Ghost Key

by Trish J. MacGregor

  She stopped in front of the Island Hotel, her headquarters since her arrival in January, and unlocked the courtyard gate. She pushed her bike inside, set it against one of the palm trees. From the basket attached to the back of the bike, she carefully withdrew a small, rectangular wooden box. She held it tightly in both hands and hurried toward the building that formed the northern boundary of the courtyard. It resembled an old barracks and had once housed Civil War soldiers. The front porch sagged, some of the windows were cracked, and the place screamed for a fresh coat of paint.

  Dominica sensed the barracks was at least twenty years older than the hotel, dating back to around 1839. In the cosmic scheme of things, 1839 was yesterday. What a difference from Ecuador, where many buildings and plazas dated back to before the time of the Incas. Yet it was one of the oldest spots on the island and she felt at home within the barracks’ chipped, barren walls, surrounded by the smell of its dusty history.

  She hoped to eventually spiff up all these old buildings around town, make them more appealing for both tourists and locals. Whit, her expert on American culture, advised her against doing anything until the town was truly a brujo enclave. He said that any such activity might attract attention from the county commissioners, who forbade renovations to historical buildings without all sorts of bureaucratic red tape. She knew that for her plan to succeed, she had to avoid scrutiny by authorities.

  Dominica entered through the door on the far side, so that no one inside the hotel could see her—or rather, see her redheaded host, Maddie. Today, Dominica controlled Maddie completely—no resistance, no fights, no arguments, just a blissful silence from the young woman’s essence. Today, the ease with which she used Maddie’s body made her feel as if it actually belonged to her. Dominica prompted her to reach into her jacket pocket for a flashlight, turn it on, then directed her to the interior of the building, to what used to be the barracks kitchen. No reaction at all from Maddie. These days, the only times she resisted was when Dominica urged her to have sex with Whit’s host. And then she fought violently for control of her own body.

  The linoleum floor was scuffed and filthy, dust covered the counters, a scarred wooden table stood in the middle of the room. Four flickering candles provided enough illumination for her to see the two others seated at the table, waiting for her.

  Whit, her second in command, eyed her with such naked desire she couldn’t wrench her eyes away from him. In the lambent light, his host, the island mayor, Peter Stanton, looked like a middle-aged Olympian god. His thick white hair, those smoldering dark eyes, those beautiful hands that scoped out her deepest sexual desires: Dominica drank in the sight of him. A quick, sly smile reshaped his mouth as she set the box on the table. She shrugged off her pack, set it on the floor, and sat down.

  “Where’re the others?” she asked.

  “Late,” Whit said.

  Late. Now that irritated her. How could the other members of the committee be late for the first judicial hearing in her new tribe? In the old days, in Esperanza, when she had given an order, it was carried out immediately. But those brujos had been older, many of them ancient; the members of her new tribe were, for the most part, young, naïve, recently dead. They didn’t understand the rules yet.

  “I’m sure they’ll be along,” said Liam, nudging his host’s glasses farther up on the bridge of his nose. “All our hosts are on island time. You know … no clocks.”

  Or the ghosts themselves weren’t entirely adjusted to a twenty-four-hour clock yet. Cedar Key’s perfect isolation—the nearest city lay fifty miles inland—was both a blessing and a curse. The live-and-let-live attitude made the populace more passive, but they could also be fiercely independent.

  Inside the wooden box, the imprisoned brujo screamed to be released, screams that Whit and Liam both heard. Liam’s host, Sam Dorset, winced as though he found the screams physically painful. He reminded her of a bear or some other lumbering creature, but his haunted eyes peered out from behind his glasses like those of an anxious dog that feared it might not be fed. Sam was editor of the local newspaper and, so far, he and Liam had been a good fit. But when Liam was alive, he’d been a lost human with an alcohol problem and sometimes in the bar at night, he tipped a few too many. That worried her. On the other hand, Liam obviously enjoyed physical existence and maybe that alone would prevent him from blowing it.

  “Liam, I thought you posted the time of the meeting on the newspaper Web site,” she said.

