Ghost Key

by Trish J. MacGregor

  But as soon as he felt this certainty, he doubted it. His ability was capricious enough to surrender to desire, to create images and scenarios that would never manifest themselves because they had no basis in reality. Just the same, he continued toward the general area below the third bridge. When he neared the salt marsh with the tall reeds and lush growth that would hide him, he cut the power. The bayou quickly went shallow, forcing him to tip the engine out of the water. Since he didn’t have paddles as backup, he drifted with the current.

  Thirty yards from shore, he ran into a sand dune. It was low tide. He swung his legs over the side of the boat and sank to his thighs in muck. He pulled one leg out, stepped forward, sank again. Jessie barked and paced the length of the rocking boat, eyeing the water warily. “C’mon, girl,” he coaxed her. “A short swim and then a short run. You can do it.”

  But in the end, she sat back, whining and pawing at the side of the boat and Sanchez had to lift her out and set her in the water. Then she raced for shore, splashing through water and muck. They plowed through the last few yards together and collapsed on a tiny dune of low brush and crushed shells. Sanchez felt so spent, so totally exhausted, that he shut his eyes. When he opened them again, the sun was much lower against the horizon, his stomach cramped with hunger, his mouth felt like a fire pit, dry and sooty.

  He rocked back onto his heels and saw a dune buggy tearing toward them, toward him and Jessie. He flung his arms around her and they scooted down behind the dune, below the level of the brush and reeds. Jessie didn’t move, didn’t whimper. The dune buggy flew past them, the echoing laughter of the people inside a seductive call: Join us, laugh with us, physical life is fun. Seductive, he thought, unless you’d been seized and knew the truth. Possession by one of the brujos made death look inviting.

  He didn’t know how many minutes passed before he finally got to his feet. He felt washed out, like some old codger coming off last night’s drunk. His thinking had gone fuzzy, his head and eyes ached, he craved sleep. He and Jessie trudged up the dunes. They weren’t high dunes, but felt like Everest. His calves hurt, his feet hurt, he was a goddamn mess. He needed water, food, a respite. He tried not to think about the chaos and carnage he had fled. But suddenly, it was all he could think about. Visions exploded in his skull—real or imagined, the effect on him was the same, a crippling guilt that he had not stayed behind to fight, to defend the camp, to help the man who had saved his ass.

  He crawled the last thirty feet to a wooden porch, up three steps, to the sliding glass doors. And there, he collapsed, he just couldn’t move another inch. Jessie whined and pawed at him, licked his face and neck, insisting that he crawl another few feet to the doors. Sanchez reared up on his knees, pressed his palms against the glass and pushed left.

  The door rattled open and he and Jessie made it inside the quiet house. He slid the door shut, eyed the comfortable-looking couch on the far side of the living room. It listed, the room blurred, and he knew he wouldn’t make it. He crumpled to the cool tile floor, the side of his face resting against his hands, and shut his eyes. His dog stretched out alongside him, a warm, familiar shape against his side.

  * * *

  He dreamed in great, sweeping mythic themes, everything excessive, large, boldly colored. But when he woke, he recalled only the myth and the grandness, no specifics. He was thirsty enough to lick his own sweat, and weaved toward the kitchen.

  Faucet on, he guzzled, then jerked open the door of the freezer and grabbed a handful of ice. The chill shocked him when he rubbed the cubes over his face and neck, and down his arms. Then it felt good and he popped a piece of ice in his mouth and sucked on it. He filled a bowl with water and set it on the floor for Jessie. She lapped it up.

  Sanchez shrugged off his pack, dug out his map of Cedar Key and smoothed it out against the floor. Where is Maddie? He ran his hand slowly over the map, trusting that his body would show him her precise location, something more than below the third bridge. If his talent failed him, maybe Charlie or his mother would help out. But nothing happened. No tingling, no warmth in his hand, and his mother and Charlie were apparently out to lunch.

