Sacrifice Island

by Kristin Dearborn

  Lightning illuminated the sky. The creature on the stairs lurked dark and formless. Karen shrieked, but as the thing took a step, Alex recognized the gait.

  “Jemma?”

  “Are you down here?” she asked.

  Karen shone her light in Jemma’s face and she raised a hand against the light.

  “Are you all right?” Karen asked.

  Alex knew what she’d really want. “Come down. Do you feel anything down here?”

  “No, nothing. Just like the rest of the island.”

  Jemma scuffed down the stairs. She shivered, but Alex couldn’t do anything to warm her.

  Karen shone her light in the little room. It smelled like the rest of the basement, yes, but with a thicker, muskier smell. And underneath hovered a sweet perfume Alex didn’t recognize.

  The next room yielded more surprises. A bloody sweatshirt with the Gap logo lay crumpled in the corner.

  Jemma took a few steps forward, as if to pick it up, but Alex stopped her.

  “I wouldn’t.”

  Alex no longer wanted to be down here. He didn’t want to be here when the inhabitant of this basement came home.

  Upstairs, they saw the storm had stopped, and patches of blue peeked through the clouds.

  “This will blow off soon. It’s going to be beautiful later,” Karen said. She resumed her spot near the dormitory’s back door with her e-book while Alex and Jemma set up the rest of the tripods and microphones. He pulled the memory cards from the storm and stuck them in his pocket. It was unlikely they’d picked up anything other than the sound of rain and the leaves, but it didn’t hurt to check it out. He went tripod to tripod and calibrated the sensitive machines to the sound of the trees. Anything else—bird call, thunder, heavy wind, would trigger them. Also any spiritual noises. Or human noises, for that matter. They took a winding path back to the beach where Mr. Lucky dropped them on the first day.

  11

  Soaked to the skin, Jemma slogged along the back trail. Alex carried the remaining cases behind her on the path. She wanted to turn to him, and ask him why he wasn’t off with his new girlfriend.

  Jemma saw something in the jungle during the rainstorm. She didn’t know what she saw, but finding the room in the dormitory made her think. They weren’t alone on this island. She sucked in a deep breath of the clean air. No ghosts, no nothing. So empty. Peaceful. Maybe it wasn’t a someone. The being who’d been living in the basement had something to do with the aura of the island, she knew it.

  Jemma came out of the jungle and onto the white beach, watched over by the Virgin Mary. Up past the tidal line the sand looked disturbed. What kinds of animals lived on the island? What was big enough to disturb the sand like that? Could it be rain? Little pock marks covered the sand, but the passing squall didn’t have the energy to wipe out these scuff marks.

  “There.” Jemma pointed at the sand. “It looks like something was dragged down the path.” She racked her brain…what animal lived on the island and could leave a trail like that? The big trail headed toward the gazebo.

  “There are monkeys,” she said, “though I didn’t think they lived this far north on the island. A monitor lizard?”

  “Maybe a seal or something? A sea turtle? Are there even seals down here?”

  They set the Pelican cases down out of the reach of the green, foamy waves. Jemma pulled her camera to her eye and started to snap pictures.

  “You okay?” Alex asked.

  “I’m fine. I promise. Focus.” She pointed the camera around at the island, taking photos. You never knew what would show up on a photo. Orbs, sometimes, though 99.99% of the time those were just dust. But the camera could catch things that the naked eye didn’t. She hoped the rain hadn’t damaged it.

  Like that footprint. A sneaker, the print protected under a palm frond. She moved her face away from the viewfinder. Someone else had been here, that was all. On her island. Trespassers.

  “I bet it’s nothing,” she said, her voice tight. She snapped more pictures. “What’s Karen wear for shoes?”

  “Boots. It’s not nothing,” Alex said.

  Jemma took more photos. Maybe these were their footprints, from the day before yesterday. A handprint, but the smeared, pock-marked sand distorted its size. She leaned in close and focused her lens. Where the beach ended and the jungle began, the drag marks stopped, but in the jungle there were a few scuff marks. Red mud.

