Ways to See a Ghost (9 page)

Her heart was beating a frenzy, the aftershock of telling him. Gray was staring at her, eyebrows drawn together, like she was a puzzle he had to untangle.

But he wasn’t laughing.

“You serious?” he asked. She nodded. “Are you sure it’s not like…” he waved a hand “… seeing shadows from the corner of your eye and not really knowing what they are?”

Isis glanced at her lap. Angel was snuggled into the sleeping bag, her blurry little head poking straight out through the fabric. She wasn’t a shadow at the edge of Isis’s vision; she always made sure she was the centre of attention.

“I can see them.” Isis looked at Gray. “Like I can see you.” She took a deep breath. “I’m not crazy or anything.
We went to see this therapist, me and Mum, and she said I was really normal.” She was talking fast, trying to convince him.

Gray blinked. In his sleeping bag he looked like a caterpillar. “A therapist? Was that cos of your dad leaving?”

“Not just my dad. It was Angel too. My little sister. She was run over. Killed…”

Gray nodded. “Dad said, but not anything else…” His eyes were wide, his face a question.

Isis took a deep breath. She’d gone too far to stop now. And she’d had to tell the tale before, anyway. To teachers, to the school counsellor. She’d found a way of telling it, so it didn’t hurt too badly.

“Mum took us out to the countryside, she wanted to show us this standing stone, I think. I can’t really remember now. But we had to walk along the road for a bit, to reach the start of the footpath. And Angel…” A small, nearly see-through face looked up at Isis – Angel, round-eyed, listening to the tale about herself. “She ran on ahead, wouldn’t stop when Mum shouted. I tried to catch her, but this car…”

Isis had been complaining, that was the part she didn’t tell. How she’d been moaning about having to walk, about having to go out. She’d wanted to go home; she said
it over and over, watching her mum get crosser and crosser.

Why had she made such a fuss? Why couldn’t she have just been good that day? Isis couldn’t remember, maybe it didn’t matter anyhow? Except it did, more than anything.

She’d stepped in a puddle when they’d been about halfway between the lay-by and the start of the footpath. The mud and water had slopped cold inside her sandal.

“I can’t even walk now!” she remembered crying, furiously, and shaking her sodden foot. Cally had finally lost her temper, shouting back, yanking at Isis’s sandal and pulling off her mud-stained sock. Neither of them had noticed Angel, running on ahead.

“She was only three,” Isis whispered to Gray. “She didn’t know to stay off the road, not really.”

Angel had been playing a game, jumping on and off the grassy verge, and it had led her away from them. Not far, only a handful of metres. But it was where the lane curved away round a bend, where a tall, blowsy hedge blocked any sight of what was coming.

It was Isis who’d seen her first. Isis who’d raced, one foot bare, to catch her.

“Angel!” she’d shouted. “You mustn’t go on the road!”

Cally had gasped, dropping Isis’s sock.

“Stand still both of you!” she’d cried, running behind Isis. “Get on the grass!” But Isis had ignored Cally, and Angel had ignored them both, hopping up onto the verge, then back onto the tarmac.

Isis had just reached her when the car came round the bend.

Its brakes were already screeching when it hit, and Isis remembered the driver’s face, rigid with horror. She remembered the strange, shattering sensation of being hit, and seeing Angel fly over the bonnet.

When she’d opened her eyes, she was lying next to Angel in the road. Angel was staring at her, but even though dazed and filled with pain, Isis could see how terribly wrong Angel was. Her head was twisted one way, her body the other. Isis stretched out her hand, and took hold of Angel’s.

“Her eyes were open,” Isis said to the night and the sleeping wheat. Next to her, Gray was silent. “And then she died.”

Like a sigh, like some invisible change.

She remembered how much it had hurt. She remembered Cally, screaming and clinging to Angel. The driver of the car running over and gabbling into his phone, begging for an ambulance to come quickly.

“And then, Angel got up. Her body was still on the ground, but she was sitting next to me as well, still holding my hand. Like she’d just… stepped out of herself.” The little ghost on Isis’s lap nodded.

“I do that,” said Angel.

Isis smiled down at her. “It was her ghost, you see? I knew she was dead because I could see her ghost.”

