Rain of the Ghosts (6 page)

Charlie said, “Promise me we’ll leave.”

Rain said, “He’s gone. I have to, I don’t know … pay my respects first.”

Ms. Vendaval shrugged. Or maybe it was Marina or Miranda or Ariel. Or maybe it was her mother. “Pay your respects,” she said. “Say good-bye to everyone on the island, if you must. Then leave it quite behind you. There’s nothing left for you here.”

Charlie said, “Promise me.”

“He’s gone,” Rain said.

“Promise me.”

“I promise,” she said.

And on the Grande Jetée, without benefit of bait, Maq caught his own big fish. He used the last of his matches to light a fire on the beach just before the dawn. He roasted the fish on a flat rock and split half of it with me. I had had my doubts, but he was right again. It was really quite good.

CHAPTER SEVEN

A WAKE

It wasn’t on the nightstand. She checked it again. Checked behind. On the floor. Under the bed. She went through the drawers.

Outside, it was a sunny Saturday morning. A cheerful, pleasant morning. Mild for September, it could easily be classified as a “lovely morning.”

Inside, Rain, wearing a simple black sleeveless dress, tore through her room. She checked her dresser. Pulled clothes out of every drawer. Checked her desk. Under the desk. In the desk drawers. Back to the nightstand. “Where is it?” she said aloud.

“Where’s what?” Alonso stood in the doorway, wearing his worn dark suit. The one he usually referred to as “my funeral suit.” Usually. He watched his daughter pulling books off her shelf. “Where’s what?” he repeated.

“Papa’s armband. I left it on my nightstand, and I want to wear it for the…” She couldn’t complete the sentence. Couldn’t say the word. She threw her arms up in exasperation. “It’s vanished.”

“You’ll have to look for it after. We can’t be late.”

Rain had her back to her father. Her head sank melodramatically. She grumbled something he couldn’t hear. Something that on any other day he might have punished her for saying. Head still lowered, she turned and tramped past him. He stuck his tongue into his cheek. Took a deep breath and pulled the door closed. Automatically, he checked to make sure it was locked. (You learn to do that when you live at an Inn.) Then he followed his daughter down the stairs.

The Cacique family stood in the quiet tree-lined beauty of San Próspero Cemetery among people they loved. Charlie was there, straitjacketed into a coat and tie, offering a sympathetic smile. His mother, Adriana Dauphin, had given Rain a gentle kiss on the forehead. Charlie’s older brother, Hank, and younger brother, Phil, who usually treated Rain with differing versions of contempt, just nodded to her nervously. Old Joe Charone, ’Bastian’s oldest friend, gave Alonso an encouragingly firm handshake, before kissing Iris and Rain. He wore a coat and tie and the same special-occasion over-strong aftershave that ’Bastian would never wear again. Even Miller, who sometimes worked the boat with Rain’s father, was there, foregoing a perfect day for surfing to pay his respects. His blond ponytail lay against the back of his corduroy sports coat.

Then there were three generations of Ibaras. Two of Jacksons. Four of Hernandezes. Et cetera. ’Bastian had lived a long life and made many friends. Iris leaned her entire body against her husband’s and said, “He’d have liked this.” Rain heard and frowned.

Maq and I kept our distance. We didn’t exactly have a respectful change of clothes, but Maq removed his big straw hat and held it over his heart. Rain glanced back. He caught her eye and winked at her. She forced a smile and looked away.

A few lazy bees buzzed about, looking to pollinate. Father Lopez began to speak. Keeping my ears open, I wandered off among the familiar gravestones and vine-covered mausoleums. Some were neatly kept. Others had been overgrown for centuries. Most were empty of anything that mattered to me, but they were pleasant reminders of smiling faces, kind voices and rich smells. Off to the side was a small pet cemetery where I could easily have spent the entire day.

The good Father kept his sermon short. But it seemed to me he could have skipped it altogether. A pleasant breeze and the swaying, skipping shadows of leaves on the trees bespoke a better epitaph for old ’Bastian Bohique than any man’s words ever could.

