Apparition (The Hungry Ghosts)

by Trish J. MacGregor

  “Tess,” Diego said. “I need to get off.”

  He disconnected before she could say anything.

  Tess quickly lowered the blinds and went over to the stove to flip the trout. The sirens started up again and the high pitch stabbed at her, dug into her eyes, bored through her skull. She detested the sound and was terrified what it might mean for her and Ian and everyone else she loved.

  When the trout was done, she squeezed some lemon juice on it, picked out the bones, dropped some lettuce and tomato on the plate, and gobbled it as she paced back and forth in front of the window, plate in one hand, phone tucked between her cheek and shoulder. She called Ian, but the call went straight to voice mail.

  “Clooney, it’s me. I’m at the apartment. Call.”

  She noticed that the time on her iPhone was 9:28. She glanced around at the cuckoo clock, but the hands remained at 9:28. She picked up her iPad, flipped open the cover. It read 9:28. “Shit.” Tess headed into the bedroom to check the digital clock on her nightstand: 9:28.

  Alarmed, Tess went into the office and woke up her iMac. The screen came into view and there, in the upper right-hand corner, the time read 9:28.

  “Okay, this is freaking me out,” she whispered.

  Was it happening only to her or was it happening everywhere in the city? If it was happening only to her, then maybe she’d finally gone round the bend. Or maybe she was actually dead. But if it was happening all over Esperanza, then something much larger was going on.

  Tess turned on the TV, tuned it to the local news. The emergency broadcast was on, directing residents to seek refuge.

  Frustrated, she felt she should be doing something other than stuffing her face and waiting for news. But what? The sirens still screeched, people were panicked, pandemonium would ensue just as it had at the café.

  To keep herself from going nuts, Tess started putting away what remained of her groceries. When she’d struck the cop with her shopping bag, she’d lost half of what she’d bought. But at the bottom of the bag she found the item she’d purchased after walking up and down the grocery store aisle several times, arguing with herself. She set the box on the table, finished putting her purchases away, then picked up the box and read the directions on the back. Yes or no?

  “Let’s do it.” Tess plucked a paper cup from the dispenser next to the counter, and headed for the bathroom.

  Pee in cup, hold test strip in urine for at least seven seconds. Done. Now she had to wait five minutes. She set the strip on top of the box, poured the urine into the toilet, flushed it, dropped the cup in the wastebasket. She stared at the strip, willing it to indicate that she wasn’t pregnant.

  She and Ian used protection, she couldn’t be pregnant. Her ridiculous hunger these past few weeks had to be caused by something else. A chemical imbalance, a thyroid problem, diabetes.

  Her iPhone sang out “Piece of My Heart,” and she rushed back into the living room and snatched the phone off the table. “Clooney, are you okay? What happened? Why’re you with Pedro in a church?”

  “Long story short, Pedro, Wayra, and I blew up the Pincoya and started the fire. We sealed off a brujo portal. Now the cops are apparently looking for us, as suspects. A security camera caught us in the park. Are you all right?”

  “You blew up … shit, Ian. Are you still in the church?”

  “Yeah, in the basement with several hundred other people. I’ll be back when the coast is clear. I left you a note on the Expat door, didn’t you see it?”

  “No. I parked in the garage, not on the street.”

  She told him what had happened on her way back to the apartment. A moment of stunned silence followed, then Ian whispered, “Christ, it’s happening again, isn’t it. The past is repeating itself.”

  “I’ll drive over to the church and pick you up,” she said.

  “No way, Slim. Stay put. I’m safe here. And you’re safe in the apartment. But if you see fog, lower the damn shutters. Look, my cell is nearly out of power. I’ll call you in a bit. Love you.”

  “Wait, are the church’s clocks—”

  His cell went dead, the connection was lost. The sirens had paused again, the booming voice returned, and Tess hurried over to the blinds, parted the slats with her fingers, and peered outside. Hundreds of people now swarmed through the street and across the park, waving torches, chanting something. She raised the blinds, opened the window, and heard, “Nunca más, nunca más.” Never again, never again.

