Ways to See a Ghost (3 page)

Isis and Gray both turned to look. Cally was flinging herself down the front steps of the house, and Sondra
Borwan was behind her in the doorway, floaty and furious, one hand on the door frame.

Cally stopped when she reached the gravel, turning back.

“If you don’t believe,” she shouted, “why did you even ask me here?”

“I believe genuine psychics, and you are clearly a
fraud
!” screamed Sondra, her whole body swinging forwards, only her hand on the door holding her back. “I can’t believe you’d even suggest he was seeing another woman! And there’s
nothing
he hasn’t told me!”

“I can’t help what the spirits say!”

“
They’d
never say such a thing!”

Gray looked at Isis.

“What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” she mumbled, a hideous blush crawling onto her face. She’d have to go to school tomorrow, and he’d be there. Pointing her out, telling everyone about this.

“You should leave!” Sondra yelled at Cally.

Cally swung round and stormed to the car, stopping when she realised Isis wasn’t in it. She glared around the garden, hand above her eyes, searching.

“You might have fooled my cleaner,” shouted Sondra,
“but I know the psychic world, I know real ability! Get out of here!”

“I have to find my
daughter
!” Cally snapped back. Isis pulled further into the shadow of the tree. She was in trouble now. “Isis? Isis!”

“Is that your name?” asked Gray. Isis nodded, miserable. He had that as well now.

“Isis!”

“Looks like you better go,” said Gray.

Isis stood up from the bench. The drone of the lawnmower stopped.

“Isis!”

Why had she given in to Cally, back in their flat? Why hadn’t she just refused and stayed at home?

Sondra Borwan was still at her doorway. “I’m calling the police!”

“Sondra’s pretty angry,” said Gray, sounding impressed. “I’ve never seen her like that before.”

Isis stared at him. “You know her?”

Gray nodded.

Which meant Sondra would tell him all about Cally, and he’d tell everyone at school!

A man came round the side of the house, took a few
steps towards the two women, then stopped, uncertain.

“Is everything all right?” he asked.

“No, Gil, it’s not!” Sondra pointed at Cally. “I want you to show this
fake
off my property!”

“As soon as I find my
child
!” yelled Cally. “You know, the aura around this house is really dark. Suffocating even.”

“Thirty seconds!” shrieked Sondra. “You’ve got thirty seconds!”

“Oh no,” groaned Isis.

“That’s the quickest way to the house,” said Gray, pointing at a narrow, shadowy gap between tall, evergreen shrubs. Almost a tunnel, after a few metres it opened out onto the lawn below the house. “There’s steps up.”

“Thanks.” Isis could hardly look at him. Tomorrow he’d ask his friends if they knew a girl called Isis, and they’d say, “That freak job?” Then he’d tell them all about this, and it’d get added to the other stories, the ones already going around.

She started for the gap in the hedge, heading to her mum, but she glanced back as she ran, trying to read Gray’s face. Was he the type to join in with the others, with the taunts in the corridor?

Her left foot caught on something. She stumbled,
pitching down onto the muddy grass, her fingers dragging through the scratching leaves of the bushes. She lay for a moment, hands stinging, and felt wet grass against her cheek.

“You all right?” Gray called.

If only the ground were softer, if only it could swallow her away.

She pushed to her feet, muddy and crumpled. When was he going to start laughing?

“Stupid,” she muttered, at herself, at whatever she’d tripped over. She looked down, and saw what had caught her. Not a stone, or a fallen branch, even though it felt as hard. A large, bare foot was sticking out from the bushes, dirty heel against the grass. An ankle, then a yellow-corduroy-covered leg headed off under the leaves. Further in, against the dark earth, Isis could see a man’s hand. Still and unmoving, pale blue and glassy.

She gasped in a hiccup, staring.

A thump of running feet, and Gray was next to her.

“That’s
Norman Welkin,
” he whispered. “Is he… is he dead?”