  “Oh fuck.” Alex pointed. She could just see his finger, huge in her zoomed lens. Palm fronds, dark red-brown with blood.

  “We shouldn’t go any farther,” she said. “Messing up evidence.”

  “You think the cops in this backwater are gonna be all CSI on this shit? What if it’s the ghost, teasing?”

  Jemma stared at the blood through the camera. It could be. Ghosts did do this kind of thing. But it didn’t feel like spectral activity. It felt like nothing, which meant it had to be real. She pulled the machine from her face and looked at the blood spot. Moved closer. She closed her eyes, tried to let whatever the island had to offer wash over her.

  She felt the slightest tropical breeze. The sun peered through the passing clouds of the storm. Birds and bugs made a symphony, complemented by the waves lapping at the sandy beach. Nothing out of the ordinary. At least not until she opened her eyes and saw the blood again. Maybe it wasn’t blood. Maybe it was from the rain.

  Alex popped open the second case and pulled out the ectometer. It took a few moments to assemble the device, and it made a science-fiction whirring sound as it charged up. Alex ran the meter over the blood spots. The needle never moved.

  “You’ve got the camera, you go first.”

  She hesitated.

  “Sorry, babe. We can trade…”

  No. She wanted the camera. It made her feel safe. On leaden legs, she headed down the trail.

  “This meter’s giving me nothing,” Alex said, from behind her. Of course not. Because there were no ghosts on Sacrifice Island. Something else lurked here. She knew it. She’d joked about a demon the night before. Today it wasn’t funny. Did demons live in basements? Did they covet GAP sweatshirts and Daisy Duck?

  The trail to Mary’s gazebo didn’t yield any more information. Jemma photographed roots and leaves and the sky, a big wasp with a white face, and a black-and-white bird.

  Lovely white benches surrounded Mary in a peaceful ring. The birds still sang. The corner of one bench, protected from the afternoon rain, was smeared with blood. Jemma paused, taking pictures in high resolution. She turned the camera on Alex and saw him through the viewfinder. Alex waved his wand.

  “There’s nothing. We have to find Karen and call the police. Stop fucking around.” Alex’s feet weren’t listening, though, and he pressed onward. Under the sound of the birds, the sound of the waves lapping at the white beach, she could hear another sound. Buzzing.

  Jemma didn’t want to see the source of the blood, human or animal. She knew it was human. The smell hit her then—something rotten and dead.

  She stepped past Alex, fixed on the screen. It felt more like fiction when she saw it on the screen. A dried chocolate syrup blemish on the smooth, perfect marble.

  Her sandals scuffed loudly on the sandy marble.

  “Oh,” she said unconsciously. Her view screen showed her a hand, bloated from a day in the heat. Alex abandoned the smear he’d been metering and came to her side. Captivated, she clicked the shutter.

  “This is Feng. His sister was looking for him at the bar last night.”

  Feng became pixelated and small through the camera’s screen. Click, click, click. She could see and not see, all at the same time.

  He didn’t look like a person anymore. He lay curled up on the floor in front of the Virgin Mary, protected from the rain. His body had been thrown against her and fallen at her feet. Feng’s Airwalks were clumped with sand; his unharmed legs were clad in stylishly tight jeans. Blood, dried to look like chocolate, spotted his T-shirt.

  She photogr
aphed a bit of black hair, and a horrified brown eye with an epicanthic fold. The left side of the boy’s head was gone, his skull a messy, jagged crater. Head wounds bleed a lot. She couldn’t stop taking pictures.

  “Jem, enough,” Alex said behind her. She couldn’t stop, though. She documented every angle of the kill. The moment she stopped, she had to check in with reality. Click, click, click.

  “Come on. Put it down.”

  She whimpered.

  Alex reached out and pulled the camera down, careful not to touch her white fingers. She took one more crazy shot, depicting sand and lines of motion, and Alex’s shoe.

  “Maybe a rock crushed his head,” Alex said. She turned to the dark windows of the dormitory. They both knew nothing crushed Feng’s head.

  It appeared something, something with a sizable maw—lion or baboon, something big, had taken a single bite of the boy’s head, it crunched through skull and obliterated nose, eye, ear, and the whole back of the skull. The brain seemed notably absent.

