Apparition (The Hungry Ghosts)

by Trish J. MacGregor

  Lauren slipped her arms around Ian’s waist, relieved that he was real, that her arms didn’t pass through him, and pulled him back against the seat. His head flopped to one side. Beneath his lids, his eyes moved rapidly. REM sleep. Ian was dreaming. Was she dreaming, too? Was her dream lucid? Lauren pinched her forearm so hard the skin briefly turned a bright red. Not a dream. Then again, when Tess and Ian had had their near death experiences that had brought them to Esperanza as transitional souls, everything for them, Tess had told her, had seemed undeniably real.

  She checked Ian. His pulse was fast, but he otherwise appeared to be okay. She shook him by the shoulders, and when he didn’t respond, she slapped him hard across the face and screamed, “Ian, wake up!”

  He suddenly bolted upright, eyes wide open, and grabbed her wrist.

  “What the fuck,” he sputtered, and released her wrist and looked around slowly, like a man coming out of a dream. “This looks like … brujo fog.”

  “I don’t think it is. It doesn’t drift through the open windows. I … don’t hear the litany. Whatever it is, it doesn’t move. I can’t rouse the others. Their vitals are fine, but they’re unconscious.”

  Ian held her gaze for a moment and she sensed he was about to say the obvious, that dead people didn’t have vital signs. “What happened to everyone else?”

  “No idea.”

  Ian gave her hand a quick, reassuring squeeze, then pushed unsteadily to his feet and drew her over to the open window. They leaned out into the whiteness.

  “It’s not cold or warm or damp or anything,” Ian said softly.

  “It just sits here.”

  “Does the bus start?”

  “I haven’t tried it.”

  “Let’s see.”

  They had to move Kesey from the driver’s seat to the floor, not an easy task; he weighed more than two hundred pounds and, at the moment, it was all deadweight. They finally got him on the floor. Ian grasped him by the ankles, Lauren took hold of his arms, and they dragged him back to where McKenna lay. Neither man moved or regained consciousness.

  Crouched on either side of the two men, she and Ian stared down at them. Lauren suddenly felt that the whiteness was listening to them, that it was somehow conscious. She whispered, “Maybe the bus won’t start for the same reason these three Pranksters are unconscious.”

  Ian’s gaze met hers. “Because they aren’t real?”

  “Because they’re dead.”

  “And the bus was conjured from their collective memories.”

  “Exactly. Maybe their purpose was to get us into El Bosque. The rest is up to us.”

  “We don’t even know for sure that we’re in El Bosque, Lauren.”

  “Well, we know the bus plowed into the whiteness, we saw that happen.”

  They moved quickly to the front of the bus. Ian slipped behind the steering wheel, Lauren dropped into the passenger seat. The key was still in the ignition, Ian turned it. The ignition clicked, the engine refused to turn over, and Ian tried again. And again. “Wait a minute,” he said. “You traveled on this bus, you still have a memory of it. That may be the only reason the bus is still solid and here. You try it. Let’s switch places.”

  Lauren was shorter than either Kesey or Ian, so she adjusted the seat, then sat there for a moment, hands on the steering wheel, and vividly recalled those months more than forty years ago when she had traveled on Further through northern California with Kesey and Garcia. She knew that McKenna and his brother had traveled with them, too, but she couldn’t recall whether it was for a couple of days or months. And where had she met McKenna? She couldn’t remember.

  Her hands tightened on the wheel, a wave of panic washed through her, she squeezed her eyes shut. I know this, I know this …

  Then it came to her. She had met McKenna at a party in San Francisco. They had done peyote and spent hours talking about the nature of reality. She had introduced him to Kesey and Garcia.

  “Lauren?” Ian said.

  “Yeah. Yeah. I’m just pulling my memories in around me.” She patted the steering wheel and lovingly ran her hand over the old radio, the dashboard, the door, the key and ignition. She turned the dial on the radio and music abruptly boomed from it, one of the top hundred songs from 1968, the Rolling Stones’ “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” “Yessss.” She pumped her fist into the air, then turned the key and hit the gas pedal simultaneously.

