Apparition (The Hungry Ghosts)

by Trish J. MacGregor

“Any idea what this meeting is about, Charlie?”

  “Maybe about what happened at the Taquina. I was hoping you might know.”

  She shook her head. “I’m out of the loop lately. I’ve been over in Africa, helping some of these kids with AIDS pass over.”

  “Any sign of brujos over there?”

  “In Africa? Ha. Brujos have no interest in seizing people who are starving and sick. Seizures in other countries are increasing, though.” She stabbed her thumb toward the door. “Here comes Victor.”

  Charlie glanced around. Victor, nearly bald and wearing a silly white toga, looked like a throwback to ancient Rome. He quickly thought away the toga and replaced it with modern attire—khaki pants, a black shirt, a jacket. He ordered his usual whipped-cream latte sprinkled with cinnamon, with a huge sugar stick inside of it, and headed over to the table.

  “Hi, Karina, Charlie. What’s with the parrot?”

  “No idea. Ask her.”

  Victor squeezed his corpulent body into a chair, his eyes pinned on Kali, and pointed his index finger at her. “¿Qué quieres, Kali?” What do you want?

  She squawked at him, lifted from Charlie’s shoulder, and fluttered over Victor’s head for a moment. A couple of her soft bluish-green feathers drifted down on his head. Charlie snickered. “You’re fortunate she didn’t shit on you, Vic.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time. She’s never liked me.”

  “So what’s going on? What’s this black stuff that devoured part of Taquina Café?”

  Victor sipped noisily at his whipped-cream latte. He looked utterly miserable when his dark eyes met Charlie’s. “Come with me for a moment, Charlie. I’d like to show you something.”

  Charlie hesitated, eyeing Victor’s outstretched hand as though it might transmute at any second into a nest of vipers. As the most recently deceased member of the chaser council, the one for whom physical life was still an actual memory and not some loop in the collective chaser soup, he vividly remembered snakes and rats and roaches.

  “What about me?” Karina asked.

  “You’re welcome to come, too,” Victor said. “But this little trip remains among us.”

  Charlie grasped Victor’s outstretched hand, and held out his own hand to Karina. She laced her fingers through his, a touch that thrilled him. “Okay, Victor, let’s see it.”

  Instantly, they stood in front of La Pincoya, an abandoned hotel in the heart of old town. The name translated as mermaid, ironic, Charlie thought, since they were hundreds of miles from any ocean. But legend had it that the lake at the foot of Taquina volcano was home to mermaids.

  The hotel driveway was cracked, the property overgrown and neglected, a faded FOR SALE sign was stuck in the ground. Kali circled above them, squawking noisily. Charlie, Karina, and Victor moved back into the trees across the street from the lopsided hotel. As her hand slipped away from his, he felt its absence.

  Victor whispered, “Watch, you two.”

  “I don’t see anything,” Charlie said.

  “Orbs,” Karina said softly. “See them?”

  The bright orbs of light danced and floated toward the hotel and vanished through the walls. They didn’t reappear. “So it’s true,” Charlie breathed. “They’re back. One of them tried to strangle my daughter.”

  Victor and Karina looked horrified. “When did this happen?” Victor asked.

  “Before everything went down at the café.”

  “We’d better keep that to ourselves for now,” Karina said.

  “Good idea,” Victor agreed.

  “Why haven’t they tried to seize anyone?” Charlie asked.

  Victor shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know if any of the other council members even realize the brujos are here. The attacks outside of Ecuador have increased so dramatically that there’s been talk among some council members about taking Esperanza back into the nonphysical.”

  “What?” Karina gasped. “That’s madness, Victor.”

  “I know. They feel it’s the only way to end the brujo scourge once and for all.”

  “You can’t just disappear a city of thirty thousand into the ether without killing everyone,” Charlie said.

  “We know that. Shit, even they know. Just the same, I think several of them decided to conduct a stupid goddamn experiment and the events at the café were that experiment. A failed experiment.”

  “You know all this for a fact?” Karina asked.

