Apparition (The Hungry Ghosts)

by Trish J. MacGregor

  Javier turned around and looked at Wayra without any recognition whatsoever in his dark eyes. “Yes, I’m Javier,” he said in Spanish. “Do I know you?”

  Uh, yeah, since you were in diapers. “I’m Wayra. I drop by your bakery a couple of times a week for breakfast. My wife and I attended your son’s baptism. Your wife makes the best arepas in Ecuador.”

  Javier smiled politely. “You must have me confused with someone else. I don’t have a son. I’m not married. And I don’t own a bakery. Excuse me. I need to get to the cemetery for the burial.”

  Stunned, Wayra watched him hurry off to a scooter, hop on, and chug away. Wayra scanned the faces in the crowd, but didn’t see anyone else who looked familiar to him. He wished Pedro were with him. Pedro knew most of the priests in Esperanza and would likely know the priest in charge of this parish, who now stood on the church steps, talking to several mourners who lingered.

  Wayra moved closer, noticed Kali circling silently above the church, and waited until he could speak to the priest alone. When the others had left to join the procession to the cemetery, Wayra approached the priest, a small man with gray hair, a dimpled chin, chipmunk cheeks. Wayra addressed him in Spanish.

  “Excuse me, may I ask you a question, Father?”

  “Of course. You are…?”

  Wayra gave a phony name. “Esteban.”

  “Thank you for attending the service, Esteban. It means a great deal to the families to see all the support they have.”

  “Such a tragedy about the child,” Wayra said, referring to the smaller of the two coffins.

  “Indeed. She was found wandering through the commercial district, blood pouring down her face. She didn’t know what had happened. She lasted for only three days in intensive care.”

  Three days? The black crud had swept over El Bosque only last night. Was there a connection between the priest’s sense of time and all the odd hours that appeared on every timekeeping device in El Bosque before its disappearance? “Why is the sky a perpetual twilight?” he asked.

  The priest frowned and dropped his head back, peering upward, then crossed himself quickly, kissing his thumbnail as he finished. “No one remembers.” He spoke softly, with obvious puzzlement and regret. “Most of my parishioners choose to ignore it. The consensus, I think, is that the brujos are behind it. But since we seem to be protected from the brujos here, no one questions too closely. What do you know about it, Esteban?”

  “Nothing definitive. I was hoping you had the answers. And why haven’t the dead birds been cleaned up?” He gestured toward the corpses to the right of where they stood.

  “Dead birds?” The priest looked in the direction Wayra motioned. “I don’t see any dead birds, Esteban.”

  This pronouncement told Wayra everything he needed to know about the extent of the perceptual delusion. It shocked him nonetheless. He walked over to the closest bird corpses, picked up a sparrow and an owl, and carried them over to the priest, holding them up by the feet. “Dead birds, Father. Can you see them?”

  The priest looked at Wayra, at his upraised hand, blinked rapidly several times, then backed away from him. “I … I … listen, Esteban, if you aren’t feeling well, there’s a clinic two blocks over. You should talk to someone. A lot of us here have been talking to these mental health professionals who—”

  “Are you telling me you can’t see them?” Wayra moved toward the priest, the dead birds dangling from his hand. “A sparrow, a barn owl.” He practically rubbed the corpses in the priest’s face, who only threw up his hands. “Please, Esteban. You should go to the clinic, to the—”

  Wayra turned away from him, still holding the bird corpses, and hurried across the street to where Ricardo waited. “They can’t see the dead birds, Ricardo. And they can’t remember anything.”

  The shade of the trees ebbed and flowed across Ricardo’s face, his virtual face. The brujo reached out and stroked the feathers of the dead birds. “We should bury them, Wayra. We should bury the thousands of birds that have died here.”

  “It would take weeks. We don’t have weeks.”

  “But we have a few minutes,” Ricardo said, and plucked the dead sparrow and owl from Wayra’s hand and walked quickly, resolutely, to a pile of leaves at the curb.

