Ways to See a Ghost (12 page)

That girl was right, Isis did look mental. Holding onto nothing, yelling. She had tears rolling down her face, and she was screaming, “Angel! Angel!”

Everyone sitting at their tables, drinking coffee, they were all staring. The gang of kids were laughing their heads off.

I guess I would’ve thought she was mad too, except for what I’d seen before, in the field. She’d said there was a ghost, and there was one. So now, if she said something was in the shopping centre, I believed her, you know? The trouble was, I couldn’t see what she could. I didn’t know what was happening.

I ran over. “What? What do I do?”

She looked at me and her eyes were blown pure black. She was freezing too. “Help me hold her,” she said, and her voice sounded miles away. “Help me hold Angel.”

How do you hold a ghost?

I swiped my hands through the air, flapping them about until they hit cold. Ice in the air. That was Angel, the shape of her, frozen out of nothing. Like, you know when you’re holding something, your hands make the shape of it? Well if you took away the thing, and left your hands in the right place, that’s what holding Angel was like.

The gang started shouting stuff at me too, but I didn’t care, because as soon as I got a grip on Angel, everything changed.

Like a dream got laid over my eyes. Or the world was a dream, and I woke up.

Out of nowhere, there was this… monster. I mean, really, a monster. It’s hard to describe, because it didn’t exactly have a shape, but it was a deep, dark flickering blue, like the bottom of the ocean, or a shadow at night. It filled up the top of the shopping centre, oozing into everything, pushing right up to the roof. And even while I could see it, right there, I could see all the people just carrying on, like it wasn’t.

It had teeth all over – thousands, millions – but no mouth. Then sometimes it would flicker, and it was nothing but mouths. It had hundreds of eyes as well, all over, and when it flickered the eyes all crunched together into one. Like a whirlpool spinning into its body. Every time that happened I thought I was going to fall in, just go down and down. I stared at the monster, with my brain going,
“You’re
not seeing this!
You can’t be!”

I think I screamed.

And Isis headbutted me.

Not hard or anything, just enough to get me out of those whirlpools.

“Don’t look in its eyes!” she cried.

I managed to pull my eyes off the monster, to what we were both holding. Isis had a grip on one of Angel’s hands, and it turned out I had hold of Angel’s shoulder. I nearly let go then, nearly screamed again, because Angel didn’t look like this plump little ghost-girl any more. She was all stretched out and up, with these hands on her everywhere, pulling her into the monster. Her feet were already stuck inside it. Around her ankles, the blue watery stuff was rippling and sloshing, trying to suck her in further. Her eyes were open, and she was saying,
“Mummy, Isis, Mummy, Isis,” over and over.

“Take both her hands,” cried Isis. “I’ll get hold of her waist.” In the weird blue light, she looked like a photo, like all the shape had been taken out of her.

To get a decent grip of Angel’s hands, I had to let go for a second.

And everything went back to normal.

No monster, no Angel. Only me and Isis, on the top floor of the shopping centre, screaming and holding onto air. The gang were still laughing, everyone was staring.

No wonder.

I hardly even noticed though, I just felt for the cold, and grabbed hold of Angel again. Soon as I touched her, the normal world faded and I was staring straight at that
night-watery
monster. And it was scary. I mean, wet-your
self-scary
. Not because it was huge and freaky and trying to eat Angel. It was scary because…

Well, there was this time me and Dad got caught in a thunderstorm, out in this really big field. The lightning hit a nearby tree with this massive crack, and it exploded into flames and smoke. We watched it burn, the thunder crashing around us, and I knew there wasn’t anywhere to hide. Then Dad said, in this really calm voice, “We’re going
to get down on the ground, Gray, and make ourselves as small as possible.” And I curled up next to him, nearly burying myself in the dirt, while the rain pelted my back and the thunder boomed on forever, shaking the ground under us.

The thing in the shopping centre was like that storm. You knew it’d roll right over and kill you without even noticing.

Me and Isis pulled on Angel, trying to get her out. The monster let out this roaring, and the ripples glopping around Angel’s feet turned into waves. She slid through our hands, sucking further into the monster. I tried to pull her back, but my feet were slipping on the floor, my fingers so cold I couldn’t even feel them.

