Ways to See a Ghost (2 page)

Isis pressed her hands on the wall, holding herself up on trembling legs.

“I won’t do it,” she whispered.

“That woman gives them lies,” said the ghost of the old man, his words piercing through the shouts, “while you could give them the truth.” He was standing back from the mob, as if studying her.

Goosebumps shivered up her arms, even under her thick jumper. The clamouring phantoms had dragged the heat from her body, her breath was crystal-freezing in the air.

“Go away,” she whispered. How long could she hold them off for? Would they be too strong this time?

“You’re as bad as that phoney back in the hall!”

“Worse! Because you’ve got the gift, and you won’t even use it!”

“Jenny!” “My son!” “The cats!” “They can’t sell it!” The shouting went on, getting more and more desperate, starting to press against her thoughts.

Go away go away go away

A shadowy young man put his fingers to a tattooed neck, pulling open a wide gash and revealing the bright-white bones of his spine.

“Look what they did to me,” he moaned. “You tell my brothers, they got to sort it out.”

The spirits closed in. Smells of earth, ash and river water filled her nose.

“Go back in there!”

“You have to tell them!”

Shivers raked her body, chattering her teeth.

“N-no,” she whispered “N-no.”

Then, a jostling in the crowd. Cries of surprise, and a wavering in the mist.

Angel! Swatting with her fists, kicking her small feet.
Fury crumpling her little brow and scrunching up her mouth.

“You go-way!” Angel’s voice squeaked loudly. “
My
sister! You go-way, you horrids!” Isis managed a smile, feeling her fight come back. She took a deep breath, then shoved her hands right into the ghost with the sliced neck. She gasped as a fierce, aching cold rushed up her arms, her fingers going white, then blue, then numb.

“Ow!” yelled the ghost, stumbling backwards, staring down at the hand-shaped holes in his shadow-body. “How did you
do
that?”

“Get away from me,” whispered Isis. “All of you.”

“Go!” shouted Angel, fists up. “Go-way!”

The ghost of the young man moaned, hugging the holes in his chest. They were closing, slowly, like ice refreezing.

Isis held her hands out, waving them at the other ghosts, praying she wouldn’t have to do it again. Her fingers prickled and burned as the blood returned to them, but the ghosts backed away, fearful.

They faded and flopped into the walls, sliding and slipping through the woodgrain of the door. The old man with the fez was the last to leave.

“Do you even know what you can do?” he asked as he
swirled into plumes of dust, drifting into nothing. Isis didn’t answer.

When he’d gone, Angel’s small hands reached up.

“Carry,” she ordered.

Isis leaned down and picked Angel up. Like holding the breeze from a butterfly’s wingbeat.

“Thank you.” Isis shivered, smiling. “You saved me.”

Angel grinned at Isis from her round little face. “I do it.”

Isis kissed her. Like kissing the mist rising from a river.

Her little sister. Three years old, five years dead.

All right then. If you want to know, I met Isis the year after, in late March. The days were getting longer by then, there’d even been a few warmish ones, so Dad’s round was picking up. He always gets busier in spring; lawns need cutting, stuff needs pruning. He started taking me out with him, on his weekends and the days he picked me up from school. That’s another of Dad’s things I didn’t tell Mum, cos she would’ve got really mad about it, but I liked it actually. I liked being outside.

So, we were at this house. Mansion really. It had a massive garden, about the size of our school playing fields or something, with high yew hedges and big iron gates on the drive. Dad was doing the lawn that afternoon, driving
round it on his mower. Green Garden Gil, that’s what he calls himself – it’s painted on his camper and on the trailer behind. Not that he’s actually green, he just doesn’t use any chemicals and tries to get people growing wildflowers and stuff.

