Hungry Ghosts

by Stephen Blackmoore

  The magic courses through me. I pull it back when I feel Mictlantecuhtli’s power unspooling inside me. It’s like being chained to a sleeping tiger. Wake it up too much and it’ll eat me.

  Even with that the spell’s strong enough for what I need. Electricity arcs through the metal. Shrieks, the fall of bodies down the stairs, jerking from the voltage coursing through them. I don’t have a good gauge on this thing, but with the power I put into it they’ll either stay down for a while, or not get back up again.

  Once I get to the car I’ll be safer. Get on the road, get down to Mexico City. If these are Bustillo’s men, it’s a pretty good bet that when they don’t report in they’ll just send more after me. A big place like Mexico City is a lot easier to hide in than Zacatecas. It’s not like I’m planning on being there long.

  I back out of the exit door at the bottom of the stairs and into the parking lot, the Benelli trained on the steps above me just in case. I turn to head to the car and stop dead.

  At the gas station back in Tepehuanes I saw five pickup trucks filled with Bustillo’s men in the backs. They’re all here.

  They stand in a semi-circle around the exit door, guns trained on me. Smart. Knew I’d cut and run, knew where I’d come out. Couple dozen guys with automatic weapons. They can pump several hundred rounds into me inside of three seconds. No matter how many protection spells I have in my tattoos, those are not good odds.

  I slowly lower the Benelli to the ground, put my hands up. “Gentlemen. How’s everybody doing tonight?” They don’t say anything.

  To make matters worse the parking lot has filled with ghosts. Some Wanderers, but seeing how closely these linger around Bustillo’s men, it’s more likely that they’re Haunts who have bound themselves to their killers rather than to where they died. It happens sometimes, but not often. Which tells me these guys have killed a lot of people.

  It also means that hopping over to the dead side as an escape route is the mother of bad ideas. The ghosts will shred me before I get three steps.

  So the question comes down to, do I want to die from bullets or do I want to die from ghosts?

  Being eaten by ghosts sucks.

  They don’t take bites out of your body so much as they take bites out of your soul. The scars they leave behind aren’t just physical, they’re emotional and mental. Chunks torn out of the very fabric that makes you, well, you.

  I’ve been hit by ghosts before. Hurts like you wouldn’t believe. I’ve even fed a few people to ghosts. Took them to the other side, tossed them to the Dead like chucking trees into a woodchipper.

  It’s a horrifying way to go. Most of them deserved it.

  The thing about being killed by ghosts is that it takes time. They’re like piranha more than sharks. Death by a thousand cuts. I’ve had to run through a crowd of ghosts on the other side before. Some of the worst pain I’ve ever felt.

  But I got through them. When I popped back to the living side they couldn’t touch me. There aren’t quite as many here, but they’re more heavily clustered. I might make it through them and get to the car in relatively one piece. Provided that the spell doesn’t trigger the progression of jade and I turn into a rock on the other side.

  Bustillo’s men look like they’re not in a mood to talk with anything but their guns, so I figure it’s not much of a choice. Definitely die, or probably die.

  I’m about to take my chances on the ghosts when I feel a hot wind spring up around us. It grows fast. Sudden hurricane force. A wave of heat sucks the air out of my lungs, and I instinctively hit the ground and cover my head. Fiery air blasts over me. I hear screams, gunfire, the sound of torches igniting. I hazard a look and instantly regret it. My eyes singe in the hot air, but the gunmen are far worse off than I am.

  Corpses lie on the ground burning. Their skin blackened and charred. There’s a stink of cooked pork in the air. The ones still alive are rolling around desperately trying to put the flames out. I feel a little warm, my skin’s a little red like I’ve spent too much time in the sun, but that’s all. Nothing else is on fire. Not the building, not the ground, not even a nearby tree.

  I stand and survey the carnage, orange firelight casting dancing shadows across the building. One of the gunmen, his skin crackling, one eyeball burst from the heat, crawls across the pavement, reaching for his rifle with shaking hands. I kick it out of his reach and put a round from the Benelli into him. Better to put him out of his misery than let him die in a burn ward somewhere.

  “All right,” I say to the air around me. I don’t know where to look, which way to face. “I know you’re here. What do you want?”

