Ghost Key (37 page)

Sanchez stopped beside the bodies. He didn’t want to touch them but couldn’t stand the sight of their open eyes. He knelt and shut Diane’s eyes first and immediately saw how she and Fritz had died, cannibalized by
brujos
within a fog, bled from the inside out. He also saw the larger picture, the cheering audience, Dominica’s tribe in their host bodies and in their natural forms, the despicable mutant ghosts.

He couldn’t bring himself to touch Fritz’s eyes. He didn’t want any more details of their deaths. But the highways of blood that crisscrossed his eyeballs compelled him to close Fritz’s eyes, and as he did so, he saw that Dominica had intended to hang the two, but that something had interfered. So she had instructed the fog to attack. The images Sanchez saw of the attack were so hideous and brutal that they continued even when he was no longer touching Fritz, as though they were permanently etched into his brain cells, his DNA. He felt what Fritz had felt in his final moments, the agonizing explosion of capillaries, veins, arteries, organs, a body turned against itself, an immune system that hadn’t just failed, but had collapsed completely.

He suddenly heard,
There’s something older than the chasers and ultimately it will save you.

The images dried up and by then Sanchez was doubled over gasping for breath. His mother materialized beside him and gripped the back of his neck tightly; he could feel the pressure, the warmth of her hand, just like the hand of a living person. Her breath brushed his cheek and he caught the fragrance of her skin, her hair, all of it intensely
real, there, present
. Had she spoken to him about something older than the chasers? Or was it something he’d picked up from Fritz?

“Get up, Nick,” his mother whispered. “Fast. Don’t let them think you’re weak.”

His head ached and throbbed, his vision blurred, he felt like he might puke, he didn’t want to move. But he didn’t intend to get seized, so he stumbled to his feet, swept up his weapon, aimed it at the fog. A cart filled with men from Zee’s camp drew alongside him, and the driver hissed, “Get the bodies loaded fast.”

As half a dozen men hopped out of the cart, Sanchez moved in front of it, aware that his mother remained nearby but was no longer visible. He eyed the fog on the other side of the road. “Stay the fuck back.” He spoke sharply but quietly. “We don’t intend you harm. We only want to bury our dead.”

The chatter got louder, pulsing and thumping against his temples. The fog crept out from the shadows of the trees, eddying, swaying, but didn’t move any closer to him, the cart, or the bodies. Jessie howled and raced back and forth along the inside of the fence. Sanchez kept his weapon trained on the center of the fog until the cart whispered toward the cemetery, the bodies of Zee’s son and daughter-in-law on board. Then he backed away, slowly, his stomach knotted, his trigger finger aching.

Just before he reached the gate, the fog sprang across the road like some wild, hungry beast, moving so swiftly that thick, long tongues of the stuff wrapped around his knees. An arctic cold bit through his jeans and pierced skin, muscles, bone. His knee joints felt as if they were ripped apart and tossed into a shredder. His legs collapsed beneath him. He slammed against the dirt road, lost his grip on the rifle, and it clattered just out of his reach.

Sanchez rolled, struggled to vault to his feet, to run, but the fog formed a cold cocoon around his chest, thighs, and ankles that prevented him from getting up. His mother shouted, her voice needle sharp. But even as she shouted and he struggled to hear her exact words and to break the hold of the fog, something entered his body through his skull. He felt the
invasion,
the
violation,
the utter and complete
desecration
of his mind, body, soul. His mother’s voice faded away.

He didn’t know how long this hungry ghost was inside of him; it felt like lifetimes. He realized this was Dominica, the
bruja
who had held Maddie captive for so many months, and she tasted him, read him, sipped from his being as though he were a cup of hot, milky chocolate. His RV experience, his ability to read whatever touched him, leaped to his defense. He tasted
her,
read
her,
plundered, and plunged into her deepest memories. But he swam through madness. Most of her memories weren’t linear, weren’t connected to anything else. They existed as isolated islands of pleasure or despair, of hope or hopelessness, sweeping contrasts. He gleaned what he could and fled the weight and confusion and lunacy of her memories.