Anyway, it was Mr Welkin’s place. Norman. He was really rich – he’d made loads of money selling herbal remedies. You wouldn’t think you could get to be a millionaire that way, but Dad said people will believe anything. And he was mad. I mean, completely fruit loop. He had long white hair, and he never wore shoes, even outside in the winter because he said they block ‘earth energies’. He was into ghosts and UFOs. He told me Jesus was really an alien, and he was always quoting this Native American chief, who said it’s only when all the trees are gone and the seas are empty of fish that we’ll realise we can’t eat money. He was into even weirder stuff than Dad, if you can believe it. I think that’s why Dad got the job.

I suppose we’d been there about half an hour, so it was probably a bit after four, and Dad was mowing the lawns. He’d told me to stay in the camper, do my homework, but the cooler in that van hardly worked and the sun was shining in and turning it into an oven. And anyway, what’s
the point of going to a massive place like that and not even going round it? I mean, the garden has an actual stream running through it! And so many trees it’s practically a forest, and all these yew bushes clipped into weird shapes. Dad said they were peacocks when they started, but over the years they’d grown out, so now you’d never know what they’re meant to be. Norman Welkin asked Dad if he could prune them back to being peacocks, and he said he’d do his best, but when he’d finished they looked more like aliens than anything. I’m not sure if that’s what he meant to do, but Mr Welkin really liked them.

Norman’s garden is the best Dad goes to, so I didn’t want to just sit in the van. Also, there were the biscuits. Old Norman always brought some out, along with coffee for him and Dad. Really good biscuits; he said they were organic. Whatever, they had big lumps of chocolate in, and that chunky sugar on top. Him and Dad would yak on about their latest theory, and I’d eat the biscuits.

Not that day. I waited twenty minutes, and Norman didn’t show. In the end, I looked through the window into their living room, but there was only Sondra, his girlfriend. Not like that sounds, because she’s really old, as old as him. They weren’t married though, even though she
lived there. She was as weird as him, sort of jittery, like she was expecting someone to creep up on her. She had grey hair down to her waist, and wore all these long, flowery dresses. She said she was an artist, but she showed me a couple of her pictures once, and they were all… swirly and mixed up. Rubbish, I thought. Anyway, she was in the living room with this other woman, one of her friends I guessed. And no sign of Mr Welkin, which meant no biscuits.

I trudged off, keeping out of Dad’s sight, and I heard this sound over the noise of the mower.
Tatatatatata
, like someone drumming on the big horse chestnut tree. I knew it was a woodpecker because that’s what they do in spring. It’s hard to spot them without binoculars because they like to stay hidden, but I went looking anyway, staring up at the tree. It’s why I didn’t see her at first. Isis, I mean. She was sat against the tree trunk, on this bench that goes all the way round. Still as anything, feet together, hands in her lap. Like a statue or something, like she’d just appeared out of nowhere.

I thought she was a ghost for a minute.

“What are you
doing?
” I said.

She didn’t move a muscle. “Sitting.”

Little and thin, she was. She looked loads younger
than me, even though it turned out there’s only two months between us.

“Who are
you
?” she asked, like she owned the place. Except I knew there was no way she was anything to do with old Norman or Sondra. For a start, she was wearing the same uniform as me, and rich kids don’t go to our school.

“My name’s Gray,” I said. “My dad’s the gardener here.” I looked at her uniform, so it’d be obvious what I was thinking. “Who are you?”

She kept her same blank face, shivered a bit.

“Cally… my mum’s in there.” Her mouth pressed tight and she shut up, like she’d said too much or something.

“She a friend of Sondra?” I asked.

Isis wobbled her head a bit; not yes, not no.

Going out with Dad on his rounds, he’d told me how the rich types work. One time he turned up to do a garden and the husband had just run off with someone else. Other times, my dad has seen ‘goings on’. That’s what he calls it.

“Is your mum a private investigator?” I asked. We met one once – he was keeping watch on one of Dad’s customers.

She didn’t answer.

“Is Norman having an affair with your mum?” She could’ve been in there, having it out with Sondra. Which would’ve been pretty cool, actually.

