Voices in Stone (20 page)

She was made of star-born metals, her thoughts running in colour. She was arms and legs, muscles and a beating heart. She was nothing but spirit, the lightest of all.

Human, ghost, alien.

I feel like I’m stretching too far, holding all this together.

Whose thought was that? Hers, the human girl? Or hers, the vast alien? Or hers, the little ghost?

Don’t worry about it, my dear.
A Mandeville thought.

There’s no time!
Was that Gray?

No time! Not human time, not alien time. The explosion would be quicker than either. She had to move, fast as a heartbeat, fast as a human thought. Rise up, fly up, right now.

Now?

Now now now NOW!

The shaking rattled her eyelids open.

Blazing, teary light. A blurry shape. Gray was shaking her, trying to get her standing.

“We have to get out of here!” He was shouting, his words almost lost in the loud, relentless pattering, like a hailstorm. He pulled her by her arm. “Come
on
!”

Strange, unfathomable images filled her thoughts, and whatever part of her mind had been stretched when holding the ghosts and alien together, now it had ripped apart. Her legs were stiff, and the ground… it wasn’t Gray who was shaking her – everything was moving. A downward dance of pebbles was falling from every slope in the quarry; a boulder shook, high in the rock face above them, then tumbled out of place, crashing and cracking as it fell. Gray yanked Isis backwards as the boulder thudded into the dirt where they’d been standing.

Without warning the ground beneath her foot dropped away. She staggered, her ankle twisting sideways, and someone else grabbed her. Dreadlocks and a beard. Merlin.

“What’s happening?” Her words were a croak.

“They’ve set off the blast!” Gray shouted.

Merlin was clutching his dreadlocks. “But they know we’re in here, I told Dr Harcourt!”

“She’d do it anyway,” screamed Gray. “She’s one of them!”

“One of who?”

Another rock crashed out of the quarry face, spinning and splintering as it fell.

“Out!”

Isis ran, following Gray and Merlin, trying to reach the track, as the ground shuddered and shifted with every step, quaking so hard she could barely stay upright. Dust filled the air as an avalanche of rocks and boulders collapsed out of the quarry wall.

She ran faster.
Don’t fall don’t fall don’t fall!
A thunderous, cracking sound roared through the quarry, and Gray stumbled backwards, crying out. A deep gully had opened in front of them, the ground plummeting away.

“Look out!” screamed Merlin as a gaping rent appeared, just to their right. They scrambled sideways, the solid dirt they’d been standing on collapsing into a deep hole. Isis held onto Gray, onto Merlin, as the ground shook and
shook beneath them, shuddering in every direction. A deep rumble filled the air, punctuated by loud popping sounds. Thick dust coated their throats and stung their eyes. Through the haze, up on the hillside, Isis saw trees lean and topple sideways.

“This isn’t mining!” yelled Merlin, his hair white with dust. “They only put charges over there.” He pointed to where rocks were rattling and spinning out of the quarry walls. “This is everywhere!”

With another thunder-crack, the gully in front of them widened, the ground pouring into it. They staggered and Gray’s foot slipped off.

“Get down!” cried Merlin, hauling Gray backwards. “It’ll be safest sitting!”

Angel caught up with them, drifting up as if all this were normal. “The effelant baby!” she shouted happily.

By her hand, Isis saw a pebble vibrate so fiercely it slowly began rising off the ground. Another vibrated itself upwards, also defying gravity, then another and another.

“Oh man!” cried Merlin. “Look at that!”

Isis tore her gaze from the floating pebbles, and saw a
stream of dirt and rocks pouring straight up into the air from the chasm that had opened in front of them.

“What…?” said Gray.

With a deafening crash, a huge boulder tore itself out of the quarry face, but instead of falling it drifted upwards.

“Look what the effelant’s doing!” cried Angel, spinning in circles on her bottom.

“What’s going on?” yelled Merlin.

“She’s leaving,” answered Isis, but her voice was lost in the noise. Dust and rock poured up around the group, creating an upward draft that lifted Isis’s hair and pulled at her clothes. Everywhere the ground was funnelling into the air, in an impossible avalanche.