She looked across at Gray. His eyes were white against the dark, his mouth open.

“And… then what?” he asked.

Isis shrugged, her sleeping bag slithering off one shoulder. “She just sort of… hung around. And I started seeing other ghosts.” With one hand, she pulled the sleeping bag back up again. “Maybe I’d seen them before that? I don’t remember though.”

Gray twitched, looking around quickly.

“Are there any here?” he whispered.

“Me!” cried Angel.

“Yes,” smiled Isis.

Gray pulled into his chair, going very still.

“Where are they then?” he asked. His voice was too loud, a challenge.

“With me,” said Isis. “It’s just Angel. She’s around most
of the time actually.” She looked down. “Don’t you have anywhere else to go?” she teased.

Angel leaned up and kissed Isis on her chin. Like being brushed by spider’s silk.

“I lub you and I lub Mummy,” said Angel. “That why I here.”

“I love you too,” whispered Isis, and turned back to Gray. He was staring at her.

“You’ve got a ghost sitting on your
lap?
” he asked.

Isis nodded.

Gray jerked backwards in his camping chair, nearly knocking it over. Then he steadied himself, and started laughing.

“You’re winding me up, aren’t you?” he said. “That’s a good one, especially out here.” He sat down in his chair again. “You’re weird, you do know that?”

“I’m not joking!” said Isis. A sudden desperation filled her, just to have someone she could tell, someone who believed her!

“Yeah, right,” said Gray.

“I’m not!”

Angel started wriggling, pulling herself out of the sleeping bag, her wisp of a body emerging through the cloth.

“I here!” she shouted at Gray. “I here!”

Angel scrambled onto the ground, a cold shiver in the summer night. Flowery-sandaled feet stamped soundlessly on the dirt, little fists sat on Angel’s hips as she planted herself in front of Gray. The white dust path showed clearly through her.

“I HERE!” she shouted, in a voice that would have woken the field, except only Isis could hear it. “I HERE!”

There was the tiniest of flickers on Gray’s face, his only reaction. Angel glared at him, her lip wobbled, and she started to cry.

Isis unzipped her sleeping bag and got out of her chair. She crouched down next to Angel, and carefully took hold of one of her hands, like unfolding a baby’s whisper. Isis focused on her own fingers, using them to find the nothing-fizz of Angel’s cheek, and stroke away invisible tears.

Gray pushed back in his chair. Its legs caught in the grass and it toppled behind him.

“What are you
doing?
” he asked.

Isis stayed kneeling.

“You upset her. She’s crying now.”

“I upset a ghost?”

“She’s only three.”

Gray’s sleeping bag was puddled around his knees, and his arms were out, as if he were trying to ward her off. Isis ignored him.

“Are you all right?” she whispered to Angel. The little ghost head bobbed a yes. Isis stood up, keeping hold of Angel’s hand.

Gray’s arms thumped to his sides.

“You are
really
weird.”

Isis’s heart was beating more slowly now, the calm pulse of hidden anger. He didn’t believe her, he thought she was weird. Well, so did everyone else.

“Just forget it,” she said. “You were right, I was only joking.” She smiled, trying to look happy. “I had you going though, didn’t I?”

His face was a blank, confused.

“You were joking?” He was looking at her fingers, still curled around Angel’s. He shook his head.

“Are you holding hands with it?”

“I not IT!” shouted Angel. “I a girl!”

Isis started laughing, she couldn’t help it.

“What are you doing now?” snapped Gray.

Isis caught her laughter, pulled herself back.

“Nothing,” she said.

Gray kicked his way out of his sleeping bag, staring hard at the space next to Isis’s hand, slightly off where Angel was standing.

“I can’t see anything,” he said, squinting and frowning.

But he was trying.

“You looking WRONG way!” cried Angel, darting towards him. Isis felt a weightless pull on her arm, her fingers still linked with Angel’s. The ghost swiped with her free hand, trying to slap at Gray. Isis waited for the shiver, for the brief, unnoticed cold as the ghost passed through him.

“Whuh?” Gray was staring, eyes wide. Angel’s hand was stuck to his.

It only lasted for a moment, a heartbeat – Angel holding hands with Isis, and holding hands with Gray. A stretched-mist child, linking them together.

