Apparition (The Hungry Ghosts) (45 page)

What the hell? It was Hugo, the kid from the Mercado del León. “I was glad I could do it, Hugo. How did you get here?” Tess asked as he took her hand.

“With my mommy.”

“Where is she?”

Hugo pointed at a diminutive Ecuadorian woman hugging Wayra and Ian hello. Tess recognized her from the market, and as she and Hugo approached her, her eyes widened.
“Dios mío,”
she said softly, and brought her hands to the sides of Tess’s face. “Thank you for saving my son.”

“Tess, this is Quintana,” said Wayra.

“The pleasure is all mine,” Tess said. “How … did you two end up here?”

“I was just explaining that to Wayra and Ian. After El Bosque disappeared, we stayed at Wayra and Illary’s, and I … woke in the middle of the night and … and suddenly knew we were supposed to be here. But we couldn’t get in until the whiteness broke apart. We came by car. But all the vehicles started disappearing when the jungle sprang up.” She paused. “Forgive me. May I speak to your baby?”

“Uh, sure. Of course.” Tess glanced at Ian, who mouthed,
Shaman.

Quintana brought her hands to Tess’s belly and shut her eyes. After a few moments, she said, “Twins. They will usher us into what lies ahead. So it is written.”

“Written where?”

“In the
Book of Hope.
”

“I’ve never heard of this book.”

“It’s a sacred book among the Quechuas. Your and Ian’s arrival as the first transitionals in five hundred years is written there. Dominica’s defeat was written in the book. Your niece’s possession by Dominica…”

“So all these events were
destined
?”

“No. There were many possibilities.”

“Are you familiar with this book, Wayra?” Tess asked.

“I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never seen it.”

Lauren, who had been standing with Tess and Hugo, said, “By now, it’s probably gone. Along with the rest of Esperanza.”

Quintana moved her hands away from Tess’s stomach and shook her head. “No. It’s not just a physical book. Over the millennia, the Quechuas and other guardians of the planet have made sure that the predictions are recorded in sacred sites around the world.”

“What do these predictions say about what’s happening now?” Ian asked.

“The predictions say the transition will not be easy. Many will choose to leave with Esperanza. There will be trains that will carry a hundred and eleven passengers each to whatever replaces the city. A lot seems to ride on what a certain
brujo
does.”

If that
brujo
was Ricardo, Tess thought, then the end result had to be somewhat positive, right? Like, well, she would have her twins, she and Ian would live happily ever after.

Tess glanced toward the picture window at the front of the depot, the platform out there, the tracks just beyond it, all of it illumined by the fading blue light. Wind gusts blew the falling snow at an angle, yet the wind didn’t make a sound. If she just watched the falling snow and listened to the silence and didn’t think about anything else, about everything that had led to these moments, then the scene was actually peaceful.

“How did you know to come here?” Quintana asked.

Tess slipped her arm around Lauren’s shoulders. “My mother died and spoke to the spirit of Esperanza, who told her that if we chose to stay behind, we should go to the depot.”

It sounded absurd when she said it aloud.
Yeah, lock us up.

“But … that is what shamans do,” Quintana exclaimed. “The fact that you are here, Lauren, walking around, functional, means that you now have the gift of second sight.”

“I’m a nurse,” Lauren said. “That’s all I am.”

A whistle pierced the silence, and they all heard it, all one hundred and eleven people inside the depot. The squeal of brakes brought them, en masse, to the picture window and minutes later, Esperanza 14 coasted into the station.

People crowded through the depot’s front door and spilled out onto the platform. Fourteen cars total, Tess counted them, and the doors whispered open simultaneously. A conductor hopped down from the second car and made his announcement in three languages—Quechua, Spanish, English. “All aboard, please don’t push. There’s plenty of room for everyone and we aren’t pulling out until all of you are on the train.”

Tess groped for Ian’s hand on her right, her mother’s hand on the left, and behind them were Quintana, Hugo, Wayra, and Javier. The door to the first car slid open and there wasn’t enough light for Tess to see the woman’s face. But she recognized that wild hair and that stance, arms thrown open, hands pressed against the sides of the door, as if her presence alone were powerful enough to keep the door open. Maddie.

“Tesso,” Maddie shouted. “You out there?”

