Ways to See a Ghost Read Free

too late.
    The old man’s finger was pointing, quivering at Isis.
    “She can see us!”
    Every head in the standers turned, their gazes tingling over her skin. Isis stared at her mum, eyes aching with concentration.
    “Your Grampy says you shouldn’t worry so much about little things,” said Cally to the man in the audience. There was a tinkle of laughter in the room, and the man looked happy, teary.
    Now the woman called Linda was walking around the edge of the hall. Sloshing past the chairs, leaving a trail of fading, watery footprints. Isis watched from the corner of her eye, holding herself completely still. Except for her heart, beating madly.
    On stage, Cally was smiling, happily into the swing of her performance.
    “Your Grampy says you should take time every day to relax.”
    Linda stopped right in front of Isis. Face-to-face, hazing the view of the stage. She smelled like seaweed.
    Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look.
    The woman peered at her.
    “BOO!”
    Isis jumped, just the tiniest stutter in her body.
    And Linda grinned, turning around.
    “Mandeville’s right!” she crowed, waving at the rest of the standers. “She
can
see us!”
    Isis rammed her hand down on the door handle, pushing with all her weight. The door creak-slammed open, and she shot through the gap, tumbling into the lobby, shoving the door shut behind her. She stopped, heart hammering. In front of her were the main doors of the community centre, but they only led to cold winter rain in the car park, and an empty, night-time housing estate.
    She ran to the far wall, pressing herself against it.
    A damp stain appeared on the door into the hall, droplets of condensation forming on it. The stain darkened and spread, sliding down the grain, streaking into wet shadows. Limbs and a body, then a head. Water bubbled out through the varnish, collecting in vertical puddles and joining into the shape of a woman, who sucked herself out through the door, leaving it dry behind as she took a sloshing step forwards.
    Following her, something like smoke puffed through the cracks around the door. It swirled vaguely in the air, then curled up and over Linda’s sloshing shape, funnelling downin front of Isis. She pulled in against the wall as grey specks spun in the air. Not smoke, but a cloud of velvet fibres and dust, forming into the tall figure of an elderly, tortoisey, blue-eyed man.
    Behind him, through him, Isis could see the other ghosts following. Fingers pushing through the breeze-block wall, a leg stepping out of nothing. Arms dripped out of the wall, bodies and heads squeezed from the wood of the door.
    And the mouths. Open, clamouring.
    “I want to talk to Jenny.”
    “It’s really important – they aren’t looking after my cats!”
    “I left the house to
them
– they can’t sell it!”
    Bodies and limbs melted into almost-people. Rushing for Isis on wavery legs, crowding round her, pushing and slapping each other, shouting louder and louder. Wispy hands plucking at her clothes, cold fingers brushing her face.
    Isis beat at nothing, the cold piercing into her.
    “You can see us! You have to go on stage!” cried one.
    “Chuck that fake woman off, go and do the seance properly!” screamed another.
    They pressed in further, overlapping each other, pushingthemselves into a translucent wall of faces, bodies and reaching arms.
    Isis swallowed dry nothing, trying to hold down her fear.
    “No,” she whispered, shaking her head.
    There were astonished, outraged looks from the ghosts.
    “But that woman’s a liar!”
    “She’s just making stuff up!”
    “There was no Jonny, and she got Linda’s name wrong.”
    See-through heads and blurry, featureless faces pushed closer. Their words had no breath behind them, only a spreading cold.
    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