Hungry Ghosts

by Stephen Blackmoore

  “Most of them.” There’s a dangerous gleam in his eye as though he knows what I’m thinking. And hell, maybe he does.

  “That does explain why you were worried I’d come after you once I’d signed on with Santa Muerte. I can’t imagine she likes you much.” Though what the hell he thinks I can do to him I have no idea.

  “Mother of all understatements, there.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

  “Partly because I couldn’t. There’s all sorts of things I can’t talk about. Those two death gods saw to that. But mostly I figured you’d freak the fuck out.”

  I think about that for a second. “Good assumption. I probably would have. So what the hell happened in that tomb? The place is littered with the bones of dead Conquistadores.”

  Darius takes another drink. Both our shot glasses are suddenly full. I remember this is a dream. I toss back a second one and watch it fill back up the second I put it back onto the table.

  “Got ambushed. Mictlantecuhtli was waiting for me. Set a trap. Had some mojo all set in there to stick me back inside my bottle and lock it up tight. I don’t know what the plan was after that. Whatever it was, it didn’t happen. I turned him into a rock while he was sitting there working his magic to shove me back in my bottle. Everybody was losin’ their shit about then. Dead soldiers. Priest just a smear on the wall. Lots of chaos.”

  “And that’s when Cabrillo took the bottle,” I say. The gaps are filling in quickly.

  “Only thing that saved him. Took him weeks to get out of Mictlan. And I was no help. He couldn’t open the bottle. I couldn’t get out. He kept me around, afraid what would happen if anybody else got hold of it.”

  “And then he bounces around South America and twenty years later heads up to California, gets himself killed in the Channel Islands. And your bottle winds up where?”

  “No idea. Somewhere on the mainland.”

  I know Darius well enough to catch when he’s outright lying, something he doesn’t do very often. He’s much better at twisting the truth by simply not telling you all of it. But a flat out yes or no? That’s not like him.

  “This is fascinating and all,” I say. “And it fills in some holes, but what does it have to do with why you’re here now?”

  “Shit’s about to hit the fan, son. For you and that little lady you got snoring out there. You’re both fucked and you got no idea how bad.”

  “Oh, I have an idea.”

  “No. No, you really don’t.”

  “Then tell me. You know what Santa Muerte wants from me, don’t you? You know her agenda. Which one of them is telling the truth? Which one do I kill to fix this?”

  “Oh, it ain’t nothin’ that simple. But there’s three problems with telling you what the real deal is and how to keep your ass out of the fire. The first is that I can’t tell you. Not the important part at least. Mictlantecuhtli’s magic locked me up, sealed my lips as much as it sealed my bottle. I can’t get out even if somebody finds it. That shit lasts a long time. I’ve only been able to talk about this at all in the last hundred years or so.”

  “It’s weakening?”

  “Yeah, but not fast enough to do you a goddamn bit of good.”

  “Great. So, what, I play Twenty Questions?”

  He taps the end of his nose. “Got it in one. Though I seriously doubt it’ll take you twenty.”

  I haven’t slept in days and the first time I get any shuteye I get to spend it playing a guessing game with a Djinn.

  “All right, what else?”

  “Second one’s more of a problem. See if I tell you, then you know.”

  “How is that— Oh. If I know it, this piece of Mictlantecuhtli in my head knows it.”

  “You keep this up, son, you may win yourself a cigar. Right now I got him asleep. He ain’t eavesdropping on this conversation. But once you’re awake, it’ll be like normal and he can run his fingers through your brain like it’s a Rolodex.”

  “But what does that matter? I’ve got it locked up in there. It can’t talk to Mictlantecuhtli or vice versa. So what’s the big deal?”

  “We’ll get to that. But trust me, it matters.”

  “So what do I do?”

  “You forget,” he says. “You’ll get your answers and then I’ll block them off.”

  “You’re going to tell me and then make me forget. I’m seeing a flaw in this plan.”

