When Isis came in through the door of their flat, Cally was waiting for her, rushing out of the kitchen to greet her with a kiss.
“How was your first day back at school?” she asked.
Isis shrugged, dropping her bag by the door. Angel hopped her way to the living room. “I waited, I waited, I waited waited waited,” she sang soundlessly, clambering onto the sofa and disappearing inside one of the cushions.
“Did you make any new friends?” Cally asked. “Is there anyone you’d like to invite round for tea?”
Isis stayed motionless, close to tears. But her mum only smiled, looking eager; she didn’t know what had happened at school and Isis could see she was trying to make an effort.
Isis shook her head, following Angel towards the living room.
“I just want to watch a bit of TV,” she said, trying to keep the tremor out of her voice.
“Peppa Pig!” squeaked a voice from inside the cushion.
“You must be tired,” said Cally. “Do you want a drink? Apple juice? Orange juice?”
Isis turned back to her mum. “Have we got those?”
Cally nodded. “I bought them when you were out. I know it’s a bit extravagant, but first day back and everything!” She headed for the kitchen and Isis followed in surprise. On the kitchen table was a plate piled with biscuits, and an empty glass, waiting for her.
“I told you,” said Cally. “Things are going to be different now.”
Isis picked up a chocolate digestive, while Cally poured her an orange juice. Isis felt a tiny bit better. She was safe here, and Cally was making good on the promise she’d made in hospital.
“I did something else while you were at school,” said Cally.
A smile crept onto Cally’s lips. “I got a job!”
Isis stopped eating, a biscuit halfway to her mouth.
Cally laughed. “Really! A real job!”
“But what about your psychic readings, your performances?”
Cally’s smile became a wince. “I’m not doing any more of them. I’ve… come to my senses about all of that. You probably didn’t realise this, but some of the people in the Welkin Society weren’t very trustworthy. And I think Philip Syndal was–” she frowned a little–, “well, not a mentally stable person.”
Isis almost laughed. Her mum didn’t know the half of it.
Cally turned the kettle on. “Like I said in the hospital, I’ve realised it wasn’t healthy for you to be surrounded by talk of ghosts. We need to move on, don’t we?”
In the living room, Angel was singing. “I waited, I waited. I did waiting all day.”
“What job have you got?” asked Isis, beginning to hope. This might change everything – her mum would be out working, not depressed in their flat, they’d have money at last, and there’d be no more hanging around community centres while her mum tried to make a career as a stage psychic despite not being able to see ghosts.
“Well, it’s wonderful,” said Cally. “I’m sure a higher power must have guided me there. I only popped into Crystal Healing to get a small rose quartz, but I got talking to Constance and she told me she’s just opened a new treatment room at the back. She needs someone to mind the shop when she’s doing her healing sessions.” Cally beamed. “It’s only part-time to start with, but Constance has such a powerful aura, I’m sure she’ll be fully booked in no time.”
Isis put down her half-eaten biscuit. “You’re working at Crystal Healing?”
Cally nodded. “Isn’t that great?”
“They sell incense, and packs of tarot cards.”
“And crystals, and healing bells, and a wonderful selection of books.”
“I thought you meant you’d got a job in a supermarket or something,” said Isis.
Cally laughed. “I would hate to work in a supermarket, you know that.”
“But why do you have to work at Crystal Healing?” Isis didn’t mean to wail, but that’s how it came out. Maybe she’d be okay if no one from school ever went past the shop or looked in the window… But, what if they found out? What if they went in?
Cally’s smile drifted into a puzzled frown. “You’ve asked me so many times to get a job.”
“Not there!” Isis grabbed a handful of biscuits and marched back into the living room. She threw herself on the sofa, switching on the telly.
“I don’t understand,” Cally called after her. “I thought you’d be pleased!”
Isis stared at some programme where children got to redesign their bedrooms. She ought to be pleased, and Cally was trying to change. But why couldn’t her mum do something normal, just once?
“Your mother’s right,” whispered a voice from behind her. She twisted around but there was no one there. As she turned, a biscuit crumb caught in her throat and she began to cough. Or maybe it was the dust that was suddenly filling the room? Every surface seemed to be breathing out particles; motes danced in the sunlit air, fibres floated up from the sofa, dust balls rolled out from beneath the coffee table.
It wasn’t a breeze – the windows were all shut.
