Apparition (The Hungry Ghosts)

by Trish J. MacGregor

  “I’ll ask. Tess, is it brujos?”

  “I don’t know. If you see Dad, ask him, okay?”

  “Hey, he drops by to see you more often than he does me.”

  “Not recently,” Tess said, and told Lauren the rest of it. Ricardo. A message for Charlie. “Tell Dad all that.”

  “I will.” The damn ghost tried to choke her daughter? “I definitely will. I’ll call you later.”

  Everything her daughter had just said was precisely why people in Esperanza often ended up with partners who were also from the city. You simply couldn’t explain any of this to an outsider, couldn’t explain that Esperanza was somehow sentient, that she retained a residual power from when she had been nonphysical that conferred health, longevity, youth. You couldn’t explain that to someone who hadn’t experienced it. It was why all of them, locals and expats alike, stayed.

  Lauren could just imagine trying to explain any of this on an Internet dating site, on Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, Wordpress. Put the truth out there and up there and you would be forced to start your own social network just to make a few friends.

  Lauren struggled to understand the implications. If the brujos were back, if the assaults began again, would she stay here? Esperanza was her home now, she had burned all her bridges to the U.S. But she knew her decision would depend on what her family did.

  Tess and Ian, she suspected, wouldn’t leave. They had a life here, the newspaper, and Ian would be afraid that if he left, the heart condition that had killed him would return. She didn’t know for sure whether Maddie and Sanchez and his dad would leave. Probably not. They were happy in Esperanza, and Maddie and Sanchez were getting married next month. Sanchez’s father wouldn’t return to South Florida without them and, besides, his health problems had cleared up within a month of his arrival in Esperanza.

  Then there was Leo. He had arrived in Esperanza from Argentina twenty-two years ago on the heels of an ugly divorce, a terrible custody battle that he’d lost, and a diagnosis of leukemia that had given him several months to live. Within six weeks of his arrival, his leukemia had gone into remission and had never returned.

  Leo was so certain the city had cured him, that he hadn’t left the region since. He had never returned to his native Argentina, but had gotten his Ecuadorian medical license and gone to work at the hospital as the resident OB. His children, now adults, often visited him here.

  So if they stayed, she would stay.

  Lauren stepped out onto the balcony, the door whispered shut behind her, and she breathed in the chilly night air. Stars littered the black dome of the sky, many of them so bright that if she raised her arms, she might be able to scoop them out of the heavens. Among the Quechua, there was a saying that the altitude of Esperanza made it easier for its people to mingle with the gods.

  She hadn’t seen any gods yet, but she had seen and conversed with her dead husband from time to time, had had brunch with shape shifters, and felt and looked better and younger than she had in years.

  Even though Charlie’s proximity comforted her, she often wondered if he watched her and Leo, shadowed them without her knowledge, kept tabs on them, observed them as they made love in front of that wonderful fireplace in their condo. Charlie, voyeur. Yes, she could see him doing that.

  After he had passed away, she’d spent a lot of years living by herself in the home they’d bought in Key Largo. They hadn’t lived there long when Charlie had died, not even six months, and that had made her transition easier. There was less of him in that house, less energy, fewer reminders. Yet, every time she’d climbed into her king-sized bed, the bed she had shared with Charlie, he had been there, in her head, holding her, making love to her, the two of them laughing.

  When she’d started dating an ER doc during her last year in Key Largo, when he’d occupied that king-sized bed, her memories of Charlie and the bed had begun to fade. That bed, she thought, had burned with the rest of the house when Dominica had seized Tess’s former lover and partner in the bureau, and forced him to torch the place.

  Just as well, she thought. Once the house was gone, she had known her time in Key Largo was done. Her travels with the Merry Pranksters in the sixties had taught her the importance of signs, and that fire had been a biggie. She had fled Key Largo with Tess and Maddie and come here.

