Apparition (The Hungry Ghosts) (46 page)

So she pushed and pushed and her daughter popped out into the world and Lauren took her away, too. Then Lauren brought them both back, a boy and a girl, five pounds five ounces and five pounds six ounces respectively, and set them in the crooks of Tess’s arms. She felt the flickering reminder of a memory, of being on a train, in a jungle, crossing a terrible rope bridge. Had to be the Demerol injection her mother had given her.

“The times,” Tess said. “I need their times of birth. Maddie said that’s important.”

“Eleven–oh-one for your son,” Lauren said. “And let’s call it eleven-eleven for your daughter.”

Eleven-oh-one, eleven-eleven.
As soon as those words were out of her mother’s mouth, Tess felt something profound shifting inside of her, something she knew she should remember, but which refused to surface.

She saw the look that her mother and Leo exchanged, though, and wondered what it meant.

3.

Wayra and Sanchez bounced along in the old pickup, headed out of old town Esperanza. Wayra had the sensation, as he often did these days, that something was missing in the city or markedly different about it, or both. But he couldn’t pinpoint it. The railroad tracks where a slow-moving trolley now moved seemed all wrong to him, but he didn’t know why. He kept seeing the city covered in white sand, but didn’t know why. When he looked at certain landmarks—Parque del Cielo, La Pincoya, the Posada de Esperanza—he felt that he wasn’t remembering the truth. Weird. He didn’t know what it meant.

Once they were in the countryside, on an unpaved road, Sanchez picked up speed, driving so fast that the tires kicked up dust that settled on the windshield and drifted through the windows. A CD blasted from the player—Esperanza Spalding singing “I Know You Know.”

Wayra lowered the volume. “And that’s the thing, Sanchez. I
know
that I know. I just can’t pull it out, identify it.”

“We all know that we know.”

“Do Tess and Ian know?”

“I don’t think so. They’re too busy with the twins and their online magazine, I guess. What about Pedro?”

“Pedro is too sick these days to talk about what he does or doesn’t remember.”

“You, me, Maddie, Illary, we’re the only ones who have had the dream, Wayra. How can four people dream the same dream? And not just once, but repeatedly for more than two years?”

The dream always took place on a train. “What about Lauren and Leo?” Wayra asked. “Have you talked to them about it?”

“Maddie has. They’re already at the house. They’re going to join us for this excursion.”

“Then we need to get Tess and Ian to the house as well.”

“They left for Punta yesterday, drove down with the twins for a long weekend. There’s a great place down there where the kids can swim in a lake…”

Wayra didn’t hear the rest of what Sanchez said. He suddenly had a very bad feeling about Tess and Ian leaving Esperanza and felt a kind of desperate urgency to call them. But why? What the hell would he say to them? “It worries me, that they left.”

Sanchez nodded. “Me, too. But I don’t have any idea why. Maddie and I were talking the other night about how we haven’t left Esperanza since we got here in 2009, more than five years ago.”

“Illary and I haven’t left, either.”

The two men looked at each other. “So … is that random or is it important?” Sanchez asked.

“I don’t know. What about Leo and Lauren? Have they left at all?”

“No.”

A pattern.
But what did it mean?

“Maddie says the Segunda Vista will fill us in on everything we need to know. Apparently the shamans she’s been working with call Segunda Vista the DNA of Esperanza, but claim the distillation has to be just right. She thinks she’s got the perfect essence this time.”

Sanchez turned abruptly onto a narrow dirt road that ran between fields of Segunda Vista, a blanket of green crowned with delicate flowers that looked as if they’d been spattered with paint by some mischievous abstract artists. Blues, violets, reds and pinks, yellows and gold, a rainbow spectrum of colors. A light breeze rippled across the fields so the flowers seemed to sway and dance.

“Why does Maddie think we can enter the dream by taking Segunda Vista?” Wayra asked.

“The Quechuas do it all the time, in a ceremony called Memory.”

Sanchez pulled into the driveway of the bed-and-breakfast he and Maddie owned, and parked in between Leo’s VW and Illary’s smart car. The four of them were sitting on the front steps, a small cooler at their feet, Jessie snoozing nearby in a pool of warm light. As Wayra got out, he noticed a blue and green feather on the ground and picked it up. In the light, the colors shimmered.

