Apparition (The Hungry Ghosts)

by Trish J. MacGregor

  “It’s not broken,” Ricardo told her. “You just sprained it. C’mon, we need to keep moving.” He tried to help her up, but she wrenched back from him.

  “I can’t walk, okay? I … I can’t walk and … and Wayra threw me down here, he—”

  “He saved your ass,” Tess said. “So stop whining. Right now, the parrot is our best bet out of here.” With that, she loped after Kali, who flew straight down the middle of the tunnel.

  “I’ll carry you, Naomi,” Ricardo said.

  “Stay with me,” she pleaded. “I don’t want to travel with them. I don’t trust them.”

  “I’m not dying in here,” Ricardo told her.

  “We’re already dead,” she shouted. “Why do you keep talking like we aren’t?”

  Wayra leaned into her face. “Let me spell it out for you. Your virtual form became a host body, you can’t get out of it, and you can die in that body.”

  Shouts, directly above them. Wayra hesitated a moment longer, wondering why he bothered, then took off after Tess and Kali.

  3.

  The tunnels spread out beneath El Bosque like splayed fingers on a giant’s hand. Tess followed Kali up one finger, down another, up and down. Once, she lost sight of the parrot and Kali flew back to find her. By then, Wayra had caught up to her and Ricardo was directly behind him, with Naomi hobbling along behind him. That was when she heard the echoing shouts of the mob, smelled the smoke, and realized the crazies had found the hatch and at least some of them had entered the tunnels.

  Kali vanished into yet another tunnel, Tess ran faster. The shouts sounded closer, closer. Beads of sweat rolled down the sides of her face, fear coiled in the pit of her stomach, a viper ready to spring. Then the tunnel abruptly dead-ended. Kali made a heart-wrenching sound, a cry that sounded almost human to Tess, and quickly flew back the way they had just come.

  “A trap,” Naomi gasped, panting hard. “Just like I said.”

  “The parrot has been down here before and we haven’t.” Wayra’s voice sounded tight, tense. “If you’ve got a better idea, go for it.”

  “Well, shit, it looks to me like the parrot is lost,” Ricardo spat.

  Kali swept toward them, past them, her wings flapping hard, and flew back and forth in front of the dead end, left wall to right to left again, a space of perhaps six feet. “What’s she doing?” Tess asked.

  “It’s like she’s … weaving,” Wayra replied.

  “We’re trying another tunnel.” Ricardo sounded terrified. “That mob is just minutes away.”

  “Look,” Tess exclaimed and pointed.

  As Kali repeatedly flew back and forth, the wall started to fissure, then crack, and the cracks sped quickly toward a central spot in the wall. An opening appeared in that spot and the faster she flew, the larger it got. It was as if invisible hands were pulling back on the concrete, widening the opening.

  “She’s no parrot,” Ricardo breathed. “She’s … something else.”

  Kali circled around them once, squawking, then sailed through the opening. Tess could hear her on the other side of it, fussing, talking. “Vamonos, amigos, rápido.”

  Wayra climbed through first; his head appeared in the opening moments later. “Quick, I don’t think she can hold it like this much longer.”

  “C’mon, Naomi,” Ricardo urged, tugging on her hand.

  But she jerked free of his grip and backed away from him, tears rolling down her cheeks. “I’ll … I’ll find my own way out of here.”

  Tess pushed through the hole, with Ricardo quickly following her. Naomi didn’t appear. Wayra shouted for her to hurry, but Naomi wasn’t in that tunnel anymore. Kali flew back and forth across the opening, the tips of her wings brushing against the fissures and cracks in the concrete, until they began to vanish. The hole started shrinking, but not quickly enough. One of the crazies raced into the tunnel, waving his torch, yelling, “In here, they’re in here. Behind the wall.” He dropped his torch and dived for the hole even as the concrete around it continued to repair itself, to weave together.

  Tess and Wayra rushed forward to help him, to pull him through, but within seconds, the hole had closed completely, severing his right shoulder, arm, and head, which dropped to the ground.

  “Fuck, fuck.” Tess lurched back. Her stomach somersaulted, she nearly gagged on her own bile.

