Apparition (The Hungry Ghosts)

by Trish J. MacGregor

  Javier sobbed, “No, let me go, my legs are gone, shit, gone.” Then his eyes rolled back in their sockets, his hands slipped away from Ian’s, and he vanished into the darkness.

  For a horrifying instant, Ian stared down into the dark matter, a blackness that swirled clockwise, faster and faster, as if it were drilling its way to the center of the earth. It looked slick, almost shiny, like wet asphalt, and the funnel created by the swirling seemed bottomless. Then the swirling stopped and the darkness surged forward again and Ian flung himself back and bolted to his feet.

  Around him, pandemonium. A tidal wave of humanity surged forward to escape the deck and everyone inside the restaurant tried to flee as well. Tables and chairs and bar stools overturned, shattered glass blanketed the floor, screams riddled the air. Squeezed from every side, Ian vaulted over the railing and dropped to the narrow rug of earth on the other side. Less than a foot in front of him, the ground dropped off several hundred feet. He turned carefully until he faced the chaos on the deck, and moved quickly sideways along the railing, gripping the wood tightly.

  He glanced back once and saw the blanket of shadows flowing behind him, as if following him, and he moved faster, faster, hand over hand, sidling like a crab. When the railing ended, he swung around it and ran into the parking lot, looking anxiously around for Tess, for her blond head bobbing in the panicked crowd.

  He didn’t see her. The crowd thrust him forward and he made his way left, away from the café and the black wave, toward a nearby field. Sirens screeched, drowning out the shouts and the pounding of feet. Ian stumbled into the field, ran farther, and finally dropped to his knees on a patch of grass and vomited.

  His body had reacted the same way when, more than four years ago, Wayra had brought him forward in time from 1968. It told him that whatever was happening here was triggered by something beyond human control—brujos, light chasers, or something else.

  He didn’t have any idea what something else might be.

  When he rocked back on his heels, a black Lab raced toward him and a sparrow hawk circled overhead. The shifters. Ian leaped up, loped toward the dog, and together they ran across the street and down the block, into a deserted cobblestone alley. The dog instantly shifted into his human form, that of a tall, dark-haired man in jeans, a jacket, running shoes.

  “Is Tess with you, Wayra?”

  “No. Illary’s looking for her.”

  “I need to go back and find her.”

  “Illary will find her, amigo. C’mon.” Wayra touched his arm. “My truck is a couple blocks from here. We don’t want to be here when the police arrive. They’re probably going to cordon off the entire area and may try to detain people to question them.”

  As Ian ran alongside Wayra, he tried to ignore the endless visual loop that played through his head, of Javier slipping away from him, screaming in agony.

  2.

  Swept up by the crowd, Tess managed to remain upright so she wouldn’t be trampled. Then she was outside, running, dashing away, and couldn’t remember where she’d left her car. She reached a front yard and her knees buckled and she went down in cool, damp grass.

  Sound was sucked out of her world; it was if she had gone deaf. But she felt and saw the raw power of paranoia and terror, those old undercurrents, bursting from the collective psyche of everyone who had been on that deck. Then sound penetrated again, screams and the shrieks of sirens, panic, utter terror.

  As Tess stumbled to her feet, a sparrow hawk swept in low overhead, crying out. Illary. Tess hurried after her, shoes slapping the pavement, and followed her into an alley between two apartment buildings. Her cries echoed, Tess could hear the flap of her wings. The alley twisted and curved for half a mile south and emptied into a small neighborhood park with a playground and fountain surrounded by monkey puzzle trees and pines. Illary touched down next to one of the trees and began to shift.

  Even though Tess had seen Illary and Wayra shift dozens of times, the transformation always struck her as beautiful, miraculous. Illary’s feathers went first, replaced by skin the color of coffee and milk and long hair like burnished copper. Her wings and legs and claws transformed quickly into human arms and legs, hands and feet. Before that process was complete, her human head and face took shape. Within moments, a tall, lovely woman in jeans, a sweater, and boots stood before Tess.