  “It’s an educated guess. I figure that whoever is responsible realized they aren’t powerful enough to do this on their own, with just a few council members. They need a majority. Getting a consensus from what—eight thousand of us now?—is nearly impossible. So they’re fumbling and it caused the deaths of those people at the café and tore apart some space/time shit. So here we are, trying to figure out how to pick up the pieces.”

  “A few members on the council can’t unilaterally decide to do something like this,” Karina said. “A resolution has to be passed by the council and then presented to the rest of the chasers for a vote.”

  As Karina said this, Charlie was struck by yet another parallel between chasers and brujos.

  On Cedar Key, Dominica had had a council of brujos who oversaw things. In the years before that, when her tribe had attacked Esperanza relentlessly, there had also been a council. How had it come down to a council for both the chasers and brujos?

  “It’s a clear violation of how things are supposed to work on the council,” Victor said. “But maybe my theory is all wrong. Maybe it’s these brujo bastards.” He gestured toward the orbs of light, hundreds of them now. “It’s too coincidental that one of them tries to choke Tess right before the events at the Taquina.”

  “Suppose you’re not wrong?” Charlie asked. “What the hell can we do about it?”

  “Not much. There are some obscure rules from when the council had fourteen members, but I’m not even sure if those rules are valid anymore. I’ve got to do some research on that.”

  Victor slung his arms around their shoulders and they returned instantly to the café. The other ten council members had arrived and were chatting among themselves. The three of them took seats at the round table. Charlie was secretly thrilled when Karina made a point of squeezing her chair next to his. Greetings were exchanged, then the oldest member of the council, Newton, called the meeting to order.

  Newton looked like the man whose name he’d taken, Sir Isaac, the guy who’d discovered gravity and who, by many accounts, was the greatest scientist who had ever lived. Charlie begged to differ. Einstein, David Bohm, and Richard Feynman had his votes.

  Shortly after Charlie had transitioned, he had met the real Newton, an anal guy the chasers tried to rescue and recruit from the astral realms, but he wanted none of it. Newton apparently hadn’t believed he was really dead, and until he did, the only thing they could do for him was to assign a chaser to him to act as his buddy, his confidant, and ultimately, his mentor. Dead for centuries and he still couldn’t accept the fact.

  “We’ve come together to vote on a resolution that must be passed,” Newton said. “It has become clear that brujos have been using the Pincoya as a portal to other locations within the physical universe, where they have been seizing the living with utter impunity. It’s time to take Esperanza back into the nonphysical.”

  So all along the council members had known about the Pincoya, Charlie thought. And at least some of them had discussed and experimented with removing Esperanza from the physical world, just as Victor had speculated.

  Newton flung his right arm upward and an image appeared in the air above them, a world map with pulsating red hearts that indicated where brujo seizures had happened. Thousands of red hearts. “These are the seizures in just the last forty-eight hours. The brujos have been using the abandoned hotel as a portal to other countries around the globe. Always in the past, they simply thought themselves to other locations. We don’t know what has changed.”

  “Excuse me,” Charlie
said. “Your little experiment in the disappearance of Esperanza went seriously haywire, Newton. And I’d like to know who granted you and the other members of the council who participated in this experiment the right to kill and injure dozens?”

  Newton looked surprised that Charlie had interrupted his spiel. “We, uh, well, weren’t certain that it could be done and decided to try it on a hillside. But things…”—he ran his fingers through his white hair—“got out of hand.”

  “Out of hand?” Charlie’s voice sounded shrill enough to break glass. “Explain that to the families who lost loved ones, Newton. When the council brought Esperanza into the physical universe five hundred years ago, the world was a different place. This plateau and everything else beyond the Río Palo were empty, just windblown mountains. In the twenty-first century, you can’t just disappear a city and expect that no one will notice. The Internet exists, remember? With YouTube, cell phones, iPads, there are always witnesses to everything.” He pushed back his chair and stood. “I can’t be a part of anything that is going to annihilate thousands.”

  Around the table, a few other members of the council nodded in agreement with Charlie. Victor stood up—and so did three other chasers—Liana, Karina, and Franco. All of them had lived physical lives in Ecuador, so their opinions carried weight on the council.

