Ways to See a Ghost

Calista? Here, let me help you with your things.” He took the camping chairs from Cally. She glared at Isis, pulling her by the arm and locking the door behind them.
    You must come.
    The memory fluttered up from deep inside Isis’s mind, but she couldn’t remember who’d said the words to her. Shuddering, she knew no one had.

    Shadows were deepening over the field, the sun gleamingred across a western roll of hills. This was a different place to last time, the location down to Gil’s calculations. And even after they’d found Gil’s camper van, parked up on the roadside, it had been a long walk to get to the field. Now they were all standing on a rough, nettle-strewn strip of grass next to a hedge.
    A breeze fluttered through Isis’s hair, then hissed across the wheat. Cally shivered, drawing her cardigan around her shoulders.
    “It’s chillier than I thought it would be.”
    “You’re always cold!” said Gil, smiling at her. “You need someone to keep you warm.”
    Cally giggled, but Isis said nothing. She’d seen the real reason for Cally’s chill: Angel had been running in circles around her legs. Recovered now, and back to her chubby, invisible self.
    “I with Mummy!” she laughed.
    Philip Syndal looked pointedly at Angel, then up to Isis. He winked.
    “Go home!” mouthed Isis, but Angel took no notice, only plopping onto the ground and running her hands through the grass without moving it.
    Gil set about putting out his monitors and scientificinstruments: unrolling long strands of wire back to his laptop, weaving a black, straggling electronic web around the field, lecturing them all as he worked.
    “It’s to do with fluctuations in the electromagnetic field – they’re very unusual in this part of the country,” he said, as he set out a large grey metal box. “This is an EM field generator. I’m going to try communicating with them.”
    Cally and Philip followed after him, asking questions, but Isis couldn’t pretend to care. Over the hedge, she saw the tops of three heads. Voices drifted in the evening air as more people headed their way.
    Philip called out, and started towards them. Gil stood slowly, watching as the small group huddled on the other side of the field gate, seemingly baffled as to how to open it. He turned to Cally.
    “More of you?” he asked.
    “You said I could invite anyone from the Welkin Society,” she said.
    “Yes, of course,” said Gil quickly, wilting a little under Cally’s challenging stare. “It’s great that they’re here.”
    Cally headed off to the gate, but Isis kept back as a man and two women joined Cally and Philip in the field, all of them talking excitedly. Instead Isis watched for anystrange flutters in the sky, or a shivering sweep of blue.
    Philip introduced Gil to an elderly woman called Jean, a tall soft-voiced man called Ian and a round, blousy woman wearing draping layers of clothing, who loudly announced herself to be Andrea Simms. Isis recognised all of them from the meeting at Philip’s house.

    Almost straight away they gathered in a huddle, arguing about how to create a ‘psychic circle’. Isis stayed close to Angel, who was running about on her short legs, chasing after a moth fluttering along the hedgerow.
    “Please go home, you’ll be safe there!” Isis hissed at her. But Angel only shook her head.
    “No. I not doing that.”
    If any of the adults had been watching Isis, they might have wondered at her odd wanderings up and down the field edge. But they weren’t paying her any attention, caught up with their own concerns.
    “Just stick to the tramlines,” Gil was saying to the others, “and it’ll be easier to move around the crop.”
    “What are the tramlines?” asked Jean, turning her grey-haired head towards the field.
    “It’s where the tractor drives when they’re sprayingthe crop,” said Gil, pointing at the long thin gaps in the wheat, heading straight into the field.
    “This is wonderful,” said Philip, brightly. “I am sure we are going to have a most interesting night. I’d like us to start by calling on the spirits to come and assist us.”
    Isis glared at him from a distance – he was such a hypocrite, leading the others into another of their sham seances. There were no spirits out here, except Angel.
    “There are six of us,” said Philip, “so we can make a very effective circle.”
    Gil shook his head. “Not me. I’m not included.”
    “I thought you wanted…” started Cally,