“It was the thunder,” Jack said.
“What are you talking about?”
“The thunder set off the doll.”
Spiders continued to pour out from beneath the doll’s dress, searching for refuge between the floorboards. Elizaveta kicked the ghastly doll into the far corner.
“Thunder?” Jesus said. His back was pressed to the opposite wall, by a window. “It started laughing right after Eliza asked if the killer was still on the island!”
“At the same time as the thunder,” Jack said.
“Thunder doesn’t make—”
A scream cut him off.
5
Nitro burst out the door of the hut first, Elizaveta right behind him. Pita stood rooted to the ground, staring into the rain-thrashed jungle, still screaming.
Elizaveta saw the woman immediately. She was twenty meters away, leaning against a large tree, supporting herself with one arm. She was naked, her pale skin standing out in stark contrast to the gathered darkness.
All Elizaveta could think was: It’s the ghost, ghosts are real, I’m seeing the ghost, we summoned the ghost, oh my God ghosts are real!
Then, from behind her, Rosa cried, “Lucinda!”
Lucinda! Elizaveta sagged with relief. Of course it was, of course—
Nitro rushed past Pita to help the woman. Elizaveta forced her legs to move and went to Pita. “It’s okay,” she told her, slipping her arm around her friend’s waist and turning her back toward the hut. “It’s Lucinda, the friend of Rosa’s brother. It’s okay.”
Pita stopped screaming and started to mumble gibberish.
Elizaveta led her to the hut and eased her to the floor where she had previously been seated. Nitro came in a few moments later, carrying Lucinda, telling everyone to get out of the way. He set her down on the floor. Her head lolled to one side, limp. Long black hair, wet and tangled, spread away from it like a bed of snakes. Her face was ashen and muddied. Elizaveta’s eyes flicked over the woman’s body, almost guiltily: slender shoulders and large breasts with light brown nipples, the left one pieced; an hourglass waist and wide hips; a pierced bellybutton above her pubic hair; long, toned legs; fingernails and toenails painted plum.
Everyone was crowding around her. Rosa, clutching Jack’s legs, said, “What’s wrong with her?”
“She’s hurt,” Nitro said, and rolled her gently onto her chest.
An angry cut split open her right shoulder. It was filled with blood the color of puce that turned a brighter red where it leaked down her back. Elizaveta thought the wound resembled a slightly parted mouth smeared with raspberry jam.
Pita was saying something in a frantic, frightened voice. Rosa began crying. Jack scooped her into his arms and carried her away.
“Was she stabbed?” Jesus asked. “Was she stabbed too?”
Nitro nodded. “Looks similar to Miguel’s wounds.”
“What should we do?” Pepper asked. “She needs help. What should we do?”
Elizaveta grabbed Jack’s bottle of vodka, knelt next to Lucinda, and dosed the gash.
Lucinda moaned softly.
Nitro asked the woman what happened, who did this to her. She didn’t respond. Her eyes remained shut. He peeled off his tank top. Bare-chested, he folded it into a compress and pressed it against the wound.
Elizaveta felt the woman’s forehead. “She has fever.”
Pepper draped his purple blazer over her, covering her nakedness.
“She needs something warmer than that,” Jesus said.
“Got anything handy, bro?” Nitro said.
“We should take her to Solano’s cabin.” Jack said. He stood separate from them in the corner, holding Rosa in his arms.
“There are clothes there?” Nitro asked.
“I didn’t check. But there were two bedrooms, two dressers. At the very least there were sheets on the beds.”
“How far is it?”
“Ten minutes.”
Elizaveta glanced out the hut’s door, at the dark and rain.
“I’m not going out there,” Pita said. “No way. She’s out there, she’ll get us—”
“Enough, Pita,” Jesus said severely.
“She’s out there—”
“Enough!”
She bit her bottom lip and glared at him.
“We’ll vote,” Nitro said. “Everyone in favor of moving to the cabin, raise your hand.”
Everyone except for Pita raised their hand.