But it was like a jolt of electricity. It was like when she first saw Angel, back at the roadside.

Gray let out a wordless shout, amazement and fear working his face. He jerked backwards, his feet catching in the sleeping bag, and tumbled over his fallen chair, tripping on the thin metal legs. He landed heavily on the ground, his hand out of Angel’s.

I saw her! I know you aren’t going to believe this, but I did.

This girl, this little ghost-girl, with curly hair and big brown eyes. She was see-through, but not like a skeleton or anything, actually she was sort of chunky. And she was wearing this pink dress and sandals with flowers on. I mean, she was right there, looking at me – but not, at the same time. Like she wasn’t quite in the right place, or your eyes couldn’t get focused or something.

I’m not making it up. I was holding onto a ghost! I could see her fingers in my hand. I could see my hand through her fingers.

Then I think I might have made a noise or something, cos she let go.

And the next thing I was flat on my back on the grass, and the only person I could see was Isis.

Gray got to his feet.

Isis hobbled back a step. Angel was clinging to one of her legs, freezing it into numbness.

Gray turned his head from side to side, staring down, searching the dark grass. He picked up his chair, looking underneath it, then lifted his sleeping bag, opening it to peer inside. He turned to Isis, his eyebrows scrunched.

“Are you okay?” asked Isis. “Did you hurt yourself?”

He shook his head.

“She’s got curly hair,” he said.

Isis stared at him.

“And she’s wearing this pink dress, and sandals with flowers on.”

The world fell into silence. The wheat stopped growing
and the stars froze onto the night. There was nothing, anywhere, except her own breathing.

“You saw her?” she whispered.

Gray nodded.

“He SEE me!” shouted Angel. She flung herself away from Isis’s leg, jumping up and down without actually touching the ground.

Her numb leg gave way, and Isis sat down heavily on the grass.

“I can’t see her now,” said Gray. “It was only for a second. Just now.”

Isis turned the moment over in her mind.

“When her hand was in yours?” she asked.

Gray nodded.

Angel’s dance turned into an aeroplane flight, arms stretched wide as she flew around them.

“Will you hold Gray’s hand again?” Isis asked her. Angel shot behind Isis, pulling her arms in tight. She peered round at Gray, then shook her head.

“No.”

“But you just did!” Isis pushed herself up to standing.

“I not want to
now
,” said Angel, putting her hands behind her back. “He too big.”

“Please, Angel, don’t you want him to see you again?” Isis made a move for Angel, but the little ghost skittered away, shaking her head even harder.

“No no! I not
want
to!”

“What’s going on?” asked Gray, looking blankly around.

Isis stood still, and sighed. “She’s being awkward, like usual.”

“I not orkard!” Angel’s mouth fixed into a pout, she started fading.

“No! Angel, don’t!” Isis lunged for the little ghost, but she’d already misted into nothing. Isis turned to Gray. “I think she’s gone a bit shy.”

They sat in their chairs, looking up, letting the star-filled night press down on them. Cally and Gil were near the black lump of the camper van, surrounded by a pattern of blue and green lights, some along the track, some glowing out of the field. Gil’s UFO monitors, relentlessly measuring.

“Will she come back?” asked Gray.

Isis shrugged. “Usually she sulks for an hour or so, but I don’t know about now. She’s never been seen by anyone else before. I think it scared her. She’s always saying it’s what she wants, and she was really happy. But then she just vanished.”

Gray stretched out his legs, nylon-whispering his sleeping bag.

“Has your mum seen her?”

Isis shook her head.

“Have you told your mum you can see her?”

Isis shook her head again. “After Angel died, she got really depressed.” Lost in a dark world, unreachable. “I wanted to tell her, but I… couldn’t.”

Her dad had been around, for a few weeks after Isis got out of hospital, but he and Cally had filled the air with fighting and crying. When he went away again, the house had seemed too quiet to speak in, too empty. The words had sat on her tongue every day, the imagined answer to everything her mum said.

“Did you have a good day at school?”

Angel’s still with us.

“What do you want for tea?”

I see her all the time.

She’d never said them, of course. She’d never known if they’d make things better or worse. Not long after, Cally had said she was going to become a psychic, and even at not-quite eight years old Isis had understood what a fragile strand her mum was clinging to. She’d known
then she definitely couldn’t say anything about Angel.

