Ways to See a Ghost (5 page)

Isis slid down to the floor, a sick feeling reaching up to her.

Angel was in a room full of psychics. Any one of them might see her. All of them might!

All except Cally, who’d never seen Angel, not once. Not in the darkest days, not even when Angel’s little ghost had stepped from her own mangled body, in front of her horror-struck sister and screaming mother.

Isis got herself up to standing, heart thudding. There was nothing else to do.

She walked to the door of the meeting room, and took hold of the handle. She could hear a man speaking, and another answering.

She pushed the handle down, and walked into the room.

“Can we help you, dear?” asked an elderly woman with high cheekbones and a narrow, almost lipless mouth. She was staring at Isis from her heavily made up, deeply sunken eyes. As were the other eight people at the table.

“I… er…” Isis kept her hand on the door handle, looking in.

It was Philip Syndal’s dining room, but it was decorated
like the interior of a castle, with bronze candle brackets on the walls and a dark wood table filling the room. A dragon mural coiled across all four walls.

The members of the Welkin Society were sitting around the table, like knights of old. Instead of swords and silver goblets they were surrounded by files, folders and sheets of paper, business-like. The only thing Cally had on the table in front of her was the letter, her hands flat on the paper as if she was scared it might blow away.

She was glaring at Isis.

Isis smiled, trying to act normal, while scanning the room for Angel.

There. The see-through shimmer of a little girl, sidling along the wall, working her way to Cally.

“Is everything all right?” asked Philip, starting to get up. “Do you need any more biscuits? I can get you some…”

“No, Philip. Please.” Cally scraped her chair back, the letter fluttering onto the floor. “I can deal with this.”

She walked quickly round the table and grabbed Isis’s hand, pulling her back out into the hallway and shutting the door behind them before Isis could think of a way to stay in the room.

“Please, don’t embarrass me,” Cally hissed, pulling Isis
into the kitchen. “The society aren’t going to let me come to meetings if you keep interrupting.”

Isis yanked her hand out of Cally’s. “Then you should have let me stay at home!”

“You know I couldn’t find anyone to look after you.”

“I don’t
need
anyone!”

Cally stood by the kitchen door, and took a deep breath through her nose.

“We can discuss this later. Just tell me what you want and then I can get back to the meeting.” She flicked a glance back at the dining room. “They’ll be waiting.”

Isis followed her gaze, and saw Angel slinking out through the wall. Little arms waved.

“Isis! I here!”

There’d been no shouting from inside the room, no cries or questions. Angel was out, and no one had noticed her. The knot in Isis’s stomach untightened. She looked straight at Cally, and shrugged.

“I just wanted to know where the toilet is, that’s all.”

Cally laughed, and rolled her eyes.

“It’s over there, you silly.” She hugged Isis briefly, then hurried back to the meeting. “Nothing to worry about—” she said as she opened the door. Her words
were cut off as it closed behind her.

Isis ran into the hallway, plunging her hands into Angel’s smoky form, grasping hold of her and pulling her back to the kitchen.

“Oooow!” wailed Angel, kicking with weightless legs, trying to hit Isis. “You hurting me!”

Isis’s hands were going numb, she let go with one of them.

“Don’t go in there again!” she hissed. “That was very naughty!”

She pulled her other hand out of the little ghost, who sank onto the floor, her edges dissolving a little.

“I not naughty,” she wailed.

“Don’t start crying,” snapped Isis. “It won’t work. I told you not to go in there! One of them could have seen you.”

Angel became a little more solid, and started fiddling with the flowers on her sandals. “No one see me,” she mumbled.

Isis sighed, it was hard to stay angry with Angel. She crouched down and touched a finger to Angel’s cool-whisper cheek. “They
might
have,” she said. “They’re psychics.”

“Like Mummy?”

Isis shook her head, her throat tight.

“Not like Mummy. Proper ones.” She sat down on the tiles next to Angel. “This is Mummy’s big chance, you see? It’s what she really wants. But if the others spot you, and find out she can’t…” Cally would be crushed. Cut to pieces. “They won’t let her join their club.”

Angel scrunched up the cloth flower. When she let go it was still perfect. She looked up at Isis.

“They dint see me,” she said.

“That’s because they weren’t looking,” said Isis. “I distracted them.”

Angel’s eyes were round in her not-quite-there face. “After. When you and Mummy wented out.” A smile sneaked onto her lips. “I runned on the table.”

Isis groaned, dropping her head into her hands. Angel poked her face through Isis’s fingers.

“They dint see me. Even when I show my tummy, like this.”

Angel stood, pulling up her dress to reveal a stretch of ghostly belly above pink tights. Through Angel, Isis could see the fridge.

“None of them?” whispered Isis.

Angel shook her head.