A straggle of spider’s web began to un-weave itself from a ceiling corner, wafting in a single line through the air to a point near Isis’s head. Still floating, the spider silk gently coiled in the air, winding itself into a ball, and with each twist it caught the dust and fibres, spinning them in its tiny whirlwind.
Isis got up slowly, moving away.
Now dust was pouring out from underneath the TV stand and rising up from the carpet. Frayed scraps of paper peeled and fell from an old tear in the wallpaper. Above the sofa, the spin of spider silk was transforming into a swirling, mouldy-smelling column. It became a body and a head. Arms formed from the gathering fluff, draping across the back of the sofa. Long, thin legs slithered out, crossing themselves at the knees.
At last, sitting in Isis’s living room was the recognisable shape of an elderly man, dressed in an old-fashioned tweed suit, a fez perched on his head. Across the formless shape of his face, the dust and dirt was beginning to crust, like drying mud, bulging into bony features and a long, beaky nose. Holes cracked in his eye sockets and blue light glinted through them.
“Mandeville,” whispered Isis.
“The very same,” said the ghost, lifting his fez in greeting. With every moment he was becoming less a creation of dirt, but even as his body settled into its final form, his skin remained patched and flaking, his suit tattered and threadbare. He was human-looking, but rotten.
“What are you doing here?” Isis whispered. “I thought you were… eaten.”
Mandeville smiled, relaxed and amiable. “I must admit, I did think my doom had arrived when Philip Syndal directed the Devourer to consume me, but thanks to your prompt actions only a little of my essence was absorbed before I was freed. When you opened a tear in its monstrous side I was one of the first to escape in the general stampede of spirits. After a period of rest and recuperation, I thought I would come and pay my respects to my saviour.” Mandeville bowed his head. “I am most grateful.”
“I didn’t do it for you.”
Mandeville shrugged, sending a puff of dust into the air and making Isis cough. She glanced back at the kitchen, checking that Cally was busy. She turned up the volume on the TV and a boy’s voice blared out, complaining to the show’s presenter about the way they’d transformed his bedroom.
“I appreciate that the effort was for your sister,” said Mandeville. “Nevertheless, I benefited.” He peered around. “Where is she, by the way?”
A small voice called out of one of the sofa cushions. “You goway! You horrid!”
Mandeville tutted. “She has the matter backwards. I believe the correct form is for a child to be seen, but not heard.”
“You poopy!” shouted the cushion.
“Children are no better when dead,” muttered Mandeville.
Isis folded her arms.
“What do you want?” she whispered. “And what did you mean before, about my mum being right? Supermarkets weren’t even invented when you were alive; how would you know if she could work in one or not?”
Mandeville raised his eyebrows, cracking the papery skin of his forehead. “I was not referring to her employment. I was discussing her decision to retire from the Welkin Society. Probably the first sensible thing she has ever done, leaving that nest of self-deceivers. And speaking of Philip Syndal, as he is now incapacitated…” One of his eyebrows slowly dropped, leaving the other raised in question.
Isis only needed a moment to work out what he wanted. Someone to be his link to the living. Someone with whom he could be a star, even though he was dead. When Mandeville had been alive, he’d been obsessed by the Victorian psychics of his day. When he’d died and discovered them to be charlatans, he’d set about finding genuine psychics. Isis knew that Mandeville had put decades of effort into Philip Syndal, but while the man had become a celebrity, performing to huge audiences and making regular appearances on television, he’d never even revealed Mandeville’s existence to his fans. Now that his time with Philip Syndal had ended so horribly, the ghost was still searching for fame.
But Isis shook her head. “No.”
Mandeville sighed, letting out a plume of green mould spores.
“My dear, would you destroy my hopes when they are all that hold me together?”
“I won’t do it!” snapped Isis, louder than she meant to.
“Are you all right?” Cally called from the kitchen.
Isis glared at the elderly ghost. “Yes,” she shouted back.
Mandeville smiled, his teeth dangling in his mouth. “Shall I take that as a maybe?”
“It isn’t,” she hissed, “it’s a no. No! No!”
But Mandeville was already crumbling. In a blink, he was a falling fountain of dirt, then a stain on the sofa, then nothing.
When she was sure he’d completely gone, Isis turned the TV down and sat back on the sofa. She stared at the television programme, her thoughts a thousand miles away from the boy and his bedroom. She picked up one of the biscuits and put it in her mouth, instantly spitting it back into her hand. The biscuit was now soft and stale, the cream filling fuzzed with bluish mildew.