Maddie snickered, plopped back on her virtual couch, and covered her face with a pillow and laughed out loud.
* * *
Annie’s Café stood in the crooked elbow of a salt marsh on State Road 24, a one-story place that looked as if it had been built of the same driftwood that Sanchez had seen everywhere else on Cedar Key. The tiny parking area was jammed with vehicles and he had to park the cart two blocks away, in a neighborhood of old Florida homes. He held on to Jessie’s halter, making it clear that she shouldn’t stray, and as they walked through the chilly air, he kept glancing around, hoping that Red would show up again. She didn’t and neither did his mother, although he felt her around just as he had earlier out in front of the motel.
“Mom?” he whispered.
“Right here, Nick.” She materialized for a moment at his side, then faded as a car turned toward them, headlights bright, glaring.
“You think the people in that car can see you?”
“You never know.”
“So you’re, like, what, my guardian angel now?”
The car passed and she came into view again. “I’ve been here over a year and have yet to meet anything with wings. Be careful in the café, Nick.”
Like he needed his dead mother telling him that.
“I’ve got your back,” she added, and faded again.
How could a ghost have his back?
Sanchez wondered about the dark-haired man who had told him to get out of the salt marsh. Wayra. He had Googled the name when he’d gotten back to the motel and discovered that in Quechua it meant “wind.” The Quechua people predated the Incas and the language itself was still spoken in parts of Peru and Ecuador. He didn’t know what, if anything, that meant in relation to what was happening.
His BlackBerry jingled, no song this time, just that obnoxious electric chord. Nicole’s text message appeared:
ET, call home.
Hey, I’m here, he typed. On Cedar Key. Am OK. How’s dad doing? Did Carmen return?
Yes to Carmen. Dad seems better. He won in dominoes today. Holler for whatever you need.
Interesting, he thought, that Nicole apparently had taken what he’d said seriously enough to keep texting and calling him.
Hugs, he typed, and signed off.
Sanchez, no longer gripping the dog’s halter, entered the café through a screened porch that led to the wide outside balcony. It extended a hundred feet into the salt marsh, with tables on either side and another row straight down the middle. Every table was covered with a checkered plastic tablecloth, easy to clean, but ever so tacky. Burning torches, mounted on posts that extended upward from the railing, cast the area in a surreal light. Half a dozen customers had their dogs with them, and the dogs lay with paws draped over the edge of the balcony, watching fish jump, listening to the sounds of the marsh.
The hostess, a middle-aged woman in jeans and a sweater, showed Sanchez to a table along the railing, but close enough to the screened porch so that he could see the large group of customers on the right side. Red had referred to them as “the real terrorists.” They looked like locals and tourists to him. Were the ghosts inside of them?
Assume nothing is what it appears to be, Delaney had texted him moments before Maddie had located him earlier today. Stay with it. And send vid from the café.
The group on the right was loud and boisterous and a couple of the men kept waving the waitresses over, shouting for more beer, more wine, more warm bread, more salads, more, more, more. They ate and drank like gluttons.
He surreptitiously snapped a couple of photos of the group, e-mailed them to Delaney, then to Nicole just for safekeeping. He brought one of them up, enlarged it. With the porch screen between him and the group, the photo lacked the detail he wanted. But the smaller torches inside the porch illuminated the area in a strange, pumpkin-colored light. Pale orbs floated in the air around the group. They looked like water droplets, but the lens on the BlackBerry was dry. Light leaks? Not likely. He glanced up, but didn’t see anything in the air that resembled the orbs in the photo.
He pressed the video button, then stretched his arms above his head, a guy working the kinks out of his back, the BlackBerry cupped and hidden in his right hand. Ten seconds, fifteen, thirty. He lowered his arm, viewed the video. It had captured the balls of light, too. He e-mailed this to Delaney, with a note: Any idea what these orbs are?
Sanchez thought he might be able to get better photos if he went inside to use the restroom. Just as he was about to stand, an attractive blond waitress came over to take his order. Her nametag read KATE. “What can I get you to drink, sir?”
