Apparition (The Hungry Ghosts)

by Trish J. MacGregor

  That one had really gotten her attention, and from then on he had understood how to talk to her through signs and symbols. Once she arrived in Esperanza, she had been able to see him, talk to him, and he had been forced to rethink his ideas about what was possible for him now that he was dead.

  “Look, you and Lore, Tess and Ian, Maddie, Sanchez, all of you should leave Esperanza, the sooner the better.”

  Leo ran his fingers back through his white hair. “I’ll … die if I leave.”

  “Hey, there are things worse than death. I’m a testament to that.”

  “But Charlie, if the rumors are true, that the chaser council intends to move Esperanza back into the nonphysical, the living won’t survive such a transition. Tens of thousands will be killed.”

  “And that’s why it hasn’t happened yet. But if you love her, if you actually love her and not just the sex, then the two of you need to leave. It’s getting more and more difficult to keep things under control.”

  “I’m crazy about her,” Leo said. “I wish she’d marry me tonight. But a part of her is still in love with you.”

  “I doubt that, Leo.”

  But Charlie suddenly felt so miserable and confused he didn’t know what else to say. In the years since his death, he had realized that his relationships with Lauren and Tess were the most important in his life as Charlie Livingston. And in a number of other lives as well. The three of them had been together during the Incan empire of Atahualpa, during the heyday of the Mayas, and had lived briefly on the Hopi reservation. They had been together during lives in Europe, Asia, and among the Australian Aborigines. He couldn’t quite piece together all the emotional details of these lives, but the larger picture was clear: they formed the core of who he was and might become. Perhaps the three of them were different parts of the same soul.

  Leo dropped his head back, staring up at the cawing crows, stretched out like a continent against the sky. “What … where … Crows that huge don’t—”

  “We conjured them. They’re giving us a few minutes. You and Lore better get back in your car. We can hold the crows in place long enough for you to get where you’re going. Where are you going, anyway?”

  “Cottage thirteen, Posada de Esperanza.”

  Where Tess and Ian had stayed as transitionals. “For what?”

  “I don’t know. Juanito Cardenas texted us and asked us to stop by. It’s probably connected to everything that’s happened.”

  In other words, Charlie thought, it would be a brainstorming session. Juanito and Ed Granger, who now co-owned the posada, had been part of a group that had fought Dominica and the brujos since long before Charlie had died and joined the chasers. He doubted that any chasers had been invited to this meeting.

  Lauren tore into the woods, shouting Leo’s name. Charlie puffed hard on his cigar. “Just get to the inn fast.”

  He shed his virtual form, fading from Leo’s sight, but hung around, watching his wife and her lover embrace, whisper, kiss. Lauren slipped an arm around Leo’s waist and they moved clumsily up the hill, back toward the car, whispering incessantly to each other. A sudden memory surfaced, of him and Lauren whispering just like she and Leo were doing now. They were tiptoeing through their home in Miami, past their daughters’ bedroom, hoping neither of them would wake up so they could steal some time alone together.

  They had done a lot of that when their daughters were young. Charlie had been working insane hours, Lauren was in charge of ER at one of Miami’s largest hospitals, the girls had been in day care. And watching Lauren and Leo now, he felt jealous, pissed off, cheated by death.

  Regardless of the advantages that chasers had in terms of understanding what life and death actually were, how intricate and complex reality was, the bottom line had never changed. A chaser, like a brujo, existed as mere energy. And even though this energy could create illusions that felt and looked like the real thing, could create virtual forms that looked solid, he could not make love, could not procreate, could not interact in a meaningful, physical way in three-dimensional reality.

  Except in Esperanza. Here, chaser and brujo alike could create facsimiles of physical life, but it didn’t change the fact that they were dead.

  “Don’t think those thoughts, Charlie,” Victor said, materializing beside him. “They only cloud your judgment.”

  “How the hell would you know, Victor? You haven’t been alive for centuries.”