  He tried again. And again. But he was so attached to the outcome, he picked up nothing at all. He didn’t give up. He knew he could do this. He had done it before. But first, the zone. He had to sink into his zone, find the place of no space no time. But distracted by noises, hunger, thirst, and his own angst, his consciousness just couldn’t seem to sink deeply enough. He kept thinking of his original impression, that she was below the third bridge. Then even that faded from his mind.

  When he finally reached his zone, he moved his fingertips over the map without looking at it, and felt the warmth. Strong. Immediate.

  His eyes popped open and he stared at the map.

  Pine Street neighborhood.

  Nothing on Cedar Key was very far from anything else, not as the crow flew. He estimated the Pine Street neighborhood was within a mile or two of his location. But getting there without running into any more roving bands of brujos would be a challenge. Sanchez shoved the map in his jacket pocket, stood on legs that felt like they were made of Silly Putty, and opened the sliding glass doors.

  A slight breeze kicked in off the water, the smell of it familiar to him now. Fish, seaweed, sand, a faint residue of heat from earlier in the day. Go find her, he thought, and stepped outside, his dog right behind him.

  Twenty-two

  Maddie worked feverishly until her stomach growled, her bladder ached, until her eyes felt like they’d been stung with dust. She knuckled them and raised her head.

  Long, narrow shadows, like elongated cartoon figures, fell into the room. All sorts of strange weapons surrounded her, most of them crude, built from half-remembered stuff from the Internet aeons ago, before she ever knew brujos existed, back in Key Largo when algorithms had spoken to her the way words spoke to writers or images and color spoke to artists.

  She had torches, crude firebombs, odd-looking firecrackers that would create distractions. None of it would defeat Dominica’s tribe, but she might be able to create such chaos that they would be driven away, off the island, into the fed zone outside the quarantine. She placed the first load of weapons in a cardboard box and carried it downstairs to put into the truck.

  In the kitchen, she paused and rifled through the pantry and fridge, searching for something to eat. Dominica’s people had taken just about everything that was edible, but had left behind a half-full jar of peanut butter, a few slices of bread, some frozen goods. She found a piece of bread that hadn’t gone moldy, slapped some peanut butter on it, squirted honey across it, and gobbled it down as she hurried into the garage.

  The truck was a monster. It boasted a large, open console below the dashboard and another one between the two front seats. There was also plenty of room in the passenger seat and on the floor in front of it for her backup weapons. The torches would lean against the passenger seat, within easy reach. And just in case she needed it, she dropped a bottle of lighter fluid into one of the cup holders with a box of kitchen matches and several lighters.

  When she’d emptied the box, she set it on the hood to take back inside with her for the next load, and walked around the huge truck, checking the tires. The huge tires raised the vehicle four or five feet off the ground. Lights and gun mounts graced the roof, the sun roof slid open at the touch of a button. The truck was obviously used for hunting, probably in the Everglades, by some redneck weekend warrior.

  She hurried back inside the house to put the rest of the weapons into her box. The light was fading fast from the bayou. It wouldn’t be long before the fog rose. And tonight, she thought, the fog would be brutal, thick, ugly, hostile, aggressive, intent on blood. Fear flooded the back of her throat, that awful taste of bitterness and bile, and it all suddenly felt impossible, weighted, onerous.

  No matter how she struggled to spin things in her own head, she was about to take on a tribe of vicious, hungry mutants, most of them
so clueless that they simply carried out Dominica’s orders and never questioned anything. Except in the Island Market that night. Which night? Was that last night? She didn’t know. Linear time hadn’t existed for her since Dominica had seized her. But she remembered the events, how Liam had confronted Dominica, how he had dissented.

  Where was Liam now?

  Didn’t matter. She couldn’t hang her hopes on some rebellious ghost, especially some young ghost like Liam who really didn’t understand what had happened to him, where he was, who or what Dominica was. And she couldn’t hope that Wayra or Sanchez would find her, that she would be rescued like some princess in a tower. That just wasn’t going to happen. No guy in any universe she knew of ever thought a woman would rescue him, so where had this idea come from that a woman would be rescued by a man?