  “Ian’s in the truck with Wayra, Tess. Let’s hurry. Most of the Esperanza police force is out there and they’re closing off the neighborhood.”

  “Did you see it?” Tess asked as they loped through the playground, past swings that swayed slightly in the breeze. “The hideous, moving blackness?”

  “Yeah. It seems to be receding now. Or maybe it’s just waiting. But the hillside and at least half the deck are just gone, Tess. It’s as if someone took a gigantic eraser and rubbed it all out.”

  “Is it the work of brujos?”

  “I don’t know.”

  If she and Wayra didn’t know, then who would?

  The sirens shrieked more loudly and several choppers now circled overhead, their bright spotlights cutting through the darkness. “Through here,” Illary said, and they dashed back into the trees. “Let’s stay out of sight.”

  “Shouldn’t we stick around and talk to the police?”

  “We’ll talk to Diego directly.”

  Diego, Wayra’s adopted son, was the chief of police.

  “We can go to our place,” Illary said. “It’s close. And we’ll get you home in the morning.”

  Tess’s phone belted out Esperanza Spalding’s “I Know You Know,” Maddie’s ring tone. “Maddie…”

  “Tesso? Jesus, we just heard that something went down at the café. Are you and Ian all right? Where should we meet you?”

  “We’re okay. If you’re close enough, meet us at Wayra and Illary’s.”

  “We’re on the way.”

  A yellow pickup truck roared into view, screeched to a stop. Wayra and Ian were hanging out the windows, motioning for them to hurry up. Tess climbed into the backseat with Ian. He immediately squeezed her hand. “I thought you were…”

  “I know. I thought it had gotten you, too.” She squeezed her eyes shut, blinking back the hot sting of tears that suddenly threatened to fall.

  “I tried to pull … Javier … out of the blackness.”

  “Javier the baker?” Tess asked.

  “Yeah. And another guy who was helping me … got sucked in. It’s like … a swirling vortex of blackness.”

  “And not a human construct,” Wayra said. “Of that much we can be certain.”

  The truck slammed across potholes and picked up speed. Tess was dimly aware of the ping of stones against the underside of the truck, of dust flying through the open windows. She leaned forward between Wayra and Illary.

  “Wayra, who’s Ricardo?”

  “Long story.”

  Illary looked sharply at Wayra, one of those looks that passes between couples who don’t have secrets from each other. “Well, shit, Wayra,” Illary snapped. “That’s hardly fair.”

  “Who is he?” Tess repeated.

  Illary, still glaring at Wayra, said, “If you won’t tell her, I will.”

  Wayra looked at Tess in the rearview mirror, his eyes now dark pools of misery. “Ricardo is Dominica’s brother.”

  Police cars suddenly appeared from the side streets, sirens at full tilt, the reflection of their spinning blue lights dancing against buildings, cars, sidewalks. Wayra swerved to avoid being hit by another car, Tess was thrown back against the seat, into Ian.

  What did Wayra mean that Dominica had a brother? Was Ricardo Dominica’s brother during her last physical life in the 1400s? Or did Wayra mean that Ricardo was her brujo brother? Was there even such a relationship among ghosts?

  But before she could sit forward again to demand answers, Ian slipped his arm around her shoulder, holding her in place. “Let him drive, Slim. He’ll explain it later.”

  The truck sprang free of the c
op cars, and sped into the dark hills.

  3.

  Wayra drove the back roads through the hills, past small villages, greenhouses, pastures, and barns. Fifty years ago, this area had been so dirt poor that electricity was nonexistent and clean water was scarce, except for what was drawn from the surrounding lakes. But then some local politician had realized that such poverty only fostered resentment and rebellion and had convinced the largest and most prosperous churches in Quito to reach out to the rural communities in Ecuador by launching an ambitious improvement project.

  Today, every one of these villages not only had electricity and clean water, but most of the roads were paved, and the schools had free Internet and the computers to access it. The buildings had shutters that had protected them against the dense fog in which brujos had traveled in their natural forms and cellars where they had hidden during brujo attacks. In the years since the annihilation of Dominica’s tribe, these villages had prospered by creating a food cooperative that now had the largest outdoor market in Esperanza. It shut down at dusk, and as Wayra drove past it, the truck’s headlights briefly illuminated the empty wooden tables and crates that would begin to fill by dawn.