  “Well, I know,” said Karina, emerging from the shadows with Kali perched on her shoulder. “I had an itty-bitty life in East Germany for a few years after the Berlin Wall came down.” She hooked her arm through Charlie’s and tossed her black braid over her shoulder. “Never told you about that, did I?”

  He instantly forgot about Lauren and Leo. Karina captivated him—her beauty, impulsiveness, her rebellious spirit. But it was only when she had stood up to Newton and Maria that he understood the depth of his attraction to her. She was like the best adversaries he’d faced in court when he was alive. “How itty-bitty?” he asked.

  “Hey, Victor,” she called, “make sure the crows stick around until Lauren and Leo get to where they’re going, okay?” Then she laced her fingers through his and they walked toward the trees. “Five years, five months, five days. I died at five fifty-five in the morning. I was trying to communicate a message, but my parents were too brainwashed to get it.”

  Charlie thought a moment. Tess had been born at 5:55 P.M. “What was the, uh, message for all those fives?”

  “Freedom. That my freedom was bound up with service, specifically helping others to understand. I kinda failed in that life. My parents never got it. They feared the freedom that the fall of the wall represented.” She paused, staring at him, her eyes so intense that Charlie couldn’t look away, didn’t want to look away. “You need to see some stuff, Charlie.” Then she leaned forward and her soft, cool mouth touched his. Kali instantly lifted from her shoulder, squawking as she took to the sky.

  In the twelve years since Charlie had passed on, he had never felt anything like this. He had been so wrapped up in Tess, Maddie, Lauren, the chasers, and the ultimate fate of Esperanza that he had never pursued any relationship in the afterlife. He’d heard about chasers who found and lived with their true soul families, their soul mates, their other halves, and planned their next lives with them so that they might all achieve their full creative and spiritual potential. But such relationships here had never interested him.

  Until now. “This is going to sound totally out to lunch, Karina.” He rocked back, away from her, so he could see her face. “But your place or mine?”

  She laughed. “Do you have an actual place, Charlie?”

  “Nope. Do you?”

  She laughed. “Well, sort of. It’s a little hooch that fades in and out because I don’t pay enough attention to it.”

  “Then let’s create our own place.”

  “Really?”

  “Right here. In this woods. I’d like a lake, though. How’s that sound?”

  “Perfect. And every lake needs a dock.”

  The lake and dock appeared, seductive, inviting, and they walked the long, winding path that led to it, beds of flowers on either side of them. Even in the light of the stars, he could see how brilliantly colored everything was. Greens were emerald green, blues looked deep, bold, luminous, reds deepened to scarlet, yellows and golds sparkled like the road to Oz. Vivid, it all struck Charlie as supernaturally vivid.

  When they reached the water, they stood there for a while, neither of them speaking. The surface of the lake captured the perfect reflection of the stars, the moon, the silhouettes of the mountains. “What about the house?” he asked. “Brick? Stone? Wood? Big? Little? A hooch? A cabin? A mansion?”

  “I love stone, lots of windows, and space,” she said. “And a fireplace. There’s something magical about fireplaces.”

  “We need a canoe and some kayaks, too,” he added.

  Karina linked her arm through his. “Then l
et’s make it so, Charlie. We need to have a clearer sense of our own power.”

  They turned away from the lake and gradually a large stone house began to take shape in front of them. “Not happening fast enough,” she said. “Did you ever see Mickey Mouse in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice?”

  Only a million times, he thought, when both of his daughters were very young. He roared with laughter and glanced at Karina, who was laughing so hard tears rolled down her cheek. “Here we go,” he said, and they simultaneously threw up their arms.

  Music from The Sorcerer’s Apprentice filled the air. Wands materialized in their hands. They drew on the power of the afterlife in a way Charlie had never tapped before. Everything snapped into clarity—the stone house, its bay windows overlooking the lake, the path that twisted down to the dock, the trees, the trout swimming beneath the placid waters.

  “Wow,” she breathed. “I’ve never been able to create something this magnificent and real by myself. Race ya.” She ran up the shallow rise, toward the house.

