World's Scariest Places: Volume Two

by Bates, Jeremy

  “They’ve only been gone thirty minutes,” Pita said.

  “How long do you think it takes to walk the circumference of the island?”

  She stubbed her cigarette on the floorboards. “Longer than thirty minutes.”

  “You know,” Jesus said, “we’re going to be stuck here overnight now. We’re going to be stuck here with whoever killed Rosa’s brother.”

  “We don’t know he’s dead,” Elizaveta said. “All we know is he screamed.”

  “Eliza’s right,” Pita said. “He might just be injured.”

  Jesus shook his head. “Like Jack said, if he was simply injured, he would have gone looking for Rosa. He would have been calling her name. We would have heard him.”

  “What about Lucinda?” Elizaveta asked. “Do you think she was attacked too?”

  “Of course,” Jesus said. “Otherwise we would have come across her already.”

  “Unless she took canoe back to docks.”

  Jesus shook his head again. “If she did that, she would have gotten help. She would have returned with the police.”

  “So who attacked them?”

  “Thugs,” Jesus said.

  “Thugs?” Elizaveta repeated skeptically. “Why would thugs be out here, in middle of nowhere?”

  “We are.”

  “Well—why would thugs attack them?”

  Jesus shrugged. “Rosa said her brother sent her away so he could be alone with Lucinda, right? So they were getting it on, these guys saw them, they got a hard on, they wanted a ride.”

  “You think they killed Miguel so they could rape and kill Lucinda?”

  “There’s a motive behind every murder,” Jesus said. “And when the victim or victims are strangers, the motives are usually sex or money.”

  “What about a ghost?” Pita asked. “What are a ghost’s motives?”

  “We’re not talking about ghosts,” Jesus said.

  “Why not? That’s what Rosa thinks. She thinks a—”

  “Rosa’s a child, Pita. And that story about that little girl who drowned, that’s all it is, a story, a legend—”

  “Legends don’t just materialize out of thin air,” Pita said defiantly. “People don’t just make them up.”

  “That’s exactly what they do. And they tell other people, and other people tell other people. There’s no such thing as ghosts, Pita. Okay?”

  Pita glared at him. “What about Susana?”

  Jesus opened his mouth, closed it, shook his head.

  Elizaveta frowned. Susana—as in Pita’s and Jesus’s deceased younger sister? “What about Susana?” she asked.

  Pita said, “She was our younger sister.”

  “I know. Jesus told me what happened.”

  “Did he tell you I saw her ghost when I was a kid?”

  Elizaveta shook her head.

  “Well, I did,” Pita said. “It wasn’t long after she drowned. I woke up in the middle of the night. She was at the bedroom window.”

  “Did she speak to you?”

  “Yes—sort of. Not with her mouth. I don’t know how to explain it. It was like I could feel her thoughts. They were inside me. She told me she was okay. She told me not to worry about her.”

  “Did you see her again?”

  “No. Only that one time.”

  “Huh…” Elizaveta said, not sure what else to say.

  “You were a kid,” Jesus said.

  “I didn’t make it up!” she snapped.

  “Fine. Say you did see Susana. That’s one thing. But the ghost of a girl who died fifty years ago, haunting an island filled with dolls, killing two strangers who trespassed on it…?”

  “All I’m saying,” Pita said, “is that we need to keep an open mind. We don’t know what happened, and we need to keep an open mind. Right, Eliza?”

  “Yes, we should keep open mind,” she said diplomatically. “We should also wait until the others return, hear what they’ve learned, before we jump to conclusions.”

  3

  They returned some twenty minutes later. Pepper came first, his head ducked against the cauls of rain. Jack and Rosa followed, and finally Nitro, who carried a medium-sized canoe on his back. They were all drenched, their hair sticking to their heads, their clothes to their bodies. Elizaveta and Pita leapt to their feet and went to the hut’s door, though they remained inside, out of the downpour.