Still, before Rain knew it, she was back at the Inn. Friends and loved ones milled around the lobby and dining room, eating food, offering condolences, telling ’Bastian stories. There were too many people for the space. Too many people touching her face or shoulder. Kissing her cheek or her forehead. Stopping their tales when she came near. Rain felt like she was overheating. She couldn’t eat. Could barely generate mumbled responses to each repetitive show of concern. She began to slowly navigate through the crowd toward the front stairs. She wanted to evaporate to the upper stories and listen to her iPod or her father’s rock CDs or ’Bastian’s old jazz LPs on the phonograph in his room. But reaching the bottom step, she immediately knew she couldn’t go into his room. So she stood there, vaguely paralyzed.

The front door opened. It was Mr. Chung and Ms. Ellis-Chung. Tourists, guests of the Inn, backlit by the sun, standing there, wondering what kind of party they had been missing. They held the door open as they considered the somber, whispering crowd. And Rain bolted. Out the door. Outside. Away.

To the N.T.Z. of course. Where else could she go? Her good shoes hidden away where she and Charlie had stowed the bicycles two short nights and one horrific eternity ago, she slipped through the jungle in her knee-length black dress. She entered the clearing silently. And sat down on the sandstone slab overlooking the sea. She hugged her knees to her chest and finally began to breathe again.

Time passed. And Charlie was there. She didn’t need to look back. She just slowly became aware of his presence behind her. Without turning, she nodded once. And he sat down on the slab next to her, still wearing his Sunday clothes, even his shoes. They sat there quietly, watching the ocean. Watching the sun move down the sky. They never spoke or even looked at each other. But she was glad he came. And he was glad to be with her.

Hours later found them in the exact same spot, practically holding the same pose. Rain had lowered her bare feet over the cliffside, and was gently letting them swing with the breeze. The sun sank into the ocean. The sunset was stunning. The end of a beautiful day on the Ghosts.

And still they maintained their vigil. Eventually, Rain felt moonlight wash over her body. Cooling and soothing her brittle fever from the wake. She stirred. Charlie turned his head toward her. “I just had to get away,” she said. As if he had just caught up with her and hadn’t spent half a day beside her.

“It’s okay.”

She stood up. He did too. She smiled sadly, leaned in and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Thanks,” she said.

Once again, he felt the rush of being near her. Full of self-loathing, he admonished, reproved, reprimanded and chided himself reproachfully. He just wanted to be her friend.
Now, of all times, just her friend.
But to his frustration, the buzz remained.

She turned toward the clearing, and her smile vanished; the color drained from her face. She and Charlie were surrounded. Where had they come from? Who were they? What were they? A barely audible
no
escaped her lips, and she started to back away … nearly stepping right off the cliff.

“Rain! Careful!!” A panicked Charlie grabbed hold of her, steadied her. He glanced back over his shoulder and down. It was a long way to the bottom. He looked at her profile. She hadn’t even registered the cliff.
What the hell is she looking at?

Spirits. Ghosts. Translucent. Glowing. Standing in a semicircle around the N.T.Z. Rain was hyperventilating, desperate not to lose it completely.
All these tourists do NOT belong here,
she thought. She counted them. There were eight of them. She counted again. Still eight. The counting helped calm her. Helped focus her. There had seemed to be so many at first. But no, it was a finite number of dead folk. Fixed and unchanging. At least for now. She scanned their shimmering faces. It was hard to clearly discern their features, but she was soon convinced. The Dark Man wasn’t there. These were new ghosts. All men. All dressed in bomber jackets and some kind of uniform. They looked to her like old-fashioned World War I flying aces or something.

Then, just as her breathing returned to normal, they started to approach. To close in around her and Charlie, who still had both hands locked tightly around her arm. She looked at him. He was clearly frightened, glancing back and forth between her and the clearing.
He sees them,
she thought.
Thank God, he sees them.

Rain cringed involuntarily as the Eight drew closer. They began to point out to sea. Their lips were moving but no sound came forth. Rain studied their body language. They seemed to be begging, imploring. “What do they want?!”

Charlie was clearly freaked: “What? Who? Rain, what’s wrong with you?”

She turned on him like a woman betrayed. “The ghosts! Don’t tell me you can’t see them?! You have to see them!”

He looked at her, followed her gaze and stared at the empty N.T.Z. Moonlight and a cold fire pit. That was all. He turned back to her and shook his head.

