Ways to See a Ghost

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 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 heswirled into plumes of dust, drifting into