Lantern Ghosts Read online

  Lantern Ghosts

  Copyright 2012 by Aaron Polson

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Lantern Ghosts

  A bloodstain blossomed on Nunez’s chest. He collapsed to the ground, but the bandit was dead. After the fight, the children helped their guide up the hill, past the wooden doors, and inside the stucco walls of the Cocospera Mission. Even before the scuffle outside the village, the mission had been their destination for the night. If God smiled on them, he did so with the proximity of sanctuary.

  Flaco, eight years old with a mess of black hair hanging like a wild bush on his head, closed the creaking remnants of the chapel door. The darkness which held them was cool and welcoming, shelter from the coming heat of day.

  “How is he?” Flaco asked, his dark eyes searching for his older sister’s.

  Graciela laid the man’s head on a bundle of clothing. “Not good. Weak.” She shuddered at the sight of dark splotches on her palms. “He lost a lot of blood.”

  “Yes,” Flaco said.

  Graciela rubbed her hands together, as if the action of washing would cleanse her fingers of dried blood. Her face was thin and long, too thin for a girl of her age under most circumstances, but girls aged quickly in Colima, especially those with no mother and a father sweating away in the rail yards of Santa Fe. A rich fire burned behind Graciela’s dark eyes, a fire which shone brightest in the gloom, like a magic candle from one of her mother’s fairy tales. The eyes gave beauty to the face, and, along with her long, black hair, hinted at the striking woman Graciela would become given the chance. But, for the time, she was twelve and hungry and scared, covered with a man’s blood and as far from home as she could imagine, even on nights when her magic candle eyes searched the stars.

  “What will we do?” Flaco pulled at his messy hair. “What will we do if he…dies?”

  “Stop it. Stop worrying.” Graciela rose to her feet and padded toward the chapel door. “He will be fine after some rest. The wound isn’t too deep. He will be fine.” But he won’t. He won’t and I’ll be alone with my brother, lost in this land of ghosts. She nibbled her lip and opened the door a few inches, peering into the abandoned courtyard. The mission wasn’t so big, after all, and the pigeons wouldn’t tell anyone where to find them.

  “We need water. A stream or spring or possibly an old well around here. We need to find water and wood for a fire, and then I’ll fry some tortillas and have a little breakfast. We’ll both feel better with food.”

  Graciela squeezed water from a rag and dabbed Nunez’s wrinkled brow. The old man—she thought of him as very old enough though he probably beat Papa by only a few years—wore skin sun-hardened like aged leather. It wasn’t the stiffness of the skin which bothered her, but the heat. Nunez had developed a fever over the course of the day, and had yet to regain consciousness. Graciela wrung excess from the rag and draped it on the edge of a broken clay pot, the only vessel they found to transport water from the still working pump Flaco had discovered outside the walls. He found the pump near what looked like a boarded-over well.

  Flaco snorted in his sleep and rolled onto his side. Graciela watched him for a moment, then pulled back the dressing on Nunez’s wound. Her eyes had become quite accustomed to the dark of the little chapel, but the gash looked like little more than a black mass on the old man’s skin. A better examination in daylight was needed, but she feared Nunez wouldn’t make the rest of the trip. The realization showered over her like cold water melted from the mountain snows. No, he wouldn’t make the trip with the fever and gash in his side. He couldn’t lead them to the border as he promised, as he claimed he’d done so many times before.

  With a shudder, she remembered the gouge Nunez had carved in the theif. He’d pulled the scrawny thief’s head back by the hair—he might have been a boy of twenty, maybe younger. Nunez had left the bandit with an extra mouth, slit in a jagged line from one ear along the jaw to the collarbone on the other side. Who knew the old man had so much fight in him? The military, maybe. Perhaps the army taught him how to kill with a knife.

  Graciela pushed the chapel door open. The moonlight washed the courtyard with silver dust. As she crept through the doorway, her neck prickled with the sensation someone was watching. Just a quick peek outside the walls. She circled the outside the courtyard, hidden in shadows until she was within twenty yards of the main gate. Fear caught the air in her lungs.

  Voices.

  She heard voices, tiny and indistinct, like children’s quick words in hushed tones.

  Graciela turned toward the chapel, searching for the source of the voices, and her gaze drifted toward the sky. The bell tower. She felt like she was looking on it for the first time—surely she’d seen it when they entered that morning. Of course, with her fear of heights, there would be no reason to look at the top of the tower—she’d never go there. It pointed into the star-speckled night like a bold finger accusing God. The voices came from below the tower, near the chapel. Why hadn’t she heard them before?

  Her tongue became dry and heavy in her mouth. She pressed her lips together for fear they—the owner’s of the voices—might hear her breathing. Surely children’s voices. There would be adults if there were children. Friends or enemies, though? Perhaps bandits, like man Nunez killed. She shook the thought loose from her mind. No, not bandits. Not with children. Not Federalis, either.

  She had to know.

  As Graciela walked back toward the chapel, still in the shadows, the sound of each, crunching footfall scraped against her ears. So loud. She practiced walking on her toes.