She stared at him. Then slowly her own head rotated toward the Eight, still pointing, reaching, begging for something beyond the cliff. Equal parts dread, fear and anger were at war within her. But anger was something she could hold onto. So anger won. She took a step forward. Charlie released her arm. The ghosts ignored her. She took another step. “Why me?” she said. “What do you want from me?!”

Reaching out to sea, the ghosts ignored her still, looking through her as if
she
were the transparent one, as if she were the ghost. Desperate, she took three fast steps toward the nearest spirit and reached out to him, shouting, “What do you want?!” Her hand passed right through him. There was no substance, just sensation. She had vaguely expected him to feel cold. But whatever stuff he was made of was warm and liquid, like the Caribbean. He was tall, but she tried to meet his gaze. His face was fluid, indistinct. But young. Maybe nineteen or twenty.
How could he be so young?
She stood right in front of him, waving her arm back and forth through his head.

He took no notice. But somewhere, not in her ears, but in the back of her mind, she heard him speak … or maybe just think. The whispered words, like the ghost, were liquid, were smoke. But a few of them registered:
Home … Send us home … Finish it … The mission … Help us …

It was her turn to beg, to implore. “Stop it! I can’t help you!”

Finally, the spirit acknowledged her presence. He lowered his head. His eyes locked onto hers. Solid black and hard as jewels. She wanted to run away, but those eyes froze her in place. He reached out. Put a hand of smoke and liquid into her chest and spoke again, spoke to her.
Send us home!
His voice was the night wind blowing sand across the beach. Quiet, dry, steady, insistent and impossible to hold onto. And again,
Send us home!

It was all too much. She shut her eyes. Screwed them shut against the young ghost, against all of the Eight. Charlie watched her body coil into a kind of standing fetal position. Finally, she screamed: “GO AWAY!!”

Silence. The whispering stopped. Slowly and with great trepidation, she raised her head. The young ghost was gone. The Eight were gone. She turned a full circle. The clearing was empty. Moonlight. A cold fire pit. A cliff. Rain Cacique. And Charlie Dauphin, staring at his lunatic best friend.

She felt like a lunatic. Or one step from lunacy at most. She looked at Charlie. He hadn’t seen anything. “Rain?” he said.

She shook her head, muttering to herself, “Maybe I am losing it. You can’t see them. No one can.”

Charlie wanted to say something helpful, so: “It’s grief. Playing tricks on you. It has to be.”

She nodded absently.
That’s right. That’s all it is.
He took her hand and squeezed it. She managed a smile. Then strangely disappointed, she walked with him into the jungle.

CHAPTER EIGHT

GRAVE

Rain recovered her shoes from behind the ferns. Charlie watched intently as she slipped them on and emerged into the light of the Camino.

“Kinda dressy for the N.T.Z.”

Rain and Charlie turned to see Marina Cortez watching them with amusement. “What are you guys, having candlelight dinners up there?” She was sitting next to Ramon Hernandez on the front bench seat of his convertible. He leaned over to whisper something in her ear. Rain didn’t have to be a psychic to guess what he was saying. Ramon had been at the funeral and the wake with his parents, grandparents, sisters, in-laws, nieces and a nephew. As Marina’s expression changed from mirth to sympathy, Rain once again felt the weight of everyone on the islands knowing her business.

Marina climbed up onto her knees and leaned out of the car, “Rain, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

Rain didn’t want pity or even compassion right now. Other people’s emotions felt like a burden. Created expectations for how she was supposed to respond in turn. “It’s okay,” she said flatly, which was all she could manage.

“It’s not okay. I know. Look, why don’t you guys hang with us tonight.” Then, after the fact, Marina glanced toward Ramon for confirmation. He didn’t look thrilled. Clearly, he’d been hoping for some alone time with the pretty girl from Malas Almas. But he wasn’t a complete idiot. There really wasn’t any way he could object.

“Yeah, sure. Climb in,” he said, hoping his tone sounded inviting enough to fool Marina, but threatening enough to discourage Charlie at least.

But Charlie wasn’t searching for nuances. This was an unprecedented opportunity. Seniors didn’t invite eighth-graders to hang. If they could just be spotted driving around with Ramon by someone, anyone, from school, it would alter their entire status come Monday morning. Plus, it might serve to get Rain’s mind off of, well, whatever.