by Bryn Donovan
One might have expected their deaths to scare others away, but even though the height of tourist season had passed, the boat had been almost full. The renewed attention to the creepy locale had attracted American visitors like flies to rotting fruit.
The news stories had indulged in long, panning shots of the trees on the island, from which dangled mostly naked, often dismembered or mutilated dolls, an orchard of nightmare. They retold the old story of the original inhabitant of the island, a hermit who’d recovered a doll from the canal that had belonged to a drowned little girl. He’d hung the child’s toy from a tree, where it would be safe from the water. Then, he’d added more, digging through rubbish heaps and squalid secondhand stores in Mexico City, choosing only one or two at a time.
Locals began telling stories of hearing children’s laughter among the macabre trees. The Scholars at Manus Sancti believed the man had the ability to sense spirits. Ghosts often attached themselves to dolls or puppets, like substitute bodies when their mortal ones burned away. Neighbors sometimes brought dolls to him, wanting to trade for the fruits and vegetables he grew. Only rarely would he make a deal. He gathered lost souls together, where they could have company.
Occasionally, visitors brought other dolls they deemed to be particularly creepy to string up on one of the branches. In this way, the man’s collection grew even after his death.
None of this had ever concerned Manus Sancti. Hauntings were as common as stray dogs. The stories might send chills up some people’s spines, but they were almost always harmless. But men drowning for no reason—that was new. Neither Michael nor Jonathan were ghost talkers, but with truly powerful spirits, it didn’t matter. Anyone could sense them.
Michael and Jonathan had milled around the island, watching the tourists who giggled, gawped, and snapped photos. The caretaker of the island had watched all of them closely. Most people in town had believed the drownings had been murders.
When the last boat of the day ferried visitors back to town, Michael and Jonathan lagged behind. They both carried the type of expandable batons sometimes used by riot police. The weapons were easy to toss in a backpack, where their guns remained. No bullet affected the spirits of the dead.
Birds trilled and screeched in the lengthening shadows.
Michael said, “So we walk around all night hoping a ghost tells us to drown ourselves?”
“Or throws one of us in the canal and holds us down.”
They came upon a store mannequin someone had arranged in a position of crucifixion. “Are you kidding me?” Michael exclaimed when he saw it. “This place. I’d rather be back in Vegas.”
“You liked those acrobats.”
“They were great! It wasn’t their fault they hired a succubus.”
They passed a tree of naked Barbies, one of them headless, another one hanging from her rough hair. Someone had lashed a sunbonneted rag doll by her waist to a shrub. Exposure to the elements had left most of the artificial bodies with a layer of filth.
They were looking for one that had been brought more recently, that had housed the malevolent spirit that had almost certainly driven two people to their deaths already. Jonathan grabbed a naked baby boy doll, anatomically correct, by one foot to study it more closely. “Look at this. It looks like someone burned it, or tried to. One of the victims might have done it, if it was driving them crazy.”
Michael touched its ear, which had been warped by heat to resemble the pointy ear of a troll. Half of its face had melted. He shuddered. “Too bad we can’t burn down the whole island.” He pulled up the fine-granular GPS tracker on his phone to drop a pin at the location.
By about two in the morning, Jonathan had begun to wonder if the night would be a bust. It happened all the time. Sometimes, the evil things they tracked were cagey or unpredictable by nature, and it took several attempts to bring them down. On rare occasions, the paranormal happenings just stopped, which unsettled everyone in Manus Sancti.
Then they heard a man’s scream.
They ran in its direction through the trees to the edge of the canal. The shining ghost of a little girl in a short dress pulled the caretaker toward the water. A ghost’s strength had nothing to do with muscle and bone. Her face was bloated, and muck covered her dress, bare legs, and pale patent shoes. A drowning victim, for sure. He didn’t know why the spirit wanted others to drown, and he didn’t care. He told Michael, “Help him, and I’ll find the doll.”
Michael reached the man’s side, grabbing his arm, providing more physical resistance against the spirit’s pull.
