But today was Sunday, his day off, and so Carlos thankfully found himself peering out across the lake from his little verandah at the mouth of the garden path, eating salted jicama as he watched other pilots maneuver the familiar contingent of ships up and down the Pedromiguel Lock—but not fast enough, for seven ships clogged the waters of Miraflores now. Four cargo, three cruise ships. Music blasted from the cruise ship decks, resounding from the hills and blending into an arrhythmic cacophony that wasn’t entirely unpleasant. Such had become the soundtrack of Carlos Cabellos’s life. His life was filled by the sounds from the ships, the taste of salted jicama, and the smell, that luxurious smell of plumeria blooms that swept up from the garden path, reminding him so much of his late wife. There was something missing, however. A feeling that nagged at him even in his quietest of moments. Unfinished business. It would wake him at night, and when his mind was idle, it would pull him to the front door, as if he were heading out for an errand, only to find that there were no errands to be run. Each Sunday he would sit on the verandah, wondering what this unfinished business might be.
The gate swung open. The gate swung closed. Another ship was already approaching from the Miraflores locks to take the place of the one that had been dispatched.
Cerilla Ceballos tended flowers just past the second turn of the switchback path. Cerilla had never married. A badly cleft lip had warded off most suitors. She was twenty-five now, resigned to her lot—which included an eight-year-old son. She had him at sixteen, by a schoolmate who apparently didn’t care about her face, as long as he got what came with it. But he had quickly found someone else, then disappeared into the crowded workforce of Panama City, and now she had little Memo.
She had always believed that her face was a judgment for something she had done, or would someday do. The priest said she had more than done her penance for having Memo out of the sacrament of marriage, but she was never quite sure. So it became her way to turn her thoughts to God as she pruned and planted flowers, tending the garden path her mother had so loved. Fragrant lilies, and bright gold-petaled plumeria. An hour among the rich plumeria would perfume her skin with its sweet fragrance. It made her feel beautiful, and so she lingered there, waiting for forgiveness or damnation. Waiting for something to happen that might define her life in terms as vibrant as the flowers around her.
The gate labored open, admitted a ship, then labored closed.
Eight-year-old Guillermo “Memo” Ceballos often sat on the rocks by the edge of the lake, his palm spread across the stone. If you touched the stones by the shore, you could actually feel the gate closing before you heard it. Feeling the resonance of the gates through his bones connected him to this place, and he secretly longed to pilot the canal like his grandfather Carlos, although his mother wanted more for him. It’s why she made him learn English, and always spoke of his uncles, and how successful they were in far-off places.
He didn’t argue with her. So for now, he was content to sit at the end of the little dock and fish, watching the great ships pass, imagining himself piloting them through the canal gates. Imagining that they weren’t mere oceangoing vessels, but spaceships in disguise, bound for starports far beyond the Atlantic or Pacific.
There was power in being an observer; knowing the cycle of the ships, each returning on their own schedule, but yet as regular as the phases of the moon. The ships always came back to him, on his lake. There was satisfaction in knowing that his little fishing dock sat smack in the middle of the greatest crossroads of the world.
His feet dangling over the edge of the dock, he reeled in his line to reveal that his bait was gone.
“There are no fish in Miraflores,” Abuelo Carlos often told him when he spent such long hours with his line in the water. It wasn’t true, of course. Certainly fish were harder to come by than in the larger Gatun Lake, but they were here. They were not good to eat, though, what with the oily sheen that covered the overtraveled lake.
“Sometime I’ll take you out in the Pacific,” his grandfather endlessly promised. For those were waters rich in porgy and striped tuna. This was the “abundance of fish” for which Panama was named, not the troubled waters of Miraflores.
Memo cut a juicy bloodworm in half, then wove it onto the hook, which stuck out from the end of his lure: a silver, tear-shaped sparkler. The shiny lure had been made from one of his late grandmother’s old earrings. He knew she wouldn’t have minded. Some fish smell the blood, Abuelo Carlos had taught him, others were drawn to the shine of the lure. The important thing was to give them what they want. Memo knew if he offered them what they couldn’t resist, even the lonely fish of Miraflores could be caught. So he threw in his line, dreaming of cruise ships and starships, and waited with an anticipation that never waned.
The gate opened. The gate closed.
A point of light appeared in the air just beyond the end of Memo’s dock.
The reflection off the shell of a beetle, Memo thought. Except for the fact that the pinprick of light didn’t move.
A sudden breeze moved across the surface of the lake. It hit the shore, then doubled back again, picking up petals and leaves, kicking up a sweet, earthy smell. The breeze danced like a living thing; Memo watched the path of leaves and petals circling the piles of the dock, then the breeze came to him, swirling around him, slithering like a snake about to constrict. Then all at once the breeze died, and the petals and leaves fell from him to the wooden slats of the dock.
The point of light was still there, a few feet out, off the end of the dock, ten feet in the air—but it was more than just a point now. It was growing. The light fed itself, billowing out from its center, until it was an orb the size of a soccer ball, shifting with colors so bright he feared they might blind him, but so beautiful he could not look away.