  The engine roared to life, Further lurched forward, and the whiteness parted like the Red Sea, creating a narrow corridor through which she drove. The odometer needle read 110,952 miles. Lauren switched on the headlights, the Stones kept singing, she picked up speed, and pretty soon, the speedometer needle swung toward eighty, then ninety.

  But why didn’t the wind whistle through the open windows? Why didn’t the whiteness on either side of them drift apart as they passed? Why were the numbers on the odometer spinning? Why did she suddenly feel a tremendous, agonizing pressure in her skull?

  Lauren glanced at Ian. His shoes were pressed against the glove compartment and he rocked backward and forward in the passenger seat, hands pressed to the sides of his head, his mouth open in a scream she couldn’t hear. Then the pressure in her skull blew out through her crown and she gasped and her hands flew to the top of her head as if to hold her brain inside.

  The bus swerved crazily through the fog, and even though she grabbed the wheel and took her foot off the gas pedal, the speedometer needle leaped past a hundred and ten, Further’s top speed. The pressure that had gripped her head now seized her entire body. Her bones felt as if they were being crushed, her musculature collapsed, the skin on her face peeled away. In the ensuing seconds, the odometer stopped spinning, each digit locking into place with a resounding click until it read: 111,111. The mother of all mystical portals.

  Then the world turned from white to black and the blackness swallowed her.

  Seventeen

  Memory

  1.

  Charlie felt like it took him and Karina hours to think themselves into old town Esperanza. They moved like slugs, every inch a struggle, every mile counted by the miles still to go. Twice, they tried to assume their virtual forms, but simply couldn’t do it. When they merged their essences, they gathered a bit more momentum, and were finally able to break free of whatever force gripped El Bosque and the area around it. Once they felt stronger, they separated their essences and moved forward under their own volition.

  Suppose we can never assume virtual forms again? Karina asked. I won’t be able to touch you, Charlie. We won’t—

  Then we incarnate. The words rushed from his mind so quickly that it shocked him. He didn’t want to incarnate just yet, not unless he could remember his twelve years here and his life as Charlie Livingston. But because every soul had to cross the river Styx—the Río Palo was its equivalent here—he knew he wouldn’t remember much of anything about his previous lives or his life in the between.

  And that infuriated him. What good was any of this if you had no memories?

  He and Karina finally reached Parque del Cielo, the city’s oldest park. They thought themselves onto a bench in the shade of the giant ceiba tree, the tree of life, the first piece of Esperanza to enter the physical world. Neither of them spoke immediately. They understood the stakes: if they couldn’t assume their virtual forms here, where the energy of the city was the strongest, then it wouldn’t happen anywhere.

  Charlie? She repeated her question.

  We go to plan B.

  Which is…?

  I don’t know yet.

  Charlie created a mental image of his favorite Quechuan form, but when only his right arm appeared, he quickly shed it and thought himself into his Charlie Livingston form, white trousers, shirt, hat, shoes. Only his head materialized.

  It’s not working, Karina whispered, just her mouth and her black braid visible.

  New forms, we need new forms.

  The moment he thought this, his new virtual form emerged, lightning q
uick, almost as if it had been waiting to be summoned. He went over to the fountain and looked at his reflection in the water. Not bad. Latino dude who looked to be twentysomething, with thick dark hair and the muscular body of a gym rat.

  “It worked, Charlie, it worked,” Karina said, hurrying over to him. Her new virtual form was that of an Asian woman, a form he had never seen before, and he couldn’t stop looking at her. His eyes moved slowly from her face to her toes and back up again. “You’re stunning. I feel like I should ask you for a date.”

  She touched his muscular arms. “Maybe I’d better join a gym. How’d you know it would work?”

  “I didn’t. The real issue is why these new forms worked and our old ones didn’t. C’mon, let’s go find the others.”

  They hurried through the park. Several elderly men and women were feeding the birds, a young mother sat in the shade, chattering away on her cell, absently pushing a stroller with her foot, and several young men shot hoops on a small basketball court. No one paid any attention to them. Were he and Karina even visible to any of them?