“No!” Isis pulled back on the bench, like I’d spat at her or something.

“So what then?”

But Isis only shut her mouth up and glared. Wouldn’t say another word.

The screaming started not long after that.

I didn’t want her to die, if that’s what you’re asking.

Cally got the call from Sondra Borwan while Isis was walking home from school. When Isis opened the door of their flat, Cally was waiting for her. Coat on, car keys in hand.

“We’re going out, I’ve got a job.”

“Job?” For a hoping moment, Isis thought Cally had finally gone through with her promise to Grandma Janet.
Real work, bringing in regular wages, even if it’s just at the supermarket.
She flash-dreamed that other life: Cally being awake at the same time as Isis; Cally making new friends, and being happy; no more dark days, no more seances. Back to how they used to be. Back to normal.

Angel’s head drifted out from inside the sofa.

“A lady,” she lisped. “She want Mummy to listen.”

Isis tried not to blink as her dream ran into nothing.

“It’s a reading,” said Cally, blushing slightly, chin up.

“You said I wouldn’t have to go to any more!” said Isis, challenging back. What had been the point of all their fights during the seance tour, if she still had to do this?

Cally jingled the keys in her hand.

“Don’t be silly, Isis, I can’t leave you here by yourself, can I?”

Isis dropped her school bag onto the floor.

“I don’t want to go.”

Cally picked up Isis’s bag, and put it on the table. “Isis, this could be really important for me. The client’s rich, I could tell from her address. She wants someone who can get there right away, and she called
me
! If I do well, and she recommends me, this could be my breakthrough!”

“I won’t!” said Isis, even though she knew she would, that she’d already lost the argument. And going to individual readings was almost as bad as working the village halls. Cringing in the corner of someone’s living room, while Cally told them what the spirits were saying. Worse still when the spirits were there too, angrily contradicting.

It took about twenty-five minutes to drive through the
traffic-clogged roads of Wycombe, and out the other side to the wealthy, tree-lined lanes. Sondra Borwan lived in one of those villages where the cottages all had hanging baskets and pretty gardens, and the pub on the green did expensive Sunday lunches. Isis huffed a circle of mist on her window as they drove, drawing an angry face in it. Then she wiped it off with her sleeve.

Cally, who’d been chatty and excited about her new client, had fallen into silence when they’d hit the country roads. Hands tight on the steering wheel, eyes narrowed, she stiffened every time they came to a tight bend. They were nowhere near where it had happened, but the hedges looked just the same, the way they stopped you from seeing what was coming around the corner. Isis winced at a shot of pain all down one side. It wasn’t really there, only her body remembering the sudden shock of metal.

It was years ago, she wanted to say to Cally.

The car’s indicator ticked as they turned off the road, pulling up in front of iron gates set between tall, black-green hedges. Through the gates Isis caught a glimpse of mellow brick and glinting windows.

“Wow,” she breathed, “it’s huge.”

Cally came back from her thoughts, and smiled at Isis.

“What did I tell you?”

They had to buzz to get in, and the gates slowly swung open. Cally’s rust-patch of a car crunched up the gravel drive, past the green swathes of lawn and tumbling shrubs. When they reached the semicircle steps in front of the house, Cally parked the car in front of them. Then she sighed, settling her shoulders back.

“I’m listening,” she said quietly, but not to Isis.

Sondra Borwan was already out on the steps, anxiously clasping her silver-ringed hands. She started forwards before they were even out of the car.

“At last! I was beginning to think you wouldn’t come!” And she burst into tears.

Cally hurried up the steps, putting her arm around the woman’s shoulder as if they were friends. “How long has Norman been missing?” she asked quietly.

Sondra let out a sob. “Four and a half hours. He went for his morning walk at about eleven, and he hasn’t come back. I was in my meditations until two o’clock, so I didn’t realise at first, but then…” She gasped a breath, clearly trying to get control of herself. Fanning her face with her hands, bangles jingling.

