Battle Hill Bolero

by Daniel José Older

  Carlos nods, pulls in his lips, closes his eyes. “Say their names,” he says quietly.

  “Leandro Reynaldo Salazar and Dulce Maria Aviles. It was a home invasion. I’m sorry, you guys.” She’s holding back tears. “I’m so sorry.”

  In the background, I hear Mama Esther make cooing sounds and whisper, “Shhh, child, hush.”

  Could Sarco take out all those people? That quickly? Someone certainly did; there are no accidents in ghost world, especially when it comes to massacres.

  A few moments of silence pass. Carlos watches factory yards and parking lots slide by, shakes his head. “What are we doing, then? What’s this all about?”

  “Well.” The Iyawo sniffles, clears her throat. “Within the library system, I tracked the other names that had come sniffing ’round the same trees I did.”

  “And?”

  “There’s one person: Margery Pham. Works at the very library whose computer I ha—er . . . involved myself in an intimate conversation with. She lives in Sunport, at . . . hold on . . . 2453 Park Lane.”

  I tell Carlos to put that into the GPS.

  “The what now?”

  On the other end of the line, the Iyawo sighs. “Good luck, Sasha.”

  “Thank you, Iyawo.”

  Mama Esther’s voice gets loud, like she’s nudged the Iyawo aside and gotten up close to the phone. “Carlos, Sasha: I’m so sorry, so, so sorry. You know, whatever I can do . . . just let me know.”

  “Thanks, Mama Esther,” we both say at the same time. We don’t look at each other. Snow drifts down around us, oblivious to the chaos in this car, the bloodbath of our pasts, the sorrow welling up, unstoppable. “I sent you both gifts. Little Damian’s bringing them to your places; they’ll be there when you get back.”

  “Gifts?” Carlos says. “You’ve already lent me most of your entire mystery section and—”

  “Hush, child,” Mama Esther snaps. “A gift is a gift. All you need to do is accept it. This is important. Now be safe out there, you two. Don’t let the tide of the past drag you down. There’s too much at stake for the future.”

  The call ends with a beep. Silence settles in; the snow gathers on the windshield, swooshes away beneath the wipers, gathers again. These people are strangers to me, but they surely loved me and I loved them, once. And they’re gone. Caught up in the mire of whatever hell I had gotten involved with. All these new pieces and still: so much nothing. So many impossible questions.

  “We’re not those people,” Carlos says. He’s looking away from me, out the window, as Jersey slowly turns white around us. “That man working at a video store while he went to night school? That’s not me.”

  “Andre Salazar,” I say, to feel the name on my lips.

  “Died.” He doesn’t say it bitterly; it’s just a fact. “And Carlos was born.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  He shrugs, his eyes wet. “I don’t know. I have to right now. It’s all I got.”

  He’s right. And so is Mama Esther. The past is a hideous mouth, gaping out of the darkness. It will draw us in and never let us go.

  “Do you want to turn around?” I ask. The idea feels like defeat somehow, but a relief too.

  He shakes his head. “I don’t know. No. We’re here. Anyway, I want to know how we got here. You got a lead from somewhere. And you can teach me what this GPS thing is on the way.”

  —

  Whoever named Sunport was either an optimist or high. Or perhaps those were just different times. Today, two-story tenements huddle in disarray along the Jersey shoreline. A bleak beach stretches toward the wealthier end of the world, and the rusted-out skeletons of two abandoned factories clutter up the outskirts of town alongside strip malls, gas stations, and fast-food chains. Park Lane sits squarely in the middle of a slightly happier alcove—the front lawns are trimmed and have trees instead of tires or sun-bleached strollers. Still, it’s grim. An unsettled air lingers over the whole town, and I wonder if it’s still the fallout of so many untimely deaths.

  A tall, well-put-together woman answers the door. Her black hair’s pulled back into a ponytail, and she’s wearing spandex and a purple hoodie. Her mouth drops open when she sees me. She takes a step back, gasps, then looks behind me at Carlos and screams.

  “Ms. Pham, wait!” I jam my foot in the door before it can slam.