“A Corona. And I’ll take the salmon Caesar salad.”
“Great choice. I’ll bring your dog a bowl of water and some treats, too.”
“Thanks, I appreciate it. Excuse me, but I was wondering if you heard about the incident today with the woman rescued by the dolphins?”
She looked wary. “Uh, yeah. Who hasn’t heard about it?”
“What happened exactly?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Do you know who the woman was?”
“Why?”
“I’m a freelance journalist,” he lied. “I’d love to interview her.”
“Her name’s Maddie Livingston. I used to work with her.”
“Do you know how I can get in touch with her?”
“She works over at the Island Hotel, at the front desk.” Then she scribbled something on her order pad, tore it off, and set it on the table. “Be back with your drink in a minute.”
Sanchez picked up the slip of paper. Island invaded by something that seizes human beings and seeks to live out their mortal lives. Evil ghosts. One of them is in Maddie. Everyone on the right side of the room is possessed by this evil. When the evil is fully in control of the human, blackness rolls across their eyes. Get out while you can.
“What the fuck.” He folded the slip of paper, slipped it down inside his wallet. He sat there a few minutes longer, arguing with himself. When to leave? Immediately? After he’d snapped a few more photos or taken more video from a better spot?
Photos and video first, he thought, and pushed to his feet.
* * *
Kate ducked into the kitchen and sent Rocky a text message. Am telling Annie I’m sick, going home in 15 min. Ask Amy to drop u here.
“Table four’s order is ready,” called the cook.
Table four, where twenty-seven of them watched her, their eyes shifting from blues and hazels and soft browns to obsidian black. She knew these faces—one of the local cops, a state trooper, two real estate brokers, a banker, Bean and his ex-wife, three artists who owned a co-op on Dock Street, the owner of a new restaurant on Second Street, a retired couple from upstate New York who lived out near the airport. For years, many of these people had moved in and out of her life as friends and lovers, bosses and customers. She knew their alcoholic preferences, food allergies, family dramas. And all of them were changed, possessed.
“Where’s Annie?” Kate asked the cook as she picked up the tray.
“Went outside to take a call.”
“Tell her this is my last delivery. I feel like shit, coming down with the flu or something, I’m going home.”
“Home?” The cook’s head snapped up. “You can’t go home now, Kate. We’ve got more than fifty people out there and just you and Jen doing the tables.”
“Give Annie the message.”
Kate stepped out of the kitchen just as Peter Stanton, the mayor, lumbered into the dining room. He stood there a moment, his clothes as disheveled as his graying hair. At one time, he had been a handsome guy, trim and fit with a personality and smile that could charm any woman into bed. And there had been a lot of women, three wives, multiple affairs. He was a politician’s politician, mayor of the island for nearly twenty years. But at the moment, he looked like a neglected backyard, his face gaunt, dark circles under his eyes, his jowls sagging. All the life had vanished from his eyes.
<
br /> He saw her and hurried over. “I’ve got a takeout order, Kate.”
“You’ll have to wait a few minutes, Mayor Stanton. I’ve got meals to serve. We’re busy tonight.”
Kate moved past him, but he grabbed her shirt, jerking her back. She stumbled and the tray tipped and everything slipped off—plates, bowls, glasses, all of it shattering, salads, soups, pasta, ribs, pork chops, burgers, food splattering everywhere. Kate fell into Stanton, who toppled backward and crashed into a bussing cart. It slid across the room and crashed into their table and Stanton hollered, “Seize them, seize all of them.”
Pandemonium erupted in the café. Customers at other tables leaped up, screaming, their bodies jerking and twitching as the evil seized them. Kate scrambled to her feet, grabbed one of the small, flickering torches and slammed it into Stanton’s side as he lunged for her. The banker who held the mortgage on her houseboat hurled himself at her and she thrust the torch in his face, singeing his lashes and brows and beard, setting his hair on fire. He shrieked and slapped at his face and skull and the evil within flew out; she actually saw it, a pale, dancing orb of light. Kate drove the torch into it and it vanished.