  He dug a hole through the leaves and placed the corpses gently inside, then moved the fallen leaves over the bodies. Wayra felt strangely moved by the brujo’s show of compassion. Dominica had never shown compassion toward anything or anyone.

  “I’m going to the burial,” Wayra said.

  Ricardo stood, brushing his hands together. “No fucking way I’m going to a cemetery.”

  “You’re not a brujo here, Ricardo, you don’t have to be afraid of cemeteries.”

  He gave a small, nervous laugh and ran his hand over his bald head. “I guess not. That guy, the baker, didn’t recognize you, did he.”

  It wasn’t a question. “No. And he doesn’t seem to have any memory of his family or of the bakery. And then there’s the fact that no one sees the dead birds.”

  “When El Bosque was disappeared, it wiped out the memories of everyone in here. Several hundred people.”

  “But they remember brujos.”

  “Of course. We’re as much a part of their collective history as chasers and shifters.”

  “I think the amnesia is an unexpected side effect of what’s happened here.”

  “Which benefits the chasers. What a perfect coincidence.”

  He had a point.

  “And I’ll tell you this, Wayra. These supposedly evolved souls have messed up worse than anyone in my tribe ever did.”

  Wayra’s fatigue swept over him suddenly and completely. He stumbled and Ricardo caught his arm, steadying him, and helped him over to a bench under a tree. Wayra sank onto it. “Thanks.”

  “Self-preservation, amigo. I didn’t know how to get in here to find Naomi and the others in my tribe and I don’t know how to get out of here, either. So if you die on me, I’m stuck in this twilight zone and trapped in this body. Like you, I deserve a choice.”

  “You brujos never give a prospective host a choice, Ricardo. This is what it feels like.”

  Ricardo stepped back, anger flashing in his eyes. “So what’re you saying exactly? That being in here is, like, what? Some kind of karma, Wayra?”

  “Karma,” Wayra repeated. “Bad word. It’s more like a mirror, Ricardo. You’re now experiencing what your hosts experience and I’m beginning to realize just how old and tired I really am. And these people, who endured so much during the years Dominica’s tribe terrorized the city, are suffering from a collective amnesia. The story is changing, Ricardo. Shifter, brujo, chaser, the living and the dead. We all knew this would happen eventually. But we never knew when or how it would happen. The interesting part of all this is that you and I, shifter and brujo, and the parrot, appear to be the only ones who have gotten into the disappeared area. What does that tell us?”

  Ricardo, usually a master of snappy, hostile responses, was strangely silent. He looked down at his shoes, then off to his right where a siren sounded, then ran his right hand across the back of his neck and stared up into the twilight. “The city is letting us work through this without the chaser intervention?”

  “But the chasers caused this,” Wayra said.

  “Yes, but they can’t get in now. I don’t know what to think about the parrot.” Ricardo kicked at a stone in front of him. “I feel like I’m being coerced into ending something I’m not ready to end yet, Wayra. I resent that. Once we’re out of here, I’ll fight for my tribe’s right to occupy Esperanza alongside the living. I’m going to look for Naomi and the others. When one of us has succeeded, we should meet in front of the market. If we can find it.”

  With that, he sauntered off down the road, muscular arms swinging at his sides, an ancient brujo trapped in a black man’s body. Wayra stayed on the bench a while longer, watching Kali as she spiraled down through the twilight and landed on the b
ench beside him. “I wish you could talk, Kali,” he murmured. “You know, a regular conversation.”

  She cocked her head to one side, peering at him with those strangely lovely green eyes, then squawked, “Vamonos, amigo.” Wayra pressed his hands to his thighs and stood. His bones ached. Cemetery first, he thought, and started walking.

  The sky remained locked in a forever twilight, without clouds or stars or a rising moon. Even the air temperature stayed the same, a pleasant coolness, probably around sixty degrees. El Bosque’s present state struck him as a kind of limbo—parked in some netherworld where everyone suffered from amnesia, selective perception, and the air temperature and light remained static.

