Ways to See a Ghost

Gray.
    “Oh…” breathed Gray, wide-eye staring at the flesh-walls surrounding them.
    And Isis had her hands back, holding tightly to Angel, working to pull her out through the gap they’d torn in the Devourer. Except Angel wasn’t coming free, she was onlystretching. And this time it wasn’t just her feet that were caught inside the monster.
    “Come
on
,” grunted Isis, heaving with her whole weight.
    A flickering, dancing light whizzed past them.
    “What was that?” said Gray.
    Isis shook her head, it didn’t matter. “Help me!” she snapped at him, as the oily layers sucked around Angel, drawing her back into the slithering dark.
    Another light popped out past them, then another. In the brief moments of brightness, Isis noticed the blue of her own fingernails, the bloodless white of her arms. Ice was glittering on Gray’s hair and eyebrows.
    “Leaves!” he cried. “They look like leaves!”
    My feast.
    The words dropped as stones into Isis’s memory.
    “My feast,” she said. The tentacles had found their way in.
    She turned to Gray. “I can’t hold it off…” Her words began to slur as dark sludge flowed across her mind. With every breath she was losing herself, her fingers slackening, letting go of Angel’s.
    Gripping tightly, Gray held Isis’s hands over Angel’s, keeping them all together. “Tell me what to do, Isis. I don’t know what to do!”
    She watched him blankly. Angel started sinking back into the murk.
    “It biting me!” screamed the little ghost. Her cry splintered through the sludge. Isis gasped, almost freezing her lungs, and yanked hard at Angel.
    Angel was out a little further, but she was turning thin and glassy, disappearing in front of them.
    I won’t give up my feast.
    “What can we do?” Gray asked Isis. But it was Angel, insubstantial as spider silk, who answered by opening her arms, still holding hands with Isis and Gray.
    “Let them all out,” she said.
    Angel had pulled their linked arms into a wide circle, and wherever they touched the Devourer, its flesh scuttled back, as if stung. A huge hole was forming in its flank, and a light whooshed out, then another. Swirling past, blindingly bright. Some looked like leaves, flying straight up into the night. Others were more human in form, phantoms and spectres fleeing out into the fields.
    Nonononononononononononono
    The ghost-eater screamed in Isis’s mind. Unbearable, relentless.
    But she kept her place, holding hands with Angel andGray, as the trickle of light turned into a torrent. She couldn’t see Gray through the glare. Her hair was floating and her clothes were flapping in the frozen wind made by the golden leaves and other ghostly forms pouring out through their arms. For a moment Isis saw a mouldy plume of green dust, but it was instantly carried away by the light surging all around them, blazing upwards. Her arms ached with the strain of holding onto the others, and she felt Gray’s fingers start to slip out of hers.
    “Don’t let go!” she screamed. His answer was a shout as his fingers left hers, and he was thrown out of the blinding river of light. Isis waved her hand in the air, trying to reach him, but it was Angel’s fingers she caught. Gripping onto her tightly, holding them together as phantoms shot past their faces. Lights, leaves and the bewildering shimmer of a ghost-forest poured out between them. An impossible waterfall raged up into the sky. At its top, trees blossomed and filled the air with gold.
    Let go! Run away!
    The Devourer shrieked at Isis, tearing through her memories like it was ripping pages from a book. But it made no difference, she was too numb to let go. She’d spent too long surrounded by the frozen body of theDevourer. Her arms were turning from white to pale blue, her heart failing as the blood cooled in her veins. She held onto Angel as ghosts of all kinds poured out of the Devourer, almost tearing it to shreds. Its billowing body shrivelled like plastic burning in a fire, falling off Isis to lie at her feet, waving feeble tendrils.
    And now there was just Isis, holding hands with Angel.
    Above them, light blazed in the night sky. A huge sphere, a new sun.
    Isis felt her heart beat, but only once.
    “Do you remember?” she whispered, her ice-crusted lips stiffening into silence.
    Do you remember how we held hands like this, back when you were alive? How we spun ourselves into dizzy, laughing circles?
    The little ghost nodded, her eyes wide. “Stay,