The torch fizzled out and she grabbed another and set two tablecloths on fire. Zee had told her they feared fire, so she gave them fire—burning tablecloths, plants, food, clothing, napkins, paneling, chairs, tables, railings. Smoke rolled through the café in great, greasy clouds, flames leaping, dancing, hungry. Kate made a beeline toward the farthest edge of the porch, the goddamn zombies, demons, ghosts, horrors, whatever they were, dropping, burning, the air thick with orbs.
The second torch went out. She snatched a third out of its holder and clambered over the balcony railing, into the salt marsh. She set the tall reeds on fire and they burned fast, furiously, and emitted thick, dark smoke that provided her with a measure of cover. She hurled the torch away from her, back into the café, and raced over mounds of shells and soft sand, rocks and driftwood and gulf debris. She fled through marsh so thick that the tall reeds and grasses snapped back into her face and arms, their stalks covered with teeth like saws that sliced through her skin.
At some point in her panic, she realized she wasn’t alone; the thin, black dog kept pace with her. Kate had no idea where he’d been or how he’d found her, but was grateful for his company. She made it to her wooden skiff, the dog jumped aboard, and she opened the outboard up wide and the skiff sped away from the café, the salt marsh, Cedar Key.
But Rocky was still back there, he hadn’t answered her text. Her chest heaved with sobs, tears burned tracks down her cheeks. Where was her son? What the hell was happening to her life?
The fog began to rise. She had to focus, to concentrate. She knew the channels even at night. She’d been traveling them since she was old enough to stand up. She knew every island, every beach, every fishing spot. She knew where dolphins played, where manatees mated, where wood storks slept, where the water dropped off into impossible depths.
When she finally reached Sea Horse Key thirty minutes later, she brought the engine to an idle and made her way through channels where the water was deepest, behind mangroves so thick that the inner branches rarely saw the light of day. The skiff bumped up against the houseboat, anchored in a protective cove, beneath a braided dome of branches. She tied the rope to the ladder, then looked at the black Lab.
“I’ll be back for you in a second, okay?”
The dog whined.
Shit, Kate thought, and scrambled up the ladder. On the balcony, she threw open the doors of the supply closet and brought out one of the wooden planks she and Rocky had used as a hurricane shutter for one storm or another. She wedged one end under the outer edge of the houseboat and let the other edge drop to the lip of the skiff. Then she called to the dog, snapped her fingers, clicked her tongue against her teeth. “C’mon, you can do it, you can do it, c’mon, dog.”
The skinny black Lab raced up the plank and onto the houseboat deck. He followed her into the cabin, where she turned on an electric lantern. She put out a bowl of water, emptied a can of tuna fish into another bowl. “No dog food, sorry.” She picked up the lantern and stumbled into her bedroom, her fingers punching out Rocky’s cell number. It rang and rang and rang until she reached voice mail. It’s Rocky. Leave a message.
“It’s me. Call. Immediately.”
She turned the lantern down low, pulled off her shoes, and collapsed on the bed, the cell close to her head. She didn’t even have the energy to cry. She yanked the quilt up over her body and shut her eyes. When she awakened hours later, she swept up her cell to see if Rocky had called. He hadn’t. She groped through the dim light for a glass of water, found nothing, and had to get up. Kate picked up the lantern and made her way into the galley for a bottle of water. The fridge was propane fueled, so the water was cold.
As she turned with the bottle tipped to her mouth, everything within her went still and cold. On the floor of her living room, on the floor where she had last seen the dog, head against a couch pillow, lay a fully clothed man with long, dark hair. He slept on his side, hands sandwiched between his knees. She didn’t have any idea who he was, had never seen him before. How had he found her? Where was the black Lab? What the fuck’s going on?