  “Jack!” Pita said. “Did you find the campsite? Did you find Miguel and Lucinda? What happened to them?”

  Jack wiped water from his face and pointed to a different hut maybe thirty meters away. “I’m going to take Rosa there so you guys can talk. Pepper or Nitro can tell you everything.”

  He led Rosa away. They didn’t run; the rain didn’t seem to bother them as they were already as wet as they could get. Nitro dumped the canoe on the ground, then he and Pepper entered the hut. Their shoes squeaked, trailing mud. Nitro removed the elastic band from around his ponytail and shook his hair out like a dog. Pepper found a spot against the wall and sat down with a tired sigh. His complexion appeared ashen in the dying light. A grimness etched his usual merry features.

  “Well?” Jesus demanded. “What happened, man?”

  Pepper looked at Nitro, who was running his fingers through his hair in an effeminate manner. Nitro said, “It’s not good, buddy.”

  “What do you mean?” Pita asked. “What happened? Are they dead?”

  “Miguel’s dead. Stabbed eleven times.”

  “Eleven times!” Pita said.

  Jesus swallowed. “What about Lucinda?”

  Nitro shook his head. “No sign of her—except for her clothes.”

  “Her clothes?” Elizaveta said.

  “Her clothes were on the ground, discarded. Same with Miguel’s.”

  “She ran away naked?”

  “They took her,” Jesus mumbled.

  Nitro frowned. “Who took her?”

  “Thugs. They killed Miguel, raped Lucinda, and took her with them.”

  “I don’t think thugs killed Miguel,” Nitro said, tying his hair into a ponytail once more. He hesitated. “His eyes were missing. Cut out, or even plucked out, it was tough to tell.”

  4

  Elizaveta folded her arms across her chest to ward off the chill that suddenly reached all the way to her bones, and stared big-eyed at the others, waiting for someone to explain what this might mean. Jesus seemed equally bewildered. Pita was pacing back and forth, her head down, brooding anxiously. Pepper wouldn’t look at anybody. Only Nitro seemed calm.

  “Why would someone take his eyes?” Elizaveta asked.

  “He’s sick, obviously,” Nitro said.

  “You think it’s just one person?” Jesus said.

  “Doing something like this, cutting out the eyes, it fits the profile of someone who kills for the thrill of it.”

  “You mean a serial killer?” Elizaveta said.

  “Yeah,” Nitro said. “And serial killers act alone.”

  “Bloody hell!” Jesus said. “There’s a serial killer loose on the island?”

  Nitro held up his hands. “We don’t know that. Miguel was killed yesterday. The killer might have already left the island. We only saw the one canoe—Miguel’s and Lucinda’s.”

  “Lucinda,” Elizaveta said. “What about her?”

  Nitro shrugged. “This guy could have chased her down and killed her somewhere else on the island. Or he could have taken her with him. Without a body, there’s no way to know.”

  “Should we go looking for her?”

  Nitro shook his head. “I said this guy might have left the island. But he might not have either. Best thing to do is bunker down here for the night and leave as soon as the storm dies down.”

  “It wasn’t a serial killer,” Pita said, stopping her pacing and facing them. Her voice was flat, her color drained. “It was the ghost. I know none of you believe ghosts are real, but they are. Jesus said so.”

  “I never—”

  “Not you!
The real Jesus. It’s in the Bible—”

  “The Bible’s just a book—

  “A little girl died here!” Pita exploded. “She died here, perhaps in a horrible, inconsolable way. Her spirit’s not at rest. Solano knew this. Look around you! Look at all the dolls! They’re offerings to her, to appease her spirit.” She glared at each of them in turn. “But now he’s dead, and she’s alone, and she’s angry. Isn’t this obvious? She killed Miguel and stole his eyes. So isn’t this pretty damn obvious?”

  1956

  1

  María stood at a tall window, her nose pressed against the glass, watching as her parents drove away. Then hedges obscured them from view and they were gone.

