Esperanza

by Trish J. MacGregor

  The Incan Café, deeper than it was wide, provided a welcoming fireplace to the left, a serving counter on the right, tables and chairs in the middle. Farther back stood bookcases and more tables, and beyond that lay a third area where people appeared to be sitting in front of small TV screens. Behind the counter, a young woman with beautiful skin and long black hair, who looked to be about his son’s age, had an object pressed to her ear. “Sí,sí, claro,” she was saying. “Tengo que ir, mi amor.” Then she slipped easily into English. “I’ll call you later.” She snapped the object shut and hurried over. “Buenos días, señor.” Her name tag read CONSUELO DE COLOMBIA.

  “A café con leche, please.” Ian gestured at the object in her hand. “What is that, anyway?”

  “This?” She seemed surprised by his question. “A cell phone.” She flipped it open, revealing a small screen and keypad with numbers.

  “A telephone?” Without a cord? Unconnected to anything? Smaller than her palm?

  “You don’t have these where you’re from?”

  “No. Where can I get one?”

  “We sell prepaid cells here. I’ll bring you one with your coffee.”

  As Consuelo turned away, Ian glanced at a sign on the counter: FREE WI-FI AND DSL FOR JUST A BUCK AN HOUR! Cell phones, Wi-Fi, DSL: he felt like he’d dropped down the rabbit hole.

  Consuelo returned with his coffee and a bright blue cell phone. “This one’s got a hundred prepaid minutes. It’s thirty dollars and I can activate it for you.”

  “Fantastic. Thanks.” Now he could call Luke. “What do you have to do to activate it?”

  “Caramba, you’re really new at this. I’ll show you. We have DSL now and it’s magnífico.” She brought her fingers to her lips, kissed them. “You blink and are on.”

  He had no idea what she was talking about, but followed her into the back room with his coffee and new cell phone. A dozen people sat in front of small TV screens.

  “Here you go. Number thirteen.”

  Thirteen. Again.

  He realized that what he’d mistaken for TV screens were something altogether new to him. Resting on a square pad to his right was an odd-looking plastic gizmo. Ian set his coffee down, pulled out a wooden chair, sat.

  “What browser do you use?” Consuelo asked.

  Browser? What the hell was that? “You pick for me.”

  She placed her hand on the gizmo, jiggled it slightly, and the screen lit up with a photograph of the café—and dozens of symbols. “Left click on the logo for Firefox,” Consuelo said. “Like this.”

  A white page appeared with letters across the top of it: a blue G, red O, yellow O, blue G, green L, red E. Google. What the hell was a Google? To the left of it were: more, gmail, shopping, news, maps, images, web.

  What the fuck? He sat with his hand over the gizmo, but didn’t know what to do with it.

  “You don’t have DSL where you live?” Consuelo asked.

  “Uh, no.”

  “You’re still on dial-up? Qué barbaridad.”

  What was dial-up? “I live in rural Minnesota. We don’t have anything like this yet. What do I do?”

  Consuelo’s expression made it abundantly clear that he was the white elephant in the café. “No Internet? No cells? Ay, señor. Even in the small towns in my country, everyone has a cell and Internet.” She sat beside him. “Many expats come through here. You’re the first I have met who has never used the Internet. So let me activate your cell, then give you a lesson.”

  She whizzed through the activation and proceeded with a short lesson in the use of the Internet. Most of it seemed to revolve around Google, which she referred to as a search engine. “You can enter anything in Google and if there’s information anywhere in the known universe, it’ll come up. Just give me a word, a term, a name, anything.”

  “Esperanza, Ecuador.”

  “Perfect.” Consuelo typed the words into a space she called the search bar. The screen filled with phrases—links. “You click on a link, then press this button here if you want to print. Try the Wikipedia link. It’s an open-source encyclopedia. Anyone can enter information into Wikipedia.”

  “Thanks very much, Consuelo.”

  As soon as she turned away, he clicked on the Wikipedia link and scanned the article. Some of the information echoed what Paco Faraday had told him and much of it pertained to the myths and folklore about Esperanza—that the city had once been a nonphysical location for souls in transition, about some big battle between brujos and light chasers five centuries ago. He skipped to the factual aspects.