  It’s four in the morning. I’m standing in a hotel parking lot talking to the air with a bunch of burning bodies at my feet. A second later the air answers.

  “We had an agreement,” says a voice cracking like a brushfire. “A compact,” says another with a sound like wind through dry, desert canyons. “A deal,” says a third, its hollow sound echoing in the empty lot.

  The Wind’s voices are different from what I remember when I spoke to it at Vasquez Rocks outside of Los Angeles. I was looking for it, then. Now, it seems, it’s looking for me.

  I pull shoes and socks out of my bag, and sit down to put them on. I might be dealing with an elemental of unbelievable power here, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to do it in bare feet. I don’t say anything until I’ve got my shoes tied and a shirt on.

  “Why are you talking like it’s in the past tense?” I say, buttoning my shirt.

  “Have you reneged?” the voices say in unison. “It has been too long. The stone spreads. Soon you will not be able to keep our agreement.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize there was a deadline.”

  “Deadline, yes,” say the voices, and there’s a hint of laughter behind it. At Vasquez Rocks the Wind was more serious, flatter in tone. Different wind spirits blend and blur together. The desires of one can become the desires of all. What is it about the Wind down here that’s different? And is this where the desire to see Mictlan burn came from? Is this the source?

  “The deadline will pass because you will be dead,” says another voice, its S’s stretching into a long hiss.

  “You know, jokes aren’t funny when you have to explain ’em,” I say. Who knew the Wind had the sense of humor of a five-year-old? “You’re really worried I won’t get there in time? I didn’t think I’d see the day the Wind got all panicky.” It laughs, a strange, snakelike wheeze across its multiple voices that lowers until it’s a single, deep, throaty sound that rolls and echoes across the parking lot.

  “I do not panic,” it says. The unified voice is stronger with a heaviness, a presence it didn’t have before. It blends into a single voice, the three into one harmony of rumbling bass. “But I would see Mictlan burn before the end times come. I will see that place cleansed with fire and that bastard king Mictlantecuhtli and his whore of a wife blacken in flames. And you, little man, usurper to the throne, you will do this for me, or I will turn the wind upon you and flay the skin from your bones.”

  This is sounding awfully personal. And much more coherent. Strong, steady, pissed off. It just reinforces my suspicions. A wind spirit down here has a grudge against Mictlan, and it passed the message up the coast when I spoke to the more fragmented Wind in Vasquez Rocks.

  There are only so many things that would care about Mictlan. I’m ninety-nine percent sure who this is. But I need confirmation. If I just come out and say its name, it could deny it. There’s nothing saying it can’t lie. Better to do something stupid and make it reveal itself.

  “Which one are you?” I say. “Xipe-Totec? That crack about flayed skin fits. Huitzilopochtli? No, you’re talking about wind and fire. Not blood. Tlaloc? I don’t see any rain. Not Tezcatlipoca. It’s morning now. You’d be too weak if you were the god of night. You’re some second rate wind spirit, aren’t you? One of those little godlings too weak to do its own dirty work. What, some pissed off little sprite?”<
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  “You dare—” it says, but I cut it off.

  “I dare because Mictlantecuhtli and I are connected. Which means you and I are, too. Are you one of my in-laws? What upstart little cousin of the King and Queen of Mictlan are you? You call me a usurper, but I bet you’re a pretender. You’re nobody important. Nobody worth considering.” That last bit might have been going too far.

  The wind picks up around me, and I can feel this thing’s anger on it. It shifts and whips around like a snake. It wants to hurt me, but it doesn’t dare. I’m its ticket for its revenge.

  The wind grows in strength until it’s a gale force blowing around me, pulling in trash and dirt, uprooting plants. It sucks the fires up from the corpses, taking the flames into itself, compressing them into balls of glowing flame. It coalesces in front of me in a tornado blur of burning garbage, smoldering debris.

  And when it stops, that final one percent of uncertainty vanishes. It is the god of wind and the morning star. A winged snake, pulled together from waste and leftovers. Its finery ragged, its feathers made of discarded food wrappers, shredded handbills, its eyes of bottle-glass. It blazes with fires pulled from dead men.

  Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent. I wasn’t sure if he was still around. So many of the old gods are gone or so faded they might as well be. And he isn’t looking so great. A dying god made of rags and tatters. A burning Doritos bag flutters off one of its wings.

  Quetzalcoatl’s eyes flash. It lunges at me with its mouth wide, showing teeth made of screws and nails, and lets loose an unholy shriek. The sound pummels at me, almost pushing me to my knees. But I stand my ground. This is all show, trying to get the upper hand. Assert its authority.

  “I am the Snake,” Quetzalcoatl says. “The Feathered Serpent and the Crow. I am the Wind that scours the desert.”

  I don’t have a lot of experience with gods. I’ve worked with the Voodoo Loa, Baron Samedi, Maman Brigitte, Baron Cimetiere. But my arrangement with them has always been business. With Santa Muerte and Mictlantecuhtli, it’s been a more … turbulent relationship.

  But if there’s one thing I’ve learned about dealing with them, it’s that you never back down.

  “You’re also the Duck and the Spider Monkey,” I say, naming off some of Quetzalcoatl’s lesser known forms. “So pardon me if I’m not exactly shaking over here.”

  Truth be told I am. The other Aztec gods are as close to in-laws as I’ve got, so I’ve made a point of knowing who they are and what they do. I don’t know how many of them still exist, how many of those are still intact enough to remember who they are. All I have are tales, textbooks, websites. The reality of the supernatural is always a little different from the stories.

  Quetzalcoatl is one of the heavies, and I’ve been wondering if the demands of the Wind up north came from him. The stories say he stole the bones of the dead from Mictlan and created the fifth version of humans, us. Creation myths are weird. What’s truth and what’s “truth” tend to blur. The important thing for gods isn’t what happened, but what people believe.

  Gods thrive on that. Demons, too, though they’ll all kill you just as dead whether you believe in them or not. But without belief they’ll wither away and die. They feed on it.

  Not a lot of people these days believe the old stories, but there are enough to keep a lot of the big gods around. Certainly enough to give Quetzalcoatl the power to kill more than two dozen men with a hurricane of fire.

  Hell, I know I believe.

  “You want me to burn down Mictlan,” I say. “Any particular reason why?”

  “My business is my own,” Quetzalcoatl says. “You merely must carry out my will.”

  I don’t mind the idea of burning Mictlan. I’m going to kill its king and queen, after all. Setting it alight just sounds like being thorough. But I would like to know why. What is it that’s got him in such a snit? Jealousy? Pissed off because Santa Muerte has managed to change with the times?

  I laugh at him. “Is that how you see it? No. We made a deal. I’ll keep the deal. End of story. None of this ‘carry out my will’ shit, though. I’m not your fucking minion. You don’t want to tell me why, fine. Least you can do is tell me how. Because if you were thinking to leave that up to me to figure out, man are you gonna be disappointed.”

  “To think Mictecacihuatl picked you as a consort,” he says. He licks lips made of shredded grass and palm fronds with a tongue made of tinfoil. “And you cannot do such a simple thing.”

  “I’m only human.”

  “Indeed. Then I will give you a talisman that even your feeble mind can grasp.” Quetzalcoatl vibrates, going so fast he begins to blur. He shatters in a silent explosion, pieces of trash flying only to freeze in place a few inches out. A flash of brass drops to the ground, bounces to my feet. A sound of sucking air and Quetzalcoatl snaps back into his garbage god form.

  A dented and tarnished brass Zippo lighter with a mosaic of chipped turquoise on one side lies at my feet. I pick it up and turn it over in my hands. It’s old, scratched, the brass worn. The mosaic has the hint of a shape, a chaotic mess of different shades of turquoise, but I’m damned if I can figure out what it is. It’s seen a lifetime of use and more.

  I flick the Zippo open, thumb the wheel. A spark and a flame. Yep, it’s a lighter.

  “Unless you’re expecting Mictlan to be a lot more flammable than I think it is, you’re gonna need to do better than this.”

  “The fires of Xiuhtecuhtli,” Quetzalcoatl says. “God of the flame, the light in the darkness. Fire against the cold, and a feast in famine. He is hope where there is none. He has faded over time until that is all that is left of him. An errant spark, a flicker of his former self. Take him to Mictlan, burn it down with his divine flames.”

