Ghost Key

by Trish J. MacGregor

  “Enough to move my boat out here and hide. Enough to know the mayor and nearly every other power player on the island has been compromised by … well, Zee Small calls them ‘Satan’s minions.’ I think of them as evil ghosts.”

  “Close.”

  “Which? The minions or the ghosts?”

  “The ghosts.”

  As Wayra offered the condensed version of brujo history, Kate listened with rapt attention. She interrupted now and then with a question, but it was usually to clarify something he had said or to ask for more information. At one point, a tapping at the deck doors prompted Kate to get up and open them. A breeze blew through the houseboat, swollen with the smell of salt water and marsh, and a sparrow hawk glided through the doors, crying out, and circled the living room. It landed on the arm of the couch next to Wayra and stared at him. Recognition shuddered through him. “You’re the hawk from the landfill.”

  The hawk fluttered upward and landed on Wayra’s shoulder.

  “Jesus,” Kate breathed. “She’s never done that with anyone except me and Rocky.”

  “She’s your pet?” he exclaimed.

  “Rocky rescued her last year, and after she was released from the center, she just ended up living on the porch. What do you mean she’s the hawk from the landfill?”

  “She was at a landfill in Ocala where I found the body of one of Dominica’s victims. She went after a cop who was going to shoot at me.”

  “Ocala? That’s, like, thirty-five miles from here.” Anxiety tightened her mouth. “I thought she was with Rocky. Liberty is like his protector.”

  “I’m sure he’s somewhere safe. Otherwise she wouldn’t have left him.”

  As if in response, the hawk fluttered up from Wayra’s shoulder, flew over to Kate, and settled on the back of her chair. “I can’t look for him now, not in this fog,” she said. “He knows not to come out in it.”

  “Dominica conjures the fog. It enables these ghosts to travel inside of it in their natural forms and makes it easier for them to seize the living.”

  The horror in her eyes was that of a woman who was just beginning to realize the true nature of her new reality. “In their natural forms? What does that even mean?”

  “Their souls, spirits, essences, whatever you want to call it.”

  “The orbs,” she said quietly. “At the café, I saw orbs. One of them … just vanished when I stuck my torch through it.”

  He nodded. “They call it annihilation, but you actually freed it to move on in the afterlife.”

  For a long time, she said nothing. She just stared at her hands, fingers threaded tightly together, her bottle of water pressed between her knees. When she finally spoke, her voice sounded small, uncertain.

  “What else … do I need to know about these fuckers?” Her voice cracked, and she swallowed hard. “Zee Small said they can be obliterated if the host is killed and the brujo doesn’t escape. He said they’re afraid of fire. That certainly seemed to be the case tonight.”

  “It sounds like this Zee Small has figured things out on his own. That’s impressive.”

  “At first, when he told me, I thought it was more of his religious bullshit. But yeah, he has figured out a lot of it.”

  “Anyone can be taken, Kate.”

  “Even you? A shifter?”

  “Brujos have tried, but they find me distasteful. Dominica’s little army here doesn’t know what I am, so they’ve kept their distance.”

  “How can Rocky and I protect ourselves?”

  “There’s no magic here. Stay out of the fog, be sure you’re armed, don’t hesitate to use fire.” He noticed how the hawk watched him, almost as if she were listening to his every word. Even though animals usually reacted to him in some way, he’d never experienced anything like this, especially with any kind of bird. “The bottom line is that they have a great advantage over the living. They can be anywhere, at any time. You won’t find them in cemeteries and they stay away from hospitals. Dominica doesn’t know how to swim, so it’s unlikely that she would follow anyone into deep water. Her ghosts don’t seem too fond of water, either, but it may be that it’s simply easier for them to move through air. Once you’re seized, they control you completely.”

  “Not in cemeteries,” she repeated. “That’s ironic. It’s where everyone expects to find a ghost. If you’re seized, is it possible to escape?”

  “People have done it. But some are forever broken or profoundly changed. Others survive with their humanity intact. It all depends on what you are within yourself.”

  “Will Maddie survive?”