  He brought out his iPhone and was surprised he had a signal. He texted Illary and received an error message that the network had insufficient coverage to comply with his request. Suppose he texted someone lost in this place? He composed a careful text to Tess, taking into account that she might be afflicted with the same amnesia as the priest and Javier.

  He didn’t receive an error message this time, and when he checked the Sent box, the message was there. By the time he reached the cemetery ten minutes later, no response had come through. He refused to speculate about what that might mean.

  He walked into the cemetery, where a crowd of perhaps fifty had gathered at the gravesites. The priest Wayra had talked to at the church was addressing the mourners. Wayra made his way to the back of the crowd, listening, observing the people nearest to him, wondering how pervasive their amnesia was.

  When the priest finished speaking, Wayra stepped forward and asked if he could say a few words. The priest looked uncertain about it, but was too polite to put up a fuss. He handed Wayra the mike.

  “These two tragedies were not accidental,” Wayra began. “They are the direct result of what happened to El Bosque when the chasers attempted to remove it from the physical world. It’s what they intend to do to all of Esperanza. And apparently, in order to do that, they have to make sure none of you remember what happened. A collective amnesia.”

  The crowd stirred, people looked uneasily at each other, the priest shuffled his feet nervously. Wayra rushed on. “Javier,” he said, looking directly at the young man. “You were at the Café Taquina when a moving wave of blackness consumed most of a hillside and part of the rear deck of the restaurant. You got caught in this blackness and Ian Ritter and several other men—including the gentleman on your right—struggled to free you. But the blackness took you both. Now you’re here. Why is the sky a perpetual twilight? Why can’t any of you see the hundreds of dead birds scattered around? Try to remember. Try.”

  “I don’t know this man,” Javier shouted. “He’s an intruder, he’s—”

  The priest grabbed the mike from Wayra. “Señor, please, this is a private funeral. I must ask you to leave. The—”

  “He should be arrested,” someone yelled.

  “Arrest him, arrest him,” the crowd chanted, and surged forward.

  Wayra shifted by reflex, and was relieved that it worked, that he could still shift. He raced between gravestones, headed for the nearest thicket, Kali flying high above him. The crowd screamed that only devils could shape-shift, and a handful of men tore after him, hurling stones, waving shovels. Within minutes, a truck barreled through the graveyard, with more men in the back of it—armed men—and rapidly gained on him.

  If they caught him, they would probably stone him to death or simply shoot him. An elemental panic seized Wayra and he plunged into the thicket, shifted into his human form, but the shift was incomplete, his left hand remained a paw, with fur extending up his forearm.

  He scaled one of the monkey puzzle trees, Kali touched down in the upper branches. He was midway up when the truck slammed through the woods, and even though he wasn’t fully hidden by the branches, no one looked up.

  He climbed higher, wedged his body in a V formed by a pair of thick branches, and hooked his arms around them. It wasn’t long before the men on foot appeared beneath him, armed vigilantes. Where had they gotten the weapons? Were they also a byproduct of what had happened here? They suffered from such extreme amnesia they didn’t question what was happening around them, to them.

  The men spread out through the woods, whistling, laughing, calling for the doggy devil. Wayra didn’t move, barely breathed. It was as if he were reliving the dark ignorance of medieval times, when shifters and alleged witches were hunted with maniacal obsession.

  When he could no longer hear them, he parted the leaves with his hand and scanned the area. No men, no truck. Did he dare climb down? Would they head back this way?

  He moved his body slightly, so he would have a better view of where the crowd had been. Only the cemetery employees remained. He glanced up at Kali, who flew down to his shoulder and rubbed her beak across his cheek.

  Now, he thought, and carefully climbed down. “Kali, find Tess,” he murmured. “Do you understand what I’m saying? Find Tess.”

  The parrot cocked her head, those strangely human eyes regarding him closely. Then she lifted up from his shoulder and took off.

  He shifted and sniffed at the air, following the scents of the men, and ran in the opposite direction. It occurred to him that he might be pushing his luck. When he shifted back into his human form, would he be even more incomplete? Would he be able to do it at all? Or would he, like Ricardo, be stuck? It terrified him.