  She was hiding up here, hiding from these brujo bastards who couldn’t seize her, and hundreds of locals who could be seized were risking their lives out there, daring the brujos to attack so they could be annihilated by the torches they carried.

  “Fuck this shit.” Tess grabbed her jacket off the back of the chair, snapped open the electrical box that controlled the metal shutters for the Expat office, and hit the switch to lower them. She unplugged her iPhone, slipped on her comfortable running shoes, and went in search of a broom, rags, a lighter. The broom handle was wood, so she grabbed the mop with a metal handle, wrapped rags around it, and soaked them in lighter fluid. She pocketed the can of lighter fluid and a lighter, shoved rags down into her bag, and tore downstairs. She burst into the street and joined the mob.

  Within minutes, hundreds more poured in from the park and people spilled out onto the sidewalks. Before she’d gone more than a couple of blocks, she heard a loud, whirring sound that quickly grew so shrill and deafening that it drowned out every other noise. A thick, dark swarm of locusts swept low over the mob, then settled across it like some preposterously huge quilt made of Velcro.

  Locusts flitted across her face, got tangled in her hair, and even though she sensed they were supernatural constructs conjured by brujos, they felt real, the noise their wings made was real. And there were so damn many of them, hundreds, thousands. They landed on her legs, arms, neck, fluttered down inside her clothes, covered her face, and dug into the corners of her mouth. They crawled into her nostrils, ears, eyes, and she dropped her torch and clawed at her face, raking enough of them away from her eyes so she could see that the panicked mob had splintered, people racing away in every direction. Tess tore off her jacket, pulled it over her head, and ran into the park, locusts still clinging to her clothing, writhing inside her shirt.

  The wave of locusts suddenly lifted, as if on a current of wind, and struck a hovering field of flames fifty feet in the air, a fire as supernatural as the locusts themselves. Had the chasers conjured the field of flames? As with the locusts, the supernatural flames were real enough so that she smelled the locusts as they burned, heard their bodies snap and crackle in the flames like bacon on a grill. Some of the trees in the park caught fire and Tess swept a burning branch off the ground and ran over to people pressed against the ground—two, three, four, she couldn’t tell. Locusts covered them so completely they looked like alien creatures.

  She swept the burning branch through the air just above them and most of the locusts flitted away, some of them on fire, others untouched. Two men and two women leaped up and raced for the tunnels. Another swarm of locusts turned toward Tess and she thrust the burning branch at them, incinerating some of them, buying herself a few seconds. Then a larger swarm swept into the plaza and she dropped the flaming branch and flew toward the closest tunnel entrance with a panicked crowd of several hundred people.

  The mob poured down the steps to the entrance, then squeezed through the tunnel doors and into the maze of interconnected tunnels. Every sound echoed loudly—the pounding of feet, the shouts and sobs. Tess ran with the others, distancing herself from the entrance, and finally ducked into a culvert to get her bearings.

  A statue of Santa Rosa, the patron saint of Esperanza, stood next to her. It was laden with flowers, candies, photos, prayers scribbled on pieces of paper. She glanced around for a sign that would tell her where, exactly, she was, but didn’t see anything.

  She stepped out of the culvert, into the rushing tide of humanity that conti
nued to pour into the tunnels from other entrances. “Ayuda viene, por allá, mira!” someone shouted.

  Horns beeped and honked and the crowds moved to the sides of the tunnel to allow a long line of electric carts to get through. Tess knew there were storage rooms throughout the tunnels where carts were kept for people to use while they were here. But she had never seen so many of them in one place before. They were large enough to seat ten, with wide running boards on either side and at the rear that could accommodate another ten or fifteen people.

  The crowd surged forward, but one of the drivers, wearing a city worker uniform, shouted, “There’s room for everyone, take your time, don’t push. More carts are on the way.”

  Tess hesitated. It struck her as too convenient. Yet, in the past, brujos always had avoided the underground tunnels just as they had avoided cemeteries. And since the mark on her arm didn’t burn or itch, she finally hopped onto a side running board of the nearest cart.