“Look at this beauty,” he said, showing it to Sanchez.

“Gorgeous. It looks like a parrot feather.” Sanchez elbowed him and smiled. “Powerful medicine, Wayra. That’s what a shaman would say.”

Wayra tucked the feather in his hair.

“Hey, mi amor,” Illary called. “What took you guys so long?”

“We had to stop for gas,” Wayra replied, and hugged her hello. In the light, the hawk tattoo that ran from her shoulder and up her neck seemed to move. She couldn’t recall when or where she’d gotten the tattoo. Always, they experienced these gaps in their memories.

She plucked the feather from his hair and ran her fingers over it. “Awesome. Where’d you find this?”

“In the driveway.”

She slipped it back in his hair. “A good omen, Wayra.”

“Are we ready for this, people?” Lauren asked, and flipped open the lid of a small cooler.

“I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” Leo said, and reached into the cooler and brought out one tiny glass canister after another and passed them around.

“Drink up,” Maddie said. “We’ll be deep in Memory when we reach the field. Then we’ll drink a bit more and swim inside of Memory.”

“Salud,”
Leo said, and clicked his canister against Lauren’s and drank it down.

Wayra and Illary, and Maddie and Sanchez did the same. It tasted strange—not unpleasant, just strange. Thick, like nectar, it was an avocado green, held the sweetness of a mango, the tartness of a fresh radish, and some other quality Wayra couldn’t identify.

“Hey, Maddie,” Wayra said as they started toward the fields, Jessie trotting alongside them. “I heard this stuff was taken as flakes.”

She flashed him a quick smile and hooked her arm through her husband’s. “It depends on what you’re using it for. This shit will knock your socks off, Wayra. That’s the only way into Memory.”

Within minutes, they reached the field of Segunda Vista behind the house, and each of them dropped to the ground, gathered in a small, tight circle, and held hands. Suddenly, Wayra felt as if the top of his skull and the center of his chest blew open simultaneously and then a great, rushing warmth flowed down through his head and into his heart and visions swept across his eyes.

“It’s Memory,” he whispered.

And Memory streamed through him, vivid, bright, utterly clear. He saw himself as he had once been, a shape shifter whose destiny had been tethered to Esperanza. He saw it all, the strange and magnificent canvas of his life before the city’s magic had been stripped away, before Kali and those moments on the ghost train. He saw himself turning three humans on Cedar Key, to save their lives, and wondered what had happened to them. He saw himself discovering that the hawk one of those humans had nurtured back to health was Illary, a shape shifter more ancient than he was. He saw Dominica and her
brujos
and the chasers and heard Kali’s final words on that train:
“You can leave the city, but unless you hold on to Memory, you won’t be able to return.”

It was all there, the horror and tragedy, the magnificence and splendor of a city called Hope. And he understood why none of them had left and why Tess and Ian should not have left. Then he wept for all he had lost and for the memories that Segunda Vista had now returned to him.

4.

During the three-hour trip from Punta to Esperanza, the twins fussed and fought over their toys, their snacks. They wanted the windows down, then up, then down again, and they made so much racket Ian could barely think. He kept struggling with a vague memory of being on this road in an unusual bus with Father Jacinto and Wayra, but couldn’t remember ever having made such a trip.

In fact, their long weekend to Punta was the first time they’d left Esperanza in years. “You two want to watch
Finding Nemo
?” Ian asked, eyeing the kids in the rearview mirror.

“Nemo,”
squealed Charlie, clapping his hands. Named after Tess’s father, he had her blond hair and blue eyes. Rina had Ian’s dark hair and eyes. “Rina and me love Nemo.”

“Charlie loves Nemo more than me,” Rina said. “Can’t we watch
The Little Mermaid,
Daddy?”

“We don’t have
The Little Mermaid
with us,” Tess told her, and popped a disk into the player.

“Are we there yet?” Rina asked.

“Not too long now,” Ian said.

“Just up the road from Dorado and the Río Palo,” Tess said.

Up the road by a steep six thousand feet, Ian thought. Even though the SUV had four-wheel drive, he wasn’t surprised when the engine strained.

“Tess, I have this weird feeling about being on this road in an odd bus with Father Jacinto and Wayra. We never went to Punta with them, did we?”