  This town of 20,000 is located at 13,200 feet in the Andes. Esperanza is nearly impossible to get to without a local guide. This difficulty is due, in part, to the roughness of the terrain. The roads are bad, the volcanos are unpredictable, the mountains rise nearly 8,000 feet from the nearest outpost.

  Local myths and legends claim the area retains some of the mystical qualities it possessed as a nonphysical location—that it is home to shape-shifters, that residents enjoy extraordinary health and longevity, that desires manifest more quickly. But in the last decade, the homicide rate has spiked significantly, tourism has fallen, and the city struggles to hold on to its younger population, who increasingly seek lives elsewhere.

  In the late 1960s, a cultural anthropologist from Berkeley, 35-year-old Sara Wells, won a Fulbright to study the beliefs in brujos in Esperanza. She disappeared in the Andes and is presumed dead. Her sister launched an extensive search for Wells, but nothing came of it. Her disappearance certainly remains one of the more mysterious stories in the history of this mysterious place. (See: International Herald Tribune, Journal of Cultural Anthropology, San Francisco Chronicle, L.A. Times)

  His mind raced. Was this Sara Wells the same one that Ed Granger had mentioned? Sara Wells will want to talk to you when she returns. She’s the expert on these mala sangres.

  He returned to Google, typed in Tess’s name: 52,196 hits. He added Miami, Florida, to her name and learned he could obtain a credit report, the White Pages with an address and phone number, and find out whether she’d been sued, declared bankruptcy, married, or divorced. He could buy the information for $29.95, credit card or PayPal, whatever that was. But even more puzzling than any of this was the date at the top of the page: late January 2008. That had to be a mistake.

  Back on the Google page, Ian clicked news and scanned the headlines and excerpts. He didn’t recognize any of the presidential candidates. He read that global warming was spawning entire new industries, stem cell research held great promise for diseases like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, cancer. A dead satellite was to be shot down. The space station had been expanded. Something called “blogs” buzzed with political rumors. AIDS continued to ravage Africa. In entertainment news, the writers’ strike in Hollywood was sinking the L.A. economy. The Simpsons movie was now available on DVD.

  He printed out some of the articles, feeling as if he had stumbled through the looking glass without a compass, dictionary, or rudimentary knowledge of the language or culture. Ian took the printed pages from the tray, folded them, slipped them in the pocket of his jacket. Shaken, he got up, returned to the front room, paid Consuelo, and asked for a city map. She handed him one, then leaned toward him.

  “I just received this strange e-mail from Ed Granger, at the Posada de Esperanza. That’s where you’re staying, right?”

  “Yes.” But what was an e-mail? “So?”

  “It’s the second I’ve gotten in the last several days and it was sent to all the businesses in town. The first one said no computers, cells, Google, or e-mail for you or your friend, Tess. The second one, sent an hour and a half ago, says you’re in danger from the brujos and if you’re sighted, we have to call in. Whenever the brujos are involved, the procedure is mandatory. So I had to call, Mr. Ritter. But I really dislike the way they do this, like a Gestapo, me entiendes? So it’s up to you. Stay here and they’ll pick you up or, if you move fast, you have a lead of maybe five minutes.”<
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  “Thanks, Consuelo. Where do I catch a bus to Gigante?”

  “Two blocks east, in front of a place called Books of Hope.”

  He burst through the café door and raced up the street, his new cell phone clutched in his hand, backpack banging against his hip, sutured temple throbbing, throat raw and dry with fear.

  Nine

  When Dominica gave the signal, the assault on the greenhouse ceased and the fog, shrouding a thousand of her tribe, withdrew into the nearby woods. There, her brujos chattered, their collective voices like the susurrus whisper of wind through trees. But to the living who could hear it, those voices probably sounded insidious, obscene, and hungry.

  “Why’d you do that?” Ben demanded, materializing beside her in his California surfer form.

  “To lure them out.” And because she’d heard a distress call from Rafael apparently meant only for her. “If they leave, follow them in the fog, Ben.” She sensed that Nomad and this Manuel character had some location that was more secure, someplace she didn’t know about. “Then signal me.”

  “I say we summon the rest of the tribe and move into the city, Nica.”

  “Not yet. First we scare the transitionals back into their bodies and kill them. It’s our best insurance.”