  Victor spoke first. “If we’re responsible for the deaths of thousands, then we’re no better than the goddamn brujos. I’m with Charlie on this one.”

  “This is such utter bullshit,” said Karina, flicking her raven-colored braid over her shoulder. “The council has certain rules that must be followed. You broke a bunch of them, Newton. You may be one of the oldest council members, but you’re not Mr. Supremo.”

  “We’re supposedly the evolved souls,” Liana said. “To even entertain this … this lunacy makes us worse than Dominica and her entire tribe.” Her pale blue eyes shone like ice in glaring sunlight and impaled every council member who was still seated. “None of you have any reservations about it?”

  Maria, with her perfectly straight, long blond hair, reminded Charlie of a pinup girl from the fifties, one of those babes posing with a cigarette tray around her neck. She sat forward, hands resting on the table, fingers laced together. Her bright red fingernails looked like drops of blood against her pale skin. “Sure, I have reservations, Liana. But Esperanza shouldn’t have been brought into the physical world to begin with. If we wait another five hundred years to rectify our mistake, it’s going to be an even bigger mess.”

  “It’s murder,” Charlie shouted.

  “But it’s for the greater good,” Newton burst out.

  Stunned, Charlie just stood there, staring at Newton. “Do you hear yourself, Newton? Do you know what the hell you just said? Murder is for the greater good?”

  Guilty looks around the table. Franco, who bore an uncanny resemblance to paintings Charlie had seen of da Vinci, started clapping. “Bravo, Charlie. You nailed it. The chaser council has been reduced to a group of thugs and killers. Sorry, Newton. But you and everyone else still seated should be ashamed of yourselves. You don’t just disappear a city without replacing it with something else. And if you can figure out a way to do that, then you need to give people a choice. Do they go with Esperanza into the nonphysical or do they stay behind in whatever takes its place?”

  “Franco, Franco,” Maria said in her softest and most seductive voice. “Honestly, it’s difficult enough to remove Esperanza from the physical world, but now you’re asking us to replace it with something else?” She laughed and shook her head. “That’s preposterous.”

  “Absolutely,” Newton agreed, then snapped his fingers. “José, give them the facts.”

  Newton glanced at the tallest man on the council, whose wavy dark hair was swept back from his face and fell to his shoulders. He looked like a male model on the cover of a romance novel. Charlie wondered how long it had taken José and Maria to perfect their images.

  When José spoke, his quiet voice and presence carried tremendous authority. “Of the ten thousand, two hundred, and twenty-one chasers worldwide, more than half support the resolution. It’s enough chaser power to take Esperanza back into the nonphysical.”

  Charlie rarely kept tabs on the number of chasers worldwide, but this figure was higher than what Victor had mentioned. And depressingly low compared to the number of brujos worldwide.

  Karina laughed. “Uh, José, it’s not a resolution yet because the council hasn’t voted on it. We clear on that? The council needs a majority to pass this resolution, and then it goes to the chasers worldwide. I say we put this to a private vote.”

  “It doesn’t have to be private,” Maria said quickly. “We’re all friends here.”

  “This is a bloody waste of time,” snapped Simon. Anger pinched his dark eyes and threw his forehead into a runic map of wrinkles.

  “Now hold on, Simon,” said Pilar, throwing her arms dramatically into the air. Her booming voice shut Simon up immediately. She reminded Charlie of a basketball coach Tess had had in middle school, no nonsense, no bullshit, and all she expected of you was to play by the rules. “Since rules have been violated here, I think a private vote is the only way to go.”

  Charlie felt like hugging her.

  “You idiots are too much.” Alan laughed, sitting with his chair tilted back, arms crossed against his chest. With his beard and long ponytail, he looked like an aging hippie. “No matter what we do, we’re fucked. Our purpose is to safeguard Esperanza. Period. That’s always been our purpose. And we’ve failed. So to correct our failure, one option is to kill thousands? The other option is to do nothing and let the brujos do what they’re doing now. No one in Esperanza has been seized since the great battle. The city has prospered. What’s wrong with that?”