The spirit would react to its artifact being disturbed. With his police club, Jonathan began smashing every doll in sight, like a deranged piñata game. When Jonathan clobbered a particularly ugly one, Michael yelled, “That’s it! That’s the one!”
The ghost girl stopped to stare over at Jonathan. The caretaker turned and ran into the trees. Jonathan kneeled next to the doll, shining a flashlight on its face. Wooden. Real hair? The arm sticking out of its dress was a bone. Christos. A souvenir of a murdered child, made from her parts. No wonder the spirit was angry.
“Jonathan!” Michael shouted. The ghost girl pulled him now. One of his feet was in the water.
Jonathan took out the silver flask of blessed angelica root oil and sprinkled it on the macabre creation as he recited the exorcism spell by heart. He wanted to speak more quickly, but if he didn’t pronounce every Latin word perfectly, it would be for nothing. At the final word, a flash brighter than lightning made him squeeze his eyes shut. When he looked over again, his brother was wading out of the water. Jonathan called over, “You all right?”
“Yeah.” He reached Jonathan’s side and crouched next to him, looking down at the half-charred doll. The wind had already extinguished the flames.
“Human bone, and hair,” Jonathan said. He touched the doll’s sack-like dress. “And a scrap of the victim’s clothing, I’m guessing.”
“The murderer brought it here?”
“Looks like.” Maybe he’d suffered a pang of remorse. He might have brought the doll to the island in hopes that the girl would find ghost friends. Or maybe he’d thought it was funny. With psychotic killers, it was sometimes hard to know what they were thinking. The object in its indignity was obscene. “We should bury it.”
“No, we should get going.” Michael stood up.
Jonathan emptied out the rest of the flask of holy oil over the doll. The peppery-musky scent sweetened the air. Michael crouched back down and dug out his lighter. He touched the flame to the sad rag of dress, and the fire once again whooshed into being. Crossing himself, Jonathan muttered, “Réquiem ætérnam dona ei Dómine; et lux perpétua lúceat ei.” He stood up, and Michael did the same.
Gunfire rang out. Jonathan turned, reaching for his own weapon. Pain seared through his gut. His knees buckled and he fell on his back. Michael fired into the trees. Everything looked blurry. Jonathan heard shouting—not Michael’s. His consciousness fuzzed.
Then his brother was kneeling over him, pressing his hand hard against the wound. Jonathan gagged from the pain. Michael clapped his cheek. “You with me?” Jonathan nodded, not attempting to speak. Nic’s voice blared into Jonathan’s awareness, though he couldn’t make out the words. With one hand, Michael answered the phone. “He’s shot! In the stomach.”
“Shit! Are you safe now?”
“Yes! What do I—”
“Do not move him. I’m sending a chopper.” Unlike El Dédalo, the guarídas had no hospital wings of their own. The Diviners had set up a hack to give legitimate-looking orders to local hospitals, which included sending medical helicopters. “There’s an emergency flare in your backpack. Light it so they can find you. Then keep the pressure on the wound. Jon, listen. You’re going to get through this. Keep breathing, corín.”
Breathing hurt. Michael dropped the phone, wadded up Jonathan’s shirt against the hole in his body, and put Jonathan’s hand on top of it. “Press down!” Jonathan tried. Mich
ael rifled through the backpack, found the flare, and lit it. It glowed red in Jonathan’s peripheral vision as his life pumped out of him under the black night sky. His brother returned to his side and clamped down on the wound. “Stay with me!” Strain roughened his voice.
Jonathan’s insides felt as though they were sizzling in acid. In desperation, his mind clawed toward God and took hold of a solace that diminished the pain.
Michael’s free hand grabbed his. “They’ll be here soon,” he was saying. “Hang on.”
Two days later, Jonathan woke up in the hospital. Michael said he’d become conscious a couple of times before, but he didn’t recall it. The damage to the intestine was minimal. He’d received two transfusions, one of Michael’s own blood.