  She didn’t understand why they had brought her here. Her mother had told her it was a special school. She would like it. She would meet new friends. That all sounded okay. But then she said María would have to sleep at the school too. That wasn’t good. That was terrifying. She wanted to keep living in her house. She wanted her room, her bed, her dolls. She glanced at Angela, who she held by the arm. “I want to go home,” she said.

  “Maybe you’ll go home soon?” Angela said.

  “I want to go now.”

  “I don’t think you can.”

  “Why’re my mom and dad leaving me here? What did I do—?”

  The door to the room opened and a nun entered. She had a strawberry pudding face framed by tufts of white hair visible beneath her funny hat. Mean eyes peered out from behind silver-rimmed spectacles. “My name is Sister Lupita,” she announced.

  “My name’s María.”

  “No, it’s not, you snottery pup,” she snapped in a completely different demeanor than when she’d spoken to María’s parents. “It’s 46. From this point on, your name is the number 46. Do you understand that?”

  She didn’t. “My name’s María.”

  Sister Lupita leaned toward her. María didn’t know what was coming and simply stood there. The nun clapped her hands against the side of María’s head simultaneously with the flats of her palms. Pain lanced through her ears, and she almost fell over.

  “Ow!” she cried.

  “What’s your name?”

  “46!”

  “Remember that. Now give me that doll.”

  “She’s mine!”

  Whack. Harder this time.

  “Ow!”

  “Give me the doll.”

  María began to cry.

  Whack.

  “Ow!”

  “There will be no crying in this school. Crying is a sign of weakness, and weakness is the work of the devil. Now give me the doll.”

  Biting her bottom lip to stop the tears, María thrust Angela at the woman.

  Sister Lupita took her and said, “Well, well, you can learn. Maybe you’re not as dumb as everyone says.”

  2

  Sister Lupita led María to a nearby room that had a sewing machine on one desk and a typewriter and transistor radio on another. A number of framed photographs lined the windowsill above a magazine rack.

  In the center of the room a short, frail nun stood next to an empty chair. She held a pair of metal scissors in her hand.

  “Sit in the chair, 46,” Sister Lupita instructed.

  María went to the chair and sat. She liked haircuts. The hairdresser her mother took her to always gave her a lollipop when the cut was finished.

  The short nun lifted a handful of María’s long black hair and snipped it close to the roots.

  María was horrorstruck. “My hair!” She tried to leap off the chair, but Sister Lupita seized her shoulders and pinned her in the seat. She twisted and thrashed.

  The short nun produced a hairbrush from her pocket and rapped María on the head sharply with its wooden backside.

  “Ow!” she cried, tears springing to her eyes.

  “Sit still,” Sister Lupita said.

  Her skull throbbing, María obeyed, and the short nun went back to work.

  Snip, snip, snip.

  All around her, clumps of hair fell to the floor.

  3

  After the horrible haircut—her hair was now shorter than most of the boys’ hair had been in her old school—Sister Lupita marched María down a hallway, stopping when they came to a staircase. There, she used a key on her keychain in an angled door built into the side of the stairs. She opened it to reveal a pitch-black space and said, “This is where little girls who don’t know how to behave go to think about their sins and pray for forgiveness.”

  4

  María didn’t know how long she was in the cupboard, if that was indeed what it was. She guessed maybe she’d been there a day, maybe longer. She couldn’t see her hands if she held them directly before her face, and there was a strong toilet smell. The long stretches of silence were occasionally punctuated by footsteps treading the steps above her head. She wanted to yell out, ask for help, but she didn’t, fearing it might be Sister Lupita or another nun.

  Mostly María closed her eyes and tried to banish her sadness and loneliness and fear with sleep, but she always ended up thinking about her mom and dad. Where were they right then? What were they doing? Why did they bring her to this awful place? Didn’t they want her anymore? Didn’t they love her? What had she done to make them hate her so much? And perhaps the most immediate question: Was she going to be living here forever, or would she be allowed to go home again at some point?