  She flings it open all the way, now armed with a small pistol. It’s pointed at Carlos.

  “Get back,” she whispers. “I . . . Aisha . . . is it . . . is it you?”

  “It’s me,” I say, and I feel the lie in it as soon as the words leave my mouth. Carlos is right: those people are dead.

  “And . . . Dre? You’re not . . . I don’t understand.” She shakes her head, scowls at us. “I was so worried . . . I thought he . . . or someone. My God.” Before I can stop her, she’s wrapped around my neck, her face in my shoulder. The gun presses uncomfortably against my back as Margery Pham sobs.

  “We’re not here to hurt you,” I say. “I promise.”

  She steps back, eyeing me again. “My goodness, you’re freezing, Aisha. Come inside, warm yourselves.

  “The children are with their father,” Margery says, leading us into a tidy den with a view of the less-tidy backyard. Toys and gardening tools lay half-buried in the newly fallen snow. “Please, sit. Do you want tea or coffee?”

  We both shake our heads. Margery pauses her flurry of hospitality to gaze at us for a few seconds, then shakes her head and says she’ll be right back. She scuttles off sniffling.

  Carlos puts his hand on my knee. “You okay?”

  I nod. Strangely, I am. Together, without even meaning to, we’ve formed some kind of stable point in the storm of all this tragedy. I know instinctively that Carlos won’t let me come unhinged. I know I won’t let him. I put my hand on his. If we turn them to face each other, palm to palm, his could close around mine and draw me to him, and if he brought his face near mine I’d kiss it. It wouldn’t be a thing I’d think about or deliberate—it would be what happens.

  But not in Margery Pham’s living room it won’t.

  “Here.” Margery stands in the doorway holding a shoebox. “These are . . . these are yours.” She sits on the plush easy chair, holds it out to me. “It’s not much. I . . . I don’t want you to get your hopes up. Just some pictures.”

  I take it. Pictures. I want to hug her, collapse in a puddle at her feet, but we’ve shaken up Margery Pham enough today. The box is light when I take it in my arms like a baby. All that’s left of the woman who used to have this body.

  “They declared you dead, even though there was never a body, and then your poor parents went and . . . oh, I’m so sorry.” She wants to ask what happened—the questions hang all around her, but she shoves them all away.

  “I don’t remember much,” I whisper. “Anything really.”

  “I remember watching you,” Margery says. “You came into the library almost every day after school. When you were little, your mom brought you; then you started coming on your own. First it was the books—Greek mythology was your favorite, and then you moved on to vampires and witches. But your true love was in the Media Department.” She’s staring past me. If our eyes meet, we’ll both collapse, I’m sure of it. Carlos squeezes my hand.

  “We couldn’t get you out of there. There’s a little viewing station in the back, just a wooden table and a TV with a DVD player and VCR. You would rush over to the counter to get the key from me, and if someone else was in there you’d pretend not to mind, but I could see it on your face, that pout. You’d wait patiently doing homework until they left and then grab a movie and disappear. Usually the old ones, Jimmy Cagney and Humphrey Bogart and the like.” She shakes her head.

  “Then you discovered anime, and oh my goodness, I thought we’d lose you for a while there. You were smitten.”

&nb
sp; “Something stayed with me.” It comes out quietly. Hadn’t even meant to let the words slip from my mouth into the world, but there they are. They fill the air for a few seconds of silence.

  When I look down, I’ve taken the lid off the shoebox. It wasn’t something I did consciously; my hands made the decision on their own. I hear someone gasp, and then I realize it’s me. My fingers tremble, can’t get hold of the framed photograph, and when they do they drop it again.

  “Saaisha . . . ,” Carlos whispers beside me. His cool hand on my arm, the grip firm—it steadies me. I don’t float away in the sea of lava this quiet suburban home has become.

  “What’s wrong, dear?” Margery says from a million miles away.

  “This is . . . this was . . .” A wedding photograph. I am aglow, the woman I once was: fully alive, skin a darker, richer brown, smile resplendent in the sun. The man beside me—my husband—that face.

  “Your wedding, Aisha. You don’t remember?”