  “I think so.” But he hadn’t been able to say that until this afternoon in the salt marsh, in those few moments before Dominica had seized her again. “But Maddie has been a prisoner within her own body for months. I’m not sure how much longer she’ll be able to hold on to who she is. The—”

  The hawk suddenly cried out and flew toward the French doors, circling, agitated, until Wayra opened the doors for her. She flew off into the darkness, silent now. It was then he heard what the hawk had heard. “Boats, headed this way,” he hissed. “Turn off the lantern. Do you have another weapon?”

  She turned off the lantern. “Just grenades. Christ, I can’t see a damn thing. Lemme find a flashlight.” Drawers opened and shut, then a narrow beam of light pricked the darkness. “I’ll get a couple of them.”

  Kate hastened into the galley and Wayra slipped out onto the back deck. He heard at least half a dozen Coast Guard cutters out there and that meant there would be several people aboard each one, all of them armed. He crouched at the railing, watching, listening, smelling the air. His sense of smell wasn’t as sharp in his human form, but even so, he caught the distinct scents of at least ten people on the two lead boats. The fog now crept into the mangroves, tongues of the stuff wrapping around some of the outer branches. Brujo fog? It seemed to be, but he sensed it lacked direction, that Dominica was so occupied with something else that the fog she’d conjured was on its own.

  He heard the hawk just above him, on the roof or the upper deck, making a soft trilling sound. Her wings fluttered, and a feather drifted down onto the porch. Wayra picked it up, ran his fingers over it and marveled at the softness. He set it on the railing.

  Kate dropped to her knees beside him and set a green camouflage bag on the deck between them. “Here,” she whispered.

  Wayra reached inside, his fingers trailing across the grenades. “How many?”

  “Forty-two.”

  “Where’d you get them?”

  “Same place I got the gun, from Zee Small.”

  The guy who figured things out before anyone else, Wayra thought. “Does he have more weapons?”

  “Knowing Zee, he probably has an arsenal.”

  “Ultimately, we’re going to need more than these grenades.”

  The boats out beyond the mangroves suddenly slowed down, barely idling. Through the mangrove branches, he could see their lights, reflected unnaturally in the thick fog, and estimated the vessels were less than a hundred yards away from the houseboat. He heard shouts, but couldn’t distinguish the words.

  “Let’s go topside,” Kate whispered. “We might have a better view.”

  Wayra plucked two grenades from the bag and followed Kate up the ladder to the left of the door. They emerged on the open upper deck, which nearly reached the tops of the mangroves. The hawk, perched on the back of a lounge chair, continued to trill and preen herself. She had alerted them to the approach of the boats, but didn’t seem too concerned about them at the moment. Wayra took that as a positive sign.

  He and Kate moved, hunkered over, to the railing. Except for exploratory tendrils of fog near the island, most of the fog loomed like a wall about a hundred yards offshore, swaying, undulating, sentient. He heard the brujo litany: Find the body, fuel the body, fill the body, be the body … At first, it sounded like the wind through trees. Then it sounded like fingernails drawn over a chalkboard. And then it became the lasciv
ious caress of callused palms over youthful skin, and the hawk suddenly lifted into the air, shrieking, and flew off toward the fog.

  Wayra squeezed the bridge of his nose and tried to block out the litany. But he couldn’t. He had known this sound since Dominica had joined the brujos centuries ago and learned to manipulate fog, conjure it, command it to act as a cover for her hostless followers.

  “What is that sound?” Kate whispered.

  “Her army. The ones who need hosts.”

  More shouting erupted from the boats, shots echoed, engines fired up, and above it all, the hawk’s shrieks echoed across the water. Wayra stood in order to see what was going on. The wall of fog closed in around the two lead vessels and the hawk remained well above it, visible in the starlight, circling, shrieking, occasionally diving down toward it, then soaring upward again. It was as if the hawk understood what was going on.

  The fog had thickened so much Wayra could no longer see even the shapes of the vessels inside it. But his imagination filled in the blanks. He knew what was happening, had seen it hundreds of times over the years. As the fog closed in around the vessels, the brujos within it were seizing hosts. He wasn’t close enough to hurl a grenade, and if he grabbed Kate’s weapon and starting firing, his shots would fall short and the fog and brujos would turn in their direction.