6
The icy rain pelleted Elizaveta’s skin. The wind threw her hair in front of her face and threatened to knock her over. She planted her legs apart and held onto a tree for support. Everyone was struggling against the storm, especially little Rosa, who was holding onto Jack’s leg with all her might.
Pita went down with a yelp. She lay on her back, unable to get back up. It was as though she were wrestling an invisible opponent who had close-lined her and now was sitting on her chest. Her wavy black hair seemed electrified, whipping this way and that. Pepper removed his arm from around Jesus’s waist and helped Pita back to her feet.
“The storm’s gotten too strong!” Jesus shouted, balancing on his good foot. Like Elizaveta, he held onto a tree for support.
Nitro, who was in the lead, turned to face them. He carried Lucinda in his arms. His biceps flexed powerfully. Raindrops pinged off his bare shoulders. “Don’t stop!” he shouted as he continued on.
Heads down, blinking away rainwater, they followed. Progress was exhausting. They’d been in the storm for all of five minutes and already Elizaveta felt waterlogged, each step an effort.
She focused on the ground, where she stepped. In the dark everything was layered in shades of gray, browns, and blacks, and it was hard to see hazards such as fallen branches. The rain churned the dirt, making it thick and slippery.
She almost bumped into the back of Jack when he stopped to hike Rosa into his arms. The girl’s face poked over his shoulder, her skin glistening wetly, her black eyes wide and haunted. Nevertheless, she smiled at Elizaveta. Elizaveta wanted to reach out, touch her, reassure her. The poor thing had just lost her brother. She’d been adopted by a band of strangers, and now she was slogging through what felt like the end of the world.
Elizaveta raised her hand, but Jack was moving again. Rosa squeezed her eyes shut and buried her face against his neck.
The odd couple. That’s what came to Elizaveta’s mind. Jack didn’t like children. He often said as much, and when Elizaveta saw him around kids, he was stiff and awkward, and he usually did his best to ignore them altogether. So why had Rosa taken such a liking to him? Because he was the first person she had contact with after Miguel’s death? Because he reminded her of her brother in some way?
A peal of thunder rumbled across the turbulent sky, drawing near. A particularly nasty gust of wind whooshed through the trees, icing her blood.
A loud crack sounded.
Elizaveta snapped her head up and saw a large branch strike the ground next to Nitro. He spun toward it, cursing. The branch was massive, the length of a car and sporting several smaller boughs sprouting spiraling needles. It hadn’t missed him by much.
They all looked up. The branch had fallen ten or fifteen meters; Elizaveta could see the where it had broken away from the trunk. If it had struck Nitro, it likely would have killed him.
“We have to go back!” Pita shouted above the weather.
“How much farther is the cabin, chavo?” Nitro asked Jack, shielding his eyes from the lashing rain with his hand.
Jack bumped Rosa higher up his chest. “It’s not far!”
“You better not be lost!”
“I’m not lost!”
“We have to go back!” Pita repeated. She was scanning the blowing canopy, as if expecting another branch to fall.
“Maybe we should…” Elizaveta said before the wind drowned out the rest of her words.
“It’s not far!” Jack insisted, and marched on.
7
They reach
ed Solano’s cabin five long minutes later. It sat to the right of the path, little more than a tenebrous mass huddled amongst the trees, unwelcoming. It featured a crude open porch sheltering a drunkenly leaning door. No windows adorned the exterior, only dolls, all banging about animatedly in the wind.
Jack, still carrying Rosa, started toward it.
“Wait,” Nitro hissed. He set Lucinda on a grassy patch of ground, gestured everyone closer so he didn’t have to shout to be heard, and said, “We need to check it out first. Make sure it’s all clear. I’ll go.”
“I’ll come,” Jack said.
“No, stay here and keep watch.”
Without another word, Nitro approached the cabin. He stopped in front of the closed door, pressed his ear to it. He waited, a motionless silhouette. Then he pushed open the door and disappeared inside.
“I don’t like this,” Pita said.
“It’ll be dry inside,” Jesus said.
“It feels like a trap.”