  “Oh, you’ll remember, but only when the time’s right. We’ll work out the details. Chances are, when you do remember, you won’t have a lot of time to use what you know. Seconds, probably. So I’ll make sure you at least remember that you forgot.”

  Takes me a bit to wrap my brain around that concept. “That way I’ll be waiting for it to kick in and not just be caught by surprise.”

  “Right. Now that piece of ol’ Mick you got in there with you, he’ll know you learned something, too. But he won’t be able to get to it until you do.”

  “What are you getting out of this?” I say.

  “Revenge. Fix a problem should have been fixed a long time ago. I’ve been watching and waiting for this for five hundred years. And when I met you I knew that eventually one of them would come callin’. Truth be told, when you up and left L.A. I panicked a little. Wasn’t sure you’d come back. But then she got her hooks into you and here we are.”

  “Why do I feel like the mark in a long con?”

  “Because that’s what you are. You’re the mark, you’re the McGuffin. You’re the boy they’re gonna screw over, and you’re the treasure they’ve been huntin’ for.”

  Well, goddamn. “So this all started five hundred years ago?”

  “Yep.”

  “And you’re telling me that for five hundred years there were no other necromancers around?”

  “None that were powerful enough, or weren’t batshit crazy. I mean you got your moments, but you remember that Nazi who used to live in the Hollywood Hills?”

  “Neumann, yeah. He was a prick. I heard somebody ate him.”

  “Somebody did. Friend of mine. For a long time Neumann was the only game in town. I think you can understand why nobody would want to throw in with him. Lot of you necromancers are just as crazy, or more so.”

  I’d met Neumann a couple times before I left L.A. Talked a little shop. But he was a condescending little fuck who always had these two bodyguards around who creeped me the hell out.

  One was this body-builder, six-foot, easy. Real enforcer type. The other was his homunculus. Twisted, little, razor-toothed midget who followed him around on a leash. Homunculi are good places to store all your rage if you have anger management issues. Long as you can keep them from eating people they’re not bad to have around.

  “L.A.’s not the only place with necromancers. We’re rare, but we’re not that rare.”

  “Rare enough for their purposes.”

  “All right, what’s the third thing? I’m not going to be asleep forever. I need to know everything.”

  “Son, we’re in a dream. We got all the time in the world. But that third thing? It’s maybe the most important one of them all and the one you’ll have to fight through to do. And that is that you’re really gonna hate it.”

  “I think anything that gets me out of this situation is a win. Hit me.”

  He tells me.

  He’s right. I hate it.

  ___

  I startle awake, my head pounding and my mouth tasting like a rat just took a shit in it. The alcohol in Darius’ bar might not have been real, but it still gave me a hangover.

  The dream is still vivid and fresh in my mind with one massive exception. The entire conversation we had after he told me I was going to hate his suggestion. It’s just a blank.

  Now I only hope that when it’s time for it to come back to me that it does. I pull myself up from the ground, stretch my back and hear it pop.

  Tabitha sits cross-legged against a crystal eating another one of her not-apples. She sips something from a clay cup t
he color of a blood orange.

  “Morning, Sunshine,” she says. “Good nap?” She tosses another one of her not-apples at me. I’m slow and groggy but manage to catch it, anyway.

  “It was informative,” I say. And maddening. I keep poking at the hole in my memory. I get that it’s for my own good. At least I think it’s for my own good. “Don’t suppose that’s coffee you got in that cup.”

  “Water,” Tabitha says. “I can’t do coffee. Chocolate, though, if you like it bitter.”

  I turn the not-apple in my hands. “What is this?”

  “White sapote. The Aztecs cultivated them.”

  “You picked this trick up from Santa Muerte.”

  “Came with the package.” She puts her hand out, palm down toward me. There’s a snap in the air and a red cup identical to hers appears in front of me. I take a sip of the water, and like the fruit I ate last night, it’s gone before I realize it. “If you let yourself try you could do the same thing.”

  “Summon food of the Ancient Aztecs?”

  “Other things. Like the boat I made to cross the blood canals.”