She heard words in the roaring wind.
I won the race.

And every pebble, every rock, every particle of dust was suddenly dancing with rainbows.

Gray let out a yell of delight: “They’re back! My mes are back!”

Beautiful place,
whispered the brightly coloured dust, flickering and darkening. Tilting her head, Isis saw that the rocks pouring upwards were spinning now. Faster and faster, beginning to glow, first red, then orange, then into
white-hot droplets. The heat of it warmed her face, like standing in front of a fire.

Make my baby well,
hissed the burning air.

“Bye!” shouted Gray, waving madly with both hands at people only he could see. “Bye!”

Let him love me
, said the rising pebbles.

“Bring warmer weather,” Isis whispered back.

“Oh man,” breathed Merlin.
“Oh man.”

The ground flowed upwards; only the spot they were sitting on stayed solid. Pebbles, dust and boulders spun over their heads, melting into lava droplets. And now the molten drops were forging together into incandescent lines, hardening almost instantly into a softly gleaming metal, thin as wire. Each one joined to another, building a shape in the air above them.

“Is that its body?” asked Gray, eyes huge in his dirt-caked face.

Dust and rock cascaded into the air, melting together and drawing more of the glimmering wires. Fractal patterns began dividing, like the veins in a leaf or the crystals of a snowflake, as the strange metallic lines filled the sky with a vast outline, impossibly big, city-sized, yet so finely
wrought it should not have been able to hold its own huge form.

In places the wires welded into extra structures, poking out from the main body.

“Are those… fins?” asked Gray, shielding his eyes with his hand.

“Wings?” suggested Isis. It was hard to tell, hard to get the scale or understand what anything might be.

“Antennae?” said Gray, puzzling out the shapes. “A sail?”

Green light flickered along one of the lines. Another flashed into blue; somewhere else it was yellow.

“Oh maaaan,” sighed Merlin.

More and more of the lines above them picked up a colour, the alien drawing itself in the sky above. Red, orange, mauves and greens, a dart of silver, the pinks and gold of dawn. The colours drifted and shifted, getting faster until thousands of wires were flashing through multiple shades. They bled together, filling in the huge spreading shape of the star-beast with a hypnotic, spangled pulse. The colours began to cycle, aligning themselves into spirals and waves playing across its flanks.

Isis sat staring; next to her Gray and Merlin were open-mouthed.
The wind picked up as the creature drifted higher. The rushing of the ground began to slacken; the upward avalanche faded to a trickle, then stopped. The last molten wires jointed into the alien’s body, and with a ripple of never-ending colour it started to move, more like a cloud than any kind of star-ship. They couldn’t look away, caught by its beauty, as it floated into the real clouds, tinting them with colours of storm and sunset.

While they watched, the dust slowly cleared from the air and the rest of the world became visible again. Isis glanced down for a moment and froze. She nudged Gray. “Look.”

Gray gasped, staring down. So far down.

Merlin tore his gaze from the sky. “Oh
man
!” He grabbed hold of Isis and Gray, gripping tightly to their arms.

They were sitting on top of a sheer column of rock, only just wide enough for the three of them. Everywhere else the ground level had dropped, and was now thirty metres below, leaving them perched high above a wide plain. The trees in this new land were standing drunkenly, leaning at odd angles. The grass and vegetation was ridged into long low mounds, like wrinkled skin. The alien had pulled itself from the ground, leaving only the
coverings of soil and vegetation, which it no longer needed.

They stared, speechless, at the altered landscape. Dotted through the plain were other tall columns, and on the closest Isis could see the tiny shapes of people. Where the gates of the mining company had been, there was something like a vertically sided hill. On top of it a crowd of stunned protestors were still holding their banners.

“She kept all the people safe,” said Isis.

“And after everything we did to him,” said Gray.

Their smiles answered each other, cracking the dirt on their faces.

Isis sat on a low wall, staring out through the school gates at the cars passing by on the road. Gray wasn’t around this lunchtime – he was probably at his UFO club. It was really popular since the events at the quarry a few weeks ago. Isis had gone a couple of times, but felt uncomfortable with the level of awe directed at her by some of the more enthusiastic members.