  Just past the market, he turned right and followed a narrow road that twisted down through the hills to yet another village. Mariposa—Butterfly—sat on a plateau that overlooked Esperanza. The town itself was built around two village plazas, with many of the homes near or on one of two small lakes. Wayra and Illary lived in a place on the eastern shore of Lago Mariposa, the smallest lake, shaped like the butterfly for which the town was named.

  The house, surrounded by trees that had been grown in greenhouses and then transplanted here, was visible for a moment in the glare of the headlights, then blended into the landscape, becoming invisible. Four bedrooms, two baths, large enough to accommodate guests. Usually, their guests consisted of Wayra’s family of shape shifters, the three humans he had turned when he had rescued Maddie, or Diego Garcia’s two kids whom he and Illary took care of on occasion.

  Diego was the head of the Guardia—the Esperanza police department—and was like a son to Wayra, who had adopted him when Diego was orphaned at thirteen, after his parents were killed during a brujo attack. He hoped Diego would be able to get away from the Café Taquina at some point, meet them here at the house, and explain things from the official perspective. But the only car in the driveway at the moment was a silver Honda that belonged to Maddie and Sanchez.

  The two of them and their golden retriever, Jessie, were sitting on the front steps. As Wayra pulled into the driveway, Maddie shot to her feet, her long, wildly curly red hair bouncing against her shoulders. “Shit, shit, after we heard what had happened at the café, you guys had us really worried.” She hurried over to the truck, peered inside the windows, front and back. “Okay, everyone accounted for. What the hell really happened at the café?”

  “Let’s talk inside,” Wayra replied, getting out with the others.

  Maddie moved and spoke at the speed of light; Sanchez was more deliberate, measured, and less apt to hug everyone hello until he had flipped his psychic switch to Off. He was a former remote viewer for the U.S. government, and his ability was both a gift and a curse. He had been forced to learn to power down before he touched anyone. When he finally greeted the others, Wayra knew he was in his Off mode.

  They all went inside, Jessie bringing up the rear, her tail wagging, her nose to the floor as she pursued the many shifter scents that permeated the house. Sometimes when Maddie and Sanchez visited, Wayra ran around the lake in his canine form with Jessie and they communicated through images and symbols that convinced him that Jessie was the most joyful creature he’d ever had the pleasure of knowing.

  Her unconditional love for Sanchez—and now for Maddie—spoke tomes about the purity of her heart. He often felt that Jessie’s soul was actually human and she had chosen to incarnate in the body of this beautiful dog specifically to explore unconditional love—and to be involved in the evolution of Esperanza. He’d actually asked her this once, a difficult thing to ask in just images and symbols. She had howled with amusement, then had shown him the symbol for infinite, with the word me in the center of it. He still didn’t know if that meant yes or no.

  Wayra directed everyone out onto the enclosed back deck and he and Illary went into the kitchen to get drinks and food. She sliced up vegetables and fruits while Wayra prepared drinks. His wife looked especially beautiful at the moment and he ran his hand slowly down her spine.

  Illary glanced at him, her smile quick, elusive. The hawk tattoo on the side of her neck seemed to move. “And so?” she asked.

  “There’s too much we don’t know.”

  “Do you still have that stone we found?”

  Wayra nodded and slipped it out of his pocket. Smooth and dark, it was about three inches long and half as wide. He had picked it up at the edge of the area where he and Illary believed the blackness had begun. “I’m going to ask Sanchez to read it.”

  “That’d be a good place to start. Tess is going to grill you about Ricardo. I think it’s important to tell her everything you know.”

  “She just caught me off guard. I haven’t thought of him in centuries.”

  Illary rolled onto the balls of her feet, kissed Wayra, and handed him the platter of goodies. “I’ll get the drinks. We’ll figure this out.”