  By the time she finished loading the truck, the sun nearly touched the horizon. She dreaded dusk. She would have to raise the garage door so she could drive the truck out of here. Just the thought of it brought back the taste of all the crippling fear that had kept her captive in her own body for so many months. What a weak little shit she was, allowing Dominica to use her body as she had because she was so terrified that if she fought the bitch, she would bleed out, she would die.

  So what if she died? Death was nothing. You weren’t obliterated, weren’t reduced to dust. Her months with Dominica had taught her that. Energy couldn’t be destroyed. And in death, you learned that mythic battles were being fought on levels that might or might not have anything to do with you.

  It didn’t matter if you grasped what these battles were really about. If you got sucked in, as she had, you had to deal with the situation as it was, not as you wished it existed. If she opened the garage door and found Dominica’s newest host staring her down, so what? What did it change or not change? Nothing, absolutely nothing. She would still be herself, Maddie Livingston, willing to fight to the death to maintain her freedom.

  Bring it on, bitch.

  Just the same, she couldn’t overcome her need to check the driveway and the road for cars, people, interlopers. Since the garage lacked windows, she grabbed one of her torches, put a lighter in her jacket pocket, and slipped through the door that opened into the fenced side yard. Her arm ached intermittently, as if to remind her of the possible risk. She dug another pill out of her jacket pocket, swallowed it with a gulp of water from a bottle.

  She moved past a withered garden, tomatoes rotting on vines, dead clusters of cauliflower, and unlatched the wooden gate. She crept up the walkway, sticking close to the hedge. The sun had sunk so close to the horizon that its dying rays nearly blinded her. She raised her hands to shield her eyes and walked out to the end of the empty driveway. Dark pools of shadows spread out beneath the large trees on either side of the road. Nothing moved out there. Even the air stood still. It unnerved her.

  Maddie listened closely to the cries of birds seeking a roost for the night and periodically heard what sounded like gunfire. All day, she’d heard sporadic gunfire, but she still couldn’t tell its direction. It might be a good sign, might be a pocket of holdouts who understood that Dominica couldn’t multitask. It might also mean the bitch was winning. It reminded her that although she had a lot of firepower, she didn’t have a single gun or flamethrower.

  A screech of tires startled her and when she glanced around for the source of the noise, a pickup careened around the corner, aimed straight toward her, two men in the back of it. Maddie fumbled for the lighter in her pocket, lit the torch and ran for the side yard. But the truck moved so much faster than she did that it pulled even with her before she reached the gate. She hurled the torch at the truck, it flew wide, and the two men leaped out and tackled her.

  The three of them slammed against the ground and the two brujo hosts tore at her clothes, laughed, rolled her this way and that as though she were some cute toy found at the doggie park. Her horror triggered the release of adrenaline that flooded through her muscles, her blood, her very being, and enabled her to vault upward, breaking their hold on her.

  Maddie kicked one man in the groin and he stumbled, clutching himself, and crashed into the trunk of a nearby tree. The second man grabbed her jacket, jerking her back. Maddie wrenched free, spun, and punched him in the face. The blow split open her knuckles, but she felt the satisfying snap of his nose. Blood gushed from his nostrils and he lurched back, stunned, hands flying to his bloody nose. The third man, the driver, launched himself at her from the side, struck her hard, and they both hit the ground.

  Panic exploded inside her, she couldn’t move, her attacker’s body trapped her against the ground. She couldn’t reach the Taser in her pocket, but her arms swung free and she beat her fists against his skull, yanked at his hair, clawed at his face and eyes and throat. He just laughed and sank his knuckles into her ribs and seized the sides of her face with such force that her head was immobilized.

  “Dominica wants you back.” The words spilled from his mouth in a cloud of spittle and fetid breath. His eyes had gone dark, the way a host’s eyes always did when a brujo was fully in control. “And I’m taking you back to her and we’ll hang you in the courtyard with the holdouts from that cemetery camp and how sweet it will be.” Then he pressed his mouth to hers and dug his thumbs into her cheeks, forcing her to open her mouth. When he thrust his tongue inside, Maddie chomped down hard.