Isis leaned down and pushed at the man’s calloused foot. The leg didn’t move, it was stiff and rigid. As unyielding as a lump of rock.

It was really horrible. And it was sort of exciting, you know?

Sondra rushed down and started screaming. Dad tried to hold her back, shouting at me and Isis to get away from the body. Isis’s mum rang the police, and they turned up in about five minutes, sirens on and blue lights flashing! Five cars and a police van. Then there were coppers everywhere, shooing us away, taking charge of Sondra. Some of them had those white disposable overalls on, and they started poking around and taking tons of pictures. An ambulance came too, not that there was much point.

Me and Isis got taken into Sondra’s house, into her hallway, and this policewoman kept asking us if we were okay. Then this other one came and asked us loads
of questions, I mean, really loads, and he wrote everything down.

I thought it was going to be like on the telly, a real mystery, but the police seemed sort of bored.

“He probably had a heart attack,” one of them said to us. “I’ve seen it a few times with pensioners. They can go just like that.” He clicked his fingers. “He probably didn’t even have time to cry out.”

Still, they put up one of those tents around the body, like you see on the news when there’s been a murder.

Sondra carried on crying and screaming. You could hear her further inside the house. And I felt sort of shaky – I kept seeing Norman Welkin’s foot all blue against the grass. I’d only seen him the week before, you know? Eaten his biscuits.

Then the police said we could go if we wanted, and me and Isis went back outside. Dad was on the steps, waiting for me, talking quietly to Cally. Isis’s mum, I mean. As soon as she saw us, she rushed over and grabbed hold of Isis, hugging her. Even Dad put his hand on my shoulder, asked if I was okay.

And that’s when Dad said his thing to Cally. I should’ve guessed it really, Dad’ll try it on with anyone nearly.

“Um, maybe we could all go for a drink?” he said, staring at Cally. “You know, calm our nerves.”

Cally looked surprised, and then she blushed.

“Yes. That’s a good idea,” she said, smiling at him like she couldn’t help it, the way women do.

“Cally, no!” cried Isis. But it didn’t make any difference.

Which is how me and Isis ended up sat on one side of a pub table, with Dad and Cally on the other. It was noisy and chip-smelling, a bit too warm from the fire, and all around us people were eating, talking and drinking.

It was really weird, when Norman was lying cold in his garden.

You’d have thought Dad and Cally would have been worried. After all, one of Dad’s customers had just died on him, and me and Isis had found his dead body. But they completely ignored us, like they’d got stuck, staring at each other. Dad started telling Cally about his chasing trips, and she even sounded interested.

Actually, I’d never seen him like that with anyone, even Mum when they were still together. Mind you, I can hardly remember that, it was such a long time ago. Mostly I remember the after bits. Like, me sitting on Mum’s lap and crying, “I want Daddy, I want Daddy!” I don’t even know
why I wanted him, but I can remember Mum crying too.

Anyway, Isis didn’t say a thing for ages. She was drinking this bottle of juice, looking like the pub was the last place she wanted to be. I ate a packet of cheese and onion crisps, then a packet of smoky bacon. Because I was in shock – I needed the salt. I thought Isis was too, or maybe she was just stuck up. Some girls are, specially the ones who’re really into clothes. But she didn’t look the type – her uniform was a bit too big for her, her shoes were scuffed.

She picked up one of the empty crisp packets, smoothed it out and folded it over and over into this little wrapped-up triangle. When she’d finished, she put it down on the table, and looked at me.

“He was really cold,” she said.

“What?”

“The man in the garden. Mr Welkin. He was really cold.”

“He was
dead
,” I said.

She twizzled the crisp packet triangle on the tabletop.

“Yes, but then why couldn’t I…” she paused, then said, “I saw his hand.” She turned hers over, palm up, palm down. “It was all glittery.”