  Wayra returned the stone to his pocket and made his way back through the house. Local art covered the walls, pieces he and Illary had collected in their years here together. His favorite artist, Oswaldo Guayasamín, had his own wall. Guayasamín, born in Quito in 1919, was famous for his paintings depicting Andean people. He had exposed racism, poverty, political oppression, and class division in his work, and it reflected that misery and pain.

  The painting Wayra loved the most hung in the middle of Guayasamín’s wall: that of an alienlike face that portrayed such profound isolation it spoke to the deepest parts of Wayra’s being, and to the life he had known when he had thought he was the last shape shifter in existence, before he’d met Illary.

  “Salud, amigo,” he whispered to the alien as he passed.

  Once they were all settled on the back deck, the lights of Esperanza spread out below them, Tess and Ian related what had happened.

  “Wow,” Maddie said softly, her green eyes widening. “It sounds like brujo trickery, especially coming on the heels of Tesso’s confrontation with this Ricardo dude.”

  “That’s the most obvious explanation,” Wayra said, and glanced at Tess. “To answer your question about Ricardo, he and Dominica were the only children of a Spanish nobleman in the late 1400s, her last physical life. The family was arrogant and broke, so they planned to marry Dominica off to a wealthy nobleman. And I, a sheepherder’s son, was in the way of their plans. Her father grew to hate me because she and I loved each other. He ordered Ricardo to track me down and kill me. Ricardo stabbed me in a bar, nearly killed me. Fortunately, I’d been turned by then. My shifter blood saved my life.”

  “But what’s he doing here now?” Tess asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  “What happened at the café may not have anything to do with Ricardo or brujos,” Ian said. “Look at it from a journalistic perspective. Here in the city of hope, we talk to the dead, break bread with them, negotiate and commune with them. The sick who come here are healed and everyone lives a ridiculously long time. We have shape shifters and chasers, and once upon a time we also had brujos, who seized the living and possessed their bodies so they could enjoy the banquet of physical pleasures. But we’ve been free of them since Dominica’s tribe was annihilated. The last two ancient shape shifters in the world live here. One of them is at least six hundred years old and the other is…” Ian looked over at Illary. “I don’t even know.”

  “Two thousand,” Illary said quietly.

  Ian opened his hands. “I rest my case. The dark matter may be just another phenomenon.”

  “Supernatural
phenomenon,” Sanchez said. “And if it’s supernatural, then it has to be the work of brujos, chasers, or the city herself. After all, it’s the city that keeps us from aging like other people, that keeps us healthy.”

  “But if Esperanza is responsible for that dark matter, why would she consume her own people?” Wayra asked. “Javier and others were sucked into that blackness tonight.”

  “It could be a combination of things,” Illary said. “Perhaps Esperanza is finally shaking herself awake again, taking control of her own destiny. Shifter legend tells of how Esperanza awakened into physical reality with earthquakes, eruptions, chaos.”

  “But I thought the city had always been sentient,” Tess said.

  “There’re different degrees of sentience.” Illary raised her hands, palms held out in front of her like a blind woman making her way through darkness. “I know there’s starlight against my hands, but I don’t feel heat or cold emanating from that light. But in a different state of consciousness, I can become that starlight. During the decades of brujo assaults, I think Esperanza’s immune system was so beaten down that her spirit pretty much took flight. She left the chasers in charge. But the years since Dominica’s defeat have given her time to heal. She’s awakening to her own power.”

  “Regardless of who or what is behind it, is it going to happen again?” Maddie asked.

  “Probably.” Illary’s fingers steepled together. “Something has been set in motion.”

  Wayra brought the stone out of his pocket, set it on the table. “Nick, can you RV this?”

  Sanchez stared at it, his handsome Latino face tight, closed. “No. I don’t work like that, Wayra. I’m not a psychometrist.”

  “You’re able to read people when you touch them. You’re able to dowse maps. This is no different.”

  “But it is different, Wayra,” said Maddie. “Sanchez works best with random numbers that Delaney or I give him, which represent a target. Sanchez never knows what the target is beforehand.”

  It made sense, Wayra thought. Numbers vibrated at certain frequencies, which acted as a beacon for someone with Sanchez’s psychic ability.