Lore
I see Chase Gries again before dinner. He’s found an isolated spot on the beach some distance from the bustle of the crew, and he’s dancing.
It’s an odd dance. He’s bare chested and in a tight pair of shorts, and he’s letting his feet do most of the work—hard stomps on the sand with his heels and toes that somehow manage to look graceful. He’d set the camera against a large rock and it’s clear he’s filming himself.
In all the chaos of the sinkhole, I had little chance to assess the newcomer. He struck me as someone who was rather shallow, but now, watching him, his brows furrowed and his tongue sticking out of his mouth as he concentrates on the complicated routine, I recognize that it wasn’t right of me to judge him so quickly.
Askal, as always, chooses trouble. He bounds gleefully toward Chase just as the dance ends. The boy sees him coming; with a laugh, he opens his arms and Askal jumps into them happily, sending both crashing into the sand. “Askal!” I call out, running toward them.
“It’s all right! It’s kinda sweet.” Grinning, Chase gets back on his feet, then jogs toward his phone to end the recording. “That was a great way to end the post. Couldn’t bring my horse head, but a pup’s always a bonus.”
“Is that all you think about?” I ask curiously. “About how you will look online?”
Chase cranes his neck to look back at me, but he doesn’t seem at all offended. “I get to chat with my friends all the time,” he says. “And all it takes is a scroll. And I can talk to people all over the world. Sure, there’ll be some haters, but it’s not like I don’t get haters in real life anyway, you know? Aren’t you interested? Aren’t Filipinos like, some of the most active users online in the world? I have a lot of Filipino fans. People recognized me here.”
“Being seen isn’t my style.”
“You’re kinda weird,” Chase says, smiling. “But in a good way. It’s kinda cute.” He checks his phone, gives a satisfied nod after he plays back the video. “Is that why you like staying here? Cause everything’s quiet and stuff? How do you earn money if you’re the tour guide of an island that no one’s allowed to visit? Sell rocks to the tourists?”
“I… I fish?” I reassess my opinion of him again. He’s nice and charming, but with two brain cells at most.
He grabs my hand unexpectedly. “Do you want to dance?” He asks earnestly, then realizes what he’s doing and drops it. “I mean, do you want me to teach you how to tap dance? Or if that’s not your thing, do you wanna hang out? Not like there’s a lot to do—”
Up close, he looks almost like a puppy himself. The same earnest eyes, his obliviousness to his own appeal. “I can’t,” I say, not sure why I sound so regretful. “Need to check on my dad first. And I’m supposed to have dinner with the crew.”
“Ah.” He steps back. He’s actually blushing. “Right. You’re right. I’m gonna… go. I don’t know why I keep putting my foot in my mouth, but—I’m sorry for bothering you.”
“What? You’re not both—”
But Chase’s already sprinting back to the cabins, leaving me alone on the beach. Beside me, Askal sits and nudges at my hand, then lets out an exasperated bark.
***
“So nice of you to join us,” Armani greets me with a smile, as I step into the mess hall. Most of the crew remain outside; lanterns hanging from nearby trees serve as their main source of light now that night has fallen. Filming is done for the day, and most of the crew linger at their tables with plates of food, chatting and swapping stories. A majority of the crew have left the island after the sinkhole incident, to my relief. Only a dozen and a half are left behind.
It’s different when you’re an executive. The others eat their meals outdoors with a hearty selection of sandwiches, fries, and cold drinks. But inside, the VIPs feast. Their menu has champagne and hors d’oeuvres—bite-sized sandwiches that are somehow more elaborate than the subs the crew receives, cold soup served from a turret, and fresh unagi and uni sashimi flown to the island from the seas of Japan.
I have to leave Askal outside with the rest of the crew, much to their delight. I can hear them cooing and fussing over him when I step inside. Askal has had a quiet life with me and ’Tay, and it feels good to see people give him the attention he deserves.
There is no one else here to impress, but Armani wears cufflinks and a new suit—a ridiculous contrast to Reuben Hemslock, dressed casually in a loose shirt with sleeves rolled up to his elbows and dark jeans. His bodyguards prowl the room, a few glancing offhandedly out the window, in case someone might think to ambush the group. They carry their guns like they’re patrolling a military zone.
I would have preferred to remain outside, but Armani insists. “You’ll learn how we do things around here soon enough,” he tells me. “And as our local expert, it’ll be good for you to be here, because we’re planning the rest of the season tonight. We’ve got a pretty good idea of the lore, but we’ll tap you for other details we need more of.” He eyes my clothes. “You want me to lend you something nice to wear while you’re here? That whole authentic look’s great for when you’re on camera, though.”
His interpretation of authentic is not the same as mine, but I turn down his offer and keep my words polite.
“How’ve you been holding up so far, kid?” Hemslock asks from behind me. “Is all of this different from that island life?”
“It’s more people than I’m used to.”
“You’ll ease into it soon enough. No one to keep you company?” His grin widens. “You look like the type to swing both ways.”
“Reuben,” Gries says, looking embarrassed.
Hemslock only chuckles. “Alon’s old enough, Leo. And it’s not like I’m flirting.” For a moment his brows draw down, anger flashing across his face before he grins again. “Alon’s hanging out with the heavy hitters now. Just pointing that out.”
Leo offers the seat beside him. He introduces me to a few other people in the room, including the scientists who attempted to excavate the tree earlier, and a couple of the show’s lead writers. Melissa is here as well, presumably to run errands for the producers. Chase sits beside his father and appears distracted, fiddling with his phone and scowling down at it, obviously in no mood to answer whoever’s calling when it buzzes.
“The writing team will be presenting,” Leo explains. “And we want you on hand to make sure we don’t deviate from what the legends are really about.”
