Rain of the Ghosts (16 page)

The stone began to grind and move. Charlie backed away cautiously. ’Bastian did the same. The slab slid over to the side, revealing a set of stone steps descending down into the cliff and darkness.

In sarcastic unison, ’Bastian and Charlie said, “Gee, never saw that coming.” Rain smiled at her companions and led them forward, padding down the cold stone stairs. ’Bastian followed, but so did Charlie who walked right through the Dark Man, unaware. ’Bastian pulled up short, visibly annoyed to anyone who could see the dead. Then grunting to himself, he took up the rear.

The stairway was circular and close. Damp sandstone walls made it necessary to walk single file. The moon shining down from the entrance above and ’Bastian’s soft glow were the only sources of light. Rain began to feel apprehensive again as the guitar in her head picked up the tempo. “It’s getting pretty dark in here.”

Suddenly, beside her, a torch flared to life, startling all three of them. Rain glanced back at Charlie, smiled weakly, then continued down. He hesitated, staring at the flames. “Now that’s service,” he said. And then, “I’d like a cheeseburger.” He paused, waiting.

Behind him, ’Bastian was growling impatiently, “Come on, kid, move it.”

But Charlie couldn’t hear him. Rather, he reacted to the lack of a magically materializing cheeseburger with a shrug and a “Worth a shot.” He followed after Rain. “You ask for one.”

She ignored him. She reached the bottom of the staircase and stepped down into a darkened hold. Another torch, to her right, flared to life. Then one by one, consecutive torches flamed on all around the stone room, shedding rich, flickering firelight on the ancient chamber. Now, Rain could see where she was: a wide expanse, cut into the cliffside. Along the wall to her right were one, two, three … nine stone seats carved out of the rock. Along the left was a long empty shelf, also carved out of the wall. And before her, there was no wall at all. Just a wide terrace, open to the elements, revealing nearly the same view of the ocean that one could see from the sandstone block at the edge of the N.T.Z.

Charlie and ’Bastian stepped off the stairs to either side of her. All three were pretty darn impressed. Charlie even whistled. “Now, this took some work.” His whistle and his words bounced along the stone walls, echoing through the chamber. Fascinated, he walked past Rain to explore the room.

’Bastian shook his head in wonder and glanced back up the staircase. “What do you figure, we’re about thirty feet below the clearing?”

Rain turned to him. “Have you been down here before?”

“No. Never. Didn’t know it existed.”

“So what do I do?”

“Rain, over here.” It was Charlie. He was standing at the far end of the left wall. There were nine indentations in the otherwise smooth-carved rock shelf. The last one, the one he stood next to, looked vaguely skull-shaped. He ran his hand along the shelf, passing the other indentations: a deep widening groove, an oval ring, a larger more circular ring, a shallow cup, a semi-amorphous cross, a thick equilateral triangle, a small cylindrical hole. And finally another circular indentation matching the one from the N.T.Z. above. Rain and ’Bastian moved in to look. And Charlie said, “Looks like another keyhole to me.”

Rain was still holding the snake charm in her hand. She took a deep breath and placed the armband in the indentation. Immediately, the charm began to glow—hot yellow, orange and red.

“It’s glowing,” Charlie said.

Rain stared at him. “You can see that?”

Charlie’s eyes remained fixed on the snake charm. “Yeah, of course.”

Our trio took a step back as the glow raced from the charm to the shelf and up the side of the wall behind it. The entire wall seemed to catch fire, flaring brighter and brighter until all three were shielding their eyes and Rain could feel the heat speed-drying her clothes and hair. Then the light waned until all that remained was a set of flaming letters. Words. A message:

BIENVENIDO, BUSCADORA, A LA CACHÉ.

BIEN HECHO. HAS ENCONTRADO EL PRIMER ZEMI.

COMO TÚ, ES EL BUSCADOR Y EL CURADOR.

COMO TÚ, TAMBIÉN ES EL PRIMERO DE NUEVE.

TENEMOS POCO TIEMPO Y SÓLO UNA OPORTUNIDAD PARA CURAR LA HERIDA.

ENCUENTRA LOS NUEVE. PARA TI Y PARA ELLOS SON LAS LLAVES QUE ABRIRÁN EL VERDADERO ACERTIJO DE LAS FANTASMAS.