  Esperanza was close enough to the equator so that the seasons here didn’t change much. But because it sat on a plateau at thirteen thousand feet, the air turned cold as soon as the sun set. She smelled smoke from fireplaces all over the city. In the light of the moon, she could see tufts of smoke that burst erratically from the top of the Taquina volcano. In the past several months, she had noticed that the volcano emitted smoke more frequently. Could that somehow be connected to the creeping blackness?

  In her four and a half years in this city, Lauren had seen her share of weirdness, the kind of stuff that challenged anyone’s worldview. She could accept avaricious ghosts, light chasers, shape shifters. She could accept that in Esperanza, the veil between the living and the dead was almost nonexistent. She could not accept a creeping blackness of unknown origin that devoured solid objects and people, that approached, as it did in the video, like some conscious extension of the darkness itself. She could not accept that a brujo had tried to choke her daughter.

  “Hey, Prankster? You hungry?”

  Leo slipped out onto the balcony with her, his voice hoarse with fatigue. He had stripped off his surgery greens and stood there in jeans and a T-shirt with the symbol for pi on it. Lauren touched her finger to the symbol. “Dr. Ordeño. Why that? Why pi?”

  “Because it looks like a door. Because it’s infinite.” He touched her chin, lifting it, and kissed her.

  He was only a bit taller than Lauren, maybe five ten, and didn’t really need to lift her chin to kiss her. But she liked it, the gentle sensation of his fingertips at her chin, the cool touch of his mouth, liked that he courted her, counted her in, was there for her—and yet gave her the space she needed.

  “Are we done here?” she asked.

  “Relieved by backup staff.” He fingered the rosary around her neck. “What’s with this?”

  She told him what Elsa had said about Raúl’s video. He nodded. “Everyone in ER has now seen the video.”

  “What do you think about it?”

  Leo drew his fingers through his white hair and stood back against the wall. “It’s spooky and alarming.”

  “I need to ask Raúl if he would send the video to—”

  “I asked, he said of course, and has already e-mailed it to Ian.”

  Leo, her personal genie. This tall, beautiful man anticipated her needs and desires, sought to make them happen, and she knew he would move mountains for her. She gave him the condensed version of her conversation with Tess and he frowned and asked her a bunch of questions about Sanchez, most of which she had asked Tess.

  “Do you think we should drive out there?” she asked.

  “It sounds like he’s fine for the night. We can drop by in the morning. If necessary, they can take him to the hospital in Mariposa.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I told Tess.”

  “Right now, I think dinner is a priority. It’s just past eleven.”

  Eleven? No wonder she was starving. “I need to change. Meet you downstairs in ten minutes?”

  “Perfect.”

  Minutes later, Lauren hurried into the women’s locker room in the hospital basement, stripped off her hospital clothes, wrapped a towel around her short salt-and-pepper hair, and took a quick shower. Then she put on clean jeans, a red print shirt, and traded her surgery shoes—Adidas—for comfortable Aerosole flats, slipped on a denim jacket, and slung her purse over her shoulder. Shit, she had it down to a science.

  As she moved through the nearly empty basement corridor, Charlie materialized beside her. “Uh, can we slow the pace a little, Lore?”

  The first time her dead husband had appeared to her, shock had rendered her mute. She couldn’t
really say she was accustomed to it yet, but at least she didn’t freak out now when it happened. As usual, Charlie wore his customary white trousers, shirt, hat, and shoes, had a cigar tucked behind his right ear, and flicked his silver Zippo lighter constantly, nervously, just as he had when he was alive.

  Lauren stopped. “I have a message for you. A ghost named Ricardo tried to choke Tess. He claims he’s Dominica’s brother and he said to please tell you that everyone wants the same thing, to live peacefully in Esperanza. If the chaser council and the people of Esperanza can’t accept that, then he’ll unleash his tribe of three million brujos—”

  “Jesus,” Charlie breathed. “Nice to see you, too, Lore. How about starting at the beginning?”

  “The creeping black crud at the Café Taquina? Tess and Ian were there. But before that happened, a brujo materialized in her car.”

  Lauren told him the rest of it and, to Charlie’s credit, he didn’t interrupt.

  “Are Tess and Ian okay?”