One of the monster’s whirling eyes slid down its body, until it was right above Isis. Staring at her, like it hated her. She gripped harder around Angel, and made this crying, grunting noise, heaving even harder. From where Angel’s feet were, all these sploshes and ripples started spreading out across the thing’s body. It let out this gargling scream, and all the shops and people, everything that was normal, they all got even fainter. Like it was trying to pull us out of the real world. It was really, really cold. Our breath was puffing frozen in the air.

I was terrified by then. My heart was hammering, my arms were going numb with cold.

“Let her go!” Isis screamed, heaving at Angel. The monster shuddered in slow-motion ripples, and, just like that, Angel’s feet popped right out.

She pinged through the air, straight through Isis’s arms and into mine. Like getting a bucket of ice chucked over me. For one weird second, I was back in the sunshine, back in the real world, then Isis ran at me, and as soon as she touched Angel, we were all three into the underwater blue again. Angel was crying and gasping in my arms, one hand around my neck, one hand reaching for Isis.

The monster roared – it was like getting hit over the head. It reared up, into this tidal wave of blue. A wave filled with eyes and mouths, like a school of sharks crashing in. Everything got darker, the real world faded into foggy shapes.

“Everything’s still there,” Isis whispered. “Remember, everything’s still there.”

Except, we weren’t.

Above us, the monster’s mouths and teeth were collecting into this huge, jagged circle. Champing, gleaming and licking its lips. What wasn’t mouths, was its eye.
Spinning, circling, trying to suck us in. I wanted to throw myself in it.

“Turn around,” cried Isis, “Stop looking at it!” But I couldn’t, I couldn’t even speak. “Turn around!” yelled Isis, yanking me round by my arm.

I was able to think again.

“Run?” I gasped, and we scrambled for the escalators, sort of hugging each other around Angel, trying to protect her. We must’ve looked crazy – clumsy-running down the steps, barging past a woman with her shopping. But we got away from the dark fog of the monster, slipping out from underneath it.

At the bottom, we ran into the crowd, which was still hanging around Cally’s psychic mate. There were hundreds of people in front of us, milling about like idiots.

“’Scuse me, ’scuse me!” I shouted, trying to push us through, but no one even moved.

“It’s following us,” cried Isis.

I looked up. The monster was blue-oozing across the ceiling, covering the sky like a storm.

“It want to bite me!” sobbed Angel. She was so cold, sucking the heat out of me. All the hair on my arms was stood up straight, every one in a goosebump.

“What do we do?” I asked Isis.

She looked at Angel, and you could see how much she loved her. “Can you leave?” she whispered. “Can you hide?”

The little ghost shook her head.

“It bited me,” she said. “I too tired now.” I could see right through her, like she was made of glass.

I started to shiver, Isis was shivering too.

“Can’t we kill it or something?” I asked.

“Kill it?” said Isis. “Is it even
alive
?”

“I don’t know!” I snapped. “You’re the one who knows about all this stuff.”

She shook her head. “Not this.”

The air was getting darker, colder. The crowd all around us were fading into paper cut-outs, and the bright shopping centre was turning misty, like a fog was soaking into it. The thing had covered the whole glass roof.

“We’ll have to h-hide,” said Isis, her teeth chattering now. The monster was sucking the warmth out of the world, and holding Angel was like standing in a tub of iced water.

“Where?” I asked. “It’s a-already oozed over everywhere.”

“All right, run then,” she said. “Is there another w-way out?”

I nodded. “T-to the c-car park.”

Isis looked at me. “You’ll have to g-get her out.”

“Me? What about you?”

“I’m going to try and hold it off,” whispered Isis. She looked really scared then, but like she was trying to be brave.

I stared at her. “It’ll p-pull you in! Eat you!”

She shook her head again.

“I’m not a ghost,” she said. “I’ll be okay.”

Which goes to show, even she didn’t know everything.

Blue. Spreading and thinning in front of her, unfolding into the wide open space above the shops. Shimmering with eyes, endless reflections of each other. Countless hands descending, by scuttle or finger walk, down the walls, clinging to the glass shopfronts, clutching and pulling at the unheeding shoppers.

Her mouth tasted of dry paper, her heart was beating out of her chest.

She remembered words, suddenly.
These other bodies can’t see me. But you can.

Someone had said that to her once, but she couldn’t think who.

The creature carried on pouring out of nowhere, a slow
tide filling the shopping centre. Her legs were shaking, but she stopped herself from running. She had to stay here, she had to stop it from leaving and chasing after Gray. She had to give him time to get away, to get Angel to safety.