“What feels like a trap, Pita? It’s just a—”
“Shhh!” Elizaveta said. Because she thought maybe Pita was right. The cabin appeared not only sinister but…wrong? This was a feeling, nothing more. Still, the sight of the ramshackle place gave her the creeps.
Thunder boomed overhead, though no one took their eyes from the gaping door and the blackness beyond it.
The seconds dragged. Elizaveta blinked water from her eyes and wondered what was taking Nitro so long. The cabin wasn’t that big. He only had to poke his head in the different rooms. Had the killer been waiting inside for him then? Had he ambushed him, taken him out silently? Was he waiting for the rest of them to investigate?
Elizaveta looked at the others. Only Jack looked back at her. He seemed uneasy as well.
“I’ll check,” he said quietly. He set Rosa down.
“No,” she said. “We should go together—”
Nitro shouted a curse.
8
Something small and black darted out the cabin’s door and past Jack’s legs. It brushed Elizaveta’s right ankle before vanishing into nearby vegetation.
A cat, Elizaveta thought, her heart pounding. Just a cat.
“What the fuck?” Jack said. He had already stepped inside the cabin and was presumably speaking to Nitro.
Jesus and Pepper and Pita piled in behind him. Elizaveta glanced at Lucinda’s inert body lying on the ground in the rain. But she couldn’t move the woman by herself. Nitro or Jack would have to get her. She took Rosa’s hand and entered the cabin as well.
It was nearly pitch black—nearly, because Elizaveta could make out what Jack was pointing at.
Nitro held a semiautomatic pistol in his hand.
He slipped off his backpack and dumped the weapon inside the main pocket.
“Why do you have a fucking gun?” Jack said.
“Why do you think?” he said. “For protection.”
“Protection from what? Solano’s nephew? Because he’s the only other person we had any reason to believe might have been here—unless you knew something we didn’t?”
“Fuck off, Jack Goff. You’re pissing me off more than usual.”
Jack said to Pita, “Did you know he carried a gun around?”
Pita seemed stunned. She shook her head.
“I didn’t know either,” Jesus said, frowning.
Nitro scowled. “What’s the big deal?”
“What are you, a fucking gangster?” Jack said.
“I bought it legally.”
Pita said, “I thought you could only have a gun for home protection?”
“That’s what it’s for,” Nitro told her.
“So you don’t have a permit to carry?” Jesus asked.
“A permit? Fuck, no.”
“Bro, if you’re caught with that gun, you’re looking at up to thirty years in prison.”
“There might be a fucking killer on this island! You should all be happy I have a gun—”
“Okay, okay,” Elizaveta said. “Calm down. Maybe it’s a good thing he has—”
“It’s fucking weird,” Jack said.
“Don’t ask me to save your ass when you’re getting your eyes ripped out—”
“Enough!” Elizaveta said. “Let’s just…” Her gaze fell on a table behind Jesus and Pita. “Look, candles.”
She went to the table, took her lighter from her pocket, and lit two red candles set in glass jars. The scent of burning wax fumes and the sight of the tiny flames buoyed her tremendously. The dark became a little less threatening.
“Light!” Pita said. “Thank God.”
“There’re more candles over there,” Jesus said, pointing to what appeared to be a big pirate chest. “And there…”
Elizaveta went around the room, lighting six candles in total. The candlepower was modest, but at least they could now see each other clearly.
While she did this, Nitro collected Lucinda from outside and carried her to one of the two bedrooms.
“I don’t trust that guy,” Jack said under his breath to nobody in particular.
“Cool it, Jack,” Jesus said.
Pepper cleared his throat. “Would anyone object if I lay down in the spare bed?” He stood a few feet away from everyone, his arms folded across his chest, huddled into himself. His cherub face drooped miserably. He appeared ten years older.
“Shit, Peps,” Jack said, frowning. “You look… What’s wrong?”
“Just tired. I know it’s not fair I take the bed, but just for a bit…”
“Come on,” Jack said, leading Pepper toward the vacant bedroom. Rosa followed dutifully.