  With that, she thought herself to Rafael. He and Pearl, wearing their virtual forms, argued on an abandoned spit of sunlit beach by Lago del Sueño. Dominica ran toward them in her Amazon warrior queen form, shouting, “Enough, enough!”

  Pearl whipped around, a barefoot beauty in hip-hugging, bell-bottom jeans, a white cotton top with a scoop neck, hippie beads draped at her throat. “He’s freaking out, Nica,” she hollered. “Do something. I can’t talk to him.”

  Sobbing into his hands, Rafael was so distraught that he couldn’t hold his campesino form together. It flickered, faded, vanished, and appeared again. Alarmed, Dominica grabbed him by the shoulders. “Calm down, Rafael, take deep breaths, that’s good. Now tell me what happened.”

  His hands fell away from his tear-streaked face, dark eyes filled with such excessive emotion that she almost believed he really was human. “You . . . told Pearl and me to stay close to Ian, to frighten him when we got the . . . the chance.” He balled his hands into fists, ground them against his thighs. “He got hurt . . . when one of Ed’s men tackled him. So Ed called the doctor, and when . . . Ed left the cottage, I . . . I waited for the right moment and . . . seized him. Seized Paco Faraday. I . . . he . . . fought me, Nica, he . . . wouldn’t cooperate, he wouldn’t do what I told him to do . . . And I . . . shit, he pissed me off and I . . . squeezed too hard and he . . . bled out and Pearl had to . . . to pull me out before he died.”

  Rafael, whose life as a black man in the segregated American South had ended when he was hanged by racists, had never seized a human and caused the host body to bleed out. He couldn’t kill. It wasn’t in him. In her calmest voice, Dominica said, “It’s okay, Rafael. It’s not your fault, it—”

  “I’m not here to kill anyone,” he screamed. “I’m here to be with Pearl, to . . . to create a city of brujos, where we just use bodies to enjoy physical existence. I don’t want to kill, I can’t become like the . . . monsters who hung me. I can’t. It’s not who I am.”

  Then he sank to his knees in the sand, weeping uncontrollably. It hurt her to look at him. In Rafael, she saw her own failings, that she hadn’t foreseen this possibility, she’d neglected to connect the dots. No wonder Rafael and Pearl never joined her, Ben, and other brujos on their sexual excursions, where the risk always existed that you might have to cause the host body to bleed out.

  She drew Pearl aside. “What happened to Ian?”

  Pearl was so upset that her form also flickered. “He fled the cottage. Rafael told him that he was on life support, that Tess was in a coma, but he . . . he didn’t freak out, Nica. He didn’t cower in some corner and curl up in a fetal position. He just . . . took off. I got Rafael out of there before Ed Granger and his goddamn vigilantes showed up and found Paco’s body. I brought him down here to the beach, then returned to the inn. They were all there by then—Ed, Juanito, Sara Wells, Illika Huicho . . . and the sirens went off and . . . and . . .”

  “Bottom line, Pearl.”

  “Ian was sighted at the Incan Café. Juanito Cardenas is on his way over there now, to pick him up.”

  Juanito. Good. She could handle him. “Take Rafael back to the twin peaks. Stay with him. Have him talk to a counselor, Pearl.”

  She looked horrified. Counseling was one step removed from tribal banishment. “It just . . . caught him by surprise, that’s all. I’m sure he’s going to be fine.”

  “Your job is to take care of him and make sure he gets the help he needs. I’ll be in touch.” Dominica turned and raced back up the beach, shedding her warrior form in pieces—an arm, a leg, her head. When she was free of it, she thought herself toward Juanito Cardenas.

  But Juanito was a sly one, wise to the brujo ways. A native of Esperanza, born eighty-plus years ago, he’d gone to Quito in his late teens, then to Buenos Aires for college. He’d made a lot of money in real estate and returned here in his early thirties with his wife. They had bought a home near his parents and sister and started a family.

  Ten years ago, Dominica and Ben had seized his sister, and ever since, he’d worked with the Esperanza hierarchy of chaser helpers to defeat the brujos. He knew what they knew—how to camouflage himself when he needed to, where their sanctuaries were, what the larger plan was, who the chasers were, what they were up to. Juanito had discovered that brujos in their phony human forms could be annihilated by fire and, ever since, Granger and his ilk—like Manuel Ortega—had been armed with flamethrowers.