“Why did you do that?” cried Isis. “You could have ruined everything!”

Angel dropped her dress.

“I want someone to see me,” she said. “Someone not you.”

For a moment Isis thought of that future she’d tried to imagine, back in the garden. The one where she had a normal life, and didn’t have Angel trailing after her. She shook her head, scattering the thoughts, and held out her arms. Her dead sister climbed onto her lap, with the weight of a falling feather.

“You’ve got me,” whispered Isis, “and I’ve got you.” She kissed Angel, like kissing a breeze. “Always and forever.”

“Always and forever,” echoed Angel.

My dad had this theory. Actually, he has a theory about most things. Aliens, 9/11, how the government are using the Internet to control us, why the oil companies bumped off all these people who invented water-powered cars. You name it, my dad’s got a theory. So he had to have one about Norman Welkin, and why he died.

He’d been following it up, you see. Ringing the police, checking the local paper for stories, doing Internet searches.

“What’s the point, Dad?” I asked him. “The policeman said it was probably a heart attack.”

“Well he would say that, they’re trained to put people off the scent,” muttered my dad, frowning at his computer while it brought up about twenty trillion hits on
unusual deaths. “Norman’s death was strange. You said so yourself.”

“No I didn’t,” I said. “It was Isis. You know – your weird girlfriend’s weird daughter.”

Dad’s fingers stopped on the keyboard.

“Why do you think they’re weird?” He looked at me. “Do you think
I’m
weird?”

I shrugged. “Of course. Doesn’t everyone?”

Thing is, I should never have told him what Isis said. How it was like the dead man had been frozen and coated in ice. I should have kept my mouth shut, because as soon as the words were out, Dad’s ears pricked up, and there was no stopping him.

He spent ages on the Internet, and then he got onto the Network, which is basically this club for UFO freaks. I mean, they don’t call it a club, but they send each other emails all the time, and they have these meetings at hotels, where they give each other lectures and slide shows, and try and flog stuff like spaceship detectors, or anti-bugging gizmos for your mobile.

“Those losers,” is what Mum calls them.

The reason I know all about them is cos Dad took me along once. It was to ConspiriCon, which is just for
conspiracy theories. Like, who blew up the Twin Towers? Or were the moon landings really faked in some desert in America? Actually, those are normal-sounding, compared to what was at ConspiriCon. There was this man who said the world’s really controlled by aliens. And another who said the ancient Egyptians had predicted the end of the world, and it’s going to happen in about five years. There was a guy who went on about the earth being hollow, and how the government are going to hide inside it when things get too bad. Dad made me sit through a talk about how UFOs are just a cover story for secret government weapons, and halfway through this other freak stood up and started shouting, saying it was really the exact opposite.

We went there because it was Dad’s weekend and he didn’t want to miss out. On seeing me, or on going to ConspiriCon. So he just booked another ticket and didn’t tell Mum. He didn’t tell me either, not until we were on the motorway.

“No way, Dad!” I said. “I’m not going!”

“You’ll enjoy it,” he said. “You always enjoy our chasing trips.”

“I like
camping.
I like being outside. This is just some crappy hotel, and everyone will have their shirt tucked in
their trousers. I’m not doing it, Dad! I’m going back home to Mum.”

“And how will you do that?”

I yanked at my seat belt, undoing the clip.

“Just let me out, I’ll hitch or something.”

“You won’t.” Dad reached with one hand, grabbing the seat belt and trying to clip it back in. The camper wobbled in the lane, a lorry slow-honked us. I suppose I could’ve grabbed the wheel and spun us off the road, but that was probably the only way I would’ve stopped him.

Sometimes, I totally get why Mum left Dad.

Anyway, it was the Network that Dad used to work out his theory about Norman Welkin’s death. He sent off all these emails to his UFO friends, and he was on the computer all the time. Then, he got to use ‘The Database’.

Honestly, that’s how he says it, like he’s in MI6 or something.

One of the super-freaks, this bloke called Stu Bradley, looks after The Database. Not that Dad ever calls him Stu, he always says, “The Keeper”. Stu wouldn’t even come to our house until after dark, which meant it was eight at night before he turned up.

“A dark green Volvo, that’s what we’re looking for.”

Dad stood at the side of the window, like someone was watching us, and twitched his head to look every time a car went by. In the end this boxy old Volvo pulled up outside, really knackered, and Stu peered out. When he’d checked up and down our street, he ran for the house clutching a bag, the hood on his coat pulled right up.

He was really old, fifty or something, with long grey hair and grey stubble all over his chin. He didn’t look special; you’d never notice him on the street or anything. Except for his cigarette stink. He smelled like an ashtray, and his teeth were this nasty brown from all the fags. As soon as he got inside, he lit up a cigarette, and Dad never even stopped him. The house filled up with smoke, not that Dad cared.