  Wayra sank to the floor, hands pressed over his ears, and struggled to block out the wails of the people who were seized, their cries of shock and agony. Kate grabbed one of his shoulders. “Wayra, we need to help them, to—”

  He took hold of her wrist, pulling her down to the deck. “They’re being seized and we can’t do anything. We’re too far away to shoot or toss grenades, and if we expose ourselves, they’ll turn this way.”

  “But—”

  “If you’re taken, your son will be unprotected. If I’m killed, Dominica wins and Maddie will be trapped for good.”

  In the ghastly glow of the lights in the fog, Kate’s face looked ravaged with uncertainty, grief, rage. Her eyes filled with tears and she ran back to the ladder and vanished over the side. Wayra remained on the open deck a while longer, hoping he would be proven wrong, that the fog would roll in closer to Sea Horse Key and he would have an opportunity to hurl grenades and blast Dominica’s minions into oblivion.

  But it didn’t happen. The wails and shrieks of the seized, the forsaken, the victimized, seemed to go on for a long time. How many? How many were being seized? A dozen? Two dozen? He tried to convince himself that Dominica wasn’t winning, but he kept hearing what she’d said to him after she’d seized Maddie again in the salt marsh. Cedar Key isn’t yours to give. It’s already mine.

  * * *

  Sanchez and Jessie raced through a wooded area, sirens shredding the air around them. They came out on a dirt road that curved along the salt marsh. Starlight spilled across it, revealing a low fog that twisted through the reeds like some impossibly long, pale snake. On the other side of the road stood homes on concrete or wooden pilings, weekend places, rentals. All were dark, uninhabited, no cars in the driveways. He could still hear the sirens, and since the breeze had shifted direction, he smelled smoke from the burning café.

  Sanchez loped toward one of the empty houses, ducked beneath it, and hid behind a Dumpster piled high with wood and other construction materials. Jessie dropped to the ground beside him. In spite of the chill in the air, she was panting hard. He drew his fingers through her fur, whispering to her, telling her what a good dog she was, running like that, never straying. “We’re going to break in and find a place to sleep for the night.”

  She whined softly, but stayed close as he peeked around the Dumpster, checking out the rest of the road. It appeared to dead-end here, with one house on the cul-de-sac and another at two o’clock. No sign of lights or cars. He darted toward the stairs, Jessie close at his side.

  The front door was locked, no surprise. Sanchez checked the obvious places for a spare key—behind a large ceramic pot, under the mat, on the upper edge of the door frame. Nothing. He shrugged off his jacket, wrapped it around his fist, and slammed it against one of the glass panes in the door. The glass tinkled as it struck the floor inside. He quickly knocked away the jagged shards, reached through the opening and turned the dead bolt. The door creaked as it swung open, and he and Jessie hurried inside.

  Starlight streamed through the large windows, enough for him to see that the main part of the house was a single large room that held both the kitchen and the living room. He guessed there were bedrooms off to either side. Sanchez opened the fridge door and was relieved that the power was still on, that the fridge wasn’t totally empty. Bottled water, ketchup, mayonnaise, mustard, butter, peanut butter, jelly. He grabbed two bottles of water, poured one into a bowl and set it on the floor for Jessie. As he guzzled from the other, he opened the freezer. Trays of ice, a loaf of frozen bread, two frozen pizzas. He hurried over to the pantry and found cans of tuna, fruit, vegetables, packages of ramen noodles and spaghetti, juices, more bottled water, bottled sauces, popcorn, even dog and cat food. Good, perfect, they wouldn’t starve here.

  He filled a bowl with dog food, made himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, gobbled it down as he went through the drawers. He found a flashlight, turned it on, aimed the beam at the floor, and moved restlessly around the house, checking the views.

  From the master bedroom, he could see up to the curve in the dirt road. From the living room, he had a view of another section of the road, the salt marsh, the gradually rising fog, and the house at two o’clock. From the second bedroom, he gazed down into the cul-de-sac and at the house that occupied it. No lights on there, no car. It looked as if he were alone at this end of the road.