  I shake my head. That face. Juan Flores. Terra. The same man that watched over us when we came back around. He knew all along, was part of it all. The Iyawo said he’d been found in the park a few months after we went missing, his face chewed off.

  His face.

  Juan Flores’s smile was once wide and generous. Those big cheeks pushed his eyes almost shut. His close-cut black hair framed a light brown forehead, eyebrows raised high with amusement. His arm wrapped around my waist.

  I want to scream, but instead I look up at Margery and say: “I’m sorry—you were telling me about the library.”

  She shakes her head. “You came less after you were married. In part because you’d seen them all, and part because, well . . . I don’t think Juan liked you being there. You told me that once. But he liked you being at the video store even less.” She casts an eye toward Carlos.

  “Video Hut?” he says.

  I blink at Margery. “Andre and I . . . we knew each other?”

  For the first time since we’ve met her, Margery Pham laughs. “Knew each other? You were best friends. Inseparable.”

  —

  It’s dark, and the snow comes down in wild, windblown sheets when we leave Margery Pham’s house. She gives us directions to the highway, urging us to stay in touch and be careful, and we nod, dazed, and drive off. In the car, neither of us has anything to say for a few minutes. Then Carlos adjusts himself in that way he does when he’s about to talk. “I’m sorry.”

  I shake my head. Not mad, just tired. Vacant: an emptiness that throbs. “You don’t have to be. And you’ve said that already, many times.”

  “I know, but I mean . . . I mean, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

  “What?”

  “When we first met. I didn’t tell you about Trevor. That I killed him. I should’ve. I know I’ve apologized before but never for that, and that . . . that was fucked up.”

  I nod, crushing my bottom lip between my teeth. “It was.”

  “It’s always bothered me.”

  “Me too. But . . . why now?”

  “Because I need you, Sasha.”

  I knew that. I could feel it in the tiny movements of his face, the way his body touches mine, even in passing. He’s covered in it. As am I. Still makes me catch my breath to hear him say it out loud.

  “I need you, and I don’t even understand how or why. But I know that to get through this. All this.” He flails his hands. What good are words when the truth is so gigantic and sad? “Whatever this is. I know I need you by my side. I tried for so long to pretend I didn’t, that I could do it all on my own, but it was bullshit. I was a shell. A lie.”

  I can barely see the cascading snow, and my eyes keep getting wet no matter how much I rub them.

  “And if we’re gonna be around each other in any kinda way, it’s all gotta be out there, on the table. Starting now. At least from me. I gotta get it all out of me. Otherwise it becomes more of the same, and we can’t go back to that.”

  I nod, wipe my eyes. Laugh in a guttural, sobby kind of way. “I’m sorry I killed you.”

  He shrugs. “It’s alright, I guess. It was another me, another you.”

  I wonder.

  —

  In the parking lot of the Sunport Holiday Inn, snow covers the windshield as I tell Carlos about my first terrifying days alive again.

  “So Terra’s the . . . that faceless ghost that showed up at your door?”

  “My husband.” The word feels wrong in my mouth—a sour thing, long past its expiration date.

  “Aisha’s husband.”

  I nod.

  “And now he’s a soulcatcher. A prominent one, apparently. He was at the sit-down with Botus earlier today. Looked none too happy when B offered to make me one of the Seven.”

  “Of course. He was probably gunning for the spot himself, with whatever treachery he’s been plotting.” If we were outside, I’d spit.

  “Still, giving you the CentCom info was no small blow to the Council. What do you think he’s playing at?”

  “No idea. All I know is he can’t be trusted. And he’s gonna catch that Deeper Death.”

  A sinister smile spreads across Carlos’s face. “Of course. The question is, how much can we milk his uncertain allegiance before we end him?”

  I hug my arms around myself. The blizzard has reached its icy fingers into the car, sends slivery trembles through my bones. “I’d prefer sooner. But you’re right. And there aren’t that many people left that know what really happened to us.”

  Carlos grunts, and then silence stretches long between us. He puts his head in his hands, takes a deep breath.

  “Tonight,” I say after a few minutes slide past, “I just want you to hold me.”