  For an instant, something distracted Charlie. Something about Lauren, Tess, Esperanza. He felt he should turn back toward that yearning, that issue, that challenge, his loved ones. Then he glanced toward Karina, running toward a stone house that suddenly seemed less solid, toward massive bay windows that grew more and more transparent, and he spun around and tore after her, his heart simultaneously singing—and breaking.

  Nine

  Chaos

  Tess, stalled in traffic for what felt like days, had inched forward into a glorious sunset and then into subsequent darkness. She had eaten through half a bag of chips, part of a brick of cheese, and was seriously considering the uncooked trout as her next snack. Her iPhone was dead, the car charger was in her other purse. Her iPad still had power and the radio worked, so she could keep tabs on the local news about the fire and explosion at the Pincoya.

  She kept e-mailing Ian, which he could pick up on his phone, but he didn’t reply. She e-mailed her mother to find out if she’d heard from Ian, but her mom was more of a texter than an e-mailer, and didn’t even get her e-mail on her phone. Frustrated, hungry, her bladder filled to bursting, Tess finally pulled Snoopy out of the snarl of cars, up onto the narrow sidewalk, and drove slowly forward.

  Fortunately, there weren’t many pedestrians on the sidewalk; the explosion, fire, sirens, and the growing police presence had chased them elsewhere. Within moments, other cars followed her and pretty soon, a caravan of vehicles drove along the sidewalk.

  As she approached the intersection where she hoped to turn off, she saw a barricade of orange cones. Why? That side street would take all of them away from Calle Central, away from the area of the Pincoya, and she and the other drivers would be able to get to another thoroughfare that would be less congested. But half a dozen cops on horseback rounded the corner, saw the line of cars on the sidewalk, and stopped, shoulder to shoulder, blocking the cars.

  Pissed off now, Tess slammed her fist against the horn and the drivers behind her started honking as well. Two of the cops on horseback trotted over to her car, shouting at her and everyone else to get off the sidewalk. Tess killed her engine, removed the key from the ignition, jerked up on the emergency brake. She grabbed her purse, her bag of groceries, her packet of documents from the glove compartment. Then she threw open her door and stepped out. “Why’re you blocking off that street?” she said in Spanish. “Opening it would relieve the congestion.”

  The horses snorted and pranced around, spooked by the incessant shriek of sirens, the honking, congestion, all of it. The lead cop dismounted, handed his horse’s reins to his colleague, then marched over to her. “Señora, I am saying this only once. Please get back in your car and move it into the street.” He touched his holstered weapon, and when he leaned toward her, Tess saw that his eyes were an oily black. He had been seized. “Now,” he snapped.

  Tess held up her hands. “Fine, fine, I’m getting back in the car.” As soon as he turned to move away from her, she swung her bag of groceries and it struck him in the back of the head. He pitched forward, into his horse, some of her groceries flew everywhere, and the beautiful creature whinnied wildly and reared up. The second cop’s horse freaked and took off, bucking madly until the cop toppled from his saddle.

  She leaped back into Snoopy and tore toward the other four horsemen, certain they had been seized also, that the blocked side street was a way for the brujos to keep hundreds of potential hosts trapped—and accessible. Granted, her Mini Cooper was hardly an intimidating presence, but the horses were already so spooked that their riders could no longer control them. They raced off in every direction and Tess swerved into the street, slammed through the orange cones, and sped down the side road to the next intersection, a line of cars following her.

  To either side of her, orange cones blocked every side road. More cops on horseback converged from either direction and she assumed they, like the first six cops, were hosts to brujos. She floored the accelerator, racing up and down hills, charging through stoplights until she reached an intersection that was clear on both sides. She sped left, some cars followed her, others went right, and still others shot straight ahead.

  Tess had no idea where she was in relation to her apartment. She slowed down and used her iPad‘s GPS to pinpoint her exact location, then followed the red curving line on the screen until she was behind her building, in an alley that led into the underground garage. She finally nosed down the steep hill and into a parking space, and turned off the engine. She sat there, clutching the steering wheel, forehead pressed against her knuckles, her stomach somersaulting.