“Would he normally come back?” asked Cally.

Sondra nodded, unable to speak.

“And have you called the police?”

Sondra nodded again, and let out a wail. “They said he wasn’t missing if he’d only been gone a few hours, he could’ve just gone to the shops. But they don’t understand, I know he’s not all right! He wouldn’t just go off, not when we had yoga planned.” She lowered her voice. “I knew a psychic was my only hope.”

Cally nodded. “I’ll do my best to find him.”

Sondra fluttered her hands. “Of course, I know the country’s best psychics personally, but I can’t ask
any
of them. Norman would never forgive me, not after what’s happened recently. Then I remembered my cleaner telling me that she’d seen you in Aylesbury, last autumn.”

Cally gave a stiff smile. “Oh,” she said. “Well, you did the right thing. The spirits will tell me where your husband is, and what he’s doing.”

Sondra nodded, calmer now, caught by Cally’s soothing tone. “I was desperate, I had to ring
someone
.”

“The spirits will help us,” said Cally. Isis could see she was offended, but trying not to show it.

Sondra’s eyes filled with tears. “That’s what Norman always says.”

And the two women went into the house, leaving Isis standing there.

She held back, not following them inside. Instead, she carefully checked every window. Although the house looked modern, that didn’t mean anything. New houses are built where old ones used to be, and people die all the time. But there were no faces at the glass, no figures on the rooftop. Isis turned, glancing casually at the garden, as if she were admiring it. There was nothing there either, just a gardener driving a ride-on lawn mower, and he was definitely alive.

Which only left their car. Isis watched two short legs misting out through the shut door, feet flapping, trying to reach the ground. The legs wriggled, and the bottom half of a little girl’s dress flickered out through the side of the car, up to the waist. The legs kicked, and toes hit gravel.

She was wearing the sandals again.

White strapped, with a stitched design of pink and yellow flowers. The day they’d gone to the shoe shop Angel had refused to try on anything else, and after Cally bought them, Angel had worn her new sandals all the time, even to bed.

Isis shuddered. One of the sandals had been ripped
from Angel’s foot, that last day. There’d been mud smeared across the flowers.

She shut her eyes, opened them again. It was only another memory.

Angel pulled the rest of herself out of the car, then turned and smiled at Isis. Her not-there curls bobbed above her not-there head as she trotted over, soundless on the gravel. Isis smiled back.

“Big garden!” said Angel, a whisper in the air. “Where the swings?”

When Isis found them, the swings were hidden in a forgotten corner of the rambling gardens. Old and wonky in their frames, their metal feet lost in long grass. Whatever children they’d been meant for must be long grown up, and Isis wasn’t sure they were even safe to sit on. Of course, that didn’t matter to Angel. Isis pushed the swing and it flew up on its rusting chains, unweighted. On the seat, Angel laughed and shrieked.

“Higher, higher!”

Angel could go higher than anyone – there was nothing to hold her down. Isis tried to think what it had been like, pushing Angel when there’d been something
to push, but her muscles couldn’t remember.

She hit her palms against the swing’s seat, batting it up into the air.

“Wheee!”

Angel was the only one in the family who’d stayed the same after she died, and Isis smiled as she watched her, pushing until her arms started to get tired.

“That’s enough,” Isis said.

“No!” cried Angel. “More, more!” She hung stubbornly onto the chains, but without Isis’s help the swing quickly settled back to stillness.

Angel twisted round on the seat; eyes wide, face pleading. “Pease?”

Isis shook her head. “I’ve been pushing you for ages.”

“No fair!” Angel kicked her legs, but the swing stayed motionless. “More!”

Isis shook her head again.

“No,” she said. “Let’s play another game.”

“I not want to!” the little ghost shouted at her. “I want swing! You a meany!”

“And you’re being a brat!” snapped Isis, before walking away.