Rain’s eyes were wide, scanning quickly, trying to take it all in. On her left, ’Bastian was doing the same, but to her right, Charlie was clearly frustrated. “Wonderful. It’s in Spanish. Translation, please.”

Before she could respond, the flaming letters burnt out, but the words remained charred into the back wall. Rain’s brain tried to keep up, to adjust to all these changes. Gearing up to translate for her friend was the least of her problems: “Uh … It says ‘Welcome.’ ‘Welcome, Searcher, to the Cache.’” She looked around the stone cave. Loosely waved an arm at it. “I guess this place is ‘the Cache.’”

“And I guess you’re ‘the Searcher,’” Charlie said with almost casual wonder.

Rain brightened with that epiphany. “Hey, yeah.” Smiling, she refocused on the message. “It congratulates … ME … for finding the first ‘
zemi.
’”

All three looked confused. Charlie asked, “What’s a
zemi
?”

Rain looked at ’Bastian. He just shook his head and shrugged.

She said, “I don’t know. Well … Wait a minute—” She looked down at the shelf, at the snake charm key still snugly stuck in its keyhole. “I guess this armband must be a
zemi,
whatever that means.”

Charlie was getting impatient now, losing himself finally in his curiosity and the quest. “What else does it say?”

Rain looked up again, reading and mentally making the simultaneous translation. “It says: ‘You have found the first
zemi.
Like you, it is … the Searcher and the Healer. Like you it is also the first of nine.’”

’Bastian was stunned. “There are nine of these?”

Not hearing that, Charlie nevertheless responded. “I counted nine keyholes. They’re all different shapes.”

And Rain, “Every one?”

“Every one, yeah. Keep reading!”

Rain found her place again. “‘We have little time and only one chance to…’” She paused, trying to decipher the next phrase.

’Bastian prompted her: “‘Heal the wound.’”

“‘Heal the wound…?’” she repeated, unsure and frustrated. “I don’t know what that means either.” Failing to find any immediate answers, she shook off her confusion to finish the translation: “‘
Encuentra los nueve.
Find the nine. For you and they are the Keys to unlocking the true Mystery of the Ghosts.’”

The three stood there in silence for a time as the phrase “Mystery of the Ghosts” echoed through the Cache. Rain looked around the chamber. At the nine stone chairs. At the nine keyholes. At the words, the walls, the torches flickering in the wind. At the night sky and the ocean in the distance. The room, the world, seemed very large, and the three of them felt very small in comparison. And yet, none of this made her unhappy.

’Bastian spoke. “Looks like we have another mission.”

Rain nodded. “I’ve got to search out eight more of these …
‘zemis’
 … and use them to heal some kind of wound before it’s too late…”

“Okay,” Charlie said. “You twisted my arm. I’m in.”

“Me too”—from ’Bastian.

Rain looked from one to the other. “Thanks. Both of you.”

Rain lifted the snake charm out of its slot and slipped it back onto her arm. “Guess I’ll need this for the next time we find a
zemi.
”

“Plus,” Charlie said, “it’d be cruel to strand ’Bastian down here.”

Rain and the Dark Man exchanged a look. ’Bastian said, “I think he’s getting the hang of this stuff.”

And Charlie chuckled at his little joke. And ’Bastian chuckled at his own. And Rain giggled at the both of them.
Boys.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“Laissez les Bontemps Rouler…”

Rain, Charlie and ’Bastian climbed the carved steps up to the moonlit N.T.Z. As soon as they got clear, the sandstone block slid back into place quickly and automatically—with a heavy echoing thud as it found its home. “Glad it waited for us,” Charlie said. Suddenly jokes about getting stranded in the Cache didn’t seem so funny.

Rain thought her mind was playing a new song. Not just music. A song. Rock guitar, bass, and drums. A pounding beat and lyrics she couldn’t quite make out. The volume kept increasing, so by the time she deciphered the refrain,
“Let the Good Times Roll…”
she knew the music wasn’t coming from her head. It was approaching from the jungle.

Ramon Hernandez emerged into the N.T.Z. with a massive MP3-compatible boom box on his shoulder. He shouted back over the box and the blaring song, “See, there’s someone here ahead of us!”