  Charlie walked over to an old lady tossing handfuls of seed to a pair of doves. He just stood there, waiting for her to glance up. When she didn’t, he spoke to her in Spanish. “Where did you buy the birdseed?”

  No response.

  Karina sat down on the bench next to the woman and also spoke in Spanish. “Excuse me, but can you see us? Hear us?”

  No reaction.

  “Shit,” Charlie murmured.

  Karina got up and walked behind the bench and ran her hand over the woman’s hair. She flinched, glanced around uneasily, but that was all. Invisible to the living. Misery gripped him. His eyes met Karina’s and the two of them hurried forward, hands clutched tightly, as if to reassure themselves that they were, at least, visible and real to each other.

  They entered the cobblestone alley and both of them broke into a run and headed for La Última, the café where the council usually met. They passed the bodega, the Chinese takeout, the used bookstore, and stopped.

  The café, the place created by collective chaser thought, was a boarded-up ruin and had a NO TRESPASSING sign plastered to one of the planks.

  Charlie tore off the sign, ripped away the plank across the front door, and kicked it open. The door swung inward, creaking and complaining, the light from the alley barely penetrating the dark interior. He and Karina stepped inside, into air that smelled wet, moldy, old, the way Charlie imagined a leaky coffin might smell. He heard water dripping somewhere, puddles of water glistened on the floor. The emptiness shocked him. All that remained were the counter, two round stools, and the table where the council members had sat during their last meeting.

  He walked over to it, drew his fingers through the inch of dust, and turned, staring at the counter where he had placed his order only days ago. How many days? He no longer knew. He could no longer keep track of time in the world of the living.

  “Charlie,” Karina said softly, and pointed at the clock on the wall behind the counter.

  The hands were frozen on 11:11.

  Like in El Bosque. Deep inside his chest, something exploded and he lurched toward the stools and sank onto one, wheezing like an old man with emphysema. Panic attack, he thought. He was having a panic attack.

  Karina gently rubbed his back. “It’s okay, Charlie. Breathe through it.”

  “Breathe through what?” he burst out. “For years, I believed there was nothing worse than death. Now I believe there’s nothing worse than being a marginalized ghost.”

  She sat on the stool next to him. In the dust that covered the counter, she drew a heart with their initials inside it. “That’s our power.”

  Love. Okay. Fine. No argument with that. But his and Karina’s love for each other couldn’t rebuild a place the council had constructed, couldn’t fight against the force that had prevented the two of them from assuming virtual forms earlier. The city, Esperanza herself, had seized control of her own destiny and he was just beginning to understand what that meant for him. For Karina. For the chaser council. For all of them, the living and the dead.

  Fissures suddenly exploded through the counter at which they sat and they both wrenched back. Then the café’s floor belched, heaved upward, and the counter split in half, and Charlie and Karina leaped up and stumbled back. The floor heaved again, knocking Karina off her feet, and Charlie grabbed her by the arms, jerked her up, and they ran out into the alley.

  Seconds later, the roof of the café caved in and the remnants of the building collapsed. A thick cloud of dust billowed up and out and moved through Charlie’s new virtual body, the dust of collective thoughts and desires, a chaser dust that spanned centuries, that held the DNA of Esperanza. He slammed to the ground in a recessed doorway on the other side of the alley, and for the longest time, he and Karina lay like spoons in a drawer crowded with silverware, the dust falling over them, around them.

  Then it occurred to Charlie that he didn’t have any idea why he hid, why he was afraid. He couldn’t die again, neither of them could. But self-doubt might annihilate him.

  “They’ve scattered,” Victor said, appearing abruptly in front of Charlie. “Most of the chaser council has gone elsewhere.” Victor’s virtual self sped through period clothing—Renaissance, Dark Ages, ancient civilizations—until he settled on shorts and a T-shirt fit for modern times in the Florida keys. “We’re pretty much on our own. You, me, Karina, Liana, Franco, Newton. Pilar is probably on our side, too, but I don’t have any idea where she fled. Our task is—”

  “To free those in El Bosque who can be freed,” Charlie said.

  Victor pointed his index finger at Charlie, and suddenly they all stood in front of Maria’s home. It looked like an old sepia photo, flat and faded, a bygone memory.