And if Gray wasn’t around, she’d rather spend time by herself. Being asked about the alien wasn’t quite as bad as “What’s it like being dead?” but no one wanted to talk about everyday stuff. No one treated her as normal. Along with Gray, she was one of the survivors of what was now being called the Wycombe Event, and not just by people like Stu.

At least Mr Gerard had let her back from suspension. Mainly because the pupils who’d had the worst of the ‘ghost hysteria’ turned out never to have attended any of Isis’s seances. In fact, there was a much clearer link between the riotous behaviour at school and the pupils from Mr Watkins’s geography class who’d visited the quarry. They’d even been treated by a therapist brought into school especially. Isis had heard one of the teachers saying that whatever the therapist was doing, it was definitely working. The pupils involved seemed to have forgotten why they’d been upset in the first place.

“You’ve never been in any trouble before,” said Mr Gerard, the first day Isis was allowed back. “So I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt. But you’re on report for the next month, and if I hear of a single incident…”

He wouldn’t, though. Isis couldn’t do seances now, even if she wanted to, and she kept away from Jess’s gang, just in case. Sometimes she spotted Jess looking in her direction, but Isis always turned her head and walked away.

The air turned cold around her, filling with a damp musty smell as Mandeville appeared on her left. She noticed
the twinkle of a sparkly sandal to her right, and Angel appeared, sitting on the wall.

“By yourself again?” asked Mandeville. “You know, it really isn’t conducive to a healthy mental state.”

“She not alone,” said Angel. “She got us.”

“Well, I suppose that is true,” conceded the older ghost.

Isis waited for an argument to brew between the ghosts, but none did. She still wasn’t used to it, the way they were getting on. It was something to do with being mixed together inside the alien’s mind. Perhaps it was easier to accept someone else when you’d shared each other’s thoughts. Isis and Gray now often finished each other’s sentences, much to their parents’ bemusement.

Isis looked from Angel to Mandeville. Her last two ghosts.

Whatever it was she’d felt pulling out of her when the alien left, she’d lost most of her ability to see things other people couldn’t. Now she couldn’t even see regular spirits like the school’s ghosts. Even if she’d wanted to continue with the school seances, she couldn’t have.

“Do you think it’ll come back?” she asked Mandeville.

He turned his bony head towards her. “What are you referring to, my dear?”

“Being psychic. Do you think it’ll come back, like recharging a battery?”

“If I knew what a battery was, I might comment. As to your abilities, I doubt they will return. They may even fade further. Possession of a creature as vast as the one we tackled… it would tax any psychic’s powers, and I was forced to draw strongly on yours, which were already weakened by your encounter with the Devourer.” He paused for a moment, then pointed at the pavement outside the school. “For example, can you see him?”

To Isis it seemed an empty stretch of road. She shook her head.

“Ah, that is a pity,” said Mandeville. “It really is striking, the way he can remove his head.”

“You’re making that up!”

“I take offence at the suggestion. Ask your sister!”

“A ghostie
is
there,” said Angel, kicking her feet soundlessly against the wall. “Head off, head on. Off, on.” She started giggling. “Again! Do it again!”

“Don’t you mind?” Isis asked Mandeville. “What about all your plans? Me being your psychic, and your message to the world…”

Mandeville was silent. Isis could see gaps in his body now, daylight showing through. He seemed frail and crumbling since their encounter with the alien. The possession had taken it out of him, as well.

Mandeville narrowed his blue-fire eyes. “I had always imagined that speaking to millions through a world-renowned psychic would be the pinnacle of my achievements, but the feat we achieved with the star-beast… no other spirit has ever come close to such a deed, nor is ever likely to. It was an experience that I have still to fully fathom. Being so vast, so stretched, so other… it has made my earlier hopes seem much less important.” He put his skeletal hand on Isis’s. “I would like to thank you for persisting, and persuading me to undertake such a magnificent possession.” He let go of her hand again. “And I believe diminishing powers will be a blessing for you, saving you from the fate of so many psychics. You will not go mad. But on the other hand…” He transferred his gaze to Angel, who was still sitting giggling on the wall.