He looks tired despite his friendliness. I wonder if he’s still thinking about the strange video. Hemslock and the others decided it was a fluke since the voice couldn’t be replicated, though it is clear that Gries does not feel the same way.
Several monitors have been set up on the walls, and a technical team is hard at work connecting them to numerous laptops. One by one, the screens light up, revealing three other important-looking men in business suits who sit behind large desks.
Melissa spots my confusion. “They’re executive producers,” she says, taking advantage of the opportunity to pile her plate high with the sushi. She lowers her voice. “It’s kinda unusual. Most TV shows don’t usually have more than two executive producers, but we’ve got five. Sounds like a lot of the studio higher-ups were insistent about buying in. Probably because of the stuff that happened with Mr. Hemslock—a show of support or something.”
“Now that everyone’s here,” one of the head writers begins, after an approving nod from Armani, “we can start. As I mentioned before, we’ll be improvising a lot for this show, mostly because we still can’t completely separate the facts from fiction.” He smiles in my direction. “I’d like to show you all the direction we’re taking, and see if everyone is on board.
“All right, so we have this island, Kisapmata. Here’s the mythology: something sleeps within it—a local psychopomp at the least, a venerated death god at most. There were definitely sacrifices made here—locals and historians have verified that. The ongoing lore is that eight deaths are needed to reawaken this god, and that his waking will usher in a” he raises his hands and wriggles two fingers on each, “new beginning.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Producer Number One asks from one of the monitors. “What new beginning? Some kind of rapture?”
“That is something we can’t confirm. The locals believe the god will create a new world with no crime or poverty.”
“But then how are we gonna do business?” another producer jokes.
One by one, heads turn my way. I blink.
“Well?” Armani asks. “Surely you know what this ‘new beginning’ is?”
“It’s not the rapture,” I say slowly. “We believe that the world is nothing but a dream of the Diwata. When He wakes, the dream will end.”
“That’s pretty vague,” Producer One complains.
“If the belief is that the world is nothing but a dream,” Leo says, “then what happens once the god wakes?”
I shrug. “We are born anew.”
“So it is like the rapture,” Producer Two says, chuckling.
“We don’t need the prophecy to make sense,” Hemslock says calmly. “People’ll eat up those pseudo-religious theories and justify their own belief systems for it.”
“What I don’t get,” Armani says, “is what the trees have to do with these sacrifices.”
They all look at me again.
“Balete trees are sacred to the Diwata,” I reply. “Burying family with their saplings is a sign of devotion. He gains nourishment from the dead as He sleeps, and they in turn are promised eternal bliss when He wakes.”
“So He leeches off people in exchange for their peace of mind?” Producer Three sniggers. “Sounds like my ex-wife.”
The remark is met with a smattering of laughter.
“Are there any known species of balete that grow underground?” Hemslock asks intently.
“No,” a researcher answers. “But previous expeditions have found evidence of ancient burial sites here—nothing beyond traces of human remains, though.”
“Any evidence of balete found with those bodies?”
“No—but the bones are old, several centuries in most cases, and none of them were intact when they were unearthed, so it’s doubtful we’d find evidence of any balete trees buried with them as well. We can test the sinkhole for evidence.”
“They found roots growing on Alex Key,” Hemslock says, “They were balete. I checked.”
“We’re getting ahead of ourselves, Reuben,” Producer Two reminds him. “Sam, continue.”
The head writer clears his throat. “The plan is to give an overview of the curse and the legend surrounding it in the first episode, then focus on the known victims for the next three or four. See if we can get footage to tie fact and lore together more conclusively. We still don’t have a lot of information about the first two deaths. The corpse tree was a godsend—we’ll splash that for the first few episodes.”
“How many victims have there been?” Producer One interrupts. “Didn’t they record over fifteen deaths on this island already? So haven’t they’ve surpassed the quota for the eight needed to awaken the god?”
“Most of those deaths won’t count for the curse, sir. The deaths need to match very specific requirements. That we were able to confirm with the locals.”
“A convenient explanation to keep the con going, don’t you think?”
“Someone must be actively offered up as a sacrifice for it to count,” Hemslock says. “I don’t doubt though, that this god is not above killing anyone that it thinks is unworthy. If a serial killer sets out to kill eight women but kills men and children as well, then they’re still his murders.”
“The Diwata is not a serial killer,” I say sharply.
“That his name?” Producer Three asks. “Diwata?”
“It means god in Tagalog,” Leo says stiffly.
“Not that easy to remember. Let’s call it the Dreamer. Better recall, fits in nicely with the rest of the narrative we’re pitching.”
“Getting back to the victims.” The head writer taps on his keyboard and a projector flickers to life, displaying information on the wall behind him.
“Here we go. First two deaths, few details. Then the third victim, Oliviero Cortes. Those initial two deaths were recorded in his journal, and scholars have verified them. Cortes’s life is a good chunk of known history, until his disappearance.”
“I take it everyone here is aware of Oliviero Cortes?” Armani asks, looking meaningfully at me.
I set my jaw. “Oliviero Cortes was one of the many Spaniards who tried to colonize my country, sir. I am well aware of who he is.”
“One of the crew members of Magellan’s expedition, right?” Producer Two asks. “The one who tried to make off with the locals’ gold. Allegedly hid it on the island. Now, treasure—that’s what interests me most.”
“We’ve printed out copies of Cortes’s journal to pass around,” the head writer says. “Other records mentioned that the chieftain Cilapulapu—better known as Lapulapu, a hero in this country—had this journal in his possession.”
“The same chieftain who killed Magellan? How’d he get his hands on the journal?”
“Historians believe that Lapulapu killed Cortes for attempting to steal his people’s gold. We think it’s because Cortes had stumbled onto Lapulapu’s supposed connection with this god. This Mactan chieftain was one of the most powerful rulers of the region surