Ways to See a Ghost

she said. “I can push through ghosts, make holes in them. I already made a hole in the Devourer’s side. If I widen it, I could reach through to Angel.”
    Gray’s eyebrows shot up. “Where did you learn to do that?”
    Isis didn’t answer, because her arms were crumbling further. Now there was nothing past her elbow, only the bony joints, dangling with threads of dry flesh.
    no hands no hands no hands no hands
    “Go on then,” said Gray.
    She tried to see past the ghost-eater’s illusion. But she felt nothing, she couldn’t even remember what her fingers looked like. There was only an aching numbness where her forearms had been.
    “I can’t!” she cried. “It won’t let me see my hands.”
    She held up her arms, and he squinted at them.
    “Like there’s nothing there?” he asked, not quite believing.
    “I can only see bones,” she whispered, trying to stop herself wobbling into tears.
    Gray pressed a gentle finger onto what looked like a patch of air. “They’re still there, you know.
I
can see them.”
    He looked at her with a smile. After a moment to understand, she was smiling back.
    “Over there!” she said, pointing with nubs of bone.
    I’ll hurt you.
    “It won’t be real!” she snapped, holding out her arms.
    “What won’t?” asked Gray.
    “It doesn’t matter.”
    Gray nervously took hold of the space beyond her stumps, where she knew her hands should be. A slight frown crinkled his brow.
    I’ll HURT you.
    Instantly, her arms were agony, pure fire burning up her arms. She yelped in pain, and Gray’s hands flew off.
    “What? What’s the matter?”
    “Nothing,” she said, gritting her teeth. “It’s not real.” She lifted up her stumps, so Gray could take hold of hands she couldn’t see. He nodded, getting a careful, uncertain grip. To her eyes he seemed to be holding nothing but air, and yet he pulled her forwards a couple of steps.
    “Where am I going?” he asked. “Where is it?”
    The Devourer surrounded them in slimy piles, darkly glistening except where Isis had torn a hole in its skin. Around the wound its flesh was shivering in tiny waves, trying to heal itself.
    “There,” she said, directing him. Gray moved his hands and hers, pushing them into something he couldn’t see. Isis tried to focus on her invisible fingers and they waded into the vast, blue-black body wallowing around them.
    “It’s f-freezing,” gasped Gray, instantly shivering, his breath suddenly steaming.
    “We’re inside it now,” said Isis. He nodded, looking as scared as she felt. “Move my hands a little to the right. There.”
    He push/pulled her nothing hands straight into the gash in the Devourer. Memories flew into Isis’s mind, and in every one of them Cally was screaming, begging her to stop.
    “This is crazy!” said Gray, with a high-pitched laugh. “All I can see is me holding your hands in the air.”
    “Well it’s here,” Isis whispered.
    “I know.”
    The rip in the Devourer was widening around their arms. She was shoulder deep now, tearing through the slug-coloured jelly. Inside its body small flashes glittered distantly, like fish in dark water.
    “Do you want to k-keep going?” asked Gray, his teeth starting to chatter. Isis nodded.
    I AM STRONGER.
    She screwed her eyes shut against its shouted thoughts. Her eyelashes froze together, and she had to wrench her eyelids apart to open them.
    “We need to make it wider!” she said.
    Gray moved his hands away from each other. The rip opened further, the grey-black ooze peeling back in curls.
    “Angel!” she shouted into the darkness.
    “Can you see her?” Gray asked. She shook her head.
    “Angel!” she called again.
    “ I still here. ” A tiny voice, impossibly distant.
    “Angel!” Isis cried, tears freezing onto her cheeks. Gray’s face split into a grin.
    A tiny hand, candle-bright, reached towards her out of nothing.
    Do NOT touch her!
    Cally, her dad, Grandma Janet all screeched in Isis’s memory. The Devourer rolled its huge body, trying to crush her, snapping at her with sudden teeth-filled mouths. Tentacles whipped from nowhere, poking like fingers into her head, searching for a way back into her mind.
    But in the glittering dark, she could see Angel’s face, as thin and clear as glass.
    “She’s there!” Isis shouted. Gray blind-fumbled their hands towards Angel’s tiny fingers. “There, there!”
    “Isis!” cried Angel. “I here!”
    They all touched. Isis, Angel,