Ghost Key

by Trish J. MacGregor

  The old man pushed the bottle of moonshine toward him and gestured toward the galley cabinet. “Grab a glass and sample some Zee Small moonshine, son. Loosen up this tongue of yours. Let’s hear all about this telepathy shit.”

  As Sanchez pushed to his feet, gunfire exploded through the darkness, earsplitting staccato bursts that tore across the outside of the camper and shattered the window behind the table. Zee and Sanchez dived for the floor, then Sanchez rolled and crawled over to the window and positioned himself on one side of it. Zee snapped open a door under the galley sink, brought out what looked like a submachine gun, and stood on the other side of the shattered window. He slapped the lid of the MacBook, shutting it and killing their only source of light. Sanchez gripped the Glock so hard his fingers hurt, and dared to glance through the window.

  Four pairs of blindingly bright headlights screamed, We’re here, bet you can’t shoot us.

  “Let’s show ’em what’s what, Nicko,” whispered Zee.

  They opened fire simultaneously on the headlights.

  The lights exploded, another window in the camper blew apart, and then Zee was on his cell, barking instructions to whoever was on the other end. “We’re outta here, Nick,” and he and Sanchez ran to the front of the camper, the dog at their heels.

  Within seconds, the camper lurched forward like a dinosaur with indigestion. It belched and coughed and sputtered as it slammed over rocks, roots, low brush. It didn’t move quickly enough. In the side mirror, Sanchez saw a truck closing in on them, its headlights gone, an inside light winking off and on like a firefly. He grabbed Zee’s submachine gun and let it rip. The truck’s windshield blew apart, the hood popped up, and the sucker veered out of control, tearing across the ground until it crashed into a tree.

  “Good work!” Zee yelled.

  A second truck raced forward, its passage covered by a constant barrage of bullets. One of the camper’s rear tires blew—Sanchez felt it—and Zee struggled with the steering wheel to keep them moving. Sanchez leaped up and ran back through the camper to one of the shattered windows. For an instant, he had a clear view of the truck’s driver, bent over the steering wheel, driving like a lunatic while his companion stood in the bed of the truck, firing over the roof. Sanchez took out the front and rear tires and riddled the side of the truck with so many holes it gave new meaning to the term “air-conditioning.” One of his shots hit the gas tank and the truck exploded, chunks of flaming debris bursting out in every direction.

  A heartbeat later, the camper swung out onto the road, rear end fishtailing, then tore into a curve, the flat tire probably shredding by now, and headed for Gulf Boulevard. Sanchez hung out the window for a better look. Trailers and vehicles from the camp popped out of the trees, one after another, like beings from some other dimension.

  He pulled himself back inside, sank against the floor. His hands shook, an acrid stink clung to the air, and the wind whistled through the broken window. He pressed his fists against his eyes. I just killed at least two men, maybe more. I’m no better than these brujo bastards.

  Jessie nudged him with her cold nose, whining softly, and Sanchez dropped one arm over her back and the other to his thigh. She sank to her belly, her head resting on Sanchez’s knee. The weapon lay beside him in broken glass. “I think we’re okay for now, girl.” Until the next attack, the next crisis.

  He squeezed his eyes shut, forcing himself to breathe slowly, deeply, until his hands stopped shaking and he felt calmer. When he opened his eyes again, his mother was sitting on the floor beside Jessie, her legs folded lotus style. The dog stared at her, but didn’t make a sound. Jenean didn’t look quite as solid as she had previously.

  “You did what you had to do, Nick.”

  “I shouldn’t have put myself in this situation to begin with.”

  “You’ll be safe in the cemetery for a while. But Dominica is learning to overcome her fear of certain things, so that safety net may not last. You should have a backup plan.”

  “Like what? Just tell me how to get to Maddie without that … that thing inside her killing her first.”

  His mother’s ghost looked stricken and he had the sudden feeling that she knew only so much about these brujos. Her belief that she had to compensate for her lack of maternal support when she was alive had drawn her into a battle that wasn’t hers. He reached for her hand, to give it a quick squeeze, but his own hand went through hers.