  “This is happening all over,” Victor said. “Wherever council members have lived, wherever chasers have congregated, the buildings are disintegrating, fading away. Collectively, the council members are withdrawing their energy from Esperanza. Even the three of us are doing it to some degree, Charlie.”

  “Speak for yourself, Victor.”

  “Then how do you explain that?” He swept his arm toward Maria’s place.

  “Esperanza is claiming her own power and we’re being rendered irrelevant.”

  Victor frowned. “That’s cynical, Charlie.”

  “It may be cynical,” Karina said. “But it may also be true. If I remember correctly, the fourteenth council member predicted something like this centuries ago, before she was tossed off the council.”

  “I thought she was tossed off because she advocated for an animal representative on the council,” Victor said.

  “That was part of it. But the bottom line, Victor, is that the chaser council at that time believed that nothing was more powerful than they were. And here was one of their own telling them that at some point in the future, Esperanza herself would become so powerful that she would determine her own fate.”

  Victor’s expression spoke volumes about the shock he felt just then. “If what you’re saying is true, Karina, then we may not be able to free those people from El Bosque unless that’s what Esperanza wants. Even the ghost train may not be able to penetrate the whiteness.”

  “That’s the problem,” Charlie said quietly. “We don’t have any idea what the city wants. So we’d better make an attempt to find out.”

  “How?” Victor asked.

  “Let’s go meet the ghost train.”

  2.

  Outside, the angry throng pelted the greenhouse with stones. The sound of breaking glass told Wayra they probably had less than a minute to find the opening to the tunnels.

  Kali suddenly dropped down to a bench filled with small plastic containers that held cuttings from other plants. She squawked and fussed and fluttered her wings as if scolding Wayra for not understanding. He dropped to his knees next to the bench and ran his hand and paw over the ground beneath it, searching for a hatch, a loose board, someth
ing. But he couldn’t find anything.

  “There’s no door here,” Ricardo said. “And we’re running out of time.”

  “Every greenhouse has a hatch that opens to the tunnels.” Wayra looked around frantically, certain the opening had to be in this vicinity. Otherwise the bird wouldn’t have led them to this spot. “It’s here. It has to be here.”

  “I told you not to trust him,” Naomi snapped. “This is a trap. This whole thing is a trap. And why should we be following a stupid bird? Tell me that, Ricardo.”

  “Shut up, Naomi,” Tess said, pushing the bench out of the way.

  Kali, still squawking, flew upward, then dived at Naomi, and she stumbled back, waving her arms, shrieking, “Get away from me, you stupid parrot, get away from me!”

  She fell back into a second bench, knocking it over, and sprawled in a thicket of tomato plants. Wayra pushed the fallen containers out of the way and dug through dirt and weeds until he felt a cool metal surface. “Here, it’s here.” He unlatched the hatch, opened it, and peered into a dark hole faintly lit by the glowing lights most of the tunnels had. The drop was maybe six feet. “Get inside, fast.”

  A great explosion of glass at the other end of the greenhouse announced the mob’s arrival. Smoke them out, smoke them out, they shouted, and the flickering flames of their torches set trees and plants on fire. Tess dropped through the opening first, then Ricardo. Naomi hung back, arms clutched to her body, and shook her head violently. “No, no, it’s a trick. You tricked me once, Wayra, never again.”

  “They’ll kill you.”

  “I’m already dead.”

  Wayra threw his arms around her and dropped her down the hatch. Kali swept in after her, and Wayra quickly pulled the bench over the opening, an awkward maneuver with just one hand. He hoped it would buy them a few minutes. Then he crawled under the bench and eased himself over the side of the hatch, his right hand gripping the metal handle. As he dropped, the hatch slammed shut.

  This tunnel, like others beneath the city, had small glowing lights that ran along the base of the concrete walls. The lights along the ceiling didn’t work, Wayra noticed, but there was still sufficient illumination for him to see the others—Kali, perched on Tess’s shoulder, Naomi on the floor, sobbing that she had broken her ankle, Ricardo crouched beside her, moving his hands over her ankle.