As she tried to accommodate herself to his body, it triggered something in his immune system that made it easier for her to adjust to physical life.
The virus.
This was the virus that O’Donnell and the CDC and FEMA and all the other government agencies believed was a biological weapon.

Sanchez started laughing. He couldn’t help it. The real terrorists weren’t amorphous enemies in the Mideast, they were the dead, the ancient dead, like this
bruja
whose existence dated back so many centuries he couldn’t count them all. The harder he laughed, the more difficult it was for her to seize control of his brain, his organs, and especially his lungs and heart.

Breathe for me,
she whispered, her voice strangely seductive.
Let your heart beat for me.

Keep laughing, Nick,
his mother shouted at him.
Keep laughing.

Who’s this bitch?
Dominica demanded.
Your mother? Your alcoholic mother is giving you advice?

Even though his body was paralyzed, he continued to laugh, tears coursing down his cheeks, and Dominica’s soft, slippery voice moved around inside him
. So you’re the man Maddie thinks she loves, Sanchez? What a worthless piece of shit you are, you and your empty life, your alcoholic mother, your temperamental father, your sister with all her intellectual pretensions. But you would make a great host for Whit, so we haven’t seen the last of each other, you and I.

Zee’s people opened fire on the fog then and Dominica leaped out of him, the fog withdrew, his mother was gone, and the rising sun burned against his back. He pushed up from the dirt and lurched back through the cemetery gate, his monstrous thirst like that of someone who had wandered through a desert for days, sucking at every oasis the mind fabricated. When the gate clattered shut behind him, he collapsed against the ground, his dog whining and dancing around him, licking his face, leaping at him.

Someone clasped his hands and started pulling him across the ground. Sanchez’s eyes popped open. Zee Small stood over him, tears of grief for his dead son and daughter-in-law brimming in his rheumy eyes. He picked up Sanchez, carried him to a cart, set him gently in the back. “You are one weird fucker, son. But we protect our own and I’m mighty relieved we don’t have to bury you, too.”

Sanchez desperately needed to speak, to tell Zee what had happened, what he’d experienced, to tell him he knew what could conquer these ghosts, that it might be as simple as laughter. But a strange inertia claimed him. His last thought before he drifted away was,
Shit, that mutant was inside me.

*   *   *

Dominica
reluctantly withdrew with the fog, then she and Whit drifted free of it and moved upward, over the cemetery. They coasted just above the treetops, where they could see the pandemonium below them—men and women shouting and running around, people carrying the bodies of the dead into the largest trailer, two men carrying an unconscious Sanchez into another trailer, the guards mobilizing around the cemetery. They scurried like ants whose nest had been penetrated.

She wanted Sanchez, wanted him as a host for Whit. How perfect would that be? The two of them in the fine bodies of Sanchez and Maddie.

They’re terrified of us, Whit. Let’s drift down and terrorize them some more.

No, thanks. I don’t do cemeteries.

C’mon, Whit. Don’t tell me you’re like all the others in the tribe. What’s there to be afraid of?

I’m not afraid, okay? I just don’t like cemeteries.

Bullshit. You’re afraid! But why? You’re dead. Nothing can hurt you.

I’m NOT dead. I’m conscious, I can think and plan, I have desires, I laugh, I feel.

She had heard this argument countless times throughout her existence and it still amazed her that any ghost could actually believe it.
I have news for you, Whit. Only the dead need hosts. Without a host, none of the physical pleasures are available to you. You can’t touch or be touched. You can’t taste food or smell or see and your hearing is truncated. Consciousness uses your memories to fill in the gaps, that’s all this is. And sooner or later, if we’re going to round up the people in this camp, we’re going to have to go into that cemetery and attack them.

If you’re so goddamn brave, let’s see you go down there, Nica.

With pleasure.