Behind her, another figure appeared, a woman wearing some sort of strange headdress. She brought her hands to the sides of her mouth and called for Wayra. Tess realized that what she mistook for a headdress was Illary’s equivalent to Wayra’s paw, an incomplete shift. Then Tess saw Leo, Sanchez, the priest, and she and her group surged forward, toward the enchanted train, the ghost train, Esperanza 14.

Twenty-two

The Voice of Esperanza

1.

Lauren stumbled into Leo’s open arms and they fell back into the car, his arms clasped so tightly around her she didn’t want him to ever let go. His fingers combed through her hair, his breath exploded against the side of her neck, his mouth sought hers.

“I—” they stammered simultaneously, and then laughed hysterically, laughed through their panic and uncertainty, laughed because the alternative was to break down completely and sob with terror. They fell back against the seats, both of them talking at once.

“They—”

“We—”

“How—”

“Where—”

“When—”

He touched two fingers to her mouth. “Prankster, Charlie got stabbed. I gave him the last of the morphine and did what I could for him, but he … didn’t make it.”

He spoke so softly, with such pain, that it took a moment for the words to sink in. “Charlie stabbed? By who? How can he die again?” But of course she knew the answer to that one. The realm of the impossible was now their reality.

“He’s back here,” Leo said, and led her to the rear of the car, where Tess and Ian, Maddie and Sanchez and Karina already were.

Charlie lay across three seats, a leather jacket covering his chest, his face so strangely peaceful he didn’t resemble the Charlie she had known or even the chaser who had appeared to her during her time in Esperanza. Lauren leaned over and brushed her mouth across Charlie‘s cool cheek. “Thank you,” she whispered. “For everything.”

As she rose, her eyes met Karina’s. The chaser looked devastated, tears coursed down her face. Lauren gave her arm a quick squeeze. “I’m glad you two found each other.”

“Found and lost way too quickly,” she said softly.

Lauren didn’t know what to say to that. She looked at the three chasers who stood closely together, guarding a fourth chaser who was tied to one of the seats, blood oozing from his swollen nose, bruises like dark smudges beneath his eyes. “Chaser council?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am. I’m Newton. That’s Liana and Victor.”

“Who’s he?” She gestured at the man who was tied up and bleeding.

“Franco.”

“Why did you stab Charlie?” she asked, staring at Franco.

He just grinned at her, a grotesque rictus of broken teeth and blood. “’Cause h’deserved it,” he muttered.

“Oh, Franco, Franco,” said a soft-spoken woman who came up the aisle.

Lauren was shocked to see the woman who had spoken to her when she was dead.
“You,”
she burst out. “You’re the engineer?”

“So good to see you again, Lauren.” She turned her attention back to Franco. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to join Maria in the afterlife version of the deep freeze until conditions are right for your rebirth.”

“Who’re y’o?”

“The voice of Esperanza,” Lauren said.

“Kali,” the woman said.

Franco snickered. “S’re, s’ure, and I’m—”

Kali flicked her arm toward Franco and his body shrank until he was a wailing infant swaddled in blankets. Then he simply faded away, and as she moved her hand through the air an image appeared of a fading structure somewhere, its yard overgrown with weeds.

“That’s Maria’s place,” Newton exclaimed.

“
Was
Maria’s place,” Kali corrected. “Now it’s a nursery.”

There, through the translucent wall, Lauren could see two wailing infants on blankets, beating their little feet and fists against the air. Even as they stood there staring at this strange sight, four more wailing infants appeared. “José, Simon, Rita, and Alan,” explained Kali. “Those chasers were the most corrupt.”

Victor, Newton, and Liana moved away from her. “You can’t…” Newton stammered. “You can’t just…”

“Don’t worry,” Kali told him. “You’re not going to the nursery. That’s reserved for them.” She motioned toward the wailing infants. “For all of you, though, it’s time you returned to the afterlife and made your own decisions about your next lives.”

Victor held up his hands, patting the air. “I helped Wayra and Charlie rescue Maddie. I was always on the right side of decisions for Esperanza.”

“This isn’t a punishment, Victor. I’m simply releasing all of you from any commitment to Esperanza, that’s all.” Then she blew three kisses at the chasers and they faded away.