  “And this’ll work?”

  “The flames will set alight anything they touch. In your feeble world they will burn hot and bright, but in Mictlan once they burn they will never stop until that land is nothing but ash.”

  It takes me a moment to remember what Xiuhtecuhtli’s shtick was. He renewed the sun once every fifty years or something. Priests would take a victim up a mountain and at the right time, carve out the poor bastard’s heart and stick a fire in the empty chest. If the fire caught, yay! Happy times. Except for the guy burning on the altar, of course. And if not, the Tzitzimimeh, monsters or demons, something like that, would come down from the sky and eat everyone.

  I’m betting those priests made damn sure that fire caught.

  “I’ll have to get me some cigars, then.” I slide the lighter in my pocket.

  “Do not joke. That is a proud god you hold. Do not waste his gift. Now go to Mictlan and do what you have agreed.”

  “Sure. I’ll jump right on that.” I need to get some sleep. Speaking of which, I need to find a new hotel. Dammit. Maybe I should just move on. Keep heading south.

  We don’t seem to have drawn any attention, yet, and I honestly don’t know if anyone looked if they’d even see Quetzalcoatl, gods do weird shit like that. But they’d sure as hell see a couple dozen smoking corpses.

  I pick up my bag and head toward the Cadillac. Quetzalcoatl has sucked up all the trash and dirt in the parking lot to make his form and the ground is scoured clean.

  “I did not give you permission to depart,” Quetzalcoatl yells, his voice booming. I answer him with my middle finger.

  I open the Caddy’s driver side door and toss my bag in and the shotgun onto the seat. If he wants to play games he can knock himself out. For whatever reason he wants Mictlan destroyed, he needs me to do it. And if he’s just given me the remnants of a dead god to do it with, I’m thinking he doesn’t have a whole lot of other options.

  Police will be here eventually, and I really don’t want to have to explain all the bodies. I wonder what they’ll think did it. Probably a rival cartel. Burned bodies pop up with alarming frequency these days.

  I pull out of the parking lot, Quetzalcoatl watching me with his coal-red eyes, his tattere
d wings flapping lazily. I don’t know what feathered serpent body language looks like, but if I were to bet on it, I’d say he’s pissed off at me.

  I watch him in the rearview mirror as I get onto the street, and once the wheels touch the pavement his body crumbles, leaving nothing behind but a pile of burning trash.

  I gas up the car a couple hours later in Salinas de Hidalgo, exhaustion pulling me down like an anchor. I crush an Adderall onto a discarded receipt on the dashboard and snort it. It won’t last as long, but it will hit me hard and fast, and that’s what I need right now. I’ll follow it up in an hour with another pill that should last me for the rest of the drive down to Mexico City.

  I debate pulling over and sleeping, finding another hotel room. But my paranoia is kicking into high gear and I don’t want to be caught like that again. Any place I stop along this road is just going to leave me exposed. And it’s not like Quetzalcoatl taking out Bustillo’s men solves my problems.

  I’ve pissed off a lot of people in the last couple of months, and I know some of them are still looking for me. I’ve given them the slip so far, but they have long memories. Once I get to the city it’ll be a lot easier to hide.

  But there’s more to it than just paranoia. There’s the feeling that I’m getting close. That this is almost done, for good or ill. I haven’t had this feeling in fifteen years.

  The fact that I’m slowly turning into a statue isn’t why I’m doing this. Sure it helps, but even if I wasn’t, I’d be on this same road making the same plans.

  When my parents were killed I hunted the man down who did it. I waited for him with a car full of leaking propane tanks and when he stepped out of a warehouse in San Pedro I shoved a brick onto the gas pedal, ran it into him and set off the propane. It didn’t kill him. I fed him to the ghosts for that.

  I’m doing it again. This feels like sitting in the dark, packing the car full of propane. Santa Muerte murdered Lucy knowing I’d come looking for revenge, knowing she could steer me in whatever direction she wanted. My sister’s murder was nothing more than a means to an end. I don’t even care why, anymore. Or even what happens to me. I just want Santa Muerte destroyed, Mictlantecuhtli back in the ground where he belongs, and Tabitha, my one, big loose end tied up and squared away.