happen.

“We’ve got to get out!” I shouted at Isis. She didn’t move, so I grabbed her under the arms, trying to drag her backwards. It was really hard, you know? My arms and legs were hardly working, and she was solid and heavy, like a lump of stone.

“Please! Can’t you just try and walk?”

BOOM!

I was flattened by light, caught in waves of it. I crawled on, scrabbling and trying to hold onto Isis, trying to get us both out of there. I didn’t know which way to go, I didn’t know which way was up.

“Gray! Oh my God, Gray!”

Someone grabbed me. Mum was hauling me out
of there. Saving my life, probably.

But I screamed, fighting her, trying to keep hold of Isis. Mum wouldn’t let go, wouldn’t stop pulling me out. Because she couldn’t see Isis in all the glare. And she didn’t know Isis was so slick with ice, that she just slipped through my hands.

You wanted to know what seeing a UFO had to do with Isis dying? Well it’s this. I left her behind in all that. I left her behind, and she died.

That’s all there is, really. The burning ball of light did what the others had, the times before. Unravelled into a blinding line across the night, and flew off to the stars. Not UFOs heading back to their mother ship, like Dad said, but the biggest ghosts in the world. Maybe if I’d been with Isis I might’ve seen where it was going, what it was doing. But I wasn’t.

It went with her, that whole way of seeing.

Mum got me to where Dad was, and when it was safe he ran out into the field and started searching for everyone who’d got caught out there. He found Cally first, half-cooked with sunburn, then Philip, lying in the middle of all the smashed-down crop circles, his clothes shrivelled off and burned.

Then he found Isis.

Cally started sobbing and screaming. Mum wouldn’t let me go near. She held me back, squeezing really tight and patting a hanky at the blood on my face.

“Oh my God, Gray,” she said, loads of times.

Dad came running back, grabbed his mobile phone and jabbed in three numbers.

“Ambulance!” he shouted. “We’ve got a man with major burns, and a girl with…” He looked at me then, and he was crying. “She’s been frozen, I think. She’s not breathing.”

It seemed like hours until the ambulances turned up, and the police after. There was even a helicopter, not that it made any difference. Mum shouted at people until they got me in one of the ambulances and brought us to this hospital, and then you came and said I needed some tests, and you took me away from the treatment room…

What happened then? Where am I anyway?

I’m cold. It’s really cold in here.

My hand’s freezing.

Angel?

Angel!

She was a ghost, travelling with ghosts. One ghost, formed of numberless smaller ones. A golden chain of lives, unravelling behind them.

My life was a million years, it said.  

Breathe
.

The atmosphere rushed past, thinning and weakening, gravity losing its grip.

You got to breathe.

They passed beep-whispering satellites, drifting out above the blue curve of the world.

Isis, pease stay.

Clinging to the ghost’s tail, she saw the others. A delicate, thin-beaked bird, silently flying past, bigger than a jumbo jet.
A butterfly flapping slowly, covering the sun like an eclipse. A long-legged cat made of the purest light, running across the top of the sky. The more she looked, the more she saw them: the ghosts of extinct species. Animals and birds, insects and plants, fish and strangely shaped sea creatures. Circling the planet, haunting humankind…

Don’t go with them.

“Am I cold?” she asked. “Should I be this cold?”

She gasped. A wrenching, painful, pulling-in of air. Hearing her own strangled gargle as the air rushed down her raw, sore throat, and into her lungs. The breath turned into a cough, which hurt even more. She breathed in again, having to think about it.

Somewhere nearby, out beyond her eyelids, a man cried out. Something metal tinkled onto the floor.

She tried to move her hand, but it felt leaden and numb. Cold. Her arms, her legs, her body, all cold. She was lying on something hard, as cool as stone.

There were clankings, and the man shouted, “I need a crash team in the mortuary, right now!”

A blanket was laid over her, not nearly thick enough to make her warm.

“We’re going to get sued for this one!” he muttered.

She thought for a long time, until she remembered how to open her eyes.

She was lying flat, on a table. Strip lights lined the ceiling, and a brown-eyed man in green overalls was frowning down at her.

“Do you know where you are?” he asked.

No, she wanted to say. But she couldn’t speak, her mouth didn’t seem to have any spit in it. She tried to shake her head, managing to tip it on one side.

And she saw a little girl next to the table, holding onto her hand with plump little fingers. She had curly hair in a short bob, and she was wearing a pink dress with flounces. Her dimples showed as she smiled at Isis, the shelves on the wall behind clearly visible through her.

“I do it!” said Angel proudly. “You tried to go with them, but I maked you stay.”

Isis tried to remember how to smile.

“I going to get him too,” said Angel, letting go of Isis’s still-numb hand and running across the room. She waved goodbye with both arms, then vanished into a wall.

Across the room, the door slammed open and a tall, dark-haired woman stormed in, wearing a white coat and an air of authority. She stopped when she got to Isis, her
eyes widening. Then she turned to the man.

“When did this happen?” she snapped.

“Just as I was about to start the autops—” He stopped, wincing. “I don’t know how—”

“Misdiagnosis!” said the woman briskly, taking hold of Isis’s wrist, feeling for her pulse. “A paramedic getting it wrong again, or some junior doctor upstairs.” She smiled down at Isis, her face suddenly warming. “Well, you’re clearly not dead.”

“Muh…” said Isis, her tongue like leather.

“Shh…” said the woman, “it’s going to be fine.”

The door crashed again, and more people came rushing in, wearing green overalls and white coats. They filled the room with noise and activity, and Isis with injections and drips. They wrapped her up, putting an oxygen mask over her face.

“Muh um,” she said into the plastic.

At last, the door opened.

Cally’s face was streaked red with burns, her eyes purple and blotched from crying. A nurse was leading her, almost holding her up.

“This has never happened before…” the nurse was saying, while Cally ignored her.

“Isis?” she whispered. Staring. Motionless in disbelief. Only for a heartbeat, then her arms were tight around Isis, hugging her through the crinkling space-blankets, tangling them both in the trailing drip-lines. “I thought I’d lost you,” she whispered, kissing Isis’s hair.

Cally pulled back a little, putting her palms on Isis’s cheeks, gazing at her.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, a tear running down the side of her nose and landing warm on Isis’s cheek. “For all the times I let you down.”

Isis tried to shake her head, but she couldn’t with the mask strapped to her face. She lifted up her arm, pulled the mask off.

“Mum,” she said.

Isis turned her head, and saw her little ghost-sister run back in through the door, pulling Gray behind her. He stumbled to a halt, shocked-looking. Isis held out her hand, and Angel shot through one of the nurses, making the woman shiver.

“I do it,” Angel said again, proud of herself.

Isis looked up at Cally.

“I’ve got to tell you…” she whispered. “I should’ve before, but I never knew how.”

Cally smiled through her tears, smoothing a hair away from Isis’s face. “Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter.”

“Yes,” said Isis, “it does.” And she smiled back, a smile that started at her mouth and reached all the way to the stars.

“Look.”

She took Angel’s cold little hand, and placed it in Cally’s warm one. Then she put her own hand on top, and held them tight.