  Sanchez opened the porch doors. The balcony was wide, long, and wrapped around most of the dome-shaped house. The smell of smoke was much stronger now, the squeal of sirens just as loud. The road remained empty of cars, people, even wildlife.

  He shrugged off his pack, set it on the floor, and sank into one of the Adirondack chairs. He checked the cell phone Delaney had given him lifetimes ago in that parking lot at the state park. The damn thing didn’t have a signal, but his BlackBerry did. Its signal was weak, but at least he had something. He texted Delaney: Got out of café safely, am hidden in a neighborhood on the marsh. They’re hungry ghosts, just like we talked about. Did u get the vid? He pressed send and waited anxiously to see if the text went through. When it did, he kept staring at the BlackBerry, hoping for an immediate reply.

  Minutes ticked by. Then Delaney replied: Stay put. O’Donnell knows you went rogue. He thinks u tricked both of us. Quarantine now in place, just not formal yet. Got vid. More soon. D

  Sanchez started to answer him, but a text message from his sister popped up. You okay?

  Google Maddie Livingston. Esperanza, brujos, Cedar Key. Quarantine about to be or already imposed.

  A cart suddenly rounded the curve, four men inside. Terrified they might look up and see him and Jessie, Sanchez shoved his BlackBerry into a pocket, grabbed his pack from the floor. He and the dog slipped back inside the house.

  Master bedroom. From here, he could watch them without being seen. The cart stopped in the middle of the road, and the four men got out. They passed around a bottle, appeared to be talking, but the sirens were still squealing and drowned out everything but an occasional laugh.

  The driver gestured toward the left. Two men headed off in that direction, presumably to check the empty houses Sanchez had passed on his way in here. Then the driver and another man strode up the street toward the houses at this end. So who were they? Cops? They were wearing jeans and jackets. But even if they had been wearing uniforms, it didn’t mean anything, not after what he’d seen at the café. He had to assume these four men were inhabited by the same evil that was inside those people at the café, inside Maddie.

  He had a Glock 34 nine millimeter that Delaney had given him. During his training with ISIS, he had used this weapon most frequently. But hi
s had been altered somewhat with a set of Dawson fiber-optic sights, with the rear sight adjusted for both windage and elevation. A stainless steel guide rod and heavier spring had been added, the trigger pull had been lightened, and some of the internal stock parts had been changed out with stainless steel to smooth up the action. An extended magazine release had been added, too.

  The best news was that the Glock held eighteen rounds and he had three additional clips. In short, he had enough ammo to take out all four of these men. But Sanchez had never killed anyone before. Self-defense was one thing; picking them off from the balcony would be murder.

  The front door was the only way out of the house. He slung his pack over his shoulder. “Let’s move, Jess. Fast.” She ran over to him, and as he opened the door, he caught hold of her collar with one hand. “Stay close,” he whispered.

  She whimpered in response and hugged his side. He wondered, not for the first time, whether she was a human soul trapped within a dog’s body, voiceless.

  They raced to the bottom of the stairs, then dashed right, around a fence that separated this property from an open field. Sanchez dropped into a crouch on the other side, his heart slamming against his ribs. His options hardly boded well for getting out of here. Low brush covered the flat, open field; nothing was tall or thick enough to provide a hiding place. The wooded area behind the house in the cul-de-sac seemed to be his best bet, but to get to it he would have to cross the road and would be exposed long enough to get shot.

  Sanchez crawled to the edge of the fence, looked around it. One of the men trotted purposefully toward the only other house on this street, the place on the marsh. The other guy was stooped over, tying his shoe.

  Do it now.

  Sanchez dashed out into the road and Jessie tore toward the woods like a bat out of hell. She understood, she got it, thank God. Just when he thought he would make it, one of the men shouted, “Hey, you, stop where you are!”

  Sanchez kept running, and the guy opened fire.

  A bullet whistled past his head. Another bullet pinged against the road. Sanchez didn’t wait for a third bullet. He opened fire, shooting blindly, and dived into the woods. He slammed against the ground so hard his breath rushed out of him. He lay there for a moment, stunned, then managed to roll onto his stomach.