  “Shaken, but they’re fine. They’re with Wayra and Illary. Maddie and Sanchez are, too.”

  “Why is Tess always where she shouldn’t be?”

  “Because she’s your kid.”

  Charlie gave her the you’re being bitchy look, his dark eyes narrowed, eyebrows forming sharp little peaks. “Oh, so she doesn’t have any of your DNA? Hey, I didn’t wander around with Kesey and his Pranksters.”

  “Have you met Kesey yet? Or Garcia? And what about McKenna? I’d love to know what they’re doing these days. You told me you’d check on them, remember that, Charlie? I’m the Prankster Forrest Gump. Still here, saw it all, but they’re gone.”

  “You’re changing the subject.”

  “Damn right. Who’s behind what happened at the Taquina?”

  He kicked at a dust bunny, plunged his hands in the pockets of his trousers. “An emergency chaser council meeting has been called; I hope I’ll find out more then. I just wanted you to know that I’m on it. Tess will probably think that’s bullshit, but it isn’t. As soon as I have some answers, I’ll be in touch.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing, Lore. It is what it is, okay?”

  “No, Charlie. It’s not fucking okay.” She felt like punching him. “You jerk us around without intending to do so. I get that. But you can’t jerk us around for your own pleasure or illumination or whatever.”

  Charlie looked hurt. “You think that’s what I’m doing?”

  “I don’t have any idea what you’re doing. I don’t know how you can appear to be so real and solid and then fade away like last summer’s tan, Charlie. I don’t know shit, okay? It’s not like you’ve ever explained a whole lot. I couldn’t read your mind when you were alive and I definitely can’t read it now. Just talk to me, explain.”

  He flipped his hat off his head and slapped it against the side of his leg, like a cowboy getting rid of prairie dust. “Christ, Lore. You never said any of this before. You never told me how you felt.”

  “You never asked, Charlie, and you never stuck around long enough for me to get a word in edgewise.”

  “Really?” He looked horrified, his bushy brows pushing together just as they had when he was alive, his mouth twitching, his thumb working that Zippo lighter. “Shit. Okay. Okay, let’s see. Where to start? I’m the youngest member of the chaser council and the only one of us who still has loved ones who are physical, alive. That makes me the oddball. I have allies on the council—several men, a couple of women, but the two most powerful members of the council can easily sway the others.”

  “You make the chaser council sound like the board members of some corporation.”

  “You think politics disappears when you die?”

  He lit his cigar and blew a cloud of smoke into the air above them. The smoke, like everything else about Charlie, seemed real. She could smell it. “I always hoped that in death there would be some wisdom.”

  “Well, okay, after I died I knew more than I did when I was alive, but hey, not by much. And it’s all politics. Everything is politics. Especially in Esperanza. The council is about spiritual politics—my beliefs are truer than your beliefs. Like that.”

  It was the most Charlie had ever said to her about his situation. Lauren didn’t know what to make of it, couldn’t connect a whole bunch of dots, like, well, how a hillside and part of a restaurant could just disappear.

  “So what happened at the café is about spiritual beliefs? Spiritual politics? And why would a stone cause Sanchez to go into convulsions? Is that about spiritual politics, too?”

  “Stone? What stone?”

  She explained what she knew.

  “Is he … all right?”

  “Apparently.”

  “I’d like to see this stone.”

  “Talk to Wayra.”

  “I intend to. As soon as I find out anything, I’ll let you know.” Charlie squeezed her hand, a touch that felt real, solid, warm. “How does Tess know this Ricardo is Dominica’s brother?”

  “I don’t know, she didn’t say.”

  “She’s with Wayra, so he must’ve told her.”

  “Is it true?”

  “It’s the first I’ve ever heard of it. But Wayra is the expert on brujos and on Dominica, so if he said it’s true, then it probably is.”

  “Then why haven’t they seized anyone? How could they be here without any of the chasers knowing about it? Without Wayra and Illary knowing it?”

  “Maybe because we’ve all gotten lax.”