  “Useful trick, but I think I’m a little far gone for that to be a good idea. Don’t suppose you could call up some tequila.”

  “Sorry, no. I can do pulque, though if you’d like.”

  “Oh, Jesus, no.”

  “Bad experience?”

  “You have no idea. Okay, so I’m trying to get an address out of this guy in Chihuahua and he doesn’t seem the type who’s gonna break if I beat on him. So he says he’ll tell me what I need to know if I drink some pulque with him.”

  “Oh no.”

  “Yeah. So I say, sure, let’s do this. How bad could it be, right? He brings out this pitcher, pours this milky white gunk that looks like jizz shot out of a hippo and stinks like three-day-old fish.”

  “You still drank it?”

  “And threw it all up right then and there.”

  Tabitha’s laughing. “Did he tell you what you wanted, anyway?”

  “No, I had to put his head through a wall.”

  “Of course you did.”

  We’re both laughing now. Tension draining away. And then I think about where we are and what’s going on, and the laughter dies and it all gets weird again.

  “I want to ask you something,” I say after a minute, “but I don’t know who I’m talking to.”

  “We’ve been over this. I’m me. Part of me is Santa Muerte. Part of me is left over from when Tabitha died.”

  “I get that. But here’s what I don’t get. When I saw you last in Hollywood, you were different. More, I don’t know, more Santa Muerte? She spoke through you and at the time she was you.”

  She rubs at her wrist just above where the handcuff sits. “But then you showed up and slapped this thing on me.”

  “The magic in that should have disconnected you from Santa Muerte and it’s got a compulsion that forces you to not get too far away from me. But that’s it. You’re not fighting me all that much on killing her. You haven’t beaten me over the head with a stick and tried to take the obsidian blade from me. You haven’t let me get eaten by the Ahuizotl, or tossed me out of the boat into the blood river.”

  “I’m not hearing a question,” she says.

  “Are you your own person? Or are you still Santa Muerte’s mouthpiece?”

  “I’ve always been my own person,” she says.

  “Look me in the eye and say that and maybe I’ll believe you. What are you, Tabitha?”

  She taps the fingers of one hand against her knee. Doesn’t answer me. I don’t say anything, just let the silence grow more and more awkward.

  “I’ve had her voice in my head for years,” she says. “Knowledge, memories. Not everything. There are gaps. Maddening gaps. I know I have my own opinions. I’ve argued with her. I argued with her about your sister, about you. When I would become her it was like I was filling up with power and knowledge and everything made sense. And even when that went away and I was less than that, I knew I was a part of something bigger, something important. And I wanted to always get back to that, stay connected to it.”

  “And now?”

  “Now it’s gone. When she came to me it was like finding a sister I never knew I had. But now I’m not sure I want that connection back. The piece of her inside me is just me now. And when I think about her voice it feels like—”

  “Gaslighting?” I say. “She lies, Tabitha. You know that. She’s lied to me. She’s had you lie for her.”

  “She’s the most honest thing I know.”

  “Yes. She’s a thing. She’s not human. She’s death. Nothing more honest than that. But it’s when she’s not being death that there’s a problem.”

  I consider my words. I feel like I’m talking to a spooked horse. There’s a chink in Tabitha’s devotion to Santa Muerte and I want to worry it open, a little bit at a time. Too much too fast and it could all break down.

  “What would you do if you didn’t get that voice back? That connection?” I say.

  She gives me a sad smile. “What does it matter? It’s not like I can stay away from her forever. Even with this trinket on my arm. This thing ends one of two ways and you know it. I either go back to her or you kill me.”

  “What if there was another way?”

  “You mean kill her and let me live? I still have part of her in me, Eric. If she dies and I don’t, I don’t know what will happen. But I don’t think it will be good for any of us. I’m still not going to help you kill her.”

  “Will you stop me?”

  “I don’t know anymore.”

  “Fair enough.” It’s not much, but it’s a start. I don’t want to have to kill her. I don’t know what she is or who she is, but she’s not what I thought she was.

