Sacrifice Island (8 page)

“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?

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.