  The voices stopped when she touched the door, but she waited.

  Again, the voices.

  “He says we are to stay.”

  “Here? Why here? We’re still miles away from the border. Weeks at this rate.”

  “He said to wait.”

  “What if he’s wrong? What if…worse. I don’t trust him.”

  “He’s done this before.”

  The sound of sobs, the cries of a toddler, carried through the narrow opening.

  “Hush, Marco. Juana is just worried. She’s the big sister. It’s her job to be worried about us.”

  “Of course I am. Why do you think he lights the lantern—”

  Graciela’s foot slipped on the packed dirt, and the voices stopped. She stumbled through the doorway, but the room—from each stucco wall to the high, arched ceiling—was empty.

  Graciela frowned as her little brother struggled with the pump. “I can help.”

  “I’ll do it,” he said. “I’m the man.”

  Her nose wrinkled. “You’re eight.”

  He grunted and pressed down on the handle again. A spurt of water frothed into the bowl, spilling over the side. “See…” Flaco leaned against the pump, panting. “I…did…it. And I’m…almost nine.”

  Graciela stooped for the bowl, but paused and studied her little brother’s red-splotched face. “How did you sleep last night?”

  “Fine.” He wiped his sleeve across his face, imitating
the way the field men would on hot days in Colima. “I slept fine. Why?”

  “Nothing…just…last night, late, Nunez woke me with his moaning. I used the rag on his head. He was on fire.” She looked down at the bowl of filthy water. “Then I heard them.”

  “Them?” The boy’s eyes widened. “Who did you hear?”

  “Children. I think. They sounded like children, anyway.”

  “Here?” Blood fled from Flaco’s face, but he shrugged his shoulders.

  “Next to the chapel. In the dining hall, I think. When I looked inside, the voices stopped. Nothing was there. I thought…it’s silly…but I thought—”

  “Ghosts?”

  “Yes. I thought it might be ghosts.”

  Flaco hugged his arms across his chest, and the color stayed away from his cheeks. “You were dreaming. You had to be dreaming.”

  “No. I heard the voices.”

  “Dreaming. Dreaming or... You can’t trust voices. What if the Devil is lying to you. Tricking you—” Flaco’s head shook back and forth. He watched as his sister carried the bowl toward the front gate, and, after a moment’s hesitation, he followed, speeding to a jog to catch her. “When do you think he’ll be well enough to move on?”

  That evening, Nunez’s fever persisted, but he mumbled, incoherent snatches of sentences and words which neither brother nor sister could piece together. When he mentioned “lantern”, a quick lance of icy recognition cut through Graciela’s chest. “Lantern.”

  Later, after Flaco fell into his heavy breathing, she slipped from the chapel again. She watched a knot of clouds brush past the moon and listened. What time was it? Did the voices only come at certain times? She lowered herself to the ground and leaned against the chipping stucco. She nearly fell asleep before the voices came back, the same voices from the night before. The conversation followed the same path as the night before, until Graciela tensed for the portion she’d interrupted. She dared not move.

  “He said to wait.”

  “What if he’s wrong? What if…worse. I don’t trust him.”

  “He’s done this before.”

  The sound of sobs, the cries of a toddler, carried through the narrow opening.

  “Hush, Marco. Juana is just worried. She’s the big sister. It’s her job to be worried about us.”

  “Of course I am. Why do you think he lights the lantern atop the church tower each night?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “A signal,” the smallest voice said.

  “Yes, Marco. A signal. Who is the signal for? Who does he signal?”

  The girl’s voice was cold and wavering. Graciela hugged her knees to her chest and held her breath.

  “Maybe his helpers. Others who will lead us.”

  “Or?”

  The little voice began crying again.

  “We have to trust Nunez—”

  Graciela gasped, and the voices vanished as they had the night before. The tower. Nunez. They hadn’t known the old man well before hiring him. He wasn’t even from Colima. But Mama died, and then... After a long while, she stood and stepped into the courtyard to have a good look at the bell tower. It stood against the dark sky as it had the previous evening. A lantern in the tower? He wouldn’t have been able to light one over the past nights because of his fever. Perhaps, if she found the lantern, the voices were to be trusted. Her doubts could sleep, and her brother’s suggestions of the Devil proven unfounded.

  She found the doorway inside the chapel vestibule, but frowned at the shadows black as pitch in the tower. Her eyes failed to follow ladder past a few feet above her head. The dim glow from the night sky shone through what must have been a trapdoor at the top. Maybe, if she took it slowly… She placed one foot on the ladder, but froze as the ladder shook. Her heart pounded against he ribcage. Her stomach contracted. Her head spun. No. Not the ladder, not in the dark. Not heights, especially not in the dark.

  Flaco. She’d need her little brother in the morning.

  “I don’t understand why I have to climb up there. Why can’t you do it?” Flaco kicked a clump of dry, packed dirt. “Why do we have to do it at all?”

  Graciela chewed her lip. Man of the family. Nonsense. “The voices, Flaco. I heard them again last night.”

  “Are you going to stop talking about that silly stuff? I don’t believe in ghosts.” The waver in his voice said he did, a little at least. She’d pry him open then.

  “There’s a lantern up top. The voices—the ghosts told me so. If you go up there and find it, well, then we’d know, wouldn’t we?”

  His eyes narrowed. “But if I went up and nothing…then you’d admit you were wrong? Would you do that?”

  Graciela offered a smile. The bait worked. Her little brother wriggled toward the trapdoor at the top. She held the rails of the ladder. Vibrations shook through the rough, splintery wood into her hands, wrists and arms, but she wouldn’t look up. A moan sounded from the next room; the old man—Nunez—reminding her of his presence.

  “G—?”

  She leaned against a rung, allowing the coarse wood to press her forehead. Flaco’s tiny voice had dropped from above like rain, but she still couldn’t look up.

  “It’s here…an oil lantern. A big square one. It’s pretty clean, too.”

  Another moan from the chapel.

  “Come down,” she said. Her stomach sank. “Come down, Flaco.”

  The ladder shook again, first with tiny, distant steps, but as he came closer, she could feel it. She would not look until he was near the bottom.

  “I couldn’t bring the lantern,” he said as he jumped the last few feet. “I got it off the hook, but it was too big to carry while I came down.”

  “What was too…big?”

  They faced the specter of the old man, a pale, sweating mass of flesh, as he leaned against the door frame.

  “Senor…” Graciela moved to steady him.

  He waved her away. “I’m better…a little weak. Food perhaps.” He turned and staggered into the chapel.

  Before she followed him, Graciela caught her brother’s arm and whispered, “Not a word to him.”

  Night draped the chapel in black, thick and smoky. Graciela’s eyes were open, open and staring at the ceiling, adjusted enough she could see the cracks in the stucco. Dark lines challenged the shadows in a broken zig-zag. Almost forming a face. Perhaps it was her imagination which made the face. She tilted her head toward her brother and then the old man.

  Nunez was asleep again and still feverish. A new fear had begun to grow inside Garciela’s chest, a strange, unfounded sort of thing born of the night-voices mentioning his name. One of the voices—one of the children—hadn’t wanted to trust the man. Why? Graciela swallowed, imagining too many reasons for mistrust. Nunez had eaten a little that day and drank the clean water from their remaining jug. He was getting better, and once he was…well, what then? When she was convinced Nunez was deep in his dreams, she climbed off the folded blanket and crept to Flaco’s side.

  “Flaco,” she whispered. “It’s time.”

  He rubbed his eyes.

  “Now or never. The voices.”

  Brother and sister moved like ghosts into the courtyard, huddled next to the door, and waited. The waiting stretched until Graciela felt she might break open. She prodded Flaco with her finger every few minutes, gently at first, and then with more spirit as the boy faded.

  But then, the voices.

  Graciela knew the script well. It replayed just as it had the first two nights. She clamped fingers over her brother’s mouth, but his eyes spoke his surprise. An owl hooted his presence in the hills outside the mission. Graciela held her breath. The voices continued.

  “Maybe his helpers. Others who will lead us.”

  “Or?”

  The little voice began crying again.

  “We have to trust Nunez, don’t we?”

  “Trust him or what?”

  “Shhh…he’s coming.”

  Then, a jagged ice
of fear lanced through Graciela’s heart. The little voice erupted, screaming. She bit her tongue as she held her brother down. He fought her grip, but she needed to hear. She wouldn’t disturb them again—not now.

  “What’s to be done with us?” the girl’s voice asked.

  “No…no…no…” It was the older brother.

  A pause, then the girl’s voice again:

  “Not my brothers…God…not in the well…” She began sobbing. “No…you can’t. I won’t go…I’ll die first…”

  More screams.

  No one could hear, though. Graciela looked onto the abandoned courtyard, feeling the frozen weight of the girl’s final pleas in her heart. No one could hear her—like no one would hear them should they cry for help.

  “The well,” Flaco whispered. “Near the pump. Those old boards.”

  She nodded.

  “What’s down there? Oh, God…”

  Graciela shook her head and held her breath against the tears. What’s down there, little brother? She rose and shuddered. “We need to check.”

  “But…you said we could trust him….you said…” Flaco’s voice broke into sobs.

  “Just like the lantern, Flaco. It’s proof. If we find—” She couldn’t say the word, she couldn’t let her mouth and tongue form the word bodies, but that was it, right? Bodies. Little corpses, the children we just heard, then what? We run away? “Were there matches, Flaco? Up in the tower…did you see any matches.”

  “I-I didn’t check. It was just a lantern. Let’s go…now…” Flaco trembled. He took a few steps back toward the shadows, back toward the chapel door. A shape moved behind him. “Let’s grab out blankets and what food we have, and go…”

  “We need the matches. We could take the lantern. He might have them.”

  Flaco’s voice had almost crumbled into sobs. “We need to go…”

  A cough sounded from the shadows behind the boy. “W-where?”

  Graciela’s blood iced over. The shadows moved again.

  “Where are y-you going?” Nunez asked, followed by more coughs.