Isis looked at her too. Would the little ghost-girl become as invisible to Isis as the ghost out on the road? Would their special bond finally end?

“I’d never see her again,” she whispered to Mandeville.

Mandeville tutted. “Angel is dead.
Not
seeing her is the normal way of things.”

Isis shook her head. “That’s not what you said before! What about giving comfort to people by telling them about what happens after they die?”

Mandeville coughed. “Yes, well. Do you know, I think I may have been in… error. Did anyone at your seances ask anything meaningful, or make any serious enquiry about the afterlife? During our little spat, you accused me of having only one aspect to my ghosthood.”

Isis blushed, remembering how she’d taken everything out on him that day.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“But you were right. A psychic of your talent was bound to spot it.” He sighed out a plume of mould spores. “I do feel rather… lacking in depth, one might say. I’m sure there is a better part of my soul, somewhere beyond.” He pressed his thumb and finger onto the bridge of his nose, as if he had a headache. “Recently, I’ve been feeling quite faded. It makes the endless hours of existence something of a chore.”

He looked like an old man for a moment, rather than a skeleton. Isis almost wanted to hug him.

“Cally always says lost spirits need to find the light,” she said.

She waited for Mandeville to mock Cally, like he usually did. But instead he only sighed again. “You know, I’d like to, if only I knew where the light was.”

Angel stopped kicking her feet. “It just up there,” she said, pointing at the sky with one of her chubby little arms.

Mandeville peered at the air, then shook his head.

Isis looked as well, but could only see the flat white clouds of a chilly autumn day. “I can’t see anything.”

Angel laughed. “You not dead, silly! You can’t see it ’til then.”

She peered past Isis to Mandeville, then took one of Isis’s hands with her weightless fingers. “His hand too,” she commanded.

“You want me to hold Mandeville’s hand?” Isis asked.

Angel nodded. “Do for him what you do for Gray. Hep him to see.”

“I find this rather… demeaning,” said Mandeville. “I am the spirit guide, after all.”

Angel shrugged. “Okay, not then.”

“No!” he called, and Mandeville quickly clutched Isis’s free hand, his grip icy around her own.

“See it now?” Angel asked.

“Aaaahhh,” whispered Mandeville. “It’s beautiful.”

Isis stared at the sky, but saw only the clouds in their blank layer, even with the ghosts’ hands in hers. Was it because her powers were weakened, or simply because she was still living? She returned her gaze to the ghosts, and noticed a few dusty crystals tumble from Mandeville’s eyes. It took Isis a moment to work out they were tears.

“You going then?” asked Angel him, very matter of fact.

Mandeville gazed at whatever the two ghosts could see. He faded for a moment, the shivering cold in Isis’s hand lessening, but then he shook his head, letting go of Isis’s hand.

“Not quite yet,” he said. “Maybe later.” He looked at Angel, and winked one of his ice-blue eyes. “I believe the dollies have a few more parties to attend?”

Isis was about to ask if Mandeville was really going to play dollies with Angel when she heard footsteps behind them. Isis went very still. Angel turned around, and stuck
out her tongue. The footsteps got nearer, stopped, and then carried on, hesitantly.

“Isis?” It was Jess.

Isis turned around. “What do you want?”

“I…” Jess faltered, a blush creeping up her neck. She took another step, hands clasped together, fingers twisting around each other. “I wanted to say sorry.”

Isis could hear her own blood in her ears. After everything that had happened, this wasn’t what she was expecting.

“Sorry for what?” she asked suspiciously.

“For making you do the seances,” Jess said quietly. “I know you didn’t want to, and I pushed you to because I…” Her eyes flicked away. “I wanted to be special, like you are.”

Isis was blushing too now.

“You didn’t say anything,” Isis said. She meant in Mr Gerard’s office, and Jess knew it, because she nodded, looking even more miserable.