  Rita shot Alan a hateful look. “That’s not what you told me a few days ago.” She stabbed her fingers back through her hair so hard that the bracelets climbing her arms sang and jingled. “You just say whatever you think people want to hear.”

  “That’s a goddamn lie,” Alan snapped.

  “Enough!” Newton shouted. “You’re twisting everything. Esperanza is flourishing, yes. But the brujos are still seizing thousands every day in other parts of the world. Evil is winning. Esperanza is their portal. We can’t allow it any longer.”

  Powerful words, Charlie thought, and for long moments, no one spoke. Kali, perched on the back of Charlie’s chair, abruptly squawked and lifted into the air. It released the tension and Dan was the first to speak.

  “My, my. Such issues here today.” He had a Freudian look about him, ponderous and all-knowing. “I heard things went more smoothly when there were fourteen council members.”

  “That was way before our time,” Newton replied.

  “Maybe so,” Dan said. “But the longer we sit here, the more we sound like brujos. Let’s just get on with the vote.”

  “Private vote,” Karina said curtly. “Now.” She reached into her large shoulder bag, withdrew a pad of paper, ripped off a sheet, and passed the pad on to the next chaser. She set a bunch of pens in the middle of the table. “And yes, we may all be friends, Maria. But there are chasers at the table who hesitate going up against you and Newton.”

  “Oh, c’mon,” Maria said with a soft laugh, her eyes darting around the table, pausing on this chaser, that chaser. “Hesitant to go up against Newt and me? Really, Karina. You make it all sound so … well, conspiratorial.”

  “All in favor of a private vote,” said Franco, “raise your hand.”

  Ten out of thirteen hands shot up. Newton glanced around nervously, apparently realizing for the first time that he might not have the support of the majority. Maria and Simon, Charlie thought, looked pissed. “A private vote it is,” Charlie said. “Write ‘yes’ if you favor what Newton is proposing and ‘no’ if you’re against it. Then put your vote in the center of the table.”

  Charlie quickly scribbled “no” on his piece of paper, slid it out into
the middle of the table. Within minutes, all votes were cast. Charlie shuffled them, then he and Maria began to turn them over. Yes votes along the top, no votes beneath.

  Once the votes were all turned over, he tried not to gloat. “Six yes, seven no.” Too damn close. Charlie suspected that Pilar and Alan or Dan had voted with his group. He knew that Newton and Maria would be lobbying behind the scenes to get one of them to change a vote. But for now, Esperanza had won a reprieve.

  “Keep in mind,” Franco said, “that some of us who voted no might change our vote if provisions are included—something replaces Esperanza and people are given a choice.”

  “Damn unlikely,” Maria muttered.

  “You’d rather kill thousands?” Franco snapped, staring at her.

  “It’d be easier.” Maria snatched her bag off the table, got up, and marched out of the café.

  3.

  Charlie and Victor walked up a narrow, cobbled alley that led to a park. Early morning light swallowed up shadows. Kali flew above them, her occasional screech echoing. “The bitch should be kicked off the council for that last remark,” Victor said.

  “Fat chance of that. She and Newton are tight.” Charlie hesitated. “Listen, we may have a huge problem, Victor.” Then he told Victor what Ricardo had said to Tess.

  Victor’s virtual form turned completely pale, his appearance went berserk. He gained two hundred pounds, all his hair vanished, his cheeks puffed out, and he looked like a squat little Buddha. He swiftly shed the weight and his clothes changed from khaki pants to toga to business suit. Charlie glanced around uneasily, not entirely certain if they were visible to the living. But the alley was deserted. When he turned back to Victor, his appearance had stabilized—middle-aged man in jeans, a sweater, boots, salt-and-pepper hair, a prissy mouth.

  “Sweet Christ, Charlie.”

  “You knew Dominica had a brother?”

  “There were rumors. There are always rumors. Thing is, Wayra knew her better than any of us and you know how tight-lipped he is. Even after he and Illary disappeared Dominica, he refused to tell the council where he’d taken her. Frankly, we didn’t give Dominica’s brother much thought. We had bigger problems.”