Like familiar spirits, local teens poured like smoke into the N.T.Z. Charlie’s older brother Hank. Linda Wheeler. Jay Ibara. Renée Jackson. Marina Cortez. And more by the minute. Marina saw Rain and smiled at her, as Ramon leaned back and yelled to the heavens: “IT’S THE END OF SUMMERRRR!!!!! Time to PARTYYYYY!!!!”

Charlie exhaled loudly and leaned in to ‘whisper’ over the music to Rain, “Closed up that Cache in the nick-o-time, huh?” Rain didn’t nod. Even in profile, he could see her eyes were shining, focused on new goals, a new world.

“… GOOD! TIMES! ROLL! LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL!”
Ramon cranked the music even louder and lowered the boom box onto a flat rock. Jay dumped the first armful of driftwood into the fire pit. Someone, maybe Hank, got it burning nearly as fast as those torches flamed to life below. More driftwood appeared, fueling the blaze, and soon the N.T.Z. was sporting a legitimate bonfire.

Rain, Charlie and ’Bastian watched the kids dance in their bare feet and shout at each other over the music. A big grin began to emerge on Rain’s face, as she finally seemed to become aware of the party that had indeed materialized before her. Standing on her right, Charlie watched her turn left to make eye contact with oxygen. “C’mon. Let’s dance,” she said.

“You’re kidding,” the ghost replied.

“Can’t a girl dance with her grandpa?”

The Dark Man smiled. “I don’t see why not.”

Getting the gist of their exchange, Charlie made a half-hearted effort to inject some reality: “Uh, Rain … You’re overlooking…” But Rain rushed toward the crowd around the fire and joined the dance. Charlie sighed and shook his head. “Never mind. You two just have fun.”

Rain danced with her grandfather. Young as he looked (to Rain) and felt (to himself), this wasn’t really Old Sebastian’s preferred style of music or movement. In addition, various teenagers kept inadvertently sticking various body parts right through him. Hank Dauphin literally jumped through the Dark Man’s chest at one point. But ’Bastian made a conscious effort to ignore all of that, even made an honest attempt to mimic the moves of some of the other boys. He was quite deceased, but he felt very much alive, and one awkward dance seemed a cheap price to pay for the opportunity to see the non-supernatural glow radiating from his granddaughter.

Charlie was watching from the sidelines—completely annoyed that he was jealous of his platonic friend’s dead invisible grandfather—when a semi-familiar voice said, “Hi,” in his left ear. Charlie turned.

“Oh, Miranda, hi.”

“Hi,” she repeated. She turned toward the “dance floor” and, seeing Rain, wondered why Charlie was scowling here by the cliff alone. “Uh, Charlie … Why is Rain—”

“Dancing by herself?” Charlie heard the bitterness in his own voice and didn’t like it.

“Uh, yeah.”

Charlie looked back toward his friend, and Miranda watched his expression change. Anger quickly melted into genuine admiration. Smiling, he leaned in to Miranda and said, “Because, and trust me on this, she’s the strangest person you’re ever going to meet.” Miranda shot him a confused look, and he laughed, adding, “But that’s a good thing. Come on. If we dance next to her, she won’t look like such a freak.”

Miranda shrugged happily and slipped off her own shoes as he took her hand and towed her over to Rain’s general vicinity. Rain glanced his way, and Charlie yelled, “You’ll thank us in the morning.” He tried to arrange things so that Rain appeared to be dancing with both of them, and he even adjusted Miranda’s position so she wouldn’t be situated where he guessed ’Bastian was.

More teens manifested from between the banana plants. The N.T.Z. was packed. Full of laughter and shouting and the tribal drums of current generations. Sparks from the bonfire sailed up toward heaven on a ferry of pungent smoke. Black and white ashes floated down, leapt and danced and lighted, resembling the mosquitoes that the smoke had driven away. From under the branch of a mahogany tree, I watched the ghost of Sebastian Bohique lean forward out of habit, so that his sly “voice” could be heard over the music. “School starts tomorrow. You still feeling trapped, Raindrop?”

Rain Cacique’s eyes flared with their own fire. “No, I’m not trapped.… I’m the Searcher.”

Belatedly, I realized my tail was wagging. Probably had
been
wagging for some time.
Well, so what?
I thought.
I’m not ashamed.
I had been feeling fairly trapped myself, these last few years. Now the Searcher was found, and the Search had finally begun.
So let it wag. Let the ol’ tail wag!