  “We don’t stand a chance against three million brujos, Charlie.”

  “I’ll find out what I can, Lore. Just keep in mind that brujos lie.”

  And he faded away. The clicking of his Zippo echoed in the basement. Lauren stood there, anxiety eating a hole through her stomach.

  2.

  These days, Lauren thought, Esperanza was a city that rocked from dusk to dawn. As she and Leo walked through old town, everything lit up and decorated for the Christmas holidays, pedestrians crowded the sidewalks, couples zipped around on scooters, laughter and music drifted from open doorways, the bars and cafés were jammed with people.

  “I guess no one is worried about what happened at Café Taquina,” she remarked.

  Leo took her hand. “Maybe they don’t know about it.”

  “C’mon. The Internet is free here and everyone older than six has a cell phone.”

  He flashed a quick smile. “Yeah, I know. I’m just trying to provide a measure of comfort. For you, for myself.” He paused and she felt him mulling, turning something over and over again in his head.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Tell me again what Charlie said.”

  She’d already related the conversation, but did so again, certain that Leo was now picking apart the details, just as he did when he was with a patient. His diagnostic skills were impeccable.

  “The only way no one would realize brujos are here is if they’ve been seizing hosts elsewhere,” he said. “There are stories all over the Internet about possessions—but in other countries, not in Ecuador. So if Esperanza is their home base, then their leader isn’t going to screw that up by seizing locals. This Ricardo isn’t going to repeat Dominica’s mistakes. The ancient brujos have a strong grasp of history.” He glanced at her. “So what else did Charlie have to say?”

  More than he has ever said, she thought, but not stuff that Leo needed to hear. “Not much. I hadn’t seen him for a while.”

  “Do you ever wonder what chasers do? I mean, in their daily existence? Do they have routines? Do they have basketball teams? Schools? Libraries? I asked Charlie that once and he said he belonged to a chess club, had joined an acting group, worked in a bookstore, went skiing, coached other attorneys, had fifteen girlfriends…”

  Lauren started laughing. “Yeah. And he spends his free time watching us.”

  “I hope you’re joking.”

  “Yeah, me, too.”

  “Suppose the brujos are back, Lauren? Would you
leave?”

  “You forget, I arrived with the solstice battle. My existence here has been brujo-free. But yours hasn’t. Would you leave?”

  He didn’t reply immediately. She already knew what his answer would be; they had talked about this when they’d first started seeing each other. “I’ve loved this city since I first arrived. My life here, even during the dark years of the brujos, surpassed anything I thought was possible when I left Argentina. I’ve been cancer-free for twenty-two years. This city cured me. But if you left, I would have to leave. I can’t imagine living here without you.”

  A lump of emotion lodged in her throat and she raised his hand to her mouth and kissed each of the knuckles. “I’m not going anywhere. If I weren’t starving, I’d say let’s go home, build a fire, and get naked.”

  She knew his neck wouldn’t turn red now. They were alone, just the two of them out here on the sidewalk. His low, husky laugh told her he’d been thinking the same thing. As he slipped his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close, their stomachs growled simultaneously. “Okay, food first,” he said, and steered her into Los Gatos, a vegetarian restaurant named after the two orange-striped cats, Simba and Cobre, who strolled about freely.

  The cats were identical, except that Simba had celery-green eyes, rather like Maddie’s, and Cobre had eyes the color of the metal after which he’d been named—Copper. Lauren always wondered if they were spirit cats. And that was the thing, really, about Esperanza. You never knew for sure if what you were seeing was alive and real—or an apparition.

  Both cats came up to them as they waited for the hostess to seat them and threaded through their legs, purring. Lauren leaned over and stroked her fingers across Cobre’s back. His fur was deliciously soft and felt ever so real. Then again, the smell of Charlie’s cigar had been real, too.

  Los Gatos was crowded and the only free seats were near the bar. She had a full view of the TV from here and wished she were sitting with her back to it. But she faced the damn television, where Raúl’s video was now streaming across the screen. She forced herself to look away, to look at Leo, who held out a glass of wine.