Hungry Ghosts (Eric Carter #3)(25)

That’s a risk I’m willing to take. I can’t do anything out here. I need to get into Mictlan. Once I get inside eventually Santa Muerte will figure it out, whether I try to stop Tabitha or not. All I can do is delay it a little.

If Tabitha’s telling the truth, and there’s a gate to Mictlan on this island, then once I get inside the rest is going to be a whole lot of luck. My only exposure to the place has been driving through an extension of it in Los Angeles and standing in Mictlantecuhtli’s tomb. It’s not like they make maps for the place.

All I have to go on are legends and stories. And not all of them agree with each other. Some stories, the dead are ushered through the gates of Mictlan by Quetzalcoatl. Others say the dead are accompanied by a dog who helps them on their way. It takes four years of hard travel to reach their final judgment.

I find myself wondering what happens to the Dead now that Quetzalcoatl’s on the outs. Do they show up on their own without him to push them through? Maybe he’s not really needed and he’s pissed off things are working fine without him. Wouldn’t surprise me. He seems pretty bitter about things.

Mictlan has nine levels each with their own challenges and passages; a mountain made of obsidian blades, a terrifying wind, a rain of arrows, wild beasts and more. And at the end of that journey the soul finally comes to rest in a place called Chicunamictlan.

Honestly, that sounds like a pretty fucked up afterlife. I don’t plan on going through any of it.

My plan, such as it is, is to get through the gates, get my bearings and find Mictlantecuhtli’s tomb. I’d hoped to take the Caddy, but that’s not happening. So I expect a lot of walking. Worst case I give in and tap into Mictlantecuhtli’s power, open a hole to his tomb and shank him. Yeah, I know. It’s a shitty plan.

“You sure you want to do this?” Tabitha says, breaking the silence. All I can see of her is her silhouette against the night sky and the glow of lights along the canal.

“I don’t see how I have much choice.”

“You always have a choice,” she says. “You chose to come down here. You chose vengeance.”

“I’m choosing to stay alive.”

“By destroying two beings thousands of years old.”

“Maybe they shouldn’t have fucked with me, then.”

“Do you know why I’m showing you this way into Mictlan?” she says.

“So you can jump me the second it’s convenient?”

She laughs. “That, yes. But more so you can see for yourself what Santa Muerte’s trying to save. It’s a broken place. Even when the dead reach their end it’s nothing but suffering. She wants to change that. Wants to make it what it’s supposed to be.”

“And you? Is that what you want? Or is that what she wants you to want?” She gives me a flat stare, says nothing, so I drop it.

“How close are the legends to the reality?” I say. “A mountain of obsidian knives? Wild beasts that tear your heart out? Is that worth saving? How is that not suffering?”

“It’s suffering with a purpose. The trials are meant to cleanse the soul,” she says. “When they’re done there’s supposed to be an end to it. But they don’t get that end now. It might as well be hell.”

“Yeah, well, that’s not my problem.”

“I know you well enough by now to say you’re full of shit, Eric.”

“Dead is dead,” I say. “It happens. People die, souls move on. It’s natural. If that’s where they’re supposed to end up, then that’s where they’re supposed to end up. I don’t have a problem with people dying.”

“You act like you don’t care, but we both know that’s an act. You might not have a problem with death, but you sure as hell have a problem with suffering, don’t you? If Lucy had just died, would you be here? If she’d been in a car accident, say, or even murdered if it was quick? I don’t think so. I think you’re here, I think Santa Muerte caught you, because she made your sister suffer.”

I stop rowing, say nothing for a long time. We float in the current, lazily heading down the canal, my hands tight on the oars. I want to beat her, throw her over the side and leave her there.

“Strike a nerve?”

“How much further is this place?” I say.

“Not far. Can’t you feel it?”

I tune out the background of magic, the whispers of old dead. And then, just on the edge of perception, there it is. Haunts. A lot of them, but weak. And at the edge of my hearing a sound I can’t quite identify.

“Is that crying?” I look over my shoulder and see a dim glow in the distance. Tiny pinpricks of light swarm the far shore like hovering fireflies. I start rowing toward the sound.

The closer we get, the louder the sound and the more I can feel the dead. The light becomes brighter, the noise a cacophony. A constant wailing of anguish, torture, agony. What the hell is over here?

I let the boat bump against a row of tires tied to short wooden pilings to hold the shore together. I stare at the scene in front of me.

True to its name Isla de las Mu?ecas is covered in dolls. Perched in the crooks of trees, wrapped to branches with wire, duct taped to a couple of tiny shacks, strung from the timbers of a decaying, log fence. Large and small, weathered and cracked and coated with grime. Kewpie dolls, porcelain dolls, clown dolls, rag dolls, troll dolls, bobbleheads, marionettes, puppets.