  Of course, says that voice in the back of my mind, she could be lying now, too. I rub the bridge of my nose where the headache is growing. I’m tired of all this. Tired of the paranoia. Tired of the betrayals. I would like to be able to trust somebody. But something tells me that’s not going to happen any time soon.

  “She loves you, you know,” Tabitha says. “As much as she knows how. I’ve felt it. She’s been alone for such a long time.”

  “I know. I figured that out a while ago. It’s fucked up, like Sid and Nancy fucked up. She’s not human. She’s not going to feel the way we do. The fuck does love even mean with her? Love the way a dog loves a bone? Love me enough to murder my sister to get my attention? That’s insane to me. But it isn’t to her. I think she loves me for what she can use me for. She’s got a plan. And I’m a big chunk of it. You know that, too. Hell, you might even know what the plan is.”

  “I don’t,” Tabitha says. “That’s one of those gaps I was talking about. I have some of her memories, but there are things she won’t share with me. That’s one of them.”

  I feel sorry for her. I want to tell her about Darius, but what would I say? An eight-thousand-year-old Djinn told me what’s going on but he made me forget, and wow is that less than helpful, or what? Yeah, that’ll fly like a lead balloon.

  And say I could remember. Should I tell her? Probably not. Darius could be blowing smoke up my ass. Or he could have it wrong. Maybe he doesn’t really know as much as he thinks he knows. Too many variables, too many risks, too many ways for things to go shit wrong. But at least it’s a direction.

  Instead I say, “Did she say why she chose you?”

  “I told you, I’ve got the same kinds of powers you do. She needed a necromancer.”

  “For what?” I say. “What’s the long game? You’ve asked, haven’t you? Wondered?”

  “Of course, I’ve wondered. I just—” Confusion in her eyes. “It never seemed important.” The drumming of her fingers on her leg speeds up. She’s questioning. Nervous.

  “So you never asked.”

  “Once,” Tabitha says, her voice cracking. “She wouldn’t tell me.”

  I don’t want to push her any more. I tell myself it’s
because that might force things too far too fast and it’ll backfire. That all I need right now is for her to be questioning things. The seed’s planted. Let her worry on it.

  But I wonder if I just don’t want to hurt her.

  “How far to Mictlantecuhtli’s tomb?” I say, standing up. My knee creaks and my back screams at me with a knot of pain. I ignore it as best I can. I put out my hand and she takes it. She holds my hand a little longer than is strictly necessary before I help her up. Or maybe I hold hers. I can’t tell.

  “An hour maybe,” she says. “Are you sure you want to try to get in there?”

  “‘Want’ isn’t exactly the word I’d use, but yes. I don’t know if killing him will stop the progression of the jade, but I have to try.”

  “It could speed it up.”

  “So could all sorts of things. I’m trying not to think about it.”

  She starts down the road and pauses mid-step. “If nothing else,” she says, not looking at me, “please know that I’m sorry that it came down to this. That it happened at all.”

  “Yeah. Me, too.”

  I can tell we’re getting close because I can feel Mictlantecuhtli’s power uncoil inside me like a snake catching the first rays of the sun. It’s a big knot of want. It wants to get into that tomb, wants to reconnect with Mictlantecuhtli. It knows it’s in the wrong body and it wants very much to fix that.

  Weirdly, the raven tattoo on my chest is getting in on the action, too. It’s been feeling off for months now, as if the change in me is changing the ravens. They might be magic, but they’re still just ink. Even when the spell triggers and releases them, they’re just phantoms. A last ditch weapon when the shit hits the fan. There’s no thought in them, certainly no will. But I still can’t shake the feeling that they’re waking up.

  We head around a bend and all my tattoos get in on it. The ones to ward me against being detected by Mictlantecuhtli are beginning to itch and burn, even where my skin has turned to jade. The burning spreads. Each tattoo lighting up on my skin like they were drawn in fire. Searing pain engulfs my body and it takes everything I’ve got to keep from falling to my knees. As it is I bend over double, gritting my teeth through it.