Ways to See a Ghost

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,