“You have to try,” Tess begged. “She might still have a faint pulse, we don’t know. We don’t have a stethoscope. Please, Wayra. Just try.”
Ian tore open Lauren’s bag, pulled out her stethoscope, and went over to Lauren. He mimicked what he’d seen her do and detected a faint—almost nonexistent—pulse. “She’s still with us, Wayra.”
The shouting outside got louder, the mob had moved much closer. Ian made a beeline for the closest window, the only one with a circular pane of clear glass. He could see them now, the burgeoning herd of crazies torching cars, trees, buildings, anything and everything.
Ian spun around. “Get on with it, Wayra. Fast. The crazies are nearly on top of us.” Then he ran over to the rear pew and struggled to move it up against the door. Ricardo hastened over to help. The sucker was heavy, but Ricardo’s host, or virtual body or whatever the hell he was, proved to be as strong as he looked. They shoved and pulled, shoved and pulled until the pew stood up against the door.
“You think it’ll hold?” Ian asked.
“It should. It’s heavy enough.”
“Look, I don’t know what you’re doing here, but thanks for helping,” Ian said, then returned to the others, Ricardo behind him.
Wayra’s hands pressed against Lauren’s forehead. Ian knew that as soon as light shot from his palms, Wayra would bite his own tongue hard enough to make it bleed and then sink his teeth into Lauren’s carotid, infusing her body with shifter blood. But nothing happened. Wayra rubbed his hands together again, hard and fast, and touched his palms to Lauren’s heart.
Nothing.
“Jesus, do something,” Tess sobbed.
Wayra tried again, but the outcome was the same. He finally rocked back on his heels, misery etched in his face, and just sat there, staring down at Lauren.
“Sanchez can’t flip off his psychic switch,” Wayra said quietly. “Ricardo is stuck in his virtual body, the chasers can’t get into the disappeared area, the council can’t reverse what’s happening. And I’ve lost the ability to turn anyone.” He turned his gaze to Tess. “I can’t help her.”
Ian pressed his fists against his eyes. He blamed himself. If they hadn’t taken the Segunda Vista, if he hadn’t suggested she ask the Pranksters for help, if they had been escorted out of the area by the cops, as Leo and Pedro were, perhaps she would still be alive. It tore him apart when Tess dropped to the floor next to her mother, shaking her, sobbing, begging. Then she slipped her hands under her mother’s back, lifting her off the floor, pulling Lauren’s body against her, and rocked and sobbed.
Ian went over to her, touched her shoulder, and started to draw her away from Lauren’s body. But a hail of stones crashed through one of the stained-glass windows and something monstrously huge slammed against the door.
Then two things happened simultaneously—the first torch sailed through the broken window, into the church, and a fierce wind rose, whipping through El Bosque with such tornadic frenzy that the windows rattled, the door shook. Ian ran over to the torch and stamped it out. He moved to the window but couldn’t see anything except sand swirling through the air.
“Ian,” Ricardo shouted.
He raced to the front of the church where sand was blowing under the door and starting to accumulate on the floor in small drifts. He and Ricardo frantically pressed sheets and blankets and pillows against the crack to stop the flow of sand, but the wind blew so hard that their efforts were useless. Sand struck the door, windows, the roof of the church, the sound like that of a thousand rats clawing to get in.
“Where’s Kali?” Wayra shouted.
“She flew out when we ran out of the church and didn’t return,” Ricardo said.
“Behind the altar,” Ian yelled. “No windows back there!”
Wayra picked up Lauren and he and Tess tore toward the altar, with Ian and Ricardo right behind them.
Wayra set Lauren on the floor, between the altar and the wall. Ian and Ricardo moved two of the smaller pews onto the elevated area—one on their right, the other on their left—and flipped them on their sides so the four of them were now enclosed in a small square. Ian leaped over the barrier to snatch the last two blankets off a nearby pew, and tossed one to Tess, the other to Wayra, and they covered themselves and Lauren’s body the best they could and huddled with their backs to the wall. The blankets might protect them from flying glass, but if the roof collapsed, they would be crushed.
