“I want to be sure you’re safe.”
“So far so good.” Her weak smile didn’t convince him. She chewed on her lip a bit. “I’m not sure what we’re dealing with is even a ghost.”
“What else could it be?”
“A demon? I don’t know. I’d like to set up my instruments tomorrow, let them run overnight, analyze the readings, and then we should plan on an overnight.”
“And you think that’s a good idea?”
“How else will we know?”
A brash waitress cleared their plates while shouting something in Tagalog to a friend of hers down the beach. They paid the check. Alex chuckled at how fucking cheap everything here was.
“Let’s hit a bar.”
“Must we?”
“What better way to get a feel for the place?”
“Perhaps you should go…I can go back and work on the diary, the power’s on so I can do some more research online.”
“It would be fun…a drink? Loosen up?”
“No, not tonight.”
“You want me to take you back?”
“I’m all right. I’m not a child.”
He wanted to open his mouth, remind her of the dead bearcat nailed to her door. But she was right. She wasn’t a child. He offered, she declined.
“Are you going to go back to your cabin?” Alex asked. He didn’t like the idea of her being there alone.
He studied her. He never knew how far to push or when to let her go. Would her strange attire make her more or less of a target? He walked her to a trike, paid her way, told the driver where to take her. He wondered if he’d done the right thing as he went back to the bar. Wondered if he’d ever see her again…
Alex ordered a frozen piña colada and wandered over. He wondered for a split second about the ice, but figured the alcohol would kill whatever might be in it. He took his drink and went to watch the lights reflecting off the water.
“Excuse me?” An American voice, and not a vapid-sounding one.
Alex turned. The woman’s short, no-nonsense brown hair framed her face in a way that might be adorable, he couldn’t tell yet. Her eyes were big and brown, and she looked very young. He could tell she wasn’t, though, from the way she carried herself, and the more conservative cut of her clothes. Her T-shirt and capri pants were almost matronly by the standards of the bar.
“Is this seat taken?” She pointed to the plastic chair next to him.
“It is now. Please, sit.”
“I’m Karen Heath.” She stuck out a warm, dry hand, calloused from work. They shook. Alex introduced himself.
They danced through the customary “where are you from” conversation, he from New York, she from Minnesota. He discovered she worked for an NGO, trying to teach self-employed tour guides how they could conduct their business better for the tourists and better for the environment. She neared the end of her year here, and didn’t know where she might go next. Inevitably, she asked, “What do you do?”
Alex had a lot of fun with this question. “I’m a research assistant on a book,” he said.
“About what?”
“Hauntings. For this book, I’ve been to a haunted forest in Alaska, a school in Connecticut, a castle in England, and now a haunted island here on Palawan.”
“A haunted island? Where? Is that the one with the shrine?”
“Yeah, out past Helicopter Island.”
“Have you seen ghosts there?”
“Not yet. We got in yesterday. Today we went out for a few hours…”
“The morning doesn’t seem a very good time to see ghosts.”
“It’s not. That’s why we did it. Wanted to get a lay of the land without any distractions.” Alex couldn’t help thinking of being left there, and little dead bearcat eyes.
“We used to have a ghost in our house.” She leaned in as though she were confessing to killing a man.
“Yeah?” Everyone had their own ghost story. It was a great way to pick up chicks.
“A ghost cat. We didn’t have a cat, but all sorts of catlike things happened, stuff fell off high shelves, you know the sound when a cat startles and runs away really fast?”
Alex could think of a handful of nonspectral reasons for this, from small earthquakes to a rat infestation, but he held his tongue.
“Tell me more about the El Nido ghost,” she said.
“You know…it’s not super pleasant. I’d rather not.” Alex didn’t mean to pique her curiosity; he honestly didn’t want to talk about it. He expected her to press him, but instead she simply sat back on her bar stool, and changed the subject.
A Chinese woman, maybe twenty, appeared at the bar between them. She spoke in deliberate, heavily accented English. “Have you seen my brother Feng? He is Chinese, he is maybe eighteen? He wear a red shirt. I lost him last night.”
They both said they hadn’t seen him, and apologized. The girl frowned. “Sometimes he drink too much. Thank you.”
The woman made her rounds, and Alex noticed a lot of head shaking. No sign of Feng. Finally the woman had some luck with a couple of bikini-wearing blondes, one of whom pointed toward the door, then shrugged. The woman nodded, gave a slight bow, then followed the girl’s finger.
He and Karen kept chatting. She was nice…but off. He couldn’t put his finger on it yet. He debated needling her, getting her talking about herself, but decided he might like to get to know her in a more honest way. It started to get late, and his thoughts strayed more and more to Jemma.
“Um,” Karen asked shyly, “where are you staying?”
Alex grinned. “Vista Breeze,” he said. She smiled at him, then reached out and took his hand. She squeezed it.
Wow. Human contact. Alex tended to forget how much he missed it until he felt it.
“Are you going back to the island tomorrow?” Karen asked.
“I hope so…we’re having some trouble with our boatman.”
“Well that’s no good. Tomorrow’s my day off. I’ll take you guys out if you want.”