“I don’t think so. But I have this kind of half memory about being on an unusual bus on this road with you and my mom and Maddie.”

“That kind of bus?” He pointed at the bright blue tourist bus in front of them. Red hummingbirds had been painted on the sides and back and they were so beautifully detailed the bus looked like a work of art. Across the bumper were the words
DORADO EXPRESS
.

“The Dorado Express? I’ve never heard of that bus line,” Tess said. “And no, the bus I’m sort of remembering looked much different. The roof rack was piled with all kinds of stuff and it was really filthy. I think it was called Dorado thirteen. Can you pass it?”

“Not on this curve.”

“Mommy,” Charlie said. “Are we lost? The road looks different.”

“You’ve never been on this road, Charlie,” said Ian.

“Have, too. I waited near the Río Palo for Mommy.”

“That was way before,” Rina said with a laugh. “When we were chasers.”

“You waited by the Río Palo for
me
?” Tess teased. “But why, Charlie?”

“I think you were angry with me.”

Ian glanced at Tess, who looked as mystified as he was. That happened frequently, the twins jabbering away about stuff that made no sense to him or Tess. But Tess turned in her seat and played along. “I’m not angry with my Charlie or Rina.”

“Wrong road,” Charlie said again. “Wrong road.”

Then the road came out of the curve and Ian darted out to the left and sped past the bus. He shifted into fourth gear for the last five hundred feet to the top of the plateau and began to notice changes around them—how overgrown the trees and brush were on either side, the roadside crosses decorated with flowers, marking the spot where someone had died in a car crash, and then the weathered signs with the number of kilometers to Esperanza.

At the top of the plateau, Ian turned into the rest area and slammed so abruptly on the brakes that the SUV shuddered and died. He punched the seat belt release button, leaped out, and ran over to the railing, where a sign was posted in Spanish, English, and Quechua:

Welcome to the Esperanza Ruin. Excavation at this archaeological site is ongoing. Please stay on the designated paths. You will find brochures about this excavation at the entrance. Smoking is not allowed.

“What the fuck…”

“Ian,” Tess shouted, running toward him with Rina in her arms and Charlie stumbling alongside her. “Where … how…”

“Noooooooooo,”
Charlie shrieked and tore toward the entrance of the site as fast as his little legs would carry him.

Rina wailed and kicked and flung herself from side to side until she escaped her mother’s arms, and tore after Charlie, screaming, “Charlie, Charlie, where’d it go?”

Ian and Tess raced after them, through the entrance, down the steps, and off the designated path. Ian couldn’t process what his eyes told him, that Esperanza, which they had left only four days ago, was now an archaeological ruin. Confusion and horror rolled through him in powerful, almost crippling waves that drove him forward, faster, faster. Tess, now sobbing, kept pace with him, and when they reached Charlie and Rina, they were both so winded they sank to the ground.

“Daddy!” Charlie cried, stabbing his finger at the ruin of what looked like an old hotel. “The Pincoya, this was the Pincoya. You and Wayra blew it up.”

“Boom!” Rina shouted, throwing out her arms. “Boom, boom, fire everywhere.
Brujos
fleeing.”

“Oh my God,” he whispered.

Tess groped for his hand. “Bus depot.”

“We were waiting for Esperanza thirteen, Tess.”

“That’s not what you called me then.”

The nickname popped into his head. “Slim, I called you Slim. Bogie and Bacall.”

“Clooney.”

“The
Expat News
.”

“Shape shifters.”

“
Brujos,
chasers, the … ghost train.”

“The city covered in sand…”

“Nine twenty-eight, eleven-eleven, Victor and Franco and—”

“And me,” Charlie said, coming over to them, patting his chest, tears still coursing down his cheeks. “Me and Karina.”

And right then, Ian understood who the twins actually were, Charlie and Karina, the chasers, and remembered all of it, remembered how he and the priest and Wayra had set off explosives in the abandoned Pincoya, which the
brujos
had been using as a portal. He remembered the black sludge sweeping across the Café Taquina and how he had tried to rescue Javier. He remembered taking Segunda Vista with Lauren, the wild ride on
Further
with Kesey, Garcia, McKenna, and piercing the whiteness that enclosed El Bosque. He remembered the strangeness and mystery of Esperanza in the time before. He remembered all of it—too late.