The air was damp, and there was a cool breeze,
but Isis felt warm even without a coat, frowning as she walked. Really, Angel was eight. So why couldn’t she act like it? Isis knew the answer, of course. Angel was frozen, halted at the age of her death.

Isis followed the path as it meandered between deep borders, marking time until Cally finished. Shrubs and plants poked woody stems out of the earth. Crocuses and snowdrops speckled their colours in the flower beds, yellow daffodils just unfurling their buds. The path went on, heading under the spreading canopy of an enormous twisting tree. She saw the bench, circled around its massively gnarled trunk, and sat down.

Her frown settled in as she stared back the way she’d come.

It hadn’t mattered when she was younger, and if Angel hadn’t been there she probably would’ve ended up like Cally. But now… Isis was getting older. She was in secondary school, she’d be choosing her options next year, then it’d be exams, and leaving home. She tried to imagine going to college, getting a job, having a boyfriend.

Isis leaned against the rough bark of the tree. How could she do any of those things, with Angel?

Lost in her uncertain future, she didn’t notice the boy
until he was walking down the path straight for her. He was tall, a bit lanky even, with caramel-coloured skin. He’d come from the opposite direction she had, and he was looking up at the tree, his brown eyes deep set beneath heavy black eyebrows. The way his head was tilted made his chin look too big for his face, and he was scratching in the short black hair on his head.

Isis froze, only moving her eyes, watching him carefully. There. Wet footprints behind him on the paving stones. And there. His breath steaming into the air, his cheeks shiny with cold. Isis relaxed a little, but even so she kept still. It was a trick she’d learned over the years: people often only noticed her when she moved. It was the same for the living and the dead, whatever Cally told her audiences about the spirits seeing everything.

He almost walked by, and he probably would have if Angel hadn’t shot out from inside the tree, leaping at Isis and laughing.

“Come, Isis, come!” she squealed. “Play hidey-seek!”

Isis jumped and the boy stopped dead in his tracks, noticing her.

“Jeez!” he startled back a step, “what are you
doing
?”

Now Angel was jumping around Isis, clambering
onto her lap, grabbing her arm with butterfly fingers.

“Come, Isis,
come
!”

Isis tried ignoring her, but it was hard. Hard to think, hard to follow even the simplest conversation.

“Sitting,” Isis answered the living boy, not her dead sister.

“Don’t sit! Come with me!” cried Angel.

The boy was wearing school uniform, the same one as hers. She recognised his face as well, but she couldn’t remember his name, not with Angel pulling at her.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“My name’s Gray…”

Angel climbed onto the bench, putting her cold little arms around Isis’s neck, shouting into her ear.

“Hidey-seek,
please
.”

Isis missed the rest of what Gray said, but she could tell he’d asked a question by the look on his face.

“Cally… my mum’s in there,” she said, hoping that would sound all right.

Angel put her hands over Isis’s eyes, like frost on her eyelashes.

“Hidey,” she said. “Seek. Hidey-seek.
Hideyseek
!”

Gray was answering her, but she couldn’t hear over
Angel, could hardly see him through her sister’s hands. And she couldn’t slap them away, not in plain view.

“Come!” shouted Angel. “Come now.”

“No!” snapped Isis. Out loud, not just in her head.

She clapped a hand over her mouth. What had Gray been saying? What had she yelled at?

“So why then?” he asked, frowning.

She’d have to guess, which never worked. It was guessing that got her into all the trouble at school, especially in the old Victorian buildings. The ghost children in their old-fashioned pinafores and knee breeches were always standing in front of the whiteboards, blocking Isis’s view while they traced the coloured lines with misty fingers.

Keep quiet, and don’t say anything, she told herself. He’ll get bored and wander off.

“Can’t you speak?” he asked, starting to sound annoyed.

Angel drifted through the bench onto the path, went up to Gray and kicked him. He leaned down, rubbing at his leg without seeming to notice.

“He a smelly,” Angel said, fading. “Isis, come.”

SLAM
. The sound of a door, up at the house.