The caretaker had somehow convinced himself that Jonathan and Michael were responsible for his almost getting dragged into the canal. He should have been able to see the ghost, since they could, but it wasn’t the first time a sonámbulo had refused to believe his own eyes. Most sleepwalkers didn’t want to be woken up.
It was, however, the first time in a long while that someone they saved had tried to murder them. The caretaker survived the lead that Michael had pumped into his leg, not that Michael seemed particularly concerned about it either way. Manus Sancti smoothed over any awkward questions from the police about the whole affair.
No infection had set in during the weeks Jonathan recovered at the hospital, though between the dosages of the pain medication, he’d hurt like hell. Michael had spent his nights sleeping in a chair in the hospital room, having charmed the staff into not enforcing any visiting hours. When Jonathan had finally been off a feeding tube and allowed to eat, Michael had brought in food from nearby restaurants—soup, horchata, flan—believing the cafeteria fare looked inedible. In three weeks, Jonathan had gone home, though he was still out of commission for a good while longer.
Cassie asked him, “Right after you got shot, did you think you were going to die?”
“No. Michael didn’t give me absolutio. They’re the words you say to help someone die peacefully. And to make sure their soul moves on instead of becoming a ghost here.”
She propped herself up on one elbow. “What do you say? Do you have it memorized?”
“It’s always different. But you tell the person they did a good job—on the mission, or, you know, in life. If something killed them, you promise to get revenge for them, so their spirit won’t try to.” He shrugged. “You can say some words having to do with their faith, if you know what it is.”
“Wow,” she said. “Maybe your brother didn’t want to believe you could die. I mean, it sounds like he loved you a lot.”
A spark of insight kindled in Jonathan’s eyes. Clearly, this hadn’t occurred to him before. “Either way, I was very lucky.”
“Really? See, I think ‘lucky’ is when nobody gets shot.”
He grinned at that. “The internal damage could have been much worse. One time, a friend of mine got stabbed right here”—he indicated a spot a couple of inches in from his scar—“and part of the intestine bulged out.” He paused. “I shouldn’t tell you that.”
Cassie grimaced. “Next time, I’ll ask about a successful mission.”
“That was successful. The ghost was put to rest, and I healed up fine.”
She smoothed her hand over the scar on his abdomen. He squirmed, and the muscles rippled under her touch. Jealousy flowered inside her because he had such an exciting job.
But no, that made no sense. He had a shitty, dangerous job. “Do you ever want to do something different? Maybe do psychic stuff full-time, like Val?”
“Some Mages go on missions regularly. My mom did. But I told you, I don’t have enough psychic talent to be a Mage.”
“What about something less risky, then?”
“No.” When she waited for a further explanation, he said, “For me, once I’d saved somebody, all I wanted was to do it again.”
She’d always had daydreams of doing something heroic like that. As a kid, it had usually involved running into a burning building to save a dog or cat. As a grownup, embarrassingly, she would imagine apprehending one of those crazy shooters who decide to fire randomly on a playground or in a mall. Maybe she’d have her gun with her, and she’d shoot him right in the head. Or maybe she’d charge him and wrest the weapon from him. “Did you ever wish you were not in Manus Sancti at all? That you were just a regular person?”
“No. I can’t really imagine not being a part of it.”
She’d read a book once about Scientology, and a lot of those people said the same thing. She didn’t bring this up, though. The people in Manus Sancti seemed to share a bond, and even a culture, that made them closer than normal communities. Maybe that made them like a cult, but she could see a lot of good in it. They knew who they were and what they were meant to do, and they knew they weren’t alone.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Someone knocked on the door. Next to Jonathan on the bed, Cassie froze. He couldn’t blame her for being jumpy about visitors when she was in a place that was so strange to her. “I’ll get it.” He put on his jeans and opened the door to Gabi.
When she took in the sight of him shirtless and buckling his belt, the corner of her mouth turned up. She couldn’t have been too surprised, he figured, after seeing how he’d acted with Cassie in the car. “Sorry to interrupt,” she quipped. “I’m supposed to take your friend to see Val.”
