Ways to See a Ghost

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 ofsubstance to them, you see.”
    “They’re ghosts,” said Isis. “Like you!”
    “I know. I looked back on my former self and laughed at my foolishness. I’d caught myself in this wretched limbo, thanks to my own false hopes.”
    “Why don’t you leave then?” said Isis. “My mum says ghosts should head for a tunnel of light. She says it leads to the next world.”
    The old dead man pulled a skeletal look of scorn. “Of course, how stupid of me. And does your mother happen to have a map to help me find this wonderful tunnel?” He sighed. “I sometimes feel as if the best of me has already moved on, and I can’t even remember what it was.” He tilted his mouldy head, peering at Angel, who was hiding behind the roundabout. “May I ask, were you able to see ghosts before her?”
    Isis ignored his question.
    “Is this
for
anything?” she hissed. “Can’t you go away now?”
    The ghost shook his head.
    “How can I?” he asked. “Do you know how rare a true psychic is? Especially one so strong, so… sane.”
    Isis folded her arms. “Leave me alone.”
    The ghost put his hands together in prayer or pleading, his fingernails withered and cracked.
    “We need you, Isis Dunbar. We need a saviour.”
    Isis stayed still. “What does that mean?”
    He put a finger to his mould-speckled lips, then whispered, “We ghosts haunt the darkening plains, my dear. But there are darker places still, into which even the spirits fear to go. The unwary few who drift in and manage to return, they speak of creatures lurking there. Devourers of souls.
Things
. Now one of these has left its dark existence, and is in our very midst.”
    Isis came a little closer to him, despite herself. “What’s it doing?”
    The elderly ghost’s eyes were lines of blue. “It is feeding, my dear.”
    “Who are you talking to?”
    She jumped, spinning around. Gray was a few metres away, head tilted. He must’ve seen her. Heard her!
    Panic flapped through her mind.
    “I… um write poetry,” she said quickly. “I was just… trying it out loud.” She looked straight at Gray, trying to hold her gaze steady.
Poetry?
    Gray pulled his hands inside the sleeves of his raincoat.“Why is it so cold over here?”
    Isis shrugged, heart galloping in her chest.
    “Goodbye!” said the ghost, waggling his fingers as he dissolved into the tarmac. “When we meet again, you may call me Mandeville.”
    Isis didn’t answer.

“Go on, you do it. I can’t.” Cally’s voice was breathless, a whisper. She was standing by the door, eyes wide, hands white-knuckled on the letter.
    Isis pressed her finger on the grey plastic circle of the doorbell, and a ding-dong tune played distantly. They waited.
    Isis turned to Cally.
    “Are you
sure
this is the right place?”
    They were in front of a large, squarely built house, one of many on the long street. Each one was planted in a wide plot, surrounded by blank, featureless lawns and reached by red-brick driveways. Only small differences picked the houses