There isn’t another girl in our whole school who
would’ve touched a dead body. Only a few boys, probably. I picked up the last packet of crisps. Barbecue chilli.

“I saw this thing on telly,” I said, crunching. “All the blood sinks down, because your heart’s not pumping any more, and your hands and feet go black. Then you start drying out, so you shrink a bit and it makes your hair and nails look like they’re getting longer. That’s why people used to think they keep growing after you’re dead, but they don’t really…”

Isis made a yuk-face at me, shaking her head. “Not like that. I couldn’t work out what it was for a second, and there wasn’t even any frost on the grass. But he wasn’t just cold, he was covered in ice. It was starting to melt, but he was definitely frozen all over.”

“He had been out there all day,” I said, “and he was in a shady place.”

She sort of rolled her eyes then. And she was right, because the days were getting warmer by then, like I said. Not cold enough to freeze in the daytime, definitely not cold enough to get coated in ice. She opened her mouth, but didn’t say whatever it was…

“He was
that
Norman Welkin?” Cally cried, across the table. “Founder of the Welkin Society?” She clapped a hand to her mouth, looking horrified.

Dad nodded.

Cally’s hand dropped to her lap.

“I had no idea,” she breathed. “Oh my God! Why did Sondra call
me?
”

“You’re not one of them?”

Cally shook her head. “I want to be.” And you could hear it in her voice, the longing. “Now, I don’t suppose it’ll ever happen.”

Dad shrugged. “You’re probably better off anyway. That lot, they all sounded a bit…” he did a crazy little whistle.

Luckily, Cally wasn’t really listening. “Sondra said she
couldn’t
call any of the psychics she knew.”

Dad shrugged again. “You know those types, always falling out over their chakras or whatever. Actually, Norman had been complaining about his lot, the last year or so. How they were always ganging up on him because he wasn’t actually psychic, just the man with the money. About a month back he even told me he thought some of the group weren’t genuine, and he was a man who believed in
everything.
He was proper cut up about it. I told him to stop wasting his money.”

Now Cally was listening. She looked horrified at Dad. “No, no! Norman Welkin created something wonderful!
The Welkin Society is so well thought of. Membership is a real mark of respect, it gives you credibility.”

“Oh, yes,” said Dad, seeing the look on her face and backtracking like a pro. “I meant he should rest up a bit, at his age, since it was all going so well.”

Cally groaned. “The things I said to Sondra, I’ll never get in now.”

“With what’s just happened…” Dad’s voice wobbled a bit. “I mean, Sondra probably won’t even remember.”

“Do you think so?” Cally asked, hopeful sounding.

“What’s up with your mum?” I whispered to Isis.

She looked at me. “Haven’t you heard of the Welkin Society?”

Well yes, because old Norman was always going on about ‘his’ society, that he’d started. But I was never interested, I just thought it was a club for nutters like him.

Dad reached out, put his hand over Cally’s. “Don’t worry, it’ll work out. I can put a word in with Sondra, if you want. Explain things.”

“You can?” asked Cally, gazing at him.

Dad smiled. “We can talk about it this weekend.” He looked at me. “You’ll be all right with that, won’t you, Gray?”

“All right with what?”

“Cally and Isis coming over this Saturday.”

Isis glared at her mum, and Cally blushed.

“We’ve got a computer,” Dad said to Isis. “You and Gray can play games on it. While I take Cally for a walk in the garden, or something…” Cally blushed even harder.

“Oh! No!” cried Isis.

“No way!” I said.

But what could we do? It was love at first sight with those two…

… Where am I anyway? I thought I was supposed to be having blood taken for tests, but this is like a storeroom or something. What’s going on? Are you even a doctor?

Oh… yes, I do.

She pushed with her feet, idly spinning on the roundabout. Grey-tarmac road whirled into green-grass park, then back to tarmac. She was on her own, rustling in her raincoat. Apart from Angel of course, who was sat on the seat in front, drizzle falling through her.