Jonathan looked back at Cassie, sitting on the bed wearing only her T-shirt and underwear. “I can walk with her down there.”
Gabi spread her hands. “I’ve got my orders.”
Jonathan shrugged and scanned the floor for his shirt.
Cassie turned her back to both of them and finished getting dressed. “Hey, on the way there, could we go to a laundry room or something?”
“Didn’t I show you that?” He pushed a wall panel near the door, and a compartment slid out. “This both washes and dries. The soap’s down here.”
“This place is like a Swiss Army knife.” She prodded another panel as if to see what it would do. “Okay, that’s just part of the wall.”
Jonathan smiled.
“I was hoping to go to Seattle with Tristan and Keiko today,” Gabi told Jonathan as they headed down the hallway. “They asked for a another Knight, but Capitán said no.”
“Is that the poltergeist?”
“Two of them! Ghosts setting fires together.”
Cassie asked, “You think it’s a three-Knight job?”
“Keiko’s a Mage,” Jonathan told her. “Like Val.”
“Are most Mages women?”
“Maybe two thirds of them. Women are more likely to have the psychic talent, just like men are more likely to be physically stronger. But some men have it. Of course I have some. And Morty Silva’s an empath like Val, and a ghost talker.”
“There are plenty of women who are physically strong,” Gabi said. “And a lot of fighting is speed and skill.”
Jonathan nodded. “And you don’t have to be strong to be a sniper, or to taze a guy.” They reached the elevator bank, where Gabi’s sister was tending to the potted trees. “Salaam, Teri.” She smiled back at him, and she and Gabi chatted in Portuguese while they waited for the elevator.
After they got on and the doors slid closed, Cassie said, “You all know each other so well.”
“She’s my sister,” Gabi said.
“Oh, wow. Is she jealous of you being a Knight?”
Gabi straightened. “Why would she be jealous?”
“I don’t know. I mean…since she just has a regular job.”
God knew he was crazy about her, but there was being honest, and then there was being tactless.
“Just a regular job,” Gabi repeated.
The elevator doors slid open again, and he gestured for Gabi to get off first. “Gabi, she’s a sonámbula.” The last thing any of them needed was an argument. He caught the flash of hurt in Cassie’s eyes.
<
br /> “The trees are one reason we can breathe down here,” Gabi told her. “I’d say that’s pretty damn important, wouldn’t you?”
Her face flushed. “I’m sorry.” Jonathan recalled how Cassie had asked about the treatment of the people who’d built El Dédalo before. It wasn’t really as if she didn’t respect all kinds of workers. She’d probably been trying to flatter Gabi for being a Knight, and it had gone wrong.
“Every job is important,” Gabi told her. “Without clean floors, you get disease. Without food, you starve. It’s not hard.” She gave Jonathan an aggrieved look, as though he’d brought Cassie here on purpose to piss her off. “Come on.”
They passed a group of three Knights in the hallway, and one of them—Zaf, who’d come to El Dédalo from Istanbul over a year ago—looked Cassie over with frank interest. Jonathan moved closer to her, his hand grazing hers, as he met Zaf’s eyes. Don’t even think about it. Zaf looked away. Good.
At Val’s office, Gabi banged on the door twice with the heel of her hand.
Val opened the door to them. “Come on in.” She held up her palm at Jonathan. “Except Johnny. You’re not supposed to stay in here.”
“Why not?”
“Capitán Renaud asked me to work with Cassandra and teach her to control the spell. It should be a matter of reining in her temper in the first place.”
Cassie snapped, “I don’t need anger management class. That’s ridiculous!”
“She’s off to a good start,” Gabi quipped.
“It’s good training for anyone,” Val said in her soft voice. “Mages all have to learn to clear their heads and control their emotions to do most kinds of magic and psychic work. I can teach you how to do the same.”
Cassie sighed. “Fine. But it doesn’t happen when I just get annoyed. It has to be real fury.” She held her hand over her belly. “It goes all the way from here down through the ground. And I get this metallic taste in my mouth.”