  Wayra grabbed her arm. “We can’t do anything for him, Tess.”

  He pulled her away from the wall and she whipped around and raced after him and Ricardo and Kali, into a shorter tunnel and up a flight of crumbling stone steps. Wayra and Ricardo threw their bodies against the old wooden door, it swung open, and they stumbled into the altar area of a small church. Tess hurried after them, shut the door, bolted it, and sank down against the wood until she was sitting on the floor.

  Kali landed on Tess’s forearm, her beak open, her soft green breast throbbing. Tess shrugged off her pack, unzipped it, and pulled out a bottle of water. She poured some into her hand and Kali dipped her beak into it, drank, paused, drank some more, then hopped to the floor. Tess tilted the bottle and slowly poured water over Kali. She unfurled her wings, tilted her head back, preened herself, and made a soft, trilling noise of contentment.

  Tess polished off what was left of the water, fished out two more bottles and got up and gave them to Wayra and Ricardo. The brujo’s eyes darted around as he gulped from the bottle. When he finally had sated his thirst, he wiped his arm across his mouth. “A church. I don’t do churches.”

  “Or cemeteries,” Wayra reminded him.

  Tess wondered if he would burn up if she poured holy water on him. With that thought, another memory surfaced, of herself hiding in this very church. It had been deserted except for an elderly couple and … a priest, yes, a priest. And then another chunk of the memory crashed into place.

  “I hid from you in here,” Tess burst out, staring accusingly at Ricardo. “You seized a priest and threatened me.”

  Ricardo looked guilty. “The situation was different then.”

  “Yeah, you weren’t trapped in your virtual body.” She noticed that the mark on her wrist didn’t burn or itch even though she was only a foot from him. “I like you better like this, Ricardo.”

  “Only because I’m no threat to you.”

  “It’s more than that. I think you’ve changed.”

  He seemed bemused. “Before I was Darth Vader and now I’m Luke Skywalker?”

  “Maybe not quite as extreme as that.”

  She pushed to her feet and went over to one of the stained-glass windows. In the center of a blue pane, part of the Virgin Mary’s robe, was a piece of clear glass the size and shape of a dinner plate, a replacement pane. Tess peered out.

  Twilight still clung to the air, the road out front looked deserted. Definitely the same church, she thought. Next door was the Mercado del León, the market where the blackness had taken her. She had come full circle in El Bosque.

  After a while, Wayra joined her at the window. He gestured at the blankets and pillows piled in one of the pews. “I found those downstairs. You and Ricardo should get some sleep. I’ll take the first watch.”

  “We’re still in El Bosque. What’re we doing in here?”

  “I have no idea. But this is where Kali brought us.” He tilted his head toward the pew closest to them, where Kali huddled, trembling. “And until she’s rested and can show us the way out or until the city decides what to do with us, we’re stuck here.”

  “What is she, Wayra?”

  The shifter shook his head and jammed his hands in the pockets of his jacket. “Whatever she is, she apparently commands the residual magic of the city. She might nibble at any of the food we still have. I’m going to find some reinforcements for the front door, just in case the crazies figure out where we are.”

  Tess nodded, retrieved her pack, picked up a couple of blankets and a pillow, and went over to the pew where Kali was. She made a bed for herself, gently picked up Kali, set her on the pl
ump pillow, and dug a battered apple from her pack. She bit into it and offered the piece to the parrot. Kali pecked at it a couple of times, then lost interest and waddled to the edge of the top blanket and disappeared beneath it. Tess drew it carefully over the two of them, aware of the parrot nestling down against her leg, her body chilled.

  Tess’s head sank into the pillow, her eyes screamed to shut. She turned on her side, her spine against the back of the pew, and drew her knees up toward her chest, offering Kali a culvert of denim and body warmth. Maybe she dozed, maybe she only thought she dozed. But when she snapped into full consciousness, Ricardo sat in the pew in front of her, a tall black man, a brujo trapped in his virtual form, his chin resting on the backs of his massive hands.

  “I can’t remember what it was like to die, Tess. That’s how long I’ve been what I am.”