“Nah, we’ll make do.” He didn’t want to impose. Or endanger her. Though a little voice reminded him the biggest danger they faced yesterday was being stranded.
“I’m out on the islands all day every day. I know my way around. Even a haunted one.” She smiled, a clean, neat smile. Alex liked it.
“It’s too much to ask,” he said. “Especially on your day off.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’ll be fun. And I get to meet Jenna.”
“Jemma,” Alex corrected. She did that on purpose. He could tell from the way her lips moved. She liked him and she was jealous. Sweet. “It might be dangerous.”
“I carry a pistol. In case I run into any pirates, or anything I can’t otherwise handle. I’ve never had to use it, but it might make you feel better to have it along.”
Karen wasn’t afraid of the island, and she lived here. Maybe he was being stupid. Maybe they were onto something.
“Okay. What time’s good for you?”
“Whenever you want to go.”
“It’s your day off.”
“Is nine too late?”
“Let’s say ten.”
On their way out, they saw a crude missing-person poster stapled to a wall. A smiling girl, blonde hair, Marissa Mulchahey, last seen on the twenty-third.
10
Karen arrived on the beach at ten as she promised. She dragged her little motorboat ashore under ominous gray skies. Alex did a double take when he saw the name: Lucky Daze.
Karen thrust out a hand to Jemma, who kept her arms folded over her chest. “I don’t touch people.”
“Sorry.” Karen turned the shake into an awkward wave. Alex went through introductions, and Jemma turned to tend to their gear. Her mouth made a straight line as they loaded their cases into the boat. Jemma picked up the ectometer’s waterproof Pelican case. She left the one with the microphones for Alex. She slogged out to the boat, ignoring the water that soaked her skirt. They brought nine micropho
nes, which would be placed in various locations on the island and picked up the next day.
The waterproof gear, made for outdoor use, could be set up as usual, even in the rain.
Waves splashed up over the sides of the Lucky Daze, soaking their feet and the bottom few inches of Jemma’s dress. She dropped her head into her hands. She didn’t like Alex’s choice of a new boatman. When he asked her how she felt, she raised her head, shook it no, and dropped it back into her hands again. Alex’s stomach started to feel rather unpleasant as well.
Instead of motoring to the serene beach where Mr. Lucky had taken them, Karen tied up her boat at the concrete dock on the other side of the island.
“I thought it would keep your skirts drier,” Karen said.
“Won’t much matter when it rains.” Jemma helped herself out of the boat.
The island was a different place in the dreary gray light. The rain muted the green of the palms, and birds didn’t cry out to welcome them. This was a bad idea. A bad, stupid, awful idea.
Karen peered up at the sky. “It’ll pass. It will pour for a half hour, maybe, then blow by.” Karen headed down a little path, leaving Jemma and Alex to set up the first motion detectors on the dock.
Jemma aligned the height on the tripod, and angled the microphone so it picked up the greatest spread of noise. She kept her eyes on her work, sulky.
“This is still better than Mr. Lucky.” Alex punctuated with a smile, hoping to cheer her.
She ignored him. “I want to put the others by the gazebo, and near the doors of the building. Where else do you think? We’ve got another set.”
“On the trail, maybe?”
“Okay. I want to go and take some photos. See if I can pick anything up.”
Was Jemma giving him time to hang out with Karen alone? He couldn’t decide if that was kind of cool or totally not cool at all.
“What do you expect to find?” Alex asked.
“Does it matter?”
“I want an idea of what we think we’re doing here.”
“It’s a site of violence and there’s no spiritual activity. That’s fucking weird.”
Jemma rarely cursed. Alex waffled…push her or get away?
“But what do you think the mics are going to pick up? Or the cameras?”
“I don’t know,” she snapped. “Not everything is logical and laid out. Don’t you get that? It’s why we’re here. Go see that Karen isn’t messing anything up.”
“Fine.”
The wind picked up, and the trees began to sway. The storm rolled across the water, an elegant, inevitable force of nature. Lightning flickered inside it.
Alex turned his back on Jemma. He hoped she’d be all right and carried one of the tripods onto the path.
Leaves on the palm tree whipped back and forth in the wind. He stuck the tripods into the soft dirt as hard as he could and snapped the waterproof casings shut. Karen stood near the back of the dormitory, an e-reader in her hand.
“Storm’s rolling in across the water.”
“Where’s Jemma?” Karen asked. “We should get inside, wait it out in here.”
Alex considered the dormitory building. In bright sunlight it stood foreboding, blocky, and ugly. In this gloom it resembled something from a nightmare.
Karen regarded the sky. Worried about Jemma? Where was she?
“I should go get her.”
“The rain won’t hurt her. She doesn’t like me.”
No, she didn’t like Karen, he could tell. But there would be better times to discuss this. She was right about getting inside, though. The gazebo made poor shelter against blowing rain.
Karen tucked away the e-reader and led the way. They shielded themselves as best they could from the rain. A moment before they got inside, the skies opened up. Sheets of water dropped from above, and palms swayed and bent in the wind. Where the fuck was Jemma? He shouted her name, but the wind stole his voice.
“She knows where to go.”