  Thirteen

  Amnesiac

  For the longest time, she sat on the curb in front of the market, shoveling baked beans from a can into her mouth. At first, she used a plastic spoon she’d found somewhere, but when the spoon broke, she used her fingers.

  The beans tasted delicious. They were salty, but most canned goods were either too salty or too sweet. Open any can of fruit in her cart, for example, and it would be floating in a heavy syrup. She actually didn’t mind the syrup. It kept her hydrated and energetic and less dependent on bottled water, which was sadly lacking in her supplies.

  She had no idea why she was sitting in front of the market or why she had a grocery cart next to her loaded with stuff. She didn’t know where she was, why she was, and she didn’t know who she was. The mystery of the interrogative pronouns floated around her, just daring her to pursue them—all of them, any one of them.

  The who. Okay, she would start simple, with the basics. Who am I?

  Nothing.

  Where am I?

  Blank.

  Whom do I love? Who loves me?

  She felt something, but couldn’t grasp or name it. It just rolled around inside of her, one more loose screw, and triggered flutters of panic in her chest. How could she not know who the hell she was?

  When she’d eaten through the beans, she stood and set the empty can in the grocery cart until she could find a garbage bin. Why were there so many dead birds on the sidewalk, in the street? They lay in broken glass that she suspected came from the window of the market behind her, where she presumably had gotten the supplies in her cart. Yet, she couldn’t recall being inside the market. And who or what had shattered the window? A vague memory flopped around inside her like a fish out of water, something connected to the market, but the harder she struggled to find the memory, the more elusive it became.

  She walked over to the broken door and peered inside. A dozen or more abandoned carts loaded with food and supplies stood every which way, blocking the entrance to aisles. Other fully loaded carts had been overturned and the floor around them was littered with merchandise. The air held a peculiar stink that was somehow familiar. She suspected it came from freezer compartments, where food was going bad because there wasn’t any electricity. Why not? What had happened to the power? Was there power anywhere on this road?

  How long had she been here?

  C’mon, think. Remember. She kicked a can out of her way and it rolled down the sidewalk, across shards of glass and dead birds.

  Judging by the state of her soiled clothes, the dry, tangled feel of her hair, t
he way she smelled, she had been here a while. But how long was a while? Several days? Weeks? Days, she decided. If it were weeks, she would smell a lot worse.

  She felt an urge to slip inside, but didn’t want to leave her cart out here unattended. She had seen other street people pushing their carts around, sleeping inside them to keep their stuff from being stolen. She didn’t understand why any of this was going on, sensed she didn’t usually live like this, but that it was the way she must live now to survive.

  So how do I usually live?

  Another big, fat blank.

  “Shit, shit,” she muttered, pressing her fists into her eyes. She couldn’t answer the most basic questions about herself. Why not? Had she suffered a concussion? Brain damage?

  She ran her fingers through her tangled hair, feeling her scalp. No pain, no cuts, her fingers didn’t come away bloody. Had she had a stroke? Am I dead?

  These speculations only increased her anxiety and frustration. Since the market kept beckoning her to enter, she thought it might hold some clue to her identity. She pushed her cart up to the door, which hung by a single hinge and swung like a pendulum. Her cart’s wheels clattered as she moved through the doorway, the noise echoing in the strange, tight silence.

  First, she looked through the carts loaded with food and supplies, plucked out items she might be able to use, and dropped them in her cart. The fruits looked overly ripe, the veggies were shriveled or turning brown, but she was too hungry to care. She peeled a soft banana and gobbled it down, and added radishes, a couple of apples, several shriveled oranges, and a zucchini squash to her basket. She found a box of large kitchen matches, some bath soap, and a tall unopened bottle of water. She twisted the cap and drank until her thirst was sated, then put everything into her cart.

  She moved the abandoned carts out of her way, pushed hers a safe distance from the door, then picked up a hand basket and started down the closest aisle. A pot or pan, cooking utensils, olive oil, shampoo, towels, a razor, a hairbrush, toothbrush and toothpaste: she could use all of it.