  “I did. I guess they forgot to check the Web site, Dominica.”

  “I can see we need to rectify that.”

  “Hey, it’s not like this is corporate America, Dominica,” Whit remarked, and opened his arms wide. “I mean, really.” His gesture encompassed not only the old scarred table at which they sat, but the entire dilapidated barracks with the lack of electricity, the faint stink of mold, the filthy floors. “They need an incentive to attend.”

  Whit surprised her, as he often did. She liked that, the element of surprise and mystery. Whit had been executed seven months ago for rape and murder, and until he had answered her call, he had been stuck wandering around the lower astrals, wondering what the hell had happened to him.

  “The incentive is the vision, Whit. A brujo enclave in the U.S. Here.”

  “A lot of them may not understand what that means,” Liam remarked.

  “Since your host is the editor of the newspaper, Liam, it’s your job to explain it to them, which you apparently haven’t done. An editorial might do the trick, okay? Are we clear, Liam?”

  Liam looked conflicted. “I don’t know if that’s wise until more of us have hosts.”

  Whit nodded. “I agree, Nica. A lot of residents have already left the island. We don’t want to do anything that frightens away more potential hosts.”

  “How many in our tribe have hosts right now?” she asked.

  Whit didn’t hesitate. “Two hundred and two.” Whit, the numbers man. “At least half of them are couples.” He grinned. “Easy access to sex.”

  Good, she thought. That minimized the possibility of bleed-outs that sometimes occurred when her ghosts engaged in sexual encounters so passionate and lustful that the host bodies were overtaxed and bled out. Couples tended to be less forceful with each other. Since her arrival, thirteen hosts had bled out. Those bodies had been disposed of expeditiously so the deaths hadn’t attracted attention from outside authorities. She intended to keep it that way. Early on, she had forbidden the seizure of any child under sixteen. Nothing would bring outside scrutiny more rapidly than a bunch of dead kids. She had also forbidden any more bleed-outs. Any brujo who violated that law would end up in this wooden box for a hearing, just like Von.

  But Von’s offense was far more serious. “Let’s get down to the unpleasant business that brought us here,” she said.

  “We’re not going to wait for the others?” Liam asked.

  “They’ll hear it through the net,” Dominica said. Everyone in her new tribe would hear the proceedings through the telepathic net that connected them. “And if the other members of the committee choose to grace us with their presence, they can vote. But they aren’t necessary to these proceedings. As Whit so eloquently pointed out, we’re not a corporation.”

  The door behind them creaked, the old wood groaning, the rusted hinges squeaking, and Gogh lumbered into the kitchen carrying a paper bag. “Sorry I’m late,” he called out, as if they were all hard of hearing. “Had to stop by the market.” He set his bag on the table and brought out a selection of bottled water, soda, juices. “Take your pick.”

  Gogh’s peace offering, she thought. He had died in an L.A. gang war about a year ago and had been trapped in the lower astrals by rage and confusion. His host, Richard Pinella, was the head bartender at the hotel, a handsome man in his late thirties whose curly black hair always looked as if he had just rolled out of bed. Those Mediterranean-blue eyes of his had gone dark, indicating that Gogh was fully in control of him and peering out.r />
  “Thanks for the drinks, Gogh,” she said, and helped herself to a bottle of cold water. “Could you try to be on time from now on?”

  “Sure thing. Where’re Jill and Joe?”

  “They’re late, too. Let’s get started.” She brought her hands to the box she had set on the table. “As you know, Von is accused of violating our most sacred law. He allegedly helped his host escape and it resulted in the annihilation of two members of our tribe. There were witnesses and we heard their testimony yesterday. Von has a chance to tell his side of the story, which will be broadcast throughout the brujo net. Then we’ll vote on guilt or innocence.”

  “Just the four of us are voting?” Liam asked.

  “That’s how it’s done, Liam. The committee votes. If members of the committee don’t show up, it means fewer votes. But every brujo who listens through the net is entitled to state an opinion and all of that is taken into consideration. Up until we vote, business can be conducted mind to mind or through the physical voices of our hosts or a combination.”