  5

  She was dreaming about her old school, walking into class with no hair while all her classmates pointed and laughed at her, when she heard the key in the cupboard lock. A moment later the angled door opened.

  Squinting against light that seemed as bright as if she were staring at the sun, María nevertheless recognized the pudgy, blushed face of Sister Lupita peering in at her.

  “Good morning, 46,” she said.

  Morning? So she really had been in the cupboard for nearly a full day.

  “Good morning,” she replied, trying to sound pleasant.

  “Have you repented your sins?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, Sister.”

  “Yes, Sister.”

  “Then climb out of there. Hurry, I don’t have all day.”

  María scrambled out of the cupboard and stood before Sister Lupita, avoiding eye contact.

  “You didn’t soil yourself?” the nun said, and it sounded as though she were surprised.

  “No, Sister,” María said, though now that the woman mentioned it, she realized she did have to go pee very badly.

  “I suppose it’s off to breakfast for you then. This way.”

  Sister Lupita led her through a series of echoing hallways to a large dining hall. There were a dozen tables in neat rows of fours. Six or seven children sat on long benches at each, eating in silence. Two nuns patrolled the room.

  “Go on,” Sister Lupita said, ushering her forward. “Go get your food.”

  María went to a small window that opened to the kitchen. A grubby-looking man smoking a cigarette scowled through it at her before dumping a bowl of beans and a crusty piece of bread onto a tray and pushing it toward her. As an afterthought he added a glass of milk.

  María picked up the tray and turned to face the room. Sister Lupita was gone. The only sound was the clack of spoons on bowls.

  María carried the tray to the nearest table and sat at the end of the bench. She looked at the beans before her. They were covered in a gunky sauce and didn’t resemble the beans her mother made her. Ignoring them, she said to the girl next to her: “Hi.”

  The girl didn’t reply.

  “I said, ‘Hi,’” she said again.

  “You’re not allowed to talk,” a skinny girl hissed from across the table.

  María frowned. Not allowed to talk? She returned her attention to her beans. Despite not eating since yesterday morning, she wasn’t hungry. She was too upset, and she still needed to go pee. She glanced about for a bathroom and discovered one of the nuns looming behind her.

&
nbsp; “What’s your name, child?” the woman said. She was younger than Sister Lupita and had a mole on her chin.

  “María,” she said.

  The nun rapped the handle of a feather duster across her head.

  “Ow!” she cried

  “What’s your name?”

  “Ma—” She remembered. “46!”

  The nun lowered the feather duster. “What’s wrong with your food, 46?” she asked.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “The Lord has provided you with nourishment, and you shun His generosity?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  The nun gripped María by the hair and jerked her head back. She scooped beans onto the spoon and tried to force-feed her as if she were a bird.

  María pressed her lips together.

  “Open your mouth, 46.”

  María kept her lips pressed together in a lipless line.

  The nun released her hair and pinched her nose closed.

  Pressure built in María’s lungs until she had no choice but to open her mouth. The nun shoveled beans straight to the back of her mouth, forcing her to swallow them. She shoveled in another spoonful, then another, feeding María faster than she could swallow.

  María gagged, then coughed, spitting beans at the skinny girl across the table. Then she lurched forward and vomited. Through teary eyes she watched in horror as the nun scooped up some of the sick with the spoon.

  “Open up,” she said.

  Elizaveta

  1

  Elizaveta dashed through the rain and wind to the next hut. The interior was dark, shrouded in shadows, and inhabited with more ominous dolls, no two of which were alike. Jack sat next to Rosa on the floor, and it appeared they were playing an English nursery rhyme that involved clapping each other’s hands.

  “What are you playing?” she asked them, rubbing her wet arms to generate warmth.

  “Jack’s teaching me ‘Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man!’ Rosa said. “He promised to teach me ‘Little Miss Muffet’ next.”

  “Jack is a man of many talents,” she said.