  “Ghosts don’t do this,” Jemma said.

  “It’s like a zombie movie.”

  Jemma kept her eyes everywhere but on what they’d found.

  “What’s that?” Alex asked.

  Jemma flinched, her muscles tightening, as she prepared for the hungry beast to appear.

  “Come look.”

  No no no! But she went. Alex pointed to Feng’s biceps. Though they were swollen from the heat, she could see a clear bruise. A handprint. As though someone with small, strong hands took Feng by the upper arms. Shaking him. Reprimanding him?

  Or holding him to bite off his head.

  “Must be premortem.”

  She agreed. “It wouldn’t have bruised otherwise.”

  “Maybe the sister? Bitching at him? And that’s why he ran off?”

  Jemma raised the camera and snapped a few more photos, focusing on Feng’s bronze-colored arms.

  “Maybe,” Alex said. He leaned in close. “Let’s get out of here. No point in putting up any more audio gear. Cops will trigger it. I gotta find Karen. Head back to the boat.”

  As she walked back to the dock, Jemma swapped the camera’s memory card with an empty one. Jemma watched the patchy sun on the water from the concrete next to the Lucky Daze. She heard Karen and Alex before she saw them. Karen sounded scared. Good.

  They boarded the motorboat, and Karen turned over the engine, startling a flock of black birds from a tree.

  The sound of the motor and the roaring of the wind made conversation on the trip back to the resort impossible. Jemma fingered the memory card in her pocket, thinking about what she’d seen, and what it meant.

  Karen deposited them in hip-deep water. She apologized and told Alex she’d see him later. She waved good-bye to Jemma and motored off. They slogged to shore with the gear they hadn’t set up. Jemma’s soaking skirt clung to her body. She couldn’t imagine women who found this much exposure beautiful. Karen had probably never seen violence like that before. Jemma felt worldly and wise. Panting, they plopped onto the cases in the sand.

  “That’s not a ghost,” Jemma said, out of Karen’s earshot.

  “No shit. I’ll get the tickets squared away, we can be back in New York by dinner tomorrow.”

  “No!” Jemma whirled on him. “We can’t go.”

  Alex stared at her.

  “Something killed him. I want to know what. And we’ve left our gear on the island.”

  “To hell with the gear. Did you see that kid? Something tore off half his face. I don’t want that to happen to,” Alex paused, and Jemma felt 90% sure he would say you, but instead he said “us.”

  “There’s a killer out there, and if we mess around, he could get us.”

  “He or it?”

  “He.”

  “Or she?” Jemma remembered the smell of the perfume. “How can you be so sure?” she asked. It hadn’t left anything behind, a human killer would have left passion, or joy, or anger…something. The air surrounding the Chinese boy tasted stale and flat, like a glass of water left on the nightstand overnight. It tasted like nothing.

  “It was the same person who put the bearcat on your door.”

  He was right. A nervous person. She’d been able to taste that when she went back to her room and opened her sparkling clean door in the dark.

  “You’re back?” Terry’s ever-enthusiastic, always-too-loud voice shook them from their thoughts.

  “We are,” Alex said.

  “We need the police.”

  Terry’s eyes went wide. Jemma turned to Alex, who watched him.

  “There was a murder out on the island.”

  12

  Terry drove them in the cheery green and white Vista Breeze van to the El Nido police station. Alex couldn’t get what he’d seen out of his head—it brought about a newfound respect for soldiers and doctors and people whose professions regularly brought them in contact with savaged flesh. After baking in the tropical sun all day, the van’s vinyl seats seemed ready to sear flesh. Alex pushed himself not to think about what this heat continued to do to Feng’s flesh. He let Jemma sit up front—he was never sure if he should, was it still the gentlemanly thing to do when she wouldn’t speak a word to the driver? He didn’t know, but felt like a dick perching in the front seat and chatting it up with Terry while she sat alone in the back.

  On this ride, however, no one spoke.