“Is that it?” he asked, nodding at the bag.

‘Stu the Keeper’ didn’t say anything, just frowned at me.

“Don’t worry about Gray,” said Dad. “He can hold his tongue.”

Stu the Keeper glared at me even harder.

“You can’t tell
anyone
,” he rasped. “Not what you see on The Database. And nothing the government could use to identify me.” I nodded, trying to keep a straight face.

A stinkometer, that’s what they could use. Or a dog. A dog could smell him from miles off.

Stu the Keeper turned to Dad.

“Have you unplugged all phones and electrical appliances? Are you disconnected from the Internet?”

“Yes,” said Dad. “And we can go in the bathroom – it doesn’t have any windows.”

Like I said, they’re pretty far gone with all this stuff.

“Perfect,” said Stu.

So we went in the bathroom. Stu sat on the toilet, me and Dad perched on the side of the bath. The extractor fan hummed away, which was lucky because we’d all have got lung cancer otherwise. I mean, who smokes in a bathroom?

Stu opened up the big bag, took out a laptop and set it carefully on his knees. While he was waiting for it to start up, he turned to my dad.

“How’s your work going? Got any further with your MDLP?” That stands for mobile disambiguated luminescent phenomena. Seriously. He meant the massive light sphere I told you about.

Dad nodded. “Yes, I have as a matter of fact. I’ve been doing some calculations based on the readings, and I think I’ve worked out the base preconditions, which means I should be able to predict any reappearance with only a ten per cent margin of error. I can go and get my notes if you like…”

Stu held up his hand. “One thing at a time. I’m here with The Database tonight.” He nodded at the screen, where a small search form was flashing. “There she is.”

“All right,” said my dad, rubbing his hands together. “I’m after unusual deaths. But not mutilations.”

Stu put his fag out in the sink, held his fingers over the keypad, and started typing.

The Database is a big list of all the weird things any of the UFO freaks have ever heard of, put into different categories. They think it’s really secret, but half the stuff’s on YouTube. My film of the sky-sphere is in there.

It was pretty boring once they got going, and smoky, so I went out and made cups of tea for them, and a hot chocolate for me. When I got back, they had the laptop on the toilet seat, and they were both kneeling on the bath mat in front of it. Dad took the cups of tea, and put them down in the bath.

“Check this out, Gray!” he said, pointing at the laptop. “I told you it wasn’t just a heart attack.”

Stu shook his head at me.

“You should never believe the police, Gray. They work for the government, don’t they?” He pointed at the screen, where a list of results was sitting on the page.
“There are seventeen other unusual deaths with a strong resemblance to the one you discovered.” He lowered his voice. “Seventeen.”

I looked over his shoulder, reading the list. I pointed at one of the entries.

Death of elderly man in North Wales. Natural causes. Police report notes the weather had been unusually cold for the time of year.

“That’s just some old man who died,” I said.

Dad slapped the side of the bath. “Come
on
, Gray, you should know how to join the dots by now!” he pointed to the text. “He was cold. The police said it was natural causes.”

“Natural causes,” said Stu, “is their way of hiding the evidence, shutting up the families and putting people off the scent. Deaths by natural causes always go in The Database. They might as well say cover-up and be done with it.”

“Norman knew the
truth
about this world,” said Dad. “He was a target.”

Stu the Keeper nodded, his face all pulled together. “They don’t want people knowing the truth. They’ve got
the resources to make it look like a heart attack, but they can’t hide every trace.”

“Trace of what?” I asked. “And who’s
they?

“You know,” snapped Stu, but I didn’t. I couldn’t keep up with him and Dad.
They
could’ve been the government, or aliens, or the Americans, or big business, or one of the weird groups they think are controlling the world. And as for the truth ‘they’ don’t want people to know, sometimes it’s aliens, or secret government plans, or stuff being done by big business, or weird groups controlling the world. Any of that… maybe all of it.

“Norman was one of my best customers,” said Dad. “I owe it to him to find out what really happened.”

“But what you’ve got doesn’t prove anything,” I said. “People die all the time.”

Stu blew out a blast of smoke.

“People don’t just walk into their gardens and drop dead,” he said. I tried to argue, but he held up his hand. “When you’ve seen as many suspicious deaths as I have, you’ll be able to spot the cover-ups too.”

I wanted to ask Stu how many of those suspicious deaths were on TV programs, but Dad got in first.

“Norman may have had a heart attack,” he said darkly,
“but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t murdered.”

I didn’t argue; there wasn’t any point with those two. But now it’s obvious they were going at it all the wrong way round. I mean, Norman Welkin’s death was really weird. But it was weird because it
wasn’t
like any of the others in The Database. Nothing they found in there was the same, even if they made out it was. No one ever died like Norman had.

Until Isis.