  The long line of carts started moving and then gathered speed so quickly that the tunnel walls blurred past, grottoes and culverts melted together, her eyes teared from the wind. She suddenly realized the carts were chaser manifestations.

  Tess tightened her grip on the overhead bar and glanced at the faces around her, looking for her dad in one of his virtual forms. She didn’t see him. The people in her cart looked startled, murmured among themselves, but no one tried to leap off.

  Mile after mile swept past. “¿A dónde vamos?” she yelled. Where’re we going?

  As if in response, the line of carts slowed down and people started getting off. She could see the tunnel signs now and was shocked that they were near the El Bosque neighborhood, fifteen miles from where she had entered the tunnels. How long had it taken? Five minutes? Six?

  Tess jumped down from the running board and followed a small group toward the nearest exit. The line of carts continued on through the tunnels, gathering speed.

  At least here, Tess thought, she could find out what was happening in old town, whether it was safe to return. And if it wasn’t, she would get a hotel room for the night and take a bus or cab back tomorrow morning.

  When she pushed through the exit doors, she was relieved to hear only the noises of a busy neighborhood—cars, distant music, laughter. She trotted up the steps and paused in a small plaza where everything looked normal. Across the street stood buildings made of wood, stone, and concrete, family businesses that catered to the residents of El Bosque, as well as cafés, restaurants, and bars. A lot of people were out and about.

  Tess slipped her phone from her jacket pocket; the hands were still stuck at 9:28. She checked for text messages, e-mail, calls. No, no, and no. Okay, first she needed information.

  As she crossed the street, she felt that same sensation she’d had before Ricardo had materialized in her car. That she wasn’t alone. She paused on the curb on the other side and whispered, “Dad? Or is it you again, Ricardo?”

  No one materialized. But the sensation persisted as she followed the earthen sidewalk past bars and cafés. Something was shadowing her.

  From a jukebox somewhere, Julio Iglesias sang about love won and lost. Couples emerged from bars holding hands, laughing. Families with young kids got into and out of cars. Life in El Bosque apparently hadn’t been disrupted by locusts or brujo attacks. It was as if the neighborhood existed in another reality altogether. Had they even heard about what was happening in old town?

  It occurred to her, not for the first time, that Esperanza was a massive experiment designed by some higher consciousness. If that was true, then the city was a biblical fable that had leaped to life in 3-D, HD Technicolor, and surround sound, and all of them were just actors on this vast stage who lived and learned as events unfolded. Sort of like life.

  Tess stopped in front of Mercado del León, and debated about actually going inside to find out the time. Suppose the clocks here were all stopped at 9:28? What then? Did it mean an attack was imminent? She glanced at the church where she had taken refuge just a day ago.

  The hands on its clock tower spun wildly.

  She stared at it a moment, anxiety crawling through her, then hurried into the market.

  Lines at both registers snaked back into the narrow aisles, merchandise occupied every available space, kids fussed and whined, adults looked anxious and tired, the clerks were rushed and irritable. Everyone seemed edgy, uneasy, a distinct contrast to what she’d seen outside.

  As Tess moved farther inside the store, she understood why. The small TV mounted on the wall flashed scenes of the bedlam in old town Esperanza, probably recorded by someone in the midst of it all. She saw the mob of protestors, the swarms of locusts, people dashing for the tunnels, and then the thick fog rolling across the plaza and through the street, brujo fog that must have arrived after she had run into the tunnel. The people inside the bodega apparently believed they might be next and were stocking up on food and supplies. It wouldn’t be long before everyone else in the neighborhood got wind of this.

  She looked around for a clock but didn’t see one. She made her way to the customer service counter on the far side of the store and got in line. A short line, three people ahead of her. No one in sight wore a watch. But she bet they had cell phones.

  “Permiso,” she said to the woman in front of her. “¿Qué hora es?”

  The woman, a pretty Ecuadorian of maybe twenty, slipped her cell from her jacket pocket, glanced at it, and frowned. “How strange,” she said in slightly accented English. “My phone says it’s eleven-eleven. But it can’t be that late.”

