Rain of the Ghosts (7 page)

“Not tonight,” Rain said.

Marina would not be thwarted so easily. “Come on, come with us.” She opened the door and slid closer to Ramon to make room in the front seat.

Ramon liked the sliding closer part, and his attitude improved, “Yeah, Cacique. Get in.”

Charlie nudged Rain toward the car. “It’s what you need,” he whispered. “Blow off some steam. With
seniors…”

It wasn’t what Rain needed, and she knew it. But she felt defused. They were being so nice, and she couldn’t come up with any peer-acceptable objection. She slid into the front seat next to Marina. “Thanks,” she said, not meaning it very much.

It was only then that Charlie realized he wouldn’t be sitting next to Rain. He stood over the others stupidly, until Ramon finally said, “Well, what are you waiting for? Climb in.”

Charlie lurched over the chassis and tumbled into the backseat. Ramon put the car in gear, surreptitiously slipped an arm behind Marina’s back and drove off.

There was an awkward silence. Then Marina turned abruptly to Rain and said, “You know, my older sister died last year.”

“I didn’t know,” Rain said quickly. “I’m sorry.” It was almost exactly what Marina had said to her two minutes earlier, but they were the only words Rain could find. Marina’s revelation confused and upset Rain. The truth was she didn’t know Marina Cortez very well at all. There was the age difference, and, besides, Marina lived two islands over. Rain saw her around some times, but they had no history together.
Now, we’re sharing this?

Ramon said, “Man, baby, I didn’t know that either. Your sister? That sucks. Way worse than a grandfather.”

And from Charlie: “Yeah, sorry, Marina.”

Marina ignored the boys, keeping her focus on Rain. She said, “I didn’t tell you to make you feel guilty. And I sure didn’t tell you to compete. I just wanted you to know I understand what it feels like. I’ve been there. If you want to talk or if you just want to shut up, it’s cool. I get it.”

Rain just felt muddled. She didn’t know what she wanted. Didn’t know where they were going. Ramon was just cruising around, heading vaguely for the water. Charlie was desperately scanning the streets, still searching for that someone, anyone, to start the rumors flying at school.

Marina kept talking. Her voice was kind and soothing. “After she died, I felt like … my family … like they were putting me in a cage, you know? I started taking on her chores. Cooking the exact meals she used to cook for Mom and Dad and my brothers. It got to the point where I didn’t even want to be around anyone that knew her. Or anyplace we had been together. That’s when I started coming here every chance I got.”

“Oh, yeah,” Rain muttered sarcastically. “San Próspero rules.”

Marina smiled. “Try hanging on Malas Almas. Makes San Próspero look like Vegas.”

Rain considered that, then nodded. “And at least you were getting away.”

“Exactly. You get it.”

“I get it.”

And Ramon: “Oh, me, too. Come June, I am gone. Mainland, babies. Miami Beach.”

Charlie couldn’t resist: “’Cause you haven’t spent enough time in a tropical paradise?” Ramon flashed him an angry look in his rearview mirror that said,
Listen, scrub, you are here by the grace of me, so shut it!
Charlie got the message, lost the smile and sat way back in his seat.

Rain asked Marina, “What about you? After you graduate, I mean.”

“College, hopefully. I’m going to apply to every school in every big cold ugly city I can find. If I get in any of them and get financial aid, then, sure, I’m gone too.”

Charlie got brave again: “My brother Lew’s a sophomore at Northwestern.”

Ramon stopped the car at a red, and turned to face the backseat. Charlie winced, waiting for the order to hit the pavement. But Ramon had been a fan. “Lew Dauphin. Dude, he could move. Football scholarship?”

“Soccer,” Charlie said, relieved. “But he tore up his knee. He’s red-shirting.”

“Man, I didn’t know. That sucks.” Marina and Rain stared at Ramon, then looked at each other and smiled just a bit, sharing a common thought. The guy had only one level of tragedy. ’Bastian’s death. Marina’s sister. Lew’s knee. Ramon incidentally thought it all sucked.

The light changed, and Ramon drove on. “Your brother Hank’s pretty good too. He’ll start at cornerback, this year.” Ramon glanced into his rearview again. “What about you? You goin’ out for J.V.?”

Charlie considered numerous responses, before Rain cut off his options with, “He’s in eighth grade. And he doesn’t play football.” Charlie suppressed a groan.