He and Tess pressed up so close to each other he could feel the wild pounding of her heart.
Then the first window exploded and the tempest roared into the church.
What Is Remembered
If time is an illusion, if reality is created by our own consciousness, can this consciousness ever truly be extinguished?
—Robert Lanza, M.D., Biocentrism
Eighteen
Ghost Train
1.
The ghost train didn’t run on anyone’s timetable. Midnight came and went and Charlie, Karina, and Newton still waited in their virtual forms, outside the old depot in downtown Esperanza. They stood in the shadows of the abandoned building, between the road and the tracks, so that both were visible.
The narrow cobblestone road ran through a neighborhood of family-owned shops, cafés, and several bars where music pumped from open doorways. A young, hip crowd spilled onto the sidewalk, their laughter ringing out. Some of them crossed the street and Charlie watched them, decked out in tight-fitting jeans and colorful shirts, sweaters and jackets, the women with their flowing hair, the men with their cocky laughs.
He wondered what it would be like to be their age again, young twenties who didn’t seem to have a care in the world. Hadn’t they heard about what had happened in El Bosque? Or at Café Taquina? Didn’t they have any idea what the hell was happening in the city, how these events threatened its very existence—and theirs?
“They don’t want to think about it,” Newton said, also watching the crowd outside the bars. “When your personal Armageddon looms, it’s sometimes easier to just order another beer.”
Irritated that Newton poked around inside his private thoughts, Charlie snapped, “I would appreciate it if you didn’t do that, Newt. It’s intrusive.”
Newton, who now looked like a European tourist in jeans, a pullover sweater, and a worn leather jacket, just rolled his eyes. “Charlie, you’re such an open book that I don’t even have to reach into you to read what you’re thinking.” He gestured dramatically toward the young hipsters. “Their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents lived through the dark years of brujo seizures. Most of them probably lost relatives to brujos. But it’s been more than four years now and memory is short. When they hear about weirdness at the Café Taquina, in El Bosque, when they hear the brujo sirens, they tune it out. If the brujos are back, if some corrupt chasers are moving portions of the city out of the physical world, they don’t want to know about it. That’s how it is, Charlie.”
“That’s not how it is for his granddaughter and Sanchez,” Karina said.
“Yeah,” Charlie agreed. “Maddie’s in her twenties and Sanchez is in his early thirties.”
“They’re new to the city. And they’re exceptions.” Newton rocked forward and sank his index finger into Charlie’s chest. “Everyone connected to you is an exception.”
Charlie heard someone shouting his name and looked around. A car had pulled up at the curb and Leo and Pedro, Maddie and Sanchez piled out and hurried toward them. Illary circled above them, watchful, silent, keeping her distance, then flew off. “Here come my exceptions,” Charlie said, and Maddie barreled into his open arms. How real and solid she felt, he thought. How warm and alive.
“A chaser dude named Victor told me to come here,” Maddie said, her voice soft, almost breathless. “Something about the ghost train. Is it true? Can the ghost train take us into El Bosque?”
“We think so,” Newton replied.
“Think so?” Sanchez shook his head. “That’s not good eno
ugh.”
“It’s a theory,” Newton said. “No one has ever tried this before.”
“I tried to get into El Bosque,” said Maddie. “I’d gotten a text message from Ian after he and Lauren had taken Segunda Vista. They figured it might enable them to find a way into the disappeared area. Anyway, I couldn’t get in.”
“The mandatory evacuation orders cover everything within five miles of El Bosque,” Leo explained. “The science guys have apparently measured vast electromagnetic fluctuations in the area, just like what happened around the Café Taquina and El Bosque before the erasures happened. Or so they said when they picked up Pedro and me. Fortunately, Diego made them drop us at Wayra and Illary’s place.” Leo’s eyes met Charlie’s. “That was clever, Charlie, what you and Karina did, making the room so cold that you could write a message in the frost.”
“Clever but risky,” Pedro added. “The cops could’ve seen the message. Luckily for us, the message had faded by the time they broke open the door to our hotel room.”
“We didn’t have a choice,” Charlie said. “We couldn’t create virtual forms until we got back into downtown Esperanza. All the rules have been turned inside out. Have you heard from Lore, Leo?”
“No. But she’s in there, I’m sure of it. With Ian and probably with Wayra, too.” Leo jammed his hands in his jacket pockets. “Nothing good is happening there, Newton, so can we get this train here and moving?”
“Hey, Doc, it’s not up to me,” Newton said.
“So how do we board a ghost train?” Sanchez asked.
“We’ll ask the conductor,” Newton said. “I’m not sure.” He gestured at their packs, and bags. “It’d be better if you left your stuff here. It may slow you down. I’m not sure how this works.”
“Oh, great,” Charlie said. “And here I thought you knew what you were doing.”
“My medical bag stays with me.” Leo’s fingers tightened over the strap of the bag that hung from his right shoulder. “Right here.”
“My stuff stays with me,” Maddie said, and fitted the strap of her large black canvas bag over her head and arranged it so it fell along the right side of her body. “And, oh, Jessie’s joining us.” She slipped two fingers in her mouth and whistled shrilly, sharply.
Shit, no, Charlie thought. But what he thought at that moment about the dog or the ghost train or any of it didn’t matter. Maddie’s whistle brought the golden retriever racing around the corner of the depot, onto the platform, and Sanchez snapped on her leash and told her to sit and she did. He slipped her a treat.
“I don’t know if the conductor will allow dogs,” Newton said, eyeing the dog with obvious distaste.
Jessie tugged on her leash and moved closer to Newton, sniffing at his shoes, his jeans, then she sat down right in front of him, barked, and held up her paw.
“What the hell does that mean?” Newton asked.
Sanchez rolled his eyes. “It means she’d like to shake your hand.”
“I don’t do paws,” Newton said.
“For Chrissake, Newton,” Charlie muttered. “She’s a dog.” He leaned over and shook Jessie’s paw. “See? She isn’t going to drool on you or bite you or piss on your shoes.”
Newton stepped back, refusing to touch Jessie. “Like I said, we’ll have trouble with the conductor letting her aboard.”
“He will,” Sanchez said.
“You can see that psychically?” Newton asked.
“No.” Sanchez ran his hand over the dog’s back. “Now and then, Jessie lets me in her head. And she’s assuring me she can charm anyone, even a ghost conductor.”
A gust of wind suddenly whipped through the trees on either side of the depot. It blew Maddie’s red hair across her face, tossed Karina’s braid over her shoulder, stole a hat from one of the hipsters across the street, and toppled a trash can.
“That was strange,” Karina said. “Where’d that weird gust come from?”
“Holy crap,” Leo said. “What is that?”
He pointed west, at what looked like a huge swarm of insects or maybe a massive flock of birds in the distance, in the direction of El Bosque. Charlie saw that the formation stretched for miles to the north and south, and then began to turn in on itself, whirling faster and faster until it became a tremendous tornado.
“Locusts?” Victor scoffed. “The brujos already did their locusts.”
“Sand,” Sanchez gasped. “It’s a tornado of sand. I saw this when I held the stone, Charlie. Wind, sand, a tornado…”
Charlie remembered someone telling him how Sanchez had said these very words right before he had gone into convulsions on Wayra’s back porch. “Get inside,” he hollered. “That sucker is headed toward us.”
They dashed for the depot’s nearest door, Jessie barking wildly, several young people racing after them. Charlie expected the depot to be locked, but when Sanchez pulled on the handle, the glass door swung open, and they darted inside. Seconds before the door shut, Illary flew into the building and landed on the back of one of the benches.
Except for the benches, the depot was empty and had been for a long time. Anything of value had long since been removed and auctioned off or taken to a museum in the city. The depot’s glass door and picture windows were equipped with aluminum shutters and Charlie found the circuit box that controlled them. But since the depot was no longer used, the power had been turned off.
“The benches,” he said urgently. “Let’s stack them up against the windows and doors.”
Two of the young men grabbed either end of a heavy bench and hauled it toward the door. Charlie and the others pitched in, and within minutes, six benches were stacked to the top of the glass door and windows. The only bench they hadn’t touched was the one where Illary perched.
“What’s with the hawk?” one of the young men asked.
In a flash, Illary shifted and snapped, “The hawk is here to tell you that something very wicked this way comes.”
The kid drew back, his expression seized up in shock and horror. “What the…”
Fuck, Charlie thought. Illary’s shift was incomplete. Hawk feathers grew from her hairline, spread out across the top of her skull, and fell past her shoulders, like an Indian headdress. She ran her hand over the feathers and looked at Charlie, Karina, Maddie, each of them, looked slowly and deliberately, accusingly.
“Yeah, I know. The shift doesn’t work right anymore. Nothing works right anymore. I’m going into El Bosque with you. The tornado was born there. It or something else ripped apart the whiteness and several hundred people need a way to get to safety. That’s our job.”
The kid backpedaled and joined his two friends, who gawked at Illary as she hurried over to one of the peepholes in the barricade of benches. Since the benches weren’t all the same size or even the same size as the windows, the barricades had rather large peepholes at either end. Charlie and his group followed Illary to her peephole, Jessie hugging Sanchez’s side, and the young people huddled together at the other end.
“So the disappearance of El Bosque didn’t kill everyone?” Maddie asked.
“I don’t know about everyone,” Illary said. “I was about three hundred feet up when that tornado tore open the whiteness and it didn’t take long for people to begin fleeing. They’re panicked and confused.”
“Did you attempt to get in there?” Charlie asked. “To look for Wayra, Tess?”
“I couldn’t get anywhere near it. But I think the ghost train can.”
“Well, where is it?” Leo asked impatiently.
“Maybe it’s hiding from whatever wickedness is headed our way,” Maddie said.
Charlie heard the tornado before he saw it, a roller coaster roaring out of control, a sound so powerful it rattled the windows and shook the door violently. The stacked benches trembled, threatening to topple. And then, through the peephole, he saw it, a swirling maelstrom, a thing so huge and grotesque he knew it had to be a supernatural construct. A tornado conjured into being by who or what?
Esperanza had never been afflicted by tornados. Never. Not a single tornado in five hundred years. The weather in Esperanza simply wasn’t conducive to tornadoes. But this tornado swept over the depot, hurling granules of sand and dirt so sharp, at such high speeds, that they pierced the glass. Sand seeped through the openings and cascaded to the floor. So much sand poured through the spaces between the benches that it piled up a foot high, driving all of them away from the windows and doors, deeper into the empty depot.
“This isn’t a normal tornado.” Leo had to yell to be heard. “Otherwise the depot roof would be gone.”
The roof was still intact, but it throbbed like a drum. The tornadic fury seized the building and shook it like dice in a gambler’s fist. Even though it seemed to withstand the assault, sand streamed through a vulnerable spot in a corner of the ceiling where the wind had torn something loose. In minutes, that corner of the depot looked like a beach. Charlie went over to it, drew his fingers through it. White, it was perfectly white, as soft as an infant’s skin, and felt like beach sand, something from a north Florida beach, Pensacola, Panama City. Yet, when it had hit the building and the glass, it was razor sharp.
Dichotomies, he thought. Vivid contrasts. The landscape of Esperanza now changed so swiftly, so abruptly, that nothing could be taken for granted. Just look at Illary, with her head of feathers. Or look at himself and Karina, unable to assume their customary virtual forms or to get into El Bosque after it had been disappeared. Look at Sanchez … And on it went, a cascade of you can’t, you won’t, impossible.
Charlie suddenly felt so exhausted, so spent, so completely drained of energy and will that he sank onto the bench with the others, and barely stifled an urge to crawl under it and hide.
2.
The storm began to ebb. The wind still blew, but not like before. Charlie shot to his feet and hurried over to the peephole. The others crowded around him. Sand blew through the air, cellophane and other trash tumbled like weeds across the platform. All the garbage cans had been blown over, spilling stuff everywhere, and the wind had whipped it all into a frenzy.
Apparition (The Hungry Ghosts) Page 29