  He looks up. Considers me slowly. Smiles. Nods.

  Then we’re out in the storm, moving through windblown snow and darkness, then the bright lobby lights and sleepy desk clerk, the elevator, a corridor that smells of carpet cleaner and cologne, the stark blessing of an empty bed awaiting our tired bodies. Some clothes are shed, two swords and a few daggers placed on cabinet tops, and outside, snowdrifts reflect the murky, orange glow of streetlights across the New Jersey sky.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Krys

  The Iyawo slams her (slender, dark brown, beautiful) hand on the countertop, upsetting a little basket of cowrie shells. “Right? So then I was like, ‘No, Giovanni Patrick Lamar Summers, you fall back!’”

  “And then what happened?”

  “I mean . . . we talked it out, and now we cool.” The shells make little clicks as she drops them back in the basket. Her bangles jingle their tiny song every time she moves. “That’s how my cousin and I do, though: we can’t stand each other, and then we cool. I will always love him, but yo: I had to go. Being the third wheel in ya own house fuckin’ sucks.”

  “Iyawo!” Baba Eddie calls from the back.

  She rolls her eyes. “Sorry, Baba.”

  “You can stop rolling your eyes now. And wipe that snarl off your face,” he finishes as the Iyawo’s top lip curls upward. She fists up her face into a firm pout and then shrugs.

  “You miss him?”

  “Nah, we Skype all the time. Him and Rigo—that’s his boyfriend—are sposta come up to visit next month.”

  “That’s cool,” I say. It’s not a stupid thing to say, but the words feel clunky and meaningless after her wild adventures in Rio, a canoe paddling behind a yacht.

  The Iyawo goes back to clacking away on her laptop, and I do nothing for a few seconds, and the music fills the space between us. It’s an orisha song: a woman’s voice belts out a raw, joyful staccato over tumbling drums, and then a choir that sounds like the whole world singing at once answers her.

  Baba Eddie’s gotta be side-eyeing me so hard from the back room. I’m here. I’ve been here for more than an hour now,
in direct disobedience of his strict edict against falling in love with the Iyawo. I mean, I’m not in love with her, but if she does that little pout one more time I probably will be.

  No. Stop. Shake it off, Krys. She can’t get intimate with anyone right now, let alone a dead girl. This is madness.

  “Is it all worth it?” I ask.

  She says “Hm?” without looking up.

  “All these rules and wearing all that white and not being able to go out or nothin’. Is it all worth it?”

  “Oh yeah.” She clicks something, clicks again, and then tilts her head at me. “More than worth it. I mean, I cop attitude, yeah, but really, this has been the deepest, most intense couple months of my life already, and it’s only just begun. I mean, you a spirit already, Krys, so I dunno what that’s like, but for me, for us flesh-’n’-blood folk, to enter into such a real relationship with a powerful spiritual force, it’s like . . . like nothing I can explain.”

  If I had a dick, it’d be hard. That’s all I know. “I was like a nonpracticing agnostic when I was alive,” I say, instead of Come ride my face, and then let’s find out how deep and intense shit can really get.

  “Yeah, my dad’s laid-back Protestant, I guess, but we never really did much more than Christmas. And I never really bought into it or felt it myself. This, though, this a whole other level. It’s something I can feel deep inside me. All the bullshi—BS falls away. And the orishas are black like me. And the music . . .” She shuts up and lets the drums and singers speak for themselves. “The music. What’s dope is, this stuff still resonating in music today. Like, you can hear it in the old salsa stuff Reza listens to. It’s in all ya favorite rappers’ flow.”

  “I don’t listen to rap,” I say.

  “Oh, what you listen to?”

  “Like metal and alternative and stuff.”

  “Rohan’s double-parked up the block,” Baba Eddie says, walking down an aisle of herbs and statues. “We ready to rock ’n’ roll?”

  “Yessir,” the Iyawo says.

  Baba Eddie guffaws. “Right, because a ghost stakeout with potential to spill into an all-out riot amidst possible traitors is exaaactly the type of situation a iyawo should be in.”