“That sucks,” Ramon said, glancing with disapproval into his mirror.

From where I was standing, the conversation had become frustrating. Ramon was still heading vaguely toward the water, but Rain was going nowhere. Maq probably wouldn’t have approved of my plan, but he was snoring under his hat on a bus bench and unavailable for consultation. So I swallowed hard, lowered my head and ran out into the street.

Ramon had only just turned his attention back to the road and nearly didn’t see me at all. Marina froze in her seat. But Rain, bless her, shouted, “Look out!” She reached across Marina, grabbed the wheel and wrenched it to the right. The convertible squealed as it veered away from me and down Old Plantation Road.

You could hear the steel drum band of their hearts pounding inside the car. Ramon, both hands on the wheel now, recovered and muttered, “I wasn’t going to hit him.”

Marina said, “Let’s just turn around and head for the—”

“Stop!” It was Rain. A jittery Ramon hit the brakes and skidded to a stop about a hundred yards beyond the main gate to San Próspero Cemetery. Rain had turned around in her seat. The steel drums had taken on their own beat, their own edge. The cemetery. If she was seeing ghosts, she’d be sure to see some here. And not just any ghosts. Not just strangers, but the one ghost she’d actually like to see, wish to see. ’Bastian.

Charlie said, “Rain?”

“I want to go in. I was in a fog this morning. I want to go in now.” She opened the passenger door and got out. Charlie climbed onto the trunk and followed. Ramon looked at Marina and shrugged. Finally, they were alone. His arm began to slide back around her shoulder, but she slipped away to pursue Rain.

Rain pushed on the unlocked iron gate. It was always oiled before a funeral, so it glided open smoothly. Charlie caught up to her right elbow, effortlessly. (Like his brothers, he could move when he wanted to.) They crossed into the moonlit graveyard side by side. “Are you sure about this?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He watched her eyes shoot back and forth in her head, looking for ghosts. Before he knew it, he was doing the same. Marina materialized on Rain’s left.
She looks spooked too,
Charlie thought.

“Hey, wait up!” Ramon shouted, too loud for this hallowed ground. He nearly tripped over a tombstone, trying to catch up. Marina shushed him.

I crept up to the gate and watched from the shadows. Soon all five of us were jerking our heads back and forth at every breath of the wind, every rustle of a leaf. All on the lookout for ghosts that some of us wouldn’t recognize if they walked right through us.

Rain was the only one actually hoping for an apparition. The steel drums were warm and tangy and familiar in her head. They brought comfort. Gave her the confidence to face anything. And really, wouldn’t it be better to have evidence that she wasn’t insane? Wouldn’t it be better to see a ghost, as long as it was the right ghost?

She stopped in front of the two graves with their single large stone, purchased nearly two decades ago when her grandmother had died. R
OSE &
S
EBASTIAN
B
OHIQUE
. L
OVING
P
ARTNERS
. L
OVING
P
ARENTS
. And the dates. Three old dates, from long before Rain was born. And one new date. Yesterday.
Only yesterday.
She knelt before the soft clean earth that covered ‘Bastian’s coffin. Only this morning—
only this morning
—she had moved like an automaton to drop a single rose on that coffin before this soft clean earth covered flower, box and man.

She closed her eyes. Flanked on four sides by Charlie, Marina, Ramon and the tombstone (all of whom seemed on full alert against the very spectres Rain was praying for), Rain willed her grandfather to appear. The drums built to a climax. She felt certain. When she opened her eyes, he would be there … and the world would make sense again.

But he wasn’t there. Her almond eyes opened to find only Charlie, Marina, Ramon and the tombstone. Crestfallen, she looked to the well-kept grass that covered her grandmother’s resting place. But she had never known Rose Bohique and didn’t really expect her to show. If ’Bastian wouldn’t come, then why would Rose? And if ’Bastian wouldn’t appear, than why would any spirit appear to her?
They wouldn’t,
she decided. The drums were silent, and she felt like an idiot, like a child, standing in a cemetery at night. Like Linus Van Pelt waiting for the Great Pumpkin to rise from the most sincere pumpkin patch.

She got to her feet. Charlie steadied her, but she shook him off. “Let’s get out of here,” she said.

“Gladly”—from Ramon, and he led the way back to the gate.