  Shit, what’s this mean?

  The woman called to the man behind the customer service counter. “¿Gustavo, qué es la hora?”

  He glanced at the time on the computer screen. “It says one-eleven. That’s obviously not right.”

  “My phone says the same thing,” exclaimed the clerk next to him.

  The man at the front of the line whipped out his cell. “I’ve got eleven-eleven.”

  Nine-twenty-eight in Esperanza and 11:11 or 1:11 here?

  But 9 plus 2 plus 8 equals 19 and broken down that’s 10, and 1 plus 0 equals 1. So we’re talking 1, 1:11, 11:11. “Holy shit.”

  Alarmed, Tess spun around to race back outside. But a flicker of movement in her peripheral vision prompted her to glance right, toward the aisle closest to her.

  In the middle of the aisle, a black wave spread like oil across the concrete floor and moved up the wall, swallowing boxes of cereal, bags of rice, canned goods, whatever stood in its path. A boy of three or four saw it, too, and screamed for his mother and backpedaled away from it. But another wave of black spread out behind him, trapping him on an island of concrete between the two black waves.

  As Tess ran toward him, the boy’s mother careened around the end of the aisle, shrieking, “Sáltalo, Hugo, sáltalo!” Jump it. The dark matter was now at least five feet wide and the kid wasn’t big enough to jump over it. But Tess was.

  She backed up to the end of the aisle, then raced forward and leaped. She landed hard but didn’t go down, and swept Hugo up in her arms. He sobbed and clutched at her, his mother kept shrieking, and Tess eyed the black wave that stood between her and Hugo’s mother, widening and spreading even as she stood there.

  It’s alive.

  “Ssshh, Hugo, it’s okay, it’s okay,” she said softly in Spanish. “Be calm, please be calm, and we’ll get across this stuff.”

  But Tess didn’t have enough space in which to gather momentum. So, with Hugo clutched to her chest, she dropped to a crouch, then sprang upward and forward. In the strange, slow-motion moments when she sailed over the dark matter, when everything appeared in such perfect, painful clarity, she knew she would not clear the dark wave, that it would swallow her and Hugo with the same indifference that it had gulped down people at the café.

  Then she slammed into the concrete floor on the other side, Hugo’s mother grabbed her son from Tess’s arms, and Tess’s left foot slipped off the con
crete and sank into the abyss. A crippling cold seized her foot to the ankle, her entire foot went numb, and felt so heavy, so weighted, she couldn’t jerk it out.

  “Oh Christ,” she gasped, and fell forward onto her hands, then her forearms.

  She was vaguely aware of screams and shouts around her, of the stampede of terrified customers, of Hugo’s mother shouting at Tess to grab on to her hands. Tess did and the woman pulled and Tess started laughing, laughing hard, hoping that laughter would break the hold of whatever this was. Tears rolled down her cheeks, the tendons in her wrists and the muscles in her arms felt as though they might snap.

  Her foot suddenly popped free and she collapsed against the floor, her foot numb yet aching, weighted and hard. She somehow scrambled upright and she, Hugo, and his mother hurried to the back of the store, Tess dragging her foot. She felt like Quasimodo, she slowed them down. She kept shouting, “The exit, get out through the rear door.”

  She glanced back; the blackness sped toward her, closing in on her. She hobbled the last few feet to the door and charged through it, but not quickly enough.

  The last thing she saw before the blackness swallowed her was the parking lot behind the store and Hugo and his mother stumbling into it, away from the black wave. Then the darkness swept over her head and the numbing cold claimed her completely.

  Twilight

  The universe can be thought of as an information processor. It takes information regarding how things are now and produces information delineating how things will be at the next now, and the now after that.

  —Brian Greene, The Hidden Reality

  Ten

  Discoveries

  DECEMBER 17–18

  1.

  Ian woke in a top bunk bed, in a dorm of bunk beds, in the basement of Santa Rosa Church. He felt strangely disconnected, as though he’d left part of his body back in the Pincoya. His eyes were dry from lack of sleep and all the smoke he’d inhaled had irritated his throat.