Karen was right, of course, but Alex couldn’t help thinking about Jemma’s irrational fondness for this island. Would it cloud her judgment? What if a tree fell on her? What if she were scared?
Karen pulled a big LED flashlight out of her pack once they stepped inside the cold, dark dormitory.
“Have you been in here?” she asked.
“Not yet.”
“Now’s the time for serious exploration. What do ghost hunters look for?”
“Anything out of place, anything that tells us about people.”
“What do ghosts look like?”
“I’ve never seen one.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Never.”
“Then why—”
“I’ve heard things, like on the mics we set up today. And I’ve seen pictures. Taken pictures. But never seen a ghost. Jemma sees them.”
“Are you sure she’s not messing with you?”
“Positive. I trust her with my life. With more than my life.”
“Must be nice.” The understatement of the century. He should go. Should go get her. But…maybe getting caught in the storm might make her more ready to leave. Make her willing to give it up.
“So let’s explore,” he said.
The first room used to be a bedroom. Three bunk bed frames sat pushed against a far wall. No remnants of inhabitants were here, no signs that posters or pictures once hung on the walls. Alex thought of how Jemma described the island in a spiritual sense—devoid of personality. This room was the same.
They moved on to the next room. Alex stuck close to Karen and her light. This was an excellent flirting opportunity—he knew that, Karen knew that. He wanted to…but he couldn’t stop thinking of Jemma. Where was she? She had some common sense…why didn’t she come in from the rain?
The next room held the same three bunk bed frames, though this time with the mattresses and pillows still on them. It stank with mildew.
They made their way up to the second floor and watched the storm for a few minutes.
“There’s a basement,” Karen said. “It’s locked, but I’ve never tried to get in.”
“If the door’s wood, in this humidity, I can’t imagine it taking much to get inside.”
“I think there are records and things stored down there.”
Jemma would like those. They should wait for her for some of this. Maybe she could…he didn’t know. Something.
“Tell me what you know about this place,” Karen said as they headed back down the stairs to the basement door.
“I know women lived here. Nuns watched over them, but it wasn’t a convent. It was a spiritual retreat kind of place. You could come and stay as long as you wanted. It was expensive, I hear. Then girls started doing freaky things and killing themselves, and the place closed down. Used to be on the tourist circuit, too much unpleasantness happened, and they stopped.”
“Freaky things?” Karen asked.
They arrived at the door. Alex pulled a bobby pin out of his pack and started to work on the lock. Again, he could use this as an opportunity to flirt. Some of Rebecca’s diary was quite risqué. “Some of the ladies decided to try a little experimentation,” he said. Something in the lock gave. “But the sister who set herself on fire in front of a big pack of tourists was the last straw.”
“I read about that,” Karen said.
“It’s open.” Alex tugged at the door, and the swollen wood dragged against the tile floor. “Shine your light down here.” Karen cast her light into the black maw of the basement. The dormitory looked dark in the gloom of the storm, but the basement redefined dark, wooden stairs disappeared into nothing. Musty dampness flowed up to them.
“No, here.” He pointed down, to the floor in front of the doorway. Karen did as he asked, and he could see scrapes in the floor.
He tried to justify why someone would be using this door. And why it would be locked.
When Karen first turned on the flashlight, it seemed very bright, almost unnecessarily
so. But shining down into those stygian depths…
“We’re gonna need a bigger boat,” Alex muttered.
Karen went first, because she carried the light. Alex hesitated. Where was Jemma? Karen and the light moved farther away, and, silently apologizing to Jemma, he headed down.
The stairs creaked, and he worried about his weight on the rotten wood. Need to give up the Twinkies.
The basement seemed carved out of the stone of the island. Karen flashed the light around the room to reveal three dark doorways. A warren of god knew what.
But then again, wasn’t this what the thrill of being a ghost hunter was all about? Dark places, things that go bump in the night? It wasn’t as fun without Jemma.
Alex touched the moist stone wall to steady himself, took a last look up at the gray doorway, and followed. He thought places like this weren’t supposed to have basements. Wouldn’t floods or earthquakes or high water tables or something make it a poor choice? He stood behind Karen—close, but not touching; he was very good at not touching—and peered in the room.
Old church robes, old churchy stuff, nothing personal, nothing meaty, nothing interesting. They moved on to the next doorway. Maybe Jemma would have been able to pick something out, but it looked stinky, musty, and boring to him.
“Oh, wow,” Karen muttered.
“What is it?” He resisted the urge to take her shoulder and peer over her. She most likely wouldn’t have minded, but he never touched anyone unless they asked for it. Not these days.
“Someone’s been living down here.”
When Alex’s turn to peek came, he saw some of the mattresses from upstairs arranged into a neat little pile, with a few blankets folded on top of them. A few other personal items: a tarnished silver hairbrush, a sliver of a mirror. A picture of Donald Duck holding out flowers to Daisy hung on one wall.
“A woman,” he said.
A sound from behind them made Alex jump and Karen cry out. Something blocked the gray light from the open doorway.
Whoever or whatever’s den they’d stumbled into had arrived home. Where was Karen’s gun?
Sacrifice Island Page 5
