Ways to See a Ghost

won’t be summoning anyone. They might sleep a little during their so-called meditation.” He slithered down to the floor, his limbs feathering outwards.
    Isis shuffled away from him. The kitchen door was open behind her and noisy cartoon chatter was spilling out through the gap, but the bright voices sounded odd and out of place now.
    “Are you following me or something?” she asked.
    “Or something,” said Mandeville, with one of his yellow-teeth smiles. He stretched out his long legs in theirvelvet trousers. The material was ancient and decaying; in places the pale glow of his bloodless flesh showed through them. “You aren’t the only one with an interest in the Welkin Society.”
    “I don’t have an interest,” said Isis. “It’s Cally who joined.”
    “Really?” Mandeville looked with his blue-star eyes at the wall, beyond which the Welkin Society were still in their meeting.
    “You know,” he said, “I was devoted to seances when I was alive. I personally knew several of the great psychics of my time. Mrs Pargetter, Arthur Wrioseley, Sebastian Blackstone. I was amazed and entranced by their performances, I even wrote an essay for the
Occult Review
on the nature of phantoms.”
    Angel crept around behind Isis, hiding from him.
    “I believed the psychics without question,” continued Mandeville. “That is, until I died. Immediately, I rushed to a seance, and what did I discover? My revered teachers were really fraudsters and fakes! Mrs Pargetter was deaf to my cries. Arthur Wrioseley couldn’t see me. As for Sebastian Blackstone, the disembodied voices he so marvellously conjured turned out to be his wife shouting from inside a cleverly concealed cupboard. I had laboured so hard,sacrificed my
life
in the cause of spiritualism, only to find I could pass nothing on. That’s when I made my vow to spend my ghost-hood searching for a true channel so I could speak to the living.”
    “You wanted to be famous,” said Isis.
    “No! I wanted to dispel fear, and help people accept their end.” He tilted his head. “Perhaps a little famous. In any case, I went hunting for genuine psychics.”
    Isis caught her breath. She was suddenly desperate to find someone like herself.
    “Did you find any?” she whispered.
    Mandeville nodded, a grimy whirlwind, his head half inside the wall.
    “But there was a problem.”
    Isis let her breath out. There were always problems.
    Mandeville continued. “You see, my dear, I don’t believe it’s death alone that creates a ghost. It is the form of death. Most spirits, souls if you want, they pass quietly into whatever lies beyond. But those of us who die tragically, or unexpectedly, we are held back, caught in the mists, as it were. The murdered wife, the headless horseman – in my death I discovered the clichés turn out to be true. Of course, such phantoms are filled with longings, unhappinessand unfinished business. Anyone with real psychic powers is a burning flame, around which they circle like moths, endlessly, relentlessly.” His eyes held Isis. “Eventually the psychic is driven insane by it.” Sorrow flickered on his dusty features. “Every true psychic I ever found was mad before they reached adulthood. Locked in asylums, hearing voices. The poor things couldn’t be cured, because the doctors never realised the voices were real.”
    The ghost examined her, as if checking for signs of insanity, and Isis shivered, not just from Angel behind her. Would she go mad too? Sometimes it felt all too possible. She wrapped her arms around herself.
    “However, none of them were as strong as you. And you can do something I have never seen before.” Mandeville’s eyes were a distant blue, his gaze focused on her. “How did you do it? Putting your hands into that yobbish ghost?”
    Isis squeezed her hands on her arms, locking herself together. She wasn’t sure, but she could remember the first time. Angel had been clinging onto her all day, overwhelming in her neediness. Eventually, furiously, Isis had shoved at her, surprising them both when her hands connected with Angel’s nothing-body. How had she done it? She couldn’t explain, not even to a ghost.
    “I just… focus,” she said.
    Mandeville was silent for a moment. Then he said quietly, “You could save us.”
    Angel squeaked again, and pressed close to Isis, sending a chill into her back. Isis didn’t speak. She didn’t want him to go on, she didn’t want to get drawn in. He’d just