The creature rippled like water, the head and outstretched arms melting and stretching, turning into something like tentacles. One whipped through a family coming down the escalator. The parents were instantly sliced into shattered, sparkling pieces, their shopping bags exploding into shreds of plastic snow.

Isis gasped the start of a scream, but stifled it. No one else in the mall had even blinked. Not the crowd around her, nor the other people trundling up the escalator. The children carried on down, sucking their drinks, unaware of their parents’ destruction. The tentacle whipped back, and the atoms of the man and woman swirled together again. Utterly untouched, utterly unconscious of what had happened.

Your sister will not be so fortunate.

More remembered words, loud and vivid in her mind. Who’d said them?

“What happened to those people was just a trick,” she whispered, trying to reassure herself. But a voice
drifted out of her memory, half-remembered, like a dream.

Are you so sure?

The creature reared upwards, covering her with twilight. It was going to crush her, drown her into emptiness! She cried out, her arms going up over her head, squeezing her eyes shut. Cowering, waiting for the end.

Nothing.

She opened her eyes. A middle-aged man wearing a neat white shirt and ironed jeans was staring at her.

“Are you all right?” he said.

Isis swallowed and put her arms down.

“Fine.” She croaked the word out.

The man frowned.

“Really, I’m fine.” This time she managed to sound almost normal, despite the rippling wall of violet-blue rising up behind him, and the dozens of hands reaching out of the air towards him.

“Okay,” the man said, but like he didn’t quite believe her. He walked away, and Isis took in a deep breath.

The creature folded itself in again, disappearing some of its strange, shimmering body.

A child-ghost is only a small meal.

With a jolt, she remembered when she’d heard those
words before. It was a few years ago, when Cally used to read her bedtime stories. Cally had closed the book after reading them, and turned off the light. Then she’d kissed Isis on the forehead and said sadly,
“I am so hungry.”

Her mum had never said any of that!

“Get out of my mind,” hissed Isis.

Then how will we converse?

Isis winced, trying to drive away a sudden memory of Cally, singing these words to her as an eerie lullaby. She glanced towards the exit. Was Gray outside now? Was he running through the sunshine, holding an invisible Angel?

Your sister.

Her mum, younger and happier. Sitting in a neat hospital bed and smiling down at a tiny baby, wrapped in a pink blanket. This was a real memory – Isis had gone to visit them with Dad, after Angel was born.

“You can’t have Angel,” Isis whispered now.

But in her memory, her mum looked up from Angel’s sleepy, red-squashed face.
“She is already dead.”

“Cally never said that!”

The creature shifted. Without moving, it had got closer. Isis forced herself to stay still, keeping herself between the creature and the way out.

All around her, people were carrying on with their shopping, or milling about in the crowd. Men, women and children, ambling between the stores, squinting in the bright sunshine, passing in and out of the twilit body of the creature. None of them noticed it, none of them even shivered.

“What are you?” she whispered. “What do you want?”

I am hungry. I want to eat.

And now Isis remembered hunger. Those days upon days when Cally had been too depressed to buy food, driving Isis to search through every empty cupboard again and again, so hungry she’d even eaten dry pasta pieces scattered in a dusty corner, crunching them between her teeth in desperation.

“That never happened!” she cried. “Cally always made sure I had something to eat.”

The creature rippled a hundred heads. Was it sighing?

Isis’s mind filled with memories of food. Slices of toast she’d had for breakfast, the iced bun Cally had bought, the spaghetti they’d had for tea last night. Fish and chips Dad used to buy on a Friday, Angel’s second birthday cake. Angel eating an apple in tiny bites, Angel with ice cream smeared around her mouth. Cally spoon-feeding Angel
from a bowl of mashed banana. Food and Angel, Angel and food.

Isis clenched her fists, stopping the flow.

“You can’t have her!” she whispered, glaring at the creature. She opened her fingers, and put her hands out in front of her. They were trembling.

“I can hold onto ghosts, hurt them even,” she whispered. “Maybe I can do the same to you?”

Laughter ripped through her life, a mocking soundtrack to every memory.

Was Gray far enough away by now? Were he and Angel safe? Could she run now?

A sudden pressure, a cold poking at her thoughts.

Where?

She took a step backwards, bumping into a woman overloaded with shopping bags.

