Jim Butcher - Mean Streets

Once we had cut a path through the crowd, we found a short stone obelisk with a list of names carved on it. Hector Purecete's was there, but listed as one of a dozen men lost at sea in 1982. No grave, wrong date, wrong Hector. The Grey was thick as oatmeal and the ghost dog gamboled around the base of the stone, snapping at the marigold petals floating on the breeze. It glanced up at me and seemed to laugh, giving me a doggy smile.

Mickey glowered and the energy around him pinwheeled orange sparks that looked just like the flower petals. "That guy at the registrar's office just took the money and gave us a list of all the Hector Purecete graves he had," he groused. "He didn't even try to get the right one!"

"Yeah, because your attitude was just so endearing," I reminded him, but I was looking at the dog, which was now pawing around the base of the obelisk with incorporeal paws.

I crouched down to get a look at whatever had caught the dog's attention and saw a loop of blue energy protruding from the ground. Warily, I caught it on my fingers and pulled it up. It came like a long-rooted weed from a flower bed and popped out of the ground with a small crackle of electricity.

A skeletal man wearing a yellow fisherman's coat appeared where the blue bit of energy had left a hole in the ground. I had the impression that he was blinking, even though he had no eyelids or eyes to cover with them.

Mickey stared and jerked back half a step, but the skeleton man didn't notice. He let out a glad exclamation I heard in my head and bent down to ruffle the ghost dog's fur. "Iko! Look how big you got!" He wasn't really speaking English, but the words seemed to come clearly into my head.

The dog frisked around and whined in glee, taking slobbery licks at the skull in between joyous wiggles.

"Is that your dog?" I asked.

The skeleton in the slicker glanced at me. "He was the cook's dog, but we all liked him. He was just a puppy when the old Dulcia went down."

"So… was Hector Purecete the cook?"

"Hector? No. Hector was a deckhand. I suppose he must have saved Iko. Neither of them drowned."

"His name's on the memorial," I said.

The skeleton looked at the obelisk and laughed, clacking his teeth. "It's wrong. Martin Ramirez got off in Bermuda and was replaced by an American named Lofland. And see, there I am, but they spelled my name wrong," he added, pointing to the name Ernesto Sanchez. "It should say Santara, but my writing on the contract was so bad, they had to guess. No, they must have just taken the crew list from Senor Arbildo and assumed we all died."

"Arbildo?" I asked, surprised.

"Si, he owned the boat."

So there was a connection, but not a clear one… "What became of Hector, then?"

The bony shoulders under the slicker shrugged. "I don't know. He must have been picked up by someone. He came and looked at the memorial once or twice and used to clean it up for us every year, but then he stopped and people began to forget about us. Most of the crew are gone now, since no one comes to remember us. I have a sister who is building the ofrenda right now at home. I can feel her thinking about me and I can go soon and see all my nieces and nephews…" He trailed off, his empty eye sockets directed just over my shoulder, as if he could really see them, just there, in the field of graves behind me.

"Ernesto," I said, hoping to recapture his attention just a little longer. "Hey, did Hector have a family? Was he married? Had kids?" "Eh? Oh, Hector? No. He was our Don Juan-always charming the ladies-he couldn't make himself get married and settle down, he said. His family here was all gone. He said. I don't know. We were shipmates, and you know how sailors are with stories…" Now he was pulled away, drifting into the air like a dandelion puff and wafting toward the cemetery gates. "Goodbye, Iko," he called, without looking back. "Be a good dog…"

He vanished into the crowd of living and dead, heading for home, I supposed. I stood up, dusting off my knees and butt, thinking that the memorial must have been raised before anyone realized Hector wasn't dead, so it wasn't really wrong, just premature. I wondered how long he'd been "lost at sea" before he'd shown up again in Oaxaca…

Mickey was gaping at me, but I'm used to that. Most people give me strange looks when they catch me talking to ghosts. But Mickey had seen Ernesto, also, as well as the dog, Iko. "How long have you been seeing ghosts?" I asked.

He was too shaken to lie. "Me? I've always seen them, but only during Dia de los Muertos. You too?"

"No. I see them all the time. They aren't usually so helpful, though."

"He didn't seem very helpful…"

"He identified the dog and it seems like a safe bet Iko was rescued and raised by Purecete. But that doesn't really answer how Arbildo had the dog's spirit or why she put it in the statue."

"Yeah, maybe…"

I agreed and started for the car.

Mickey caught my arm. "Hey… how come you see ghosts? Mi madre says it's because my birthday is Todos Santos. Are you…?"

I shook my head, slipped his grasp, and kept walking for the car. I wasn't sure this was a good conversation. Or that I liked the sudden avid expression in Mickey's eyes. "C'mon! Tell me!" he yelled. "Please!"

"I'll tell you in the car. This isn't a good place for it," I conceded.

Mickey nearly dragged me back to the parking lot, flinging open the doors for both of us and sliding behind the wheel clumsily in his frenzy.

As soon as the doors were closed he turned to me again, but I shut him down with a look. "Start the car and drive. It's getting dark and I want to get inside before it's full night."

"But-"

"I'll tell you as you drive. If you don't kill us."

He ground the car to life and drove like Mario Andretti to get us out of the parking lot.

"OK," I started. "I died. That's why I see ghosts."

"Died? No way!"

"Yeah, way. Don't ask why, 'cause I don't know. It just is what it is."

He muttered, prayers or curses, I didn't know. "You don't look dead."

"It was only two minutes. But it was enough. Trust me." "But you didn't just talk to him. What were you doing?

Magic?"

"No. I just… pull them out. If they want to talk, they do.

Sometimes they don't. Sometimes they try to kill me. Most of them are useless."

"Yeah. I see those, too! They don't really know we're here." I nodded. "Somehow she must have known…"Who? Knew what?"

"Maria-Luz Arbildo. She never met me, but she put me in her will to do this job. She must have known about me, but I don't know why or how or what she expected me to do. I hope I can figure it out before Todos Santos."

"She must have been a bruja" Mickey muttered. "Doing black magic and stuff. I'll bet she scryed you out somehow because of the ghost thing."

"Maybe," I conceded. "How would I know?"

"Umm… the Santisima Muerte magic goes backward. Y'know: right to left and down to up. Counterclockwise and stuff like that."

"But I never saw the woman do any magic," I reminded him. "I didn't know her."

Big-eyed, Mickey nodded and drove. But I could see his thoughts grinding and the gold strands from his fingertips wrapped the steering wheel like a frantic vine.

We approached the last grave on the list as the sun was beginning to paint its farewell on the slice of sky above Oaxaca 's mountains. We'd taken a long drive into the hilly countryside to find the small panteon of San Felipe del Agua and then trudged through the crowds and the boiling Grey to discover an abandoned burial plot far in the back, under a stunted tree. Grass and weeds had grown over it undisturbed for years and no one was making an effort to clear it. I heaved a sigh of annoyance and got down on my knees to rip up the corn stalk-like growths obscuring the memorial stone. Mickey knelt down and helped brush the dirt aside, scraping the carving clear enough to read in the dimming light.