  “Mom, you don’t owe me anything. Really.”

  “Fire,” she said. “That’s how you have to fight them. Fire, like you and Zee talked about.”

  With that, she faded away and the camper stopped. “Nick,” the old man hollered. “Get that cemetery gate open.”

  He told Jessie to stay, picked up the monster submachine gun, and opened the camper door. Fog twisted across the pavement, narrow bands of it that his movement quickly dispersed. But as he dashed to the gate, thicker ribbons of the stuff darted toward him like hungry snakes—from the right, the left. One piece wrapped around his ankle and a bitter cold penetrated his jeans, cut through his flesh, pierced his bones. Sanchez tore at it with his hands, then kicked the other piece away. He slammed the butt of the weapon against the rusted gate lock a couple of times until it popped loose. Sanchez pushed the gate open and motioned Zee and the others inside.

  The fog didn’t follow him through the gate. It remained just outside, smaller pieces merging to form longer, thicker tendrils. Low, thin veils of fog crept out of the trees on the far side of the road, swaying at first, then whipping across the pavement toward its counterparts. It was as if the separate pieces were controlled by the same brain, one piece calling to the other: Join us, make us bigger and stronger, join us. That was creepy enough. But then he heard what sounded like sand blown against trees, like fingernails drawn down a blackboard, and realized it was an insidious whispering: Find the body, fuel the body, fill the body, be the body …

  And he suddenly knew it was these brujos in their natural form, trying to overcome their fear of the cemetery and seize him and everyone else in Zee’s camp. It triggered an elemental terror in Sanchez. He aimed the monster weapon at the largest bank of fog and fired into it. The fog broke into a thousand pieces. Some pieces hastily retreated to the other side of the road, into the trees. Other pieces hesitated, coiling as if to strike. Sanchez fired into those and they burst apart like exploding stars.

  The last vehicle in Zee’s caravan sped into the cemetery and Sanchez quickly shut the gates and secured them with large rocks so they wouldn’t swing open. A larger bank of fog now moved like a hula dancer just outside the cemetery. “You come anywhere near this cemetery again,” he shouted, “and I’ll unleash the artillery on you, and it’ll be fire.”

  He backed away from the gate, spooked by how fast the fog swelled and thickened, and how loud the lascivious litany became. It scraped against his senses until he slapped his hands over his ears, then spun around and loped toward the circle of trailers and trucks.

  It suddenly occurred to him that the cemetery might be a trap, the perfect prison for Zee and his followers until the brujos overcame their fear of this place.

  * * *

  Maddie’s exhaustion clawed through her. Every time she didn’t think she could lift another cardboard box out of a cart or the back of a truck and carry it inside the Island Market, Dominica tweaked her adrenal glands. Then for another ten or fifteen minutes, she zipped along, lifting, carrying, moving among the other hosts who entered and left the market.

  The hosts were worse off than slaves, she thought. They were captives who no longer controlled their own bodies or actions, and some of them, she knew, were no longer around at all. She didn’t sense the mayor’s essence and suspected her grandfather was right, that the mayor was dying or had died at Annie’s Café, and pretty soon the mayor’s body wouldn’t be able to sustain life. Whit would be forced to seize another host.

  Of the core group of Dominica’s brujos, Maddie felt she might be able to
reach out to Richard, Kate’s ex-boyfriend, and Bean, who owned the hotel. Both of them seemed to have held on to a fragment of their humanity. Their brujos—Gogh and Joe—didn’t control them consistently. It was why Richard had been able to warn Kate not to make waves, and why Bean hadn’t fired Kate in February, after his fuck fest in the hotel bar. She’d uncovered these two facts in Dominica’s recent memories, and they defied what Dominica wanted Maddie and the other hosts to believe, that the brujos were like gods, all-knowing. The truth was that brujos could be duped, distracted, tricked, and a host’s memories could be hidden from them. Maddie was proof of that.

  The market hummed with activity. Dozens of hosts stocked shelves, dozens more outside unloaded food and supplies, and cars and trucks arrived every few minutes with food and supplies pillaged from homes. She decided to seize her chance.