Isis watched a star twinkle in reds and yellows, just above the horizon.

“And now it’s been so long, and she says she’s the psychic.”

Gray was watching her, frowning.

“What does that matter? Won’t it make her happy?”

Isis stared at him, then shrugged. “She is happy. Since she met your dad.”

Gray went quiet, looking away.

“How long did you see Angel for?” she asked him.

His eyes turned back to her. “Like I said, just a second.”

He didn’t seem special, or gifted. Especially not swaddled in his sleeping bag.

“I just don’t understand why it happened,” said Isis. “No one else has ever seen her.”

“Maybe I’m psychic too?” said Gray, hopeful sounding.

“Maybe.”

But Isis remembered the first time she’d seen him, back in the garden. Angel had touched Gray then, kicked him actually, and he hadn’t noticed. This time, Isis had been holding onto Angel as well. Was that the difference?

“We should wait until she gets back,” said Gray excitedly,
“then we can try again and…” His eyes flashed with a sudden reflected light. His face was bleached by it, every curl of his hair gleaming like wire. The flowers on Isis’s sleeping bag leaped into colour, and she squinted against the brightness. In the distance, Gil was shouting.

Gray leaped up off his chair, scrambled out of his sleeping bag and ran for the camper van.

Isis stumbled to standing, still caught in her sleeping bag, putting her hands up against the blinding light. Looking down, she saw the grass lit into luminous green.

Then, darkness.

She couldn’t see a thing for a moment, her eyes struggling to adjust. She could hear Gray’s feet on the track, running away from her.

“It’s happening!” Gray called back. “Come on, Isis!”

“Oh!” she gasped, her heart flinging into fast-drumming excitement. Stray blobs of colour floated in her vision as she ran after Gray. Ahead of her, Gil was a tall shape, moving quickly between the lights of his equipment, and Gray was already helping, confident and sure. Cally stood awkwardly by herself, forgotten.

“Look at these readings!” shouted Gil. “There were spikes twenty minutes ago. It must’ve started but we didn’t
see it!” He put a pair of binoculars up to his eyes, surveying the night-time field. A new breeze rustled through the wheat. “We should have been paying more attention.”

Gray was bending over a laptop screen, his finger pressed on the return key as he scrolled through some kind of graph. “The readings aren’t very strong. Not like last time.”

More lights blazed into the sky, flickering above the field. Isis squinted, trying to judge where they were, but it was hard even to focus on them, as if they were moving, or she was seeing them through a filter.

Gil dropped his binoculars. “The readings are weaker because it isn’t centred here!” He ran for the camper van, yanking open the door and jumping in the driver’s seat. He started the engine, then looked back at the others. “Come on!”

“What about the gear?” Gray yelled, following.

“Leave it! We’ll come back for it after.”

Gray pulled open the side door and scrambled inside the camper.

“Come on, girls!” shouted Gil. “Don’t you want to see a UFO up close?”

Isis and her mum shared a glance, then they dashed for
the camper, laughing as they tumbled in. Gil wrenched at the gearstick, and the van’s tyres spun over dirt.

There were no seats in the back. Isis had to cling to a rope dangling down from the roof, and Gray hung onto a cupboard handle. They crashed into boxes and each other, as the camper bumped and jolted along the bridleway. In the passenger seat, Cally peered at the track ahead, lit by the van’s jittering headlamps.

“Don’t you think you should go slower?” she said to Gil. “The children aren’t strapped in!”

“If I slow down we’ll miss it!” he shouted, hurtling the camper over another pothole, sending Isis and Gray flying upwards.

They rattled on, driving for where the sky was brightest, where the strange lights were most densely packed in the sky. Light poured in through every window of the van; they were being surrounded.

With a screeching crunch, Gil slammed the van’s brakes on.

“It’s too narrow to drive further,” he yelled, opening his door and jumping out. “We’re running from here.”

“Are you all right?” Cally leaned over her seat, stretching her arm down to Gray.

“Yeah!” He jumped up from where he’d fallen, leaping out the door after his dad.

Cally climbed through to Isis, helping her out of a squashed cardboard box and looking happy, excited.