  His blood poured into her mouth, hot, sticky, a squalid taste, and he shot to his feet, shrieking unintelligibly. Maddie flipped onto her stomach and spat out blood and a large chunk of his tongue. She struggled to rise, to lift up on her elbows, but her right side, where he had punched her, screamed with pain. Her arm now bled, the stitches had torn or just weren’t holding. Shit, get up, fast, into the garage … But the first man, the guy with the injured balls, now came at her, his homicidal brujo eyes stuck to her like Velcro.

  She knew how this would unfold. He would reach her before she got up. He would beat her, assault her, the brujo within him would seize her.

  No way.

  Maddie pushed up and rose unsteadily to her feet. Pain shot through her side, blood rolled down her arm. In the last of the dying light, she swayed like a frail branch, but when the man hurled himself at her, she dived for the torch, swept it up, grateful that it continued to burn, bright, savagely hot.

  The next thing she knew, the two zombies moved toward her from either side. Physical exhaustion nearly crippled her, but emotional horror galvanized her. She swung her torch at the first man and struck him across the upper arm, setting his sleeve on fire. On the backward swing, she hit his companion in the throat and the brujo inside of him fled—and propelled itself toward her.

  Maddie thrust the torch through the puff of discolored smoke, impaling it, and it suddenly was no more. Just like that, without so much as a whimper, the brujo was gone, extinguished, liberated, like Von. The host lay writhing on the ground, hands grappling at his injured throat, then his body convulsed and he went still.

  I killed him, I killed this poor fool, my God, what am I?

  No, the brujo had bled out the host before she vaporized it.

  She heard noises behind her and whirled around and faced the driver. A bib of blood covered his mouth and chin; he had torn off his burning shirt and snorted like a bull.

  “C’mon, fuckstick,” she screamed.

  He charged her. Maddie swung the torch, but he was ready for it. He caught the metal stick with his right hand and yanked it away from her with the ease of a parent snatching a box of matches from a two-year-old. He hurled it over his shoulder and the torch landed on the dry hedge and instantly ignited it. He was oblivious to it.

  Maddie tore away from him, toward the truck, blood now streaming down her arm, her side throbbing with pain, and prayed the key was in the ignition, where Dominica insisted that all keys for brujo vehicles must remain. She jumped inside—and there it was, the key, exactly where it was supposed to be. Now she had a chance. She started the truck, slammed the gear i
nto drive, didn’t flinch or hesitate. She aimed, the truck did the rest.

  When the truck hit the man, she felt a sickening crunch, as if the impact snapped him in two. Hurled back, in the slow-motion weirdness of her perceptions, he looked like a snow bunny without the snow, arms thrown out at his sides, his expression seized up with astonishment and shock. He hit the ground and didn’t move. She didn’t see any discolored smoke or mist drift out of him and knew the brujo within him had died as well.

  Horror and panic overwhelmed her simultaneously and Maddie slammed on the brakes. Tick, tick, whispered the engine. Let me move. Maddie slumped over the steering wheel, sobbing like a mental patient. She was no longer sure whether she had killed the men—or whether they had been killed by the brujos that inhabited them.

  The stink of smoke roused her and she raised her head from the steering wheel. Embers from the burning hedge had set the dry grass on fire. It sped across the ground like a luminous serpent, igniting whatever it touched. Maddie scrambled out of the truck and ran over to the weapons the men had dropped. One was a handgun, the other a rifle with a scope. She slung the rifle over her shoulder, pocketed the handgun. She forced herself to check the dead men’s pockets for additional clips, didn’t find anything. She returned to the truck and searched it for additional ammunition. She found a small leather duffel with two extra clips for the handgun and one clip for the rifle.

  My luck is turning.

  Maddie tore into the side yard, through the garage, and up the stairs for her pack and whatever else she could grab. On her way back down the stairs, she lit one of the other torches. When she reached the ground floor, she set fire to a couch, then the chairs, throw rugs, anything that would burn hot and fast. In the kitchen, she paused long enough to turn on the gas burners, the gas oven. Terrified the entire house would explode before she got out, she raced into the garage, tossed everything into the truck, raised the door, and backed out into a darkness lit only by fire.