“Release me, too,” Karina said quietly.

Kali leaned toward Karina, whispered something, and Karina drew back, her eyes wide with wonderment. “Really?”

“I believe so.”

Kali drew the back of her hand over Karina’s cheek and she faded slowly away.

Jesus.
Lauren groped for Leo’s hand and he slipped his arm around her, holding her tightly against him as Kali touched Charlie’s forehead. Her caress lingered lovingly, Lauren thought, then Charlie’s body simply dissolved.

Lauren and Tess stood there for a moment, staring at the spot where he had lain. Then Tess flung one arm around Ian and her other arm around Lauren and Leo, and drew Maddie and Sanchez and Wayra and Illary into the circle, too, hugging them all. “We’ll remember,” she whispered. “We’ll remember because we must.”

“Kali,” called the conductor. “Everyone’s aboard. And the river is rising fast.”

“Get us out of here, Esteban.”

The conductor slipped into the engine compartment and shut the door. Moments later, the train started moving and they all took seats. Through the windows, Lauren watched as the train pulled away from the depot, its snow-covered roof briefly visible in the crackling blue lightning. Just beyond it, a rising river moved steadily toward the tracks. The train’s whistle blew twice, paused, then blew three times and sped through the neon-blue light.

Kali came back up the aisle and touched each of them on the head or shoulder. Lauren didn’t have any idea what, if anything, the touch meant, but the spot on her head that Kali had touched tingled with a comforting warmth.

When she reached Wayra and Illary, she said, “What is your preference? Animal or human?”

“Human,” they said simultaneously.

She drew her hands back over Illary’s feathers and they fell away and her lustrous hair appeared. Wayra held up his paw and Kali kissed it. As the fur vanished, it was replaced by skin, fingers, nails, knuckles, a perfect hand and forearm. Then she leaned forward, hugged him, and said something in Quechua that Lauren didn’t understand. She pressed her hands together, bowed her head slightly. “Namaste, Wayra. May you remember what you need to know.”

Kali now stood at the front of the car, flipped a switch on the wall, and when she spoke, her voice boomed through the train, back through all fourteen cars.

“In the days ahead, I hope that all of you who have chosen to stay behind can form a strong community based on mutual trust and cooperation. Thanks to Ricardo, one
brujo
who evolved into goodness, I’m adjusting my original intentions, but your lives will still be quite different than before.

“Communication between the living and the dead, the existence of chasers and
brujos,
and the profound healing properties of Esperanza will be relegated to the realm of legend and myth. Evil will always exist in the world, but never again will it gain the foothold that it did in Esperanza. It is my deepest hope that you will take what you have learned from the magnificence of Esperanza and use it for the benefit of the greater whole. You can leave the city, but unless you hold on to Memory, you won’t be able to return.”

What does that mean? Lauren wondered.

Then Kali raised her arms so that they covered her face, bowed her head, and faded away.

The train raced through the crackling blue light, through darkness and sunlight, water and snow and jungle. Then there was only blackness, a blackness so deep and profound that Lauren couldn’t even see the sky. And suddenly, she couldn’t pull air into her lungs, couldn’t breathe. Her fingers turned to claws against her seat. Her peripheral vision shut down. She squeezed Leo’s hand twice.
Love you bigger than Google
. He squeezed back once:
Ditto.

Lauren sank into the blackness.

2.

The contraction drove Tess forward, screaming. Leo, ever calm, said, “Good, good, c’mon, one more push, Tess. The first one’s crowning.”

Her mother and Ian gripped her hands, and she gave one great heaving push and felt the baby slide out. “A boy, it’s a boy,” her mother squealed with excitement, and Leo cut the umbilical cord and Lauren whisked her grandson away.

Tess thought she passed out after that, but perhaps she only dozed and went away into Demerol land again. Suddenly, she heard Leo, the cheerleader positioned between her legs—forget he was her stepfather, forget all that—urging her to push again. “C’mon, one more push, Tess, you can do it. His sister’s coming.”

As Tess pushed, her eyes fixed on the ceiling of the delivery room in the Esperanza Hospital. She had no idea how she’d gotten here, when she had arrived, what the date was, what time it was. She felt as if
she
were the newborn, clueless and unaware.