  “For me, it wasn’t much different than being alive,” she said. “There were things that didn’t make sense, but once I realized I was dead or near death, everything clicked into place.”

  “So where is Naomi now?”

  “Maybe she found another way out of the tunnels.”

  “And maybe not. Maybe those loons killed her.”

  Tess didn’t say anything.

  “You know, it’s weird. I want to hate you. But I can’t seem to muster it. I want to hate your father, Ian, your mother, Maddie, your whole group of intruders. But it’s just not there for me. It was for my sister and I think it’s what made her so powerful.”

  “It’s also what destroyed her.”

  “Probably so.” His smile smacked of resignation, sadness, and profound regret.

  Another memory clicked into place for Tess. “In the lead-up to the solstice battle against Dominica’s tribe, there was a woman who brought together tens of thousands of people whose loved ones had been seized by Dominica’s tribe. They were willing to fight against her to avenge the deaths of their loved ones. When Ian and I first wrote about that battle in the Expat News, a reader commented that we hadn’t given that woman enough credit. He talked about it like the battle was a novel where we’d ignored an important plot point. But he missed the central message. That battle, Ian and I meeting as we did, my dad as a chaser, it was our story. Other characters in that battle, in those dark years, have other stories. Do you see what I’m saying?”

  “We’re the heroes of our own stories.”

  “Joseph Campbell.”

  “Dominica hated his work.”

  Tess laughed. “That figures.” She lifted up on her elbows and bit into the apple she’d tried to feed Kali. “But what’s your story, Ricardo? I think that’s what you need to ask yourself.”

  “Sordid, opportunistic, homicidal, sexually deviant. Not too many heroics there.”

  “You can turn that around.”

  “Yeah? How? By dying and starting over again?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe you can start doing it just by thinking different thoughts, by being mindful of what you’re thinking moment to moment.”

  “The Zen of brujo conversion.” He shrugged and a frown carved its way down between his dark eyes. “I sometimes listened in on that net that connected Dominica to the rest of her tribe. She really hated you and Ian. She particularly hated the fact that she couldn’t seize you. I think that’s when I knew her days were numbered. I have to admit that I was surprised when she seized Maddie.”

  “That was a dark and terrible time for us. But especially for Maddie.”

  “And when Maddie was able to survive one month after another, I started cheering for her. Dominica never had a host like her.”

  “If it hadn’t been for Dominica, Maddie might never have met Sanchez. Brujos changed the course of all our lives and for that I’m grateful, Ricardo.”

  “The other day when I tasted you? I discovered you’re pregnant with twins. And the souls haven’t yet entered their bodies.” Then he fussed with the bed he’d made on the pew in front of hers and settled into it, vanishing from her view.

  Twins?

  4.

  One moment, Further raced forward like a stallion on steroids and Lauren, now driving, pumped her fist in the air. Then they struck something, the impact knocked Ian out, and he came to in a cloud of dust that drifted through the open windows, Lauren slumped over the steering wheel.

  Merchandise surrounded him, some of it on floor-to-ceiling shelves, most of it on the floor. Rolls of toilet paper and paper towels tumbled off Further’s hood. A can of baked beans rested against the windshield wipers. He was pretty sure he was in the market where he’d seen Tess in the early part of his hallucinogenic fest.

  The Segunda Vista had long since worn off, all of this was real, palpable. He tasted the dust on his tongue, felt it at the back of his throat. He heard something rolling across the market floor, felt the solidness of his body as he got up and moved over to Lauren.

  “Lauren, hey, c’mon, wake up.” He patted her face, but she didn’t move. He touched his fingers to her carotid and felt frantically for a pulse. Faint, almost not there. “Shit, you need a doctor.”

  He quickly squeezed behind the steering wheel, pumped the gas once, turned the key in the ignition. Further wheezed, backfired, lurched forward, and promptly died. Ian shot to his feet, slung their packs over either of his shoulders, then picked up Lauren and carried her off the bus. He moved as fast as he could through the disheveled aisles, kicking cans and boxes out of his way, talking to her, begging her to stay with him. Had her head hit the steering wheel? Had she had a heart attack?