She immediately regretted her bravado. But now that she’d made such a big deal out of this, she couldn’t back out. She’d hoped that Whit would descend with her, that they could give each other strength and perhaps overcome their mutual aversion to cemeteries. She should have sweet-talked him, approached it more gently, cajoled him. But the nuances of relationships had always escaped her.

Dominica disengaged from the
brujo
net and slowly drifted down through one of the trees, through branches and leaves. Waves of revulsion swept through her. During her last physical lifetime in Spain, she had been buried after her death, and her consciousness had awakened inside the coffin as dirt was being tossed onto it. She hadn’t understood what had happened, thought she’d been buried alive, and had screamed and screamed. She had even dived back into her lifeless body and struggled to animate it. When that hadn’t worked, she had tried to shoot through the coffin’s lid, but couldn’t. So she had drifted inside that tight, black space, alternately screaming and sobbing and listening to the
thump thump thump
of dirt hitting the lid.

When her horror and panic had grown too great for her to sustain her awareness, she had passed out. A long time later, her consciousness had become aware again and she understood that her body had died but her consciousness lived on. With that understanding, she was able to leave the coffin. She had shot out through the lid, up through the ton of dirt, and into the world again. Wayra had been waiting for her.

For centuries, she’d believed her aversion to cemeteries was unique to her. But once she had commanded her tribe in Esperanza, she understood that every ghost held this loathing for cemeteries. It was simply a part of what ghosts were. She had conquered her fear of fire long enough to help extinguish the blaze at Annie’s Café, so she could conquer this loathing, too.

Determined, she drifted about halfway down the trunk of the tree and then just couldn’t go any farther. It was as if she had descended miles beneath the ocean floor and the pressure felt as if she might implode. She shot upward again, back through the branches, the leaves, and hoped that Whit hadn’t been able to see her, that he would believe she’d made it to the ground.

He was waiting for her, and she felt his awe and astonishment.
Nica. You did it. Was it … awful?

Worse than you can imagine.
That much, at least, wasn’t a lie.

I … I just don’t think I can do it.

We can both do it without any problem if we’re in our host bodies.

What about the others who don’t have hosts? Will they be able to travel within that fog and enter here?

I think so. There’s strength in numbers.

If you’re strong, the tribe will be, too.

After you were put to death, Whit, what happened to your body? Was it buried or cremated?

Jesus, what kind of question is that?

I’m just curious. I was buried and became conscious in the coffin.
She told him the rest of it, except for the part about Wayra.
That’s where my loathing for these places started
.

Silence, then:
I was burned. I … saw it happening, saw my body inside the crematorium. I thought I was still alive. I mean, I could think and feel … I—
His voice broke off.

Then you have nothing to fear here. Will you try it with me, Whit?

He hesitated.
If our essences are merged and if we’re away from the graves and mausoleums, then I can at least try it, Nica.

She moved her essence toward his and they merged. The intimacy lacked that of physical lovemaking, but was the closest thing a
brujo
in its natural form could experience to intimacy, comfort, and communion. She immediately felt his anxiety and knew he felt hers as well. But she hid the truth about what had happened when she’d tried it alone. She, after all, was the leader of this tribe and was expected to accomplish and achieve things the others could not, acts of heroism to which they might aspire. If he realized she was as cowardly as they were, she would lose the tribe.

They drifted together toward Cemetery Point, where the land jutted out into the water, the salt marsh. Tendrils of fog eddied and swayed across the rocks. She braced herself for that terrible internal pressure; he nearly separated from her and shot for the sky. But he didn’t. And the internal pressure didn’t materialize. As they touched down, they drifted apart and hovered uneasily just above the rocks, separate beings fighting their separate demons.

Dominica knew this water was a brilliant blue, but her perceptions registered only shades of gray. She knew the air smelled of salt and earth, but she smelled nothing at all. The living could stand on these very rocks, open their mouths, and taste the salt in the air. Although she could hear the cries of the gulls and the shouts from the cemetery, these sounds lacked the rich texture of what the living could hear. In her natural
bruja
form, her perceptions, like her relationships, lacked nuance.