Kate backed away from him, then ran into her bedroom and retrieved the gun Zee had given her, a Walther PPK, a weapon her dad had taught her to shoot. It was the only thing she and James Bond had in common, a semiautomatic. This would do, she thought, and slammed in the clip, crept back into the living room and lowered herself into the nearest chair, the gun aimed at the man’s head.
She remained like that for more than an hour, the man motionless, Kate’s eyes screaming to close. The hawk appeared, tapping at the balcony doors to be let in. Kate ignored her. Go find my son, she thought. Find Rocky. Bring him home. The hawk retreated.
The man finally rolled onto his back and his eyes opened. He stared at her, lifted up onto his elbows, and in a soft, hoarse voice said, “You’ve got it all wrong, Kate.”
“Who are you? How the hell do you know my name? What did you do to the dog? Start talking or I’ll blow your fucking head off.”
Quarantine
March 17–20
Memory is when an experience
continues to live within you,
haunting you,
like a hungry ghost.
—from Yoga, Power, and Spirit: Patanjali the Shaman by Alberto Villoldo
Ten
Wayra didn’t peg Kate as the type who made empty threats, so he started talking. “All right, where would you like me to start?”
“With your name. Start there. Then you can tell me where the dog is.”
“Wayra. My name’s Wayra. I—”
“What the hell kind of name is that?”
“It’s Quechua.”
“Quechua. Isn’t that a language that was spoken before the Incas?”
“Yes. It’s still spoken in parts of South America.”
“Do you have a last name?”
“I haven’t had one of those since 1162.”
“Stop fucking with me, Wayra.” She gestured with the gun. “Sit up, lock your hands on top of your head, and scoot over to the couch.”
He moved slowly and carefully, doing exactly what she’d told him. “About the dog—”
“Shut up. I’m asking the questions.” Kate backed up to the chair, then moved behind it. “How’d you find the houseboat? No one but Rocky and I know its location.”
“I was in the skiff with you when you fled the café. I couldn’t get out of it on my own, so you fixed a length of board between the houseboat and the edge of the skiff. You fed me a can of tuna fish and apologized that you didn’t have dog food. Then you—”
“How … how can you possibly know any of that?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Obvious?” she practically shouted. “Nothing is obvious to me anymore. Nothing is what it appears to be. You must’ve been hidin
g on the boat somewhere and you … shit, you probably tossed the dog overboard.”
The simplest explanation, Wayra thought, was often the most difficult to accept. “I am the dog, Kate.”
“Yeah, and I am the walrus, thank you, John Lennon.”
“If you would put your gun down, I’ll show you.”
She laughed, a quick, nervous sound. “Oh, this should be priceless. Show away, Wayra, but the gun’s not going anywhere.”
He hesitated, then shifted. When he looked at her again, she was backing away from him, her face the white of Wonder Bread, her entire body seized up with incredulity. Her weapon lay on the floor. “Oh my God…” The words spilled from her mouth in a hoarse, almost painful whisper. “I … I…”
Terrified that she might slip over the edge, sweep up the gun, and start firing, Wayra shifted again, quickly. His bones and muscles throbbed from two shifts within minutes of each other, but he was relieved that Kate was sitting in a chair now, gripping her knees, staring at him.
“Ho-holy shit,” she stammered. “Are you … a … a werewolf?”
“No. A shapeshifter.”
“Are … th-there more … of you?”
He shook his head. “I’m the last of my kind.”
“I … wow…” She rubbed her hands over her face, pushed up from the chair, and walked around the cabin a couple of times, her breathing irregular. She finally paused in front of the fridge, reached inside, and returned with another bottle of water. She handed him one, sank into the chair, and ran her bottle over her face. Then she twisted off the cap, drank, and held the bottle tightly in her hands. In the glow of the electric lantern, she looked exhausted.
“My … worldview seems to be seriously flawed.”
No more so than that of most humans, he thought, and tipped the bottle to his mouth, emptied it, and leaned back against the couch again, his legs stretched out in front of him. “How much do you know about what’s happening on Cedar Key?”
Ghost Key Page 16