“Erewego round the mubberry bush.”

Angel held on vaguely to the steel frame, happily singing one line over and over.

Isis kicked her feet faster, eyebrows pulled down. Every time she spun past the view of the park, she could see them. Cally and Gil, cuddling on the bench under an umbrella. Cally and Gil, kissing.

Her mum had been different these past three weeks.
Happy. When Isis got home from school the flat was clean and the windows open. There were cooking smells wafting from the kitchen. Cally sang while she did things, and when the phone rang she ran to answer it. If Isis scrambled across the sofa, getting there first, it was always Gil.

“Hello, Isis. Can I speak to your mum?”

No. Go away.

“Yes, she’s just here.” Handing the receiver to Cally.

“Gil!” A smile curving Cally’s mouth, her voice softening and filling with laughter.

I should be happy for her, Isis thought every time.

But all the years of darkness, all that misery! And now Cally just threw it off, for
him?
The best Isis could manage was a sourish ache. She’d wanted things to change, but this wasn’t what she’d imagined. Now everything was about Gil, even things that weren’t. Like the letter. It had arrived this morning, and was waiting on the doormat when Isis got up. It stood out a mile from the bills and junk mail.

“Oh!” She ran across the living room, picking it up. A thick cream envelope, addressed to
Calista Dunbar
in careful, flowing handwriting. It looked special, and Isis held it up to the light, but the paper was too thick to see through, and the back was sealed shut, with no way to
peek inside. Definitely special, and she couldn’t wait until her mum woke. So she took the letter into Cally’s still-dark bedroom, yanking open a curtain. Daylight blasted over Cally, messy-haired under the duvet. She groaned and held her hands out against the light.

“What? What time is it?” Her eyes opened in sleepy confusion.

“Look at this letter for you!” said Isis, holding out the envelope. “Who’s it from?”

Cally reached out a hand over the scrunched bedding, heaving herself up. She stared at her name on the envelope, frowning as she ripped it open and pulled out a thick sheet of paper. It was neatly scrawled with the same flowing script, and Cally’s pupils darted as she read. A slow, open smile formed on her lips, and she turned the letter over, searching for more.

“What does it say?” asked Isis, trying to read the back.

Cally’s eyes were wide. She let out a laugh.

“I’ve been invited to join the Welkin Society!” She held the letter up, pointing to the signature. “Look! It’s from Philip Syndal himself! He’s really high up in the society – he’s one of the best psychics in the world! His tours are always sold out.” She read aloud from the letter. “
I have
heard extremely exciting reports from your seances, and the committee has agreed to consider you for membership.
” Cally stood up, feet still in the folds of her duvet. “Isis! This is it!” She was dancing with the letter, bouncy and happy on the bed. Isis got on too, jumping about on the squeaky mattress, laughing and holding her mum’s hand.

Then Cally cried, “I have to ring Gil!”

And Isis stopped bouncing.

“He must have spoken to Sondra, he must have sorted everything out!”

Isis got down off the bed and walked out of Cally’s bedroom, even as her mum was tapping into her mobile phone. From the living room, she could still hear Cally’s excited voice.

“I just had to thank you for sorting things with Sondra, for getting me invited into the Welkin Society… oh, didn’t you? Well you’ll never guess, a letter arrived from them this morning!”

They were going to be over at his place in a couple of hours, but Cally couldn’t wait that long.

“Let’s all go to the park!” Cally said when they’d got to Gil and Gray’s house. Like Isis and Gray were five.

“The weather’s really horrible,” said Isis.

“It’s only a bit damp.” Cally was smiling at Gil like she couldn’t stop.

“We could go to the cinema,” suggested Gray, “then you two can snog in the back row.”

“Gray!” snapped Gil. “When you start paying, you can choose where we go.”

“I can pay,” muttered Gray. “Mum gave me some money.”