  The El Nido police station didn’t resemble an American police station in the least. One whole wall stood open, a neatly dressed officer sat outside at a picnic table with a woman in a hijab. He didn’t get up when they came in.

  Alex watched as he made eye contact with Terry, and noticed the slightest dip of the officer’s chin. A greeting? No, it didn’t feel like that. It felt like an affirmation. Of what?

  They sat at a second picnic table. Rich wood made up the station floor, peppered in sand. Palms shaded them from the sun and made for a cozy grotto. Outside on the street, two boys kicked a soccer ball, so old the black had scuffed off most of the spots. Every so often one would glace at Terry. They gave him little knowing smirks, and Terry would turn away.

  Jemma occupied the smallest amount of bench she possibly could, her hands folded in her lap. She sat with the general air that she didn’t deserve to take up furniture. Alex often imagined her reclining or sprawling. At present she seemed ready to bolt and flee.

  Minutes chugged past. The woman tossed her head back and laughed. She touched the officer’s arm. Not flirting, a familiarity suggesting complete comfort. A sister? A cousin?

  “What’s taking so long?” Alex kept his voice low.

  “He’ll come over when he’s ready.” Terry continued, seeing Alex’s exasperation with his answer. “The pace of life is slower here.”

  “Wouldn’t the pace be faster if he knew someone was violently killed?”

  “I’m not even sure the island is his jurisdiction.”

  Sometimes America seemed an imperfect hassle, but the legal system and the predictability of home seemed infinitely far away.

  Two uniformed high school girls walked by, saw Terry at the police station, and started chattering among themselves. Coincidence, Alex told himself. But coincidences, like mermaids and unicorns, were made up.

  He glanced at Jemma, trying to see if she picked up on the fishy weirdness.

  One of the soccer boys shouted something at Terry.

  “Do you speak Tagalog?” Alex asked.

  “Never learned. My wife took a class, but I never did.”

  “How long have you lived here?” he asked.

  “Fifteen years.”

  Alex liked to think if he gave fifteen years of his life to a place that wasn’t home, he’d at least pick up some of the language.

  The officer stood, gave a great stretch, shook his friend’s hand warmly in both of his, then sauntered over to them. He sat on the bench next to Jemma.

  “Mr. Brenton. What may I do for you this afternoon? Are your guests having tr
ouble?”

  “These are the researchers here to study Sakripisiyuhin Island.”

  The officer’s demeanor changed. He stood straighter, and the corners of his mouth, which had been turned up in a smile, sank into a flat line.

  Jemma seemed to notice this, too, and scooted a fraction of an inch away from him.

  “Welcome to El Nido,” he said, no warmth in his voice. “I hope you are enjoying your stay here.”

  It seemed wise to let Terry do the talking.

  “They were on the island, and they ran into some trouble.” The flat line of the officer’s mouth dropped into a frown. “That is to say, they found some unpleasantness, and reported it back to me, and I was most unhappy for them to have seen what they saw—”

  “We discovered a Chinese boy who’d been savagely murdered,” Jemma said.

  In the moment before the officer put on a surprised expression, his shoulders drooped and his eyes dropped. Then he seemed to pull himself together. “My goodness, I hope you were not hurt, were not upset! Let me accommodate you for one of your nights with Mr. Brenton for free so you will not think poorly of our people.”

  Free hotel room? A man was dead.

  “Where did you find this terrible thing?”

  “On the island, in the marble gazebo,” Jemma said.

  The officer nodded. “Well, we will go and take care of it. Thank you for your time.” The officer stood, pulled a radio out of his belt, keyed it, and spoke in Tagalog.

  Terry stood up, but Jemma and Alex stayed put. The officer seemed surprised to find them there when he finished the radio call. He listened as someone else spoke.

  “Come along,” Terry said.

  “But don’t they want to know what we found?”

  “They will go and see for themselves.”

  “But we could have—” Jemma let her protests trail off midsentence. “Do they not care?”

  “Of course they care!”

  “Was it because I said he was Chinese?”

  “Things work differently here. The pace of life is slow. The detectives here don’t follow the same procedures as home, they don’t have the money or the training to conduct what you and I might think of as a real investigation.”