  I have a request, Von shouted.

  The net shuddered and trembled.

  “What is it, Von?”

  Could you let me out of the box, please? I promise I won’t try to escape.

  Dominica looked at the three men and they all nodded. She touched the rectangular box and slid the button on the side to the off position. It extinguished the fluorescent light that generated a field of extremely low frequency waves, which inflicted excruciating agony on any brujo that tried to pass through it. Von drifted out, no more than a whiff of discolored smoke, the way most brujos looked in their natural form.

  “What’s to prevent Von from escaping?” Gogh asked. “We don’t have any ELF fields in here.”

  “If he attempts to escape, he’ll be pursued,” Dominica said.

  “Yeah? By whom?” Liam asked. “Us? Or do we have a posse of ghosts for this purpose?”

  “Yeah.” Whit snickered. “We’ve got John Wayne and some of his buddies in the back room.”

  I’m not going to try to escape, Von said. Where the hell would I go?

  The plaintiveness in his words pleased Dominica. “So tell us what happened, Von. The tribe is listening.”

  Two days ago, my host and I were over on the pier. He lost his wife six months ago and was feeling really sad and depressed. I kept telling him she still existed somewhere, like I do. I explained how my death was really sudden—my heart just stopped beating one day when I was doing an emergency appendectomy. I pitched forward, right onto the patient. When I came to, I was conscious and in my own home, struggling to communicate with my wife and kids.

  “Get to the point, Von,” Dominica said.

  I kept talking to him like this, describing my own experience. And then he asked me how … how I ended up with such an evil group. And I … I started thinking about that and I couldn’t remember how I ended up here. I heard a voice, I guess it was your voice, Dominica, and I answered the call. I … I was grateful when I became physical again, but I suddenly understood what he meant. It’s like I had forgotten who I was and now I remembered. We have no right to possess someone else’s body, it’s—

  “For shit’s sake,” Whit burst out. “I’ve heard enough.”

  The net shook with gossip, chatter, turmoil. Dominica thought a moment, then said, “He’s entitled to tell his side, Whit.” It was good for the tribe to hear how twisted Von’s thoughts and beliefs were. Brujos weren’t evil. They only wanted to experience physical life. “Go on, Von.”

  He and I walked into a place on the water for a bite to eat. Three brujos were at the next table. It was just the four of us in the pub … well, eight of us if you count the hosts, right? One of them, a woman, came over to us. She said she found me and my host attractive and wanted to have sex with us right there, in the restaurant. I … I can’t begin to describe what I felt just then. I told my host to get up and walk out of the restaurant and he did. We did. We got into a car and I told him to keep driving until he was so far from Cedar Key he couldn’t even remember the name of the place. And … and then I leaped out of him and returned to that pub.

  I leaped into that bruja’s host, so two of us shared the woman’s body, and drove the ghost out. Then … then I leaped into one of the men and he fell back into the lantern that was on the table and … and it broke and … I guess the brujo inside of him shot out the top of his head and straight into the lantern’s flame, and was obliterated.

  “Hold on a minute,” Gogh said. “You’re saying the brujo intentionally shot into that lantern flame?”

  I don’t know.

  “No ghost would do that,” Whit added. “It’s suicide.”

  “Go on, Von,” Dominica said. “What happened next?”

  Von’s essence swayed from side to side, like a curtain blowing in the wind.

  I leaped into the second man and he was so freaked out with two ghosts inside of him that he ran … out onto the balcony and jumped over the railing and … and he drowned before the brujo escaped and—

  “And Joe had just entered the pub and saw everything and brought you the fuck down.”

  They all turned to see Joe, hosted by Bean, the hotel owner. Tall, much too thin and lanky for her taste, he reminded Dominica of a disheveled scarecrow. Right now, he looked like a pissed-off scarecrow, his eyes obsidian black as Joe peered from them, his muscles tight, fists clenched. “That was my wife who came on to you, Von. Jill. Her name’s Jill.”