Which hadn’t helped, not at all, and now they were here in the drizzle. Just about the only people in the whole park.

Isis spun round again. Gray had already given up on the playground. He’d found some bits of biscuit in his coat pocket, and he was busy throwing crumbs to some eager, soggy pigeons.

“This is so cringeworthy,” he’d said, as they walked behind their giggling, hand-holding parents. “Dad could’ve waited. Next weekend I’m at Mum’s anyway.” He glared at their backs. “I don’t know why we couldn’t just stay at home and let them go off in the rain.”

“Cally would never leave me,” said Isis. She blushed – she’d made herself sound like a baby.

“What about when you go to your dad’s?” asked Gray.

Isis shook her head. “I don’t.”

Gray looked at her. “You don’t see him at all?”

Isis shook her head again. “He left after…” She paused. Did Gray know what had happened to Angel? Had Cally told Gil? “He travels a lot. But I do get presents from him, at Christmas and my birthday. And he sends me letters, he always knows exactly what I’m up to.”

Her dad. His absence was like a heavy coat, one she couldn’t take off. She’d never really stopped wishing for him to be there when she got home from school, or to remember he also had a daughter who was alive. After he’d left, she’d wished for him every night, two years solid. Every birthday she made the same wish, blowing out the candles on her cake. It hadn’t done any good. She and Cally had moved to a flat, and their old house went up for sale.

“What does he do?” asked Gray.

Isis looked at her shoes, water-darkened. “He works on cruise ships,” she mumbled. “He does shows for the passengers.” She looked up, glaring. “Not rubbish or anything. He does proper magic, and hypnotism and stuff. He’s really good.” She held herself rigid, daring him to make fun.

Gray didn’t, only nodding. Then he tilted his head a little. She was learning to read him, and a tilt meant a question. She jumped in with her own, blocking.

“Why are you called Gray? Is it short for something?”

Gray rolled his eyes. “I wish it was, cos then I could call myself something else.” He nodded at Gil, holding hands with Cally. “It was Dad’s choice. That’s what Mum says anyway. It’s cos he’s such a UFO freak.”

Isis looked at him.

“What’ve UFOs got to do with it?”

Gray sighed. “The greys. They’re a type of alien. They go on about them all the time at his conferences. Anyway, he thinks aliens are super intelligent and all that, so he wanted to name me after them.”

Isis felt a laugh, but managed to swallow it.

“Why didn’t your mum stop him?”

Gray shrugged. “He has this effect on women, you know? He can make them do what he wants. Not Mum any more, not since she left him, but with all the rest…” He stopped. “I mean, he’s different with Cally, but, you know, he’s had a lot of girlfriends…”

In front of them, Gil put his arm around Cally’s waist.

All the rest.

Isis desperately wanted to ask Gray about Gil’s other girlfriends, and at the same time she wished he hadn’t mentioned them.

They walked on, in awkward silence.

“Whee! Faster!” Angel squealed on the roundabout.

“Don’t you care?” whispered Isis. “Look at them!”

Angel glanced back at Isis, the shapes of the playground showing softly through her.

“Mummy happy,” she said, as if that answered.

They whirled on, the drizzle slicking over Isis’s face and frilling her eyelashes with water. Gray was a nearby blur, hunched against the weather. The rain felt like a cold compress, calming her. It fell cool onto her cheeks, then cooler. The roundabout turned again, and the air grew colder still. In a sudden, unnatural change, her breath was a cloud of steam, and she was circling through drops of ice.

She slammed her feet down, scuffing a circle on the tarmac. The roundabout squeaked to a stop, and Angel would’ve been thrown off if there’d been anything to her.

“What you doing?” Angel cried.

Isis ignored her, standing up slowly, her head still spinning. She searched the air with her eyes.

“Who are you?” she whispered. Frozen rain skittered and tinkled on her coat. “I know you’re there.”