When had Cally last been like that?

Isis took her mum’s hand and they scrambled from the camper, running along the dusty gravel path. Lights blazed and danced around them, throwing criss-crossing shadows. Ahead, Gray and Gil squeezed between the strands of the barbed-wire fence, pushing out into the silvery, shivering wheat.

“I didn’t think it would be so bright!” cried Cally.

“Me neither,” laughed Isis. It was nothing like watching Gray’s film on the computer.

They reached the fence. Gil and Gray were wading dark trails into the crop. Gil had some kind of flashing box up over his head and Gray was holding a camera.

Cally put her feet onto the bottom strand of the fence, wobbling on the wire as she tried to climb over. She fell backwards, laughing.

“How do we get over this?” she shouted.

Lights flashed everywhere. The wheat flamed in gold, the metal fence glittered.

“Not over,” called Gil from the field. “Climb through it!”

Cally tried again, this time bending down and squeezing between two strands, trying not to get caught by the barbs. Isis pulled the top strand up, making a wider gap for her mum.

“Look at that!” yelled Gray, just as Cally climbed into the field.

Isis looked up.

The lights were drifting upwards, just as she’d seen on Gray’s film from the time he saw a UFO with his dad. She’d watched it half a dozen times on the computer, she knew what to expect.

Except, she could see now, here in real life, that they weren’t just blobs of floating light. If she concentrated, she could see other shapes hidden inside. The dazzling rays lengthened into beating wings. Shards of colour grew into heads, beaks and fluttering tails. No longer drifting, the light-birds were flying upwards, circling. A flock on the wing. Gleaming like stained glass, they filled the heavens in a vast, rising spiral. Singing in a deafening cloud, piping out their songs as she watched them for a heartbeat, for a lifetime.

Then, all at once, they dropped like stars tumbling from the sky. A chaos of falling, their silver wings missing each
other by the smallest ruffles of air. The sky emptied, as the great, shining flock plummeted into nothing…

Isis gasped in the sudden darkness. Cool air filled her lungs, her hands were clutching the wire fence. She was back on the ground again, the grass soft-brushing against her ankles.

In the field, Cally was a black silhouette near Gray and Gil. She turned around, waving at Isis.

“Come on,” Cally called. “What are you waiting for?”

“Uh…” Isis swallowed, tried again. “I’m just coming.” Her voice sounded strange and wobbly, but no one noticed.

She checked the fence for barbs, then carefully gripped the wires. They gleamed molten between her fingers, the field pulsing into a headachy orange-red. Looking up, Isis saw a huge ball of light growing out of nothing.

She saw it explode.

Streamers of silent fire flew outwards, engulfing Gil, Cally and Gray, dissolving them into orange-sparkling vapour. Isis tried to scream, but the light poured through her, past her, carrying her voice away. Yellow haze swirled and blew in the air. It flowed between her ribs, streaming from her fingers and out through her eyes. Now ribbons of light drifted and tangled in the dark, pouring upwards,
collecting together into a vast, single shape.

A bird.

A creature out of myth, with dazzling wings wider than the sky. The light-bird swooped above the fields, covering the world beneath with a golden shadow. Its thundering wingbeats seemed to sweep up the stars and it lifted its head to let out a silvery cry. A single booming version of the flock’s piping chatter. The sound echoed across the wide, flat wheat fields, and for a moment Isis was sure she was standing amongst the greys and greens of a sparkling marshland. She heard the chuckle of water, smelled the saltwater scent of an incoming tide. Then the bird called again, and the ghost-marshes dried to bare earth, the sea smell turning to sewage and smoke.

“I don’t understand,” Isis whispered. The enormous, shining bird flapped with slow, sad wingbeats into the night and let out a last lonely cry, telling of death and the distant wash of time…

“ISIS! Where are you?”

She gasped, trying to remember where she was. Her hands were still on the barbed-wire fence, the metal biting into her palms. She unclenched her fingers, she’d been clinging on so tightly they were almost numb.

“Isis!” Cally shouted again.

She tried to answer but she couldn’t get her tongue to make words, instead birdsong filled her mouth. She put a hand to her face, but her mouth was the same as normal. She just couldn’t remember how to speak.