  Who the fuck are you? she had stammered to Manuel when they were outside that bus.

  Not anyone you want to cross.

  As if he, too, had knowledge, power, answers. She wanted to know who he was, why Ben hadn’t been able to find any information on him, and what Manuel and Nomad had been doing inside that greenhouse with Tess. She was sure Juanito could enlighten her.

  She focused her attention on a mental image of Juanito and allowed that image to direct her to an old truck speeding through the back roads of the city. She moved closer to it, saw Juanito inside. Instead of dropping through the roof and seizing him instantly, she followed him to the Incan Café.

  Brujos rarely entered this place because the young woman who managed it, Consuelo from Colombia, could sense them, see them. In certain circles, she was known as the brujo bullshit detector. Rumors said that Consuelo had suffered a near-death experience when she was a kid and had been able to see and communicate with the dead ever since. Did that mean that Ian and Tess, if they survived the returns to their physical bodies, would be able to do the same? Was that the real reason the chasers had allowed these two transitionals into Esperanza?

  Is it that simple?

  The mere possibility staggered her imagination. Yet, the more she thought about it, the more likely it seemed. Perhaps this answered the most pressing puzzle of the last ten years—why the chasers had not intervened in the brujo attacks on Esperanza. Could it be that there weren’t enough of them? That these so-called evolved souls were simply outnumbered by those like her?

  Juanito didn’t stop in front of the café, but drove past slowly, talking on his cell, and vanished into an alley. She didn’t like narrow alleys any more than she did underground bunkers, the tightness of boundaries, the tomblike claustrophobia. But when the truck popped out on the other side of the alley and screeched into a right-hand turn, she took notice.

  The truck slowed, chugging along the two-lane road through a residential neighborhood—and she spotted Ian, racing up the street, arms bent, tight at his sides. Juanito lowered his windows and shouted, “Hey, amigo. It’s me, Juanito. Manuel sent me. He’s with Tess. C’mon, I’ll give you a ride.”

  Ian’s head turned, eyes wild, startled. He looked bad, she thought. His pallor, the way he gasped f
or breath, even the beads of sweat glistening on his face meant he would not be here much longer. She would be in a strong position to follow him back to his physical body.

  He slowed and called, “Why should I trust you?”

  “I’ll call Tess. You talk to her.”

  Ian stopped, the truck pulled up to the curb, Dominica moved closer.

  Juanito whipped out his cell, speaking softly to Ian as he punched out a number. Ian walked cautiously to the truck, frowning, sweatshirt tied at his waist, patches of perspiration darkening his shirt. His breath came in short bursts. He paused at the passenger window, watching Juanito warily. Then Juanito set a cell on the roof and Ian picked it up, pressed it to his ear and turned away. “Tess?”

  With Ian’s back to the truck, Dominica seized Juanito with such brutal swiftness that he didn’t have a chance to react, much less fight. She grabbed control of his brain, limbs, lungs and heart, luxuriating in the flow of oxygen through her blood. I have succumbed to convenience. But for a male body, it was put together well. Esperanza’s health and longevity benefits had been augmented by Juanito’s care of his physical being—excellent nutrition, regular exercise. Even more important was that Juanito was emotionally and spiritually happy.

  I like your body, Juanito.

  Silence. She sensed he was busy burying information that he thought she might access, so she reached deep inside him and grabbed what she could. She only retrieved fragments, the linguistic equivalents of prepositions and conjunctions. Come now, Juanito. Sooner or later your vigilance will slip and I’ll find everything I need.

  As will I, Dominica.

  I can kill you this second. A tiny bit of pressure at the base of your brain and you’ll end up like Paco Faraday.

  Juanito laughed. Wayra always said the only way you know is death and destruction. You will not win this battle.

  It angered her that Wayra had spoken to this despicable little man about her. And in that moment of anger, her defenses were lowered and Juanito leaped into the basement of her mind. He flung out one memory after another from her centuries with Wayra, a movie of heartbreaking images so intimate and vivid and ultimately traitorous that an agonizing grief drove her out of Juanito.