  Bean. Mind to mind.

  Maddie carried her cardboard box into the third aisle, where canned goods were shelved, and crouched next to Bean, who was moving merchandise around so he could fit the contents of his box onto the shelves. While Dominica spoke aloud to Joe, the brujo within Bean, Maddie pushed her mind toward Bean’s essence and brushed up against it like a gentle, cool breeze.

  Bean, can you hear me? It’s Maddie. Don’t freak out, don’t act surprised.

  He didn’t react at all. His hands kept moving and Joe kept using Bean’s voice to converse with Dominica. Maddie tried again, pushing up against Bean’s mind more forcefully. Bean? You there?

  Holy shit, Maddie. I can hear you. Can they hear us?

  Not while they’re distracted with each other and everything that’s going on. If any of us are going to live, we need to start fighting back.

  Hey, I’ve seen what they do, these bleed-outs. No, thanks. And we both saw what they did to poor Von. Shit, they burned him alive.

  He was already dead, Bean, and he didn’t burn. He moved on in the afterlife. I saw him while you all were standing around the fire pit. He was with a guide. That’s why you didn’t hear him wailing. Dominica tried to make an example out of him, but it didn’t work. He was a good man. There are forces at work here that are more powerful than she is.

  Yeah? Where? All I see is death and destruction and chaos.

  Fear is how they control us and fear is how Dominica controls them, so the first thing you have to do is stop being afraid.

  You can’t fight them. I’ve tried. Every time I fight this fucker, he inflicts so much pain on me I wish … I was dead.

  One by one, we have to escape. The next time Joe puts you into a deep sleep, hold on to your anger and try to stay conscious so that when he leaves your body, you can bring yourself to full consciousness. Then run like hell and hide in one of the empty houses. Or race up State Road 24 and get out of the quarantine area if you can. Or better yet, start burning the town. That’ll chase them out faster than anything.

  Have you tried to contact anyone else?

  I‘m going to try Rich. Like you, he still holds on to some of his humanity.

  If there’s anything left of the man I know, he’ll be on board. I think it would be more effective if we could all escape at the same time and burn these freaks out of here.

  The only way to coordinate something like that is if we acted up simultaneously and forced them to put us into a deep sleep. But they each have separate places where they put us and I don’t know if we can communicate like this when they aren’t inside us. Let me work on it, Bean.

  A commotion outside grabbed Dominica’s attention and Maddie instantly pulled back from Bean, optimistic for the first time that there might be a way out for all of them. “Nica,” shouted Liam, lumbering into the market, waving a camera. “There’ve been three more bleed-outs, two at a house over on the runway, and a body at that animal rescue place. But no one has come forward yet.”

  Liam, still hosted by Sam Dorset, the editor of the newspaper. Liam, who tried to force Sam to rape Kate the other night in the hotel restaurant. The revulsion Maddie felt for this brujo was up there with the revulsion she felt toward Whit.

  “Who were the hosts?” Dominica asked when Liam reached her.

  Other brujos gathered around to see the digital photos on the camera. “According to Sam, the ones in the runway house are the parents of a girl named Amy, Rocky Davis’s girlfriend.”

  “Kate’s son?” Dominica exclaimed.

  “Yes.”

  “Excellent.”

  Liam clicked through the photos. In the first, the man and woman on the floor near a fireplace were covered with a quilt. Even so, it was obvious they had bled out; their bloody faces were fully visible. In the second, the quilt was gone, exposing their intertwined bodies, bloody and naked. The brujos murmured with excitement. They loved the carnage.

  “Who covered them?” Dominica asked.

  “Not me,” Liam said. “I found them like that. I was checking the place for food and supplies.”

  “Was anyone else in the house? Human or brujo?”

  “Nope.”

  “Let me see photos of the third body, of Amy.”

  “She was found in the freezer at the rescue facility.”

  He clicked to several photos of the girl. The brujos really enjoyed this one, crooning over the photo, oohing and aahing their approval. Amy lay on her side, which struck Maddie as oddly as her parents being covered by a quilt. Dominica seemed to find this strange as well, perhaps one of the few times she and Maddie had agreed on anything.