“I’m sorry about that too. I was just…” Her blush had reached her ears, which were glowing red. “I’ve never been in trouble before, not for anything. I was really scared.”

“Pooh to you!” said Angel, sticking her tongue out again.

But on the other side of Isis, Mandeville shook his head. “I must say, that is a most thorough and admirable apology. Coming from one so young, it takes a lot of courage. This young lady must truly value your friendship.”

Isis looked at him in surprise, and Jess spotted the glance. “Are they here?” she asked quickly. “The ghosts?”

Isis gripped the rough edge of the wall. “You said I was making all that up.”

“That’s what
Chloe
said,” Jess answered. “I’m sorry I didn’t stick up for you, but I never doubted it, not for a second. You helped me, letting me talk to Gran Marie.” She took a deep breath. “Anyway, I know you won’t want to be my friend any more, but I just wanted to say this, that’s all.”

Jess turned and began to walk away. Isis didn’t move; she was still a little stunned.

“Are you just going to sit there?” snapped Mandeville. “Have you never made any mistakes?”

She felt a cold shove on her back, as Angel poked her off the wall. “Now you got to make up,” said the little ghost.

Isis took a step, then another. “Wait!”

When Jess turned around, Isis felt a pure happiness swell inside her. Being special, being all alone – having a friend would be better.

“I won’t do any more seances,” Isis said, walking up to Jess.

“I don’t want you to.”

Jess shrugged. “I’ve been doing some paintings at home, and I wondered if you’d like to come and…”

But Isis wasn’t paying attention – suddenly her gaze was caught by a man walking out of the school entrance and heading to the car park. He was frowning, walking quickly, and didn’t notice the girls.

“Who’s that?” she asked, and Jess turned to look.

“Oh,” she said, “that’s the therapist. The one sorting everyone’s heads out after the school trip. Haven’t you seen him before?” Jess stopped. “Are you okay?”

“He looks like…”
an old photograph.
One she’d stared at so often it was imprinted on her mind. Isis and baby Angel, Dad and Cally. If Dad had pale hair, cut differently, if he dressed in a way she’d never seen him dress, if he wore glasses, which he didn’t… No. Her dad was
on a cruise ship somewhere, so far away he hadn’t even made it back when Isis was in hospital. He wasn’t a therapist, at school every day and never even coming near her.

She shook her head. “He looks a bit like my dad, that’s all.”

Jess peered at the man. “Your dad? You don’t mean Gil, do you?”

Isis laughed. “Gil’s my stepdad, or he’s going to be when Mum and Dad get married. Did you know Mum’s going to have a baby?”

“No!” Jess squealed. “Oh, you are so lucky! I’d love to have a baby brother or sister!”

As Jess was pattering on, Gray came around the side of the school. He seemed to be searching for someone. Then he spotted Isis and Jess, and headed straight for them.

“Gray can tell us about the therapist,” said Jess. “He was the one called in today.”

Isis shrugged. “I don’t care.”

She glanced behind her and saw Angel spinning circles on the grass behind the wall, her arms outstretched.
Mandeville had wandered out into the road, and seemed to be having a conversation with the ghost Isis couldn’t see. For how much longer would she be able to see Angel and Mandeville? Her heart tightened at the thought of losing them, but at the same time she understood that the day would come when her two ghosts would take a journey they both needed.

And if that would be a hard parting, she had other people to rely on now. Like Cally, who really was trying to be the sort of mum they both wanted her to be. And Gil, who was a new kind of dad to Isis, one who was actually around. She had a brother in Gray, and another one to come when the baby was born.

“Come on,” said Jess, shyly putting her hand out to Isis.

She had a best friend too, something she’d never had before.

“Do you want to come over sometime this week?” Jess asked. “We can watch that new film if you like, the one about the dance competition.”

“If my mum says it’s okay,” Isis said, smiling.

“Oh, she will – I’ll get my mum to ring and…”

Isis walked with Jess, wrapped up in the other girl’s
chatter, as they headed across the grass to meet Gray. Isis gave a last glance back to where she’d been.

Angel waved a transparent hand, then carried on spinning.