“Watch what you’re doing,” said the woman.

Isis opened her mouth for an automatic sorry, but what came out was, “I live at Flat 2b—”

She slapped a hand over her mouth. She backed away, not from the frowning, head-shaking woman, but from the huge, bluely invisible creature, stalking her like a cat.

Where?

She pressed her hand even harder against her mouth, trying to stop herself from screaming out her address. And now she wanted to run away even more, run straight home without stopping…

Something else. She had to think of something else.

One times seven is seven.

Two times seven is fourteen.

Three times seven is Flat 2b…

The creature grew a long, impossible neck, weaving it through the shops, encircling Isis like a snake.

She jumped to the names of the planets.

Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Wentworth Ro…

“No! I won’t.”

The creature roared soundlessly, rising up into a straddling arc of violet-blue, a dark rainbow. Its eyes collected into a single whirling orb – a black hole sucking in the sunshine, pulling every gleam from the shop windows.

Desperately, she thought of anything she could, panicking her thoughts through random jumps. Grandma Janet’s house. Going with Cally to the Welkin Society. Walking in the woods with Gray. Gil and his UFO hunting. Walking out into the night-time field, and the lights rising up into the darkness. She remembered having wings and
seeing all those birds. She wanted to be like them, to fly away!

A soundless flash, the crack of an unseen whip. An eye leading to infinity, right in front of her face. Fists everywhere, slamming, thumping and smashing onto the floor tiles.

Tell me!

Isis staggered, falling to her hands and knees, her breath coming in gasps. The whirlpool circled faster, and she screwed her eyes shut, trying to force her thoughts away from Angel. She focused again on the night in the field, reliving every moment, every strange detail of the lights swirling into a strange sun, of the flock of ghostly, doomed birds.

When she reached the end of the memory, her mind was still.

She opened her eyes.

A swirl of blue, curling around the shopping centre, softly undulating. Gentle as a coil of smoke, covered in slow smiles.

Your bargain is good. You can keep your sister.

Isis stared at it, shaky with disbelief. She’d beaten it! She’d kept it from Gray, from Angel; they were safe and away, running down normal, sunlit streets. She laughed,
almost hysterical, and pushed herself to standing. An elderly couple glanced at her, then looked quickly away. She put her hand to her mouth, tears trickling down onto her fingers.

Then, you will feed me. You will be my feast-giver.

The words froze into her mind, spoken by everyone she’d ever known.

A weightless wind blew through the shopping centre, and the creature oozed into the air. It rippled through the main hall, rising above the heads of the shuffling shoppers, shooting straight up and crashing out through the glass roof, splintering the windows into a million shards of crystal.

Leaving them perfectly whole, and undamaged.

The sound of footsteps brought Isis back into the noise and chatter of the mall. The middle-aged man in the white T-shirt and jeans was leading Cally towards her. Behind them was a security guard, and trailing after was Philip Syndal.

Cally rushed for Isis, grabbing hold of her.

“What happened to you? What’s the matter?”

Isis stared at her, a blank in her mind where words ought to be.

“Uh… I was here…” she managed. Her voice sounded strange, as if she were speaking a foreign language.

“A fit,” said the man in the T-shirt. “She was definitely having a fit or something. Talking to herself, shaking, eyes rolled back in her head.”

“Oh God!” Cally pulled Isis into a tight hug.

“I wasn’t…” Isis said into Cally’s shoulder, but she wasn’t listening.

“She’s ill! I have to take her home!” said Cally. She turned to Philip. “Please, could you explain to the centre manager for me? I really can’t continue the readings after this.”

“Of course,” said Philip. He turned to Isis with genuine concern on his face. “I hope you feel better soon.”

And the world darkened around them, the sun overhead hazing and cooling. In dread, Isis looked up and saw an arrow of darkness, a swarm heading straight for them out of the sky. It plummeted downwards: a falling fountain of deep blue water, filled with eyes and laughing, biting mouths. She was frozen by fear; it was too fast to avoid. The cloud was a dagger, heading right for her. A scream opened her mouth, but came out as a gasp. The dark swarm, the many eyes and hands, they funnelled neatly into the top of
Philip’s head, as if there were an open hole in his skull.

He continued to talk with Cally as the raging swirl rushed into him. When it had finished, he shut his mouth, and Isis saw him swallow.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll sort everything out.”