She closed her eyes a little, peering through her lashes as a sudden puff of wind blew the ice drops into a glittering dance. They instantly lost their sparkle, each one dulled by a coating of dust, and she could smell musty old clothes. She tried not to breathe, backing away.

Now a set of dirty grey fingers were feeling their way out of nothing. Lengthening and growing, stretching into a long wavering arm. The swirling grey fell upwards, into a dust-cloud head, then drifted to the ground and made the shape of legs. The ice-rain slowed as it passed through the hazy body, speeding up again as it came out into the air.

As Isis watched, a tall, elderly man built himself in front of her. Smelling like old, feathery-edged books, or the woolly dust balls under her bed. He was wearing the faded memory of a velvet jacket, and on his head was the neat shape of a fez, a long tassel hanging down from the top. Only his eyes glowed. Blue, like back-lit sapphires.

“You were at one of Mum’s seances,” whispered Isis. The ghost nodded.

“I was.”

Angel hopped down from the roundabout.

“You a horrid!” she cried. “Goway!”

The old man turned his head, dust trailing from him like hair.

“I’ve always rather agreed with the saying that small children should be seen, but not heard,” he said. “Especially dead ones.” Angel squeaked and shot behind Isis.

“Go
away,
” hissed Isis.

The dust grew thicker in the air.

“May I not even introduce myself?”

Isis shook her head.

“But, my dear, you have been my fascination for some months now.”

Goosebumps rippled up Isis’s arms.

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

The ghost drifted towards her, greeny-brown dust floating out in front of him.

“I could appear in front of most people and all they would do is shiver, or think there was a draft. Even if I met them somewhere
charged
with psychic resonance, such as a ruined castle at midnight, I would appear to them as little more than a floating ball of light, or a snatch of disembodied words.” He looked at her, from blue eyes in the dust. “But you can see me clearly, hear me distinctly.
Even here, in this grotesquery of childhood.” He winced at the surrounding playground.

“I don’t want to,” whispered Isis. “I don’t want to see any of you.”

The elderly ghost raised a hairless eyebrow. “Even the little one, there?”

“She’s different,” snapped Isis.

The ghost peered at Angel, who was still hiding behind Isis’s legs. “She certainly is that.” He sighed, dustily, and turned a questioning look to Isis. “Do you think that’s her own doing, or because of you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” whispered Isis. She didn’t want a conversation with this ghost; she knew how it would end. He’d want her to give a message to someone, or take on some pointless or impossible task. The ghosts claimed it was to ‘bring them peace’, but they always needed her running around for them first.

She turned, walking away from the roundabout. A choking little cloud of dust passed around her, swirling into a tiny tornado of dirty raindrops. The ghost formed himself in front of Isis, blocking her way.

“I’m not passing on a message, if that’s what you want,” she whispered. “I don’t do that.”

He scratched the side of his nose with a grey-mist finger, curling a puff of dirt into the air.

“Ah, messages,” he sighed. “The phantom’s hope and curse.” He shook his head. “Don’t worry, my dear, I have no words of comfort for my descendants. I checked on a couple of them, and they were really quite ghastly.”

“What do you want then?” Isis whispered. The old ghost grinned, yellow teeth dangling in his gums.

“What do I want? Perhaps merely the delightful back and forth of a real conversation!”

“Talk to the other ghosts then,” said Isis, irritated now.

He flipped a hand through the raindrops, spinning them into snow.

“When I was alive, I was desperate to. I took laudanum, hoping to drug myself into just such a conversation. Bigger and bigger doses, until…” He laughed, dryly. “Once I’d died, of course I could talk to them as much as I wanted. Only then did I discover how dreary they are.” His voice dropped into a whine. “
Look what they’ve done to my house! They gave my furniture to charity! Not enough people cried at my funeral!
” His voice returned to its normal rasp. “The same thing, over and over.” The ghost shuddered, sending a shimmer of mould into the air. “There’s nothing of
substance to them, you see.”