  “These people weren’t known hosts to anyone, were they, Whit?” Dominica asked.

  He stepped forward clutching a sweating Coke bottle, his face so pale he looked as if he’d been locked inside a cellar for months. “I have no member of the tribe on record for these hosts. In all fairness, Nica, yesterday morning you instructed our members to raise the number of hosts to four hundred. I suspect that’s why they were seized.”

  “I also said the rule still stands for not seizing anyone under the age of sixteen. So as of this moment, I’m asking anyone who knows about these blatant violations to come forward. The offenders will then be brought before the council.”

  Silence gripped the crowd. Liam pocketed the camera and suddenly leaned in toward Dominica and actually poked her in the chest; Maddie felt it, his fingernail pressing against her sternum. “You have misled this tribe, Dominica. You’ve been promising us a true ghost key, a place for our kind, but I don’t think you can deliver. I think it’s just all empty promises.”

  “I second that,” shouted a woman on the other side of the market, someone Maddie didn’t recognize. “Let’s see a show of hands for everyone who thinks Dominica is misleading us.”

  Of the hundred or more people in the store, a definite majority of hands shot upward. You’re cooked, Dominica, Maddie said and laughed.

  Shut up, just shut the hell up.

  You’re cooked, Maddie shouted again and again. Cooked, cooked, cooked.

  Dominica erected a barrier between them, so she couldn’t hear Maddie’s voice. It was exactly what she’d hoped the bitch would do. She immediately reached out to Kate’s ex-boyfriend. Rich, can you hear me? It’s Maddie.

  He didn’t seem to hear her. His brujo, Gogh, was too busy trying to calm the crowd. “Hey, hold on, people. Just hold on. Dominica has been honest with us from day one. From the beginning she told us this wouldn’t be easy or simple, but that it was possible.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Liam shouted. “What she said was that if we followed her rules, she would show us how to use the power of the dead to control the living. From where I’m standing, people, it looks like the living are controlling the dead. The island has been quarantined. Did you see the pamphlets that were airdropped in town today?” He waved one. “Well, take a look. Everything south of fourth bridge is under a quarantine. The Coast Guard is patrolling the island so no one can escape. They think Cedar Key has been attacked by a biological weapon.”

  “Shut up, Liam,” Dominica barked.

  But L
iam kept right on going, his voice progressively louder, uglier, stoking the frustration shared by many in Dominica’s new tribe. “How the hell does a quarantine help us turn Cedar Key into a brujo paradise? Look at us, just look at us.” He threw his arms out dramatically, a gesture that encompassed the madness in the market to shelve and store all the food and supplies that had been taken from homes all over the island. “Why’re we doing this? Because Dominica told us to. What’s the purpose? Dominica said it’s to prevent our hosts from starving if the quarantine continues indefinitely. But what’s next? Rationing of food and supplies? Is that the next step, Dominica? Rationing, with you or the council deciding who gets what?”

  Keep shouting, Liam, Maddie thought, and suddenly, in spite of everything, she admired him, the only brujo to stand up to Dominica.

  Whit strode into the middle of the crowd. As the island mayor, hosts knew him, recognized him; as Dominica’s lover and her second in command, brujos knew him. But everyone, Maddie thought, also knew that Whit would need a new host soon. You could see it in his face, in the way he held himself, in his pallor. The brujo net trembled and shook with the realization that the essence of the mayor was gone, and that his body might not survive till dawn. He already looked like the walking dead.

  “People, c’mon,” Whit said in a soft, gravelly voice, patting the air with his thin, pale hands. “Give Dominica the benefit of the doubt here. Look what she has done for us this far. Until she arrived, we were a pathetic group of astrals, clinging to the physical plane because we didn’t know shit from shinola. Now look at us, more than a thousand strong. Many of us are enjoying physical existence again through our hosts. We have purpose and direction. Dominica showed us how to do this. With a community as large as ours, there have to be rules, parameters.”

  “And that’s why Von was obliterated? To enforce some goddamn rule that Dominica laid down?” Liam shouted.