  And her host’s name is Marion, she’s the island librarian, and your wife has no business inside her. And what do you care about your wife, Joe? When you two were alive, she was screwing some other guy and you shot her and killed him and then turned the gun on yourself. You’re the fucks who should be on trial here. That night in February when you screwed your brains out in the hotel bar, you compromised your goddamn tribe. That’s when people around here started realizing that something was really wrong on Cedar Key.

  Jill’s host, Marion, propped her hands on her narrow hips. “Are you kidding me, Von? You wanted me that night in the pub.” She laughed, a quick, mocking laugh, then she marched right over to the whiff of discolored smoke that Von was and poked her finger into it, into him. “You. Wanted. Me. You’re a hypocrite of the worst kind.”

  Von suddenly dived through Marion’s skull, so that she was now possessed by both him and Jill. He somehow drove Jill out of Marion’s body and then spun Marion around and raced for the door. Jill, reduced to nothing but a puff of smoke, shrieked and streaked after them. Dominica shot to her feet, her chair tipped over and crashed to the floor, and she raced after Marion.

  The woman exploded through the side door and moved so fast it astonished Dominica. How had Von managed to exert such perfect control over Marion? Dominica was vaguely aware of the pandemonium in the barracks kitchen, of Jill’s wails; her host was gone, stolen, and none of the brujos had any idea what to do. Even though Dominica’s host, Maddie, had been a runner she couldn’t close in on Von. Desperation fueled him, and the more desperate he became, the faster Marion ran. Now he tore through the courtyard, headed toward the gate that led to the main road through downtown.

  Dominica knew she had just one choice. “Whit, cover me,” she hollered, and leaped out of Maddie and into Marion the librarian.

  Von leaped out of Marion and shot up into the sky and Dominica soared after him, hating him for reducing her to this ridiculous cat-and-mouse game, ghost chasing ghost. Von saw himself as morally superior to her and her tribe, and yet he had given his word he wouldn’t attempt an escape. He had lied.

  Dominica closed in on him, then propelled herself the final yards and crashed into him, her essence melting into his, and they plummeted into the hotel courtyard. She heard Whit shouting that he had Maddie restrained, and sensed Gogh nearby, with the box and its ELF field that would trap Von. She and Von tumbled, rolled, and suddenly she vaulted away from him and Gogh nabbed him like an insect to flypaper.

  Dominica
instantly sought Maddie, and found her inside the barracks kitchen, bound to a chair, gagged. She dived into her again, right down through the middle of her skull, and quickly fitted herself into the young woman’s body.

  “Nica?” Whit leaned over her, anxiously scanning her host’s face. “If it’s really you, what’s our code word?”

  “Pensacola.” It was where she and Whit had gone recently in their natural forms and had seized a couple of tourists to enjoy sex and good wine and a fantastic sunset. He knew she had blocked these memories from Maddie, that their code was genuine.

  He quickly untied her, removed her gag, and wrapped his arms around her. “We won this round.”

  This round, but how many more were there in the future that they wouldn’t win?

  Gogh barreled into the kitchen with the rectangular box clasped in his hands. Behind him were Jill, Joe, Liam. Jill was back inside Marion, who looked exhausted, her face shiny with perspiration in spite of the cool air.

  “Now what?” Gogh asked anxiously.

  “Disengage from the net.”

  They did so, their lights blinking out like stars at the edge of sunrise. The white noise she had grown accustomed to, the communal voices in the brujo net, went silent. “Make sure we have six votes cast,” she said, and told him what they should say. “This is the official record. We’ll enter it into the net later.”

  While Gogh scribbled frantically, Whit went over to the counter, opened the cabinet under the sink, and brought out lighter fluid, rags, a box of kitchen matches. He put everything into his pack, glanced at Dominica, and tilted his head toward the door. She nodded, walked to the pantry, and removed five kayak paddles. She handed them out and picked up the wooden box with despicable, twisted Von inside.

  “What should I do with the votes?” Gogh asked.

  “Just leave them on the table,” Dominica said. “I’ll take care of them later.”