Knowing they would need water at some point, Elizaveta went to an old enamelware bucket bristling with paintbrushes in one corner. She dumped the brushes onto the floor and looked inside it. Clean enough. She went to the door.
“What are you doing?” Pita asked, alarmed.
“Getting water. I’m not going far.”
Outside Elizaveta set the bucket on the ground a meter from the cabin, then retreated to the rickety porch. She crossed her arms and studied the storming night. There was a feeling of foreboding and desolation to it, nothing moving yet everything moving.
There’s a murderer out there somewhere.
The thought came easily, opening a pit in her stomach. She clenched her jaw and told herself she didn’t know there was a murderer out there for sure, and even if there was, it didn’t matter. There was only one of him and eight of them. And Nitro had a gun. That was protection enough for any threat. So, no, they didn’t have anything to worry about, not really. Night would come and go. The storm would end. In the morning the boatman would arrive. If not, someone could take the canoe and get help. Either way, they would be dry and safe by noon at the latest.
A flash of lightning shocked the sky, turning patches of black a deep-sea blue. Rainwater began spilling over the lip of the bucket.
Elizaveta snatched it up and returned inside.
1957
1
The days at Saint Agatha’s School for Lost Children were long and busy, and there was never any time for rest or play because, according to Sister Lupita, these were Satan’s darling hours to tempt children to all manner of wickedness.
Each morning at five o’clock one of the nuns would enter the dormitory clapping her hands or banging a wooden spoon on the bottom of a metal pot. Once all sixty or so girls were up, the nun would supervise them getting changed. There was always a scramble to be the first to line up before the communal wardrobe. María sort of understood the others did this to select the best pieces of clothing for themselves. But then she sort of didn’t understand either; she didn’t understand why clothes needed to look good, which was why she often ended up in ill-fitting and mismatched outfits.
After everyone was dressed, the nun marched them in single file to the dining hall for breakfast. There, she would choose a girl to sing a hymn as well as say grace. María had been selected once before, and because she couldn’t
sing the hymn right, or remember the words to grace, she was made to sweep the hallways with a toothbrush.
For the rest of the morning the girls went to “work.” Depending on what you were assigned each week, you might be sewing, knitting, peeling sacks of potatoes in the kitchen, cleaning, fetching water, or cutting wood. A lot of the girls complained in private about the jobs they were made to do, but this was María’s favorite part of the day. It was all pretty straightforward, and she could do what was asked of her as well as anyone else without getting in trouble.
The same couldn’t be said for school, which began after lunch. They had different nuns for each subject. María liked arithmetic the best, not because she was good at it but because Sister Francesca who taught it never punished her for getting the answers wrong. The other nuns were not so forgiving, especially Sister Vallín who taught scripture. She must have hit María on the head with her cane three or four times a class, and on the rare occasion she wasn’t in a hitting mood, she would make María copy out pages from the Bible until her hand didn’t work anymore.
Dinner was at six o’clock, followed by church at seven, during which the school’s only priest, Father Pardavé, used his sermons to remind the girls they were unwanted and unloved, castaways, forgotten by the world, lower than a snake’s belly, and they would never amount to anything. Some of the older girls called him Father Finger behind his back because of special examinations he did to them when they reached puberty. And sometimes at nighttime he would select one of them to accompany him to his cottage for “special lessons,” though no one ever told María what these special lessons were about.
Finally at eight o’clock a nun supervised everyone as they changed into their nightgowns and knelt at their bedsides to pray for a half hour. María always prayed for her parents to come and take her away from the terrible school, and when she didn’t find them downstairs waiting for her in the morning, she would pray a little harder and a little louder the next night, so God would hear her above all the other girls likely praying for the same thing.
Then it was lights out, and regardless of whether you were tired or not, you had to go to sleep. If you didn’t, the nuns said the Sandman would come for you. He’d pluck out your eyes, put them in a bag, and carry them to his nest on the moon, where he would feed them to his beaked children, who loved nothing more than the eyeballs of naughty human children.
World's Scariest Places: Volume Two Page 37