“Mama,” he called out. “Abuelo!”
They did not hear him call, but they were already running, for something had been stirred inside them.
Memo now stood, toes curled over the end of the dock, leaning forward as far as his balance would allow, reaching a hand toward the growing ball of light. He had heard of ball lightning, but knew this was something else. Like the wind, it was alive. And calling to him.
“Guillermo Gabriel Cuevas Ceballos,” they said—for there was more than one voice, more than one spirit within the ball of light. And then he realized it wasn’t a ball at all. It was a porthole, like on the many ships that passed. An opening to another place. “Guillermo Gabriel Cuevas Ceballos,” they said. “It is you we seek.”
His mother heard it, too, but it wasn’t Memo’s name she heard—it was her own. And Carlos, bounding down the hillside, was certain these voices were calling to him. “I am here,” he shouted. “Gabriela, I am here,” for he was certain that the voice he heard first and foremost was that of his dead wife.
Cerilla, then Carlos came bounding onto the dock, for this hole of light had more than just pulled their focus—it filled the absence of focus that had been building in their lives. This uncanny visitation was Carlos’s unfinished business. It was his daughter’s defining moment. It was the tug at the end of Memo’s line that he had been waiting for all this time. How could it not steal their attention? How could they not drop everything for it?
And now the three of them stood there, side by side at the end of the dock, the shimmering hole of light filling all of their thoughts and senses, leaving no room for anything else.
The hole spread wider, the clouds in the sky beyond it distorting, straining as space stretched for the growing hole of light. Hairline fractures began to form in the space around the hole, like the aged canvas of a medieval painting.
And in that bright light, three figures began to take definition.
There was no mistaking who stood within the breach, because the boy, the woman, and the old man saw them, if not with their squinted eyes, with their minds—with their souls.
It was undeniable to Carlos Ceballos that this was the spirit of his wife, flanked by
two gossamer-winged angels of light.
It was undeniable to Cerilla Ceballos that this was God the Father, with the Son on his right hand, and the holy spirit to his left.
It was undeniable to Memo Ceballos that these were the aliens he had seen in the movies, come to take him away from a sedate, fatherless world.
There was no question who they were.
“We have come to you,” their voices intoned.
“To ease your pain.”
“To grant you salvation.”
“To take you away.”
“If only you open.”
“If only you invite.”
“If only you grant us admission to dwell in your world, your home, your flesh.”
“For we have come to you, and you alone.”
“Take us in.”
Their minds told them it was all they ever wanted. Their hearts told them that it was right, that it was true, and their flesh longed to be the vessels for such extraordinary light.
“Yes,” they told them.
“Yes, fill me with your love.”
“With your glory.”
“With your strangeness.”
“Yes,” they said. “Enter in.”
A gate flung open. The sky shattered like a windshield hit by a bullet. A blast of living light blew them off their feet. And for an instant there was surprise, and the pain of the hook. Red tendrils of living light snared them, ripping them free from themselves, and dragged them down slick gullets where nothing awaited them but death.
The dock buckled from the sudden blast of energy. A shock wave expanded outward, and then silence. Then in a few moments, three figures stood, making their way from the ruined dock, to the shore. The man, the woman, and the boy. But those three human souls were gone; devoured. Something different resided within their bodies now.
With steady, determined strides, the three climbed the switchback trail, indifferent to its beauty, or the smell of its flowers. While behind them, in the air above the twisted piles and planks of the dock, the fracture in space left by their projectile arrival slowly healed itself closed.
Part III
Anglers
19. DEEP GATHERING
* * *
A DOUBLE SHOCK WAVE SPREAD FROM THE SHORE OF LAKE Miraflores—a blast of undefined radiant energy, accompanied by a slower-moving sonic boom, like thunder after lightning. The boom echoed within the hulls of the freighters and pleasure craft traversing the Panama canal, but while its power faded with distance, the strength of the first wave did not.
Some felt the psychic blast as a visceral flash of déjà vu, gone before it could be grasped. Others felt it as a burst of mental static that momentarily derailed their train of thought. But there were three individuals whose reactions were far stronger.
On a cruise ship between locks of the canal, Lourdes Hidalgo collapsed and began to convulse in a grand mal. Since her physiology controlled all those within her immediate sphere of influence, so did all others on the vessel.
Toward the rear of a plane that had just touched down in Dallas after an emergency landing, Winston Pell began to scream uncontrollably, unable to catch his breath, and unable to understand why.
And on a two-lane interstate in rural East Texas, a stolen pickup truck flew off the road and wrapped around a tree.
HALF AN HOUR EARLIER, Dillon and Maddy had crossed from Louisiana into Texas.
Maddy had begun to liken Dillon to a shark again—a creature that could not stop moving, lest it sink and drown—so powerful, yet a slave to its own motion. He spoke little, kept the radio off, and demanded the wheel, claiming that driving kept his mind focused as they plunged West through the lush East Texas foliage. For the longest time, there was nothing but trees on either side of the straight road, until they passed a huge, incongruous blue billboard. The billboard featured a bold yellow 800 number, and beneath it the words “vasectomy reversal.” Seeing that sign all by itself in the middle of nowhere made Maddy laugh aloud.
