Ways to See a Ghost

we kill it or something?” I asked.
    “Kill it?” said Isis. “Is it even
alive
?”
    “I don’t know!” I snapped. “You’re the one who knows about all this stuff.”
    She shook her head. “Not this.”
    The air was getting darker, colder. The crowd all around us were fading into paper cut-outs, and the bright shopping centre was turning misty, like a fog was soaking into it. The thing had covered the whole glass roof.
    “We’ll have to h-hide,” said Isis, her teeth chattering now. The monster was sucking the warmth out of the world, and holding Angel was like standing in a tub of iced water.
    “Where?” I asked. “It’s a-already oozed over everywhere.”
    “All right, run then,” she said. “Is there another w-way out?”
    I nodded. “T-to the c-car park.”
    Isis looked at me. “You’ll have to g-get her out.”
    “Me? What about you?”
    “I’m going to try and hold it off,” whispered Isis. She looked really scared then, but like she was trying to be brave.
    I stared at her. “It’ll p-pull you in! Eat you!”
    She shook her head again.
    “I’m not a ghost,” she said. “I’ll be okay.”
    Which goes to show, even she didn’t know everything.
    I have seen that moment, Gray, it is on footage taken by security cameras at the shopping centre. If she’s gone somewhere, I always retrieve the tapes. Keep an eye on her.
    I was worried by what I saw in them. Calista should’ve taken better care.
    But, it’s my fault as well. I’ve got too used to being at a distance. I should have stepped in. I should have done something.

Blue. Spreading and thinning in front of her, unfolding into the wide open space above the shops. Shimmering with eyes, endless reflections of each other. Countless hands descending, by scuttle or finger walk, down the walls, clinging to the glass shopfronts, clutching and pulling at the unheeding shoppers.
    Her mouth tasted of dry paper, her heart was beating out of her chest.
    She remembered words, suddenly.
These other bodies can’t see me. But you can.
    Someone had said that to her once, but she couldn’t think who.
    The creature carried on pouring out of nowhere, a slowtide filling the shopping centre. Her legs were shaking, but she stopped herself from running. She had to stay here, she had to stop it from leaving and chasing after Gray. She had to give him time to get away, to get Angel to safety.
    The creature rippled like water, the head and outstretched arms melting and stretching, turning into something like tentacles. One whipped through a family coming down the escalator. The parents were instantly sliced into shattered, sparkling pieces, their shopping bags exploding into shreds of plastic snow.
    Isis gasped the start of a scream, but stifled it. No one else in the mall had even blinked. Not the crowd around her, nor the other people trundling up the escalator. The children carried on down, sucking their drinks, unaware of their parents’ destruction. The tentacle whipped back, and the atoms of the man and woman swirled together again. Utterly untouched, utterly unconscious of what had happened.
    Your sister will not be so fortunate.
    More remembered words, loud and vivid in her mind. Who’d said them?
    “What happened to those people was just a trick,” she whispered, trying to reassure herself. But a voicedrifted out of her memory, half-remembered, like a dream.
    Are you so sure?
    The creature reared upwards, covering her with twilight. It was going to crush her, drown her into emptiness! She cried out, her arms going up over her head, squeezing her eyes shut. Cowering, waiting for the end.
    Nothing.
    She opened her eyes. A middle-aged man wearing a neat white shirt and ironed jeans was staring at her.
    “Are you all right?” he said.
    Isis swallowed and put her arms down.
    “Fine.” She croaked the word out.
    The man frowned.
    “Really, I’m fine.” This time she managed to sound almost normal, despite the rippling wall of violet-blue rising up behind him, and the dozens of hands reaching out of the air towards him.
    “Okay,” the man said, but like he didn’t quite believe her. He walked away, and Isis took in a deep breath.
    The creature folded itself in again, disappearing some of its strange, shimmering body.
    A child-ghost is only a small meal.
    With a jolt, she remembered when she’d heard thosewords before. It was a few years ago, when Cally used to read her bedtime stories. Cally had closed the book after reading them,