  She didn’t stir. Her head hung limply over the side of his arm, her mouth open slightly. He could hear her quick, shallow breathing. Beads of perspiration dotted her forehead and upper lip like perforated lines. At the front of the store he put her into an empty grocery cart. He glanced back and could see the hole that Further had punctured in the whiteness, the edges jagged, the color of metal, white stuff like snow or dust drifting through the air around it.

  He heard an explosive crackling sound and suddenly the rest of the whiteness around the hole blew apart, as if detonated, and for seconds, he glimpsed moonlight, stars. Then the market started falling apart, crumbling like a cookie, pieces of it raining down over him, over Lauren. Ian raced for the door, the cart clattering across the floor, then across the earthen sidewalk outside, and he shouted, “She’s dying, I need a doctor, hey, is anyone here? Please, shit, c’mon, please, she needs help.”

  Everywhere he looked, he saw dead birds, hundreds of them blanketing the ground, and then he saw mobs armed with torches and Christ knew what else, racing toward him from every direction. Forget a hospital or clinic, he thought. He needed to get somewhere safe.

  Behind him, a great, heaving, unnatural screech sundered the air and the market collapsed completely, concrete and wood and dust flying up, forming a cloud as huge and unnatural as the whiteness had been. It obliterated the moonlight and provided a barrier between him and the mobs. Ian tore forward, screaming for help, praying there was someone in the church nearby who could hear him.

  “Don’t die, please don’t die, Lauren. Stay with me, I know you can hear me.” The cart’s wheels clattered across stones and packed earth. His mind emptied of everything.

  The door to the church suddenly flew open, a blue and green parrot fluttered out into the twilight, and Tess and Wayra tore down the steps, toward Ian. Even in this strange light, he could tell Tess had lost weight, her cheekbones as sharp as razors, the flare of her hips chiseled away. Her blond hair hung loosely, a tangle. And she was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

  “Slim,” he shouted, and ran toward her, and she barreled into his arms and nearly knocked him over.

  They clung to each other, the scent and feel of her as familiar to him as his own skin and bones. “My God, my God, you’re here,” she whispered over and over again. Then she wrenched back from him, her face ravaged with emotion, and turned to her mother. Tess tried to rouse her, just as Wayra was doing.

  “
She needs medical help,” Ian said, his voice riddled with urgency. Up the street, shouts rang out. Through the unnatural cloud, he saw the flickering lights of the mob’s torches.

  “The hostiles,” Wayra hissed, and scooped Lauren out of the cart and tore toward the church.

  Ian and Tess raced after him, their arms around each other, Tess intermittently sobbing and asking what had happened, how had he and Lauren gotten into El Bosque.

  They sprinted into the church and Ian slammed the massive wooden doors. Not enough, he thought. They needed more protection. A crowd like the one outside could easily break through these doors. He looked around frantically, spotted an industrial-sized broom nearby, grabbed it, and slid the metal broomstick through the doors’ handles. Then he backpedaled, his eyes traveling up to the stained-glass windows, so many of them, but at least they started six feet up from the floor. If the horde broke the windows, they wouldn’t be able to climb into the church unless they had ladders. But they could hurl those torches, he thought, and set the interior on fire.

  He spun around and hurried over to where Wayra had set Lauren, on a blanket on the floor. A tall black man came over with another blanket and a pillow. “If she’s going into shock, you need to keep her warm and elevate her legs.”

  “Who’re you?” Ian asked.

  “Ricardo.”

  “Ricardo,” he repeated. The brujo? What was he doing here? “I won’t even ask. You have medical knowledge?”

  “Some. From a host. But there’s nothing in the church that will help her and there’s no hospital left in El Bosque. The crazies burned it. There’s a clinic not far from here, but the staff has probably fled.”

  Tess suddenly said, “I can’t find a pulse, her heart’s not beating.” Her wild, panicked eyes impaled Wayra. “You have to turn her. Your shifter blood will save her.”

  Wayra hesitated. “I can’t bring the dead back to life, Tess. She doesn’t have a pulse.”