“See, Dillon,” she said, nodding at the sign, “there are things in this world more bizarre than you.”
“I could do the job without an 800 number,” Dillon deadpanned. “And I’ll bet I charge less, too.”
“I’m glad to see you have a sense of humor,” she told him.
Dillon considered that. “Do I take myself too seriously, Maddy?”
“You are the most somber deity I know.”
He chuckled at that. It made Maddy feel a touch more powerful in the situation.
More hints of civilization passed around them, until they actually began to see homes through the trees.
“At least we’re getting somewhere,” Dillon said.
Maddy reached over to wipe some sweat dripping down the side of his face. He had a beautiful profile, in spite of the scars. To her he was perfect, and she wondered when it was she had fallen in love with him. Perhaps it was the first time she had touched him, reaching in through that horrible face mask to scratch his nose.
All at once she felt a sudden, uncomfortable surge in her solar plexus, and for an instant forgot what she was thinking about. Then Dillon screamed and jerked the wheel left, pulling them across the double-yellow. Maddy’s shoulder slammed into the side window with the force of the turn.
“Dillon!?”
In an instant they were off the road entirely, and the feel of the asphalt beneath them gave way to airborne numbness as they flew over a ditch, toward the trunk of a huge oak.
Even before the wheels contacted the ground, the pickup hit the massive tree at seventy miles an hour.
The old pickup had no air bag, and Maddy’s seatbelt tore loose from the impact. Her skull smashed the windshield. Her shoulder hit the tree. Her broken body tumbled in the dead grass.
Intense pain.
Darkness.
But no loss of consciousness.
In a few seconds the pain was gone.
Maddy was on the ground, looking up at a gray sky beyond the branches of the oak. Her hair was matted and wet with blood. It covered her clothes. She saw the bloody hole in the windshield through which she had ejected, but no wounds remained on her body. She had been healed so quickly, her battered body hadn’t even had the chance to die before being restored.
Dillon was still in the pickup, pinned by the steering wheel, wailing—but his screams didn’t seem to be about the pain. Maddy climbed on the crumpled hood, punching loose what was left of the windshield. “Dillon! Dillon, calm down!”
It was as if he didn’t see her—his eyes were wild, like the eyes of the people he shattered.
“They’re here!” he wailed. “They’re here!”
“Who’s here?”
He gritted his teeth, fighting the steering wheel, pushing back, and it seemed as if he made the crushed cabin longer again. Until Maddy realized that the truck was indeed stretching. She tumbled from the hood and watched in disbelief as the crumpled steel of the totaled vehicle unfolded. Shattered glass fought the pull of gravity, crawling back into place.
“My God . . .”
Another fifteen seconds and the Nissan pickup was in mint condition, its grille kissing the bark of the oak. Not a dent; not a scratch.
Dillon’s power had never acted this quickly—it had never been this strong. Maddy could feel his strength now. She could always feel his power simmering beside her—but not like this. Now his presence was like the heat of a furnace. Whatever had set him screaming in the first place had charged him to a new high.
DILLON BARELY NOTICED HITTING the tree. He was faintly aware that his body had been crushed and healed at a speed unlike anything he had done before. But none of that mattered . . . because they were here.
He had no idea who they were, or why their entrance to this world was of such significance. He didn’t even know why he had been dreaming about them. Even as his powers spiked, he felt weak, vulnerable, and powerless in the face of what they were. For a moment he saw Maddy trying to get his attention, but there wasn??
?t room enough in his mind to hold her. She was little more than a snapshot as he ran past her through the trees that lined the highway and onto a service road, where several people had already come out of their homes to view an accident that was no longer there.
There were three homes on the street and a business with a gravel parking lot. Through an empty lot there were more buildings on what must have been the main street of this one-stoplight town.
There was a steepled building across that lot. A church. Plain beige brick. Humble and unprepossessing. He reached for the cross around his neck—the one his parents had given him when he was a boy—and remembered that it was gone—that it hadn’t been there for years. He had lost it in his days of infestation, when the wrecking-hunger consumed him, and the parasite of destruction co-opted his power to feed itself. He remembered stumbling into a church during those dark times—but even the poor priest who had heard his confession had been destroyed by his presence. So helpless and confused he had been. It was the same way now. Suddenly the sanctuary of this homely church seemed the most inviting place on earth, and he longed to curl up in the protective shadow of something greater than himself.
He tried to make a beeline to the church, but found himself stumbling all the way through the field. The path of brown grass and dried autumn leaves greened like a living stream around him, spreading outward like a wake on water. As he approached the church from the back, he tripped over a waist-high wrought iron fence around the property. He found himself on the ground, facing a row of headstones. The church had its own graveyard. A sizeable one. The brown grass on the graves was already turning green. He sensed what was about to happen, and he closed his eyes, desperately praying that it wouldn’t—but he had no faith in his own prayer. He knew that today his prayers would go as unheeded as the prayers of pigeons.