  Shit, it’s happening again.

  Tess raised her head, reached for her stuff, quickly got out. The car’s security beeped when she engaged it, and she ran for the interior of the building, her bag of groceries slamming against her hip.

  Inside, the foyer was deserted and the elevator wasn’t working. She started up the dimly lit stairwell and wished the landlord used brighter bulbs and would fix the elevator. She felt uneasy in the stairwell, confined. The entire building seemed too quiet, a disturbing quiet, as though it held its breath in dreadful anticipation of something.

  On the second floor, she heard the comforting drone of a TV and caught the scent of something cooking. So people were home, she thought, and wondered if she should start knocking on doors and warning everyone that brujos had seized police. But that might create unnecessary panic. She needed to get in touch with Diego and tell him what had happened so that he could inform the mayor, who would sound the sirens.

  Tess unlocked the door, and as it swung open, the dark silence told her Ian wasn’t there. She nonetheless called his name and flipped on light switches.

  No answer.

  Light from the street spilled through the picture window in the living room. The tall cuckoo clock in the corner, a beauty hand-carved by a Swiss expat here in Esperanza, said it was 9:28. It couldn’t be that late. She knew that when she’d left the grocery store it was still light outside. Esperanza was so close to the equator that year-round, darkness fell around six P.M., with just minute fluctuations for the seasons. At the most, she had spent two hours in traffic, so it had to be closer to eight P.M.

  She walked quickly into the kitchen, set her seriously depleted grocery bag on the table with her purse, kicked off her shoes. A quick look around the kitchen told her that Ian had been about to start dinner—a pot half filled with water on a burner, two ears of corn on the counter, the table set. And then…?

  Something urgent had come up.

  Tess zipped into the bedroom, stripped off her clothes, dumped them in the washing machine, and changed into clean jeans and a T-shirt. Back in the kitchen, she hurried around—frying pan on burner, olive oil and trout into pan. Plug in iPad, charge up phone. As soon as she did that all the iPhone’s icons lit up, text messages from Ian, Wayra, her mother, Diego, Illary, Juanito.

  Ian and Pedro Jacinto were holed up in a church not far from the Pinc
oya, Iglesia Santa Rosa. That was all his text said—not why he was there or why he was with the priest. Illary asked if Tess had seen Wayra, who asked if she had seen Ian. Her mother said to call her ASAP, then later left a message that she and Leo were headed to the posada for a meeting and please, please call.

  A meeting at the posada? With whom? Juanito? Was that why he had texted her? Tess suddenly sensed dots she couldn’t connect, stuff happening beneath the surface that no one had let her in on. Did anyone else know that some cops had been seized?

  She scrolled back through the text messages, noting the times they had been sent. Except for her mother’s text message, which had been sent before six P.M., they all read 9:28. How was that possible?

  Anything is possible here.

  She called Diego. He answered on the fourth ring, his voice tight, urgent. “Tess, I’ll have to call you back. The—”

  “Diego, they’re seizing people already. A bunch of your cops are hosts now, guys on horseback. They’ve blocked off some side roads around the park near the Pincoya, trapping people so they’re accessible as hosts. The sirens need to be sounded, people have to be warned.”

  “I convinced Mayor Torres to call out the reserves and they’re headed into that area right now. How—”

  The shrill wail of the sirens cut him short, a sound that hadn’t been heard in this city for more than four years. Tess turned toward the large picture window that overlooked the park across the street. In the park, on the sidewalk below, people stopped, and then within moments, pedestrians poured across the plaza, toward the tunnels.

  The sirens paused and a man’s voice boomed from the closest loudspeaker and issued directions in four languages: Spanish, Quechua, French, and English. “Please proceed into the tunnels or into the basements of the nearest building and remain there until you are told it is safe to do otherwise. No fog has been sighted, but brujo attacks have been reported in old town, in the area around the Pincoya Hotel and Parque del Cielo.”