This time, Rain got into the backseat with Charlie. Marina was trying to be supportive. “It helps to see something concrete sometimes. To make it real, you know?”

Charlie nodded. Rain just sulked. “Can you take me home now,” she said. Marina looked at Ramon, who nodded and turned the car around. They drove past me without noticing. Turned off Old Plantation Road and drove past Maq on his bench, without seeing or waking him. If nothing else happened, they’d be back at the Inn in less than five minutes.

Five minutes for Rain to stew in her own juices.
There’s no such thing as ghosts. You’re a dope. Or a nutcase.
Marina would periodically turn around to look at the younger girl. Ramon was quiet, but even he was checking his rearview to see if Rain was okay. Charlie, who wanted to hold her, tried desperately to not even brush against her. Rain noticed none of it.

Trouble is, I saw them. I know I did. The Dark Man. The Eight. I saw them.

She remembered Charlie’s words:
It’s grief. Playing tricks on you. It has to be.

In the backseat, she nodded absently to herself.
That’s right. I’m grieving. I—

But a new thought occurred, or rather an old one resurfaced. She stopped nodding and raised her eyes to meet Charlie’s. She spoke aloud: “You said I was messed up because of ’Bastian. Grief was playing tricks on me, right?”

Marina practically turned around in her seat. Charlie answered carefully, “Yeah. That’s right.”

“Except I saw the first ghost
before
I started grieving!”

Marina said, “Excuse me?”

Charlie held her gaze. He recognized this expression. He’d just told her to turn right, and she was determined to go left.

“What if I’m not crazy?” she said. “What if it’s all real? This started before I knew he was gone.” He could see her searching her memory, see the lightbulb click on. “The night he gave me the
armband!
When I first put it on, I felt…” She struggled to remember, but the sensation slipped away, like water, like smoke. So she shook off memory to focus on something concrete. “I have to find it. But where…”

She grabbed his arms, as if maybe he could tell her. But he didn’t know what she was talking about. All he knew was that she was on fire. The cold moonlight shone in her eyes, but the light that reflected back burned. He didn’t know “where” this was taking her. He just knew he’d follow.

She stared past him, like the Eight had stared past her. “Where, where, where?” Then her entire body went rigid. She smiled and growled.

“Callahan!”

CHAPTER NINE

SEARCHER

Rain had a master key that accessed every room in the Inn. It did not usually represent an awesome responsibility. Usually, it was a simple means to a mundane end.
Yippee, I get to change more sheets!
But tonight it felt different. Tonight, after knocking softly and calling out to confirm an empty room, it felt like she was using this key to cross an important threshold in her life.
“To unlock a door, you need two things: a key and someone who knows how to turn it.”
The girl who turned this key and entered this room would never be the same again.

And typical of Rain, she didn’t hesitate.

She immediately set to work. Each spring, the whole family did a thorough cleaning of every room. Rain had found some pretty goofy stuff secreted away and forgotten by long-gone guests—so she knew every possible hiding place. It helped that
this
guest had brought so little to the Inn. First off, she emptied the entire contents of his duffel onto the bed. Sorted through it. Went through every pocket. Nothing.

She checked inside the pillowcases. Then she looked under the bed. Next, she lifted the mattress, slid it halfway off the box spring. Most of the man’s stuff fell onto the floor. She’d clean it up after. Cleaning and straightening was something at which she’d had a lot of practice. There was a little tear in the fabric covering the box spring. Not big enough for the armband to fit through, but just in case, she ripped it open wider and reached around inside. Nothing.

The drawers to the dresser and nightstand—she pulled all of them all the way out. Most were empty. None held anything of interest. She ran into the bathroom and scanned the counter. There was a can of shaving cream. She popped off the top and even tried twisting off the bottom, in case it was one of those fake cans that people put valuables in. Just to be safe, she squirted a ton of white foam into the sink. It was, as advertised, a can of shaving cream. She checked under the sink, in the tub, in the trash can, even inside the toilet bowl and tank. Nothing.

She reentered the bedroom. Pulled the furniture away from the walls, one piece at a time. She checked the little indentation where the phone plugged in behind the headboard. She turned over the chairs and the little table to see if her prize had been taped underneath. She ran her hands through the closed curtains. She picked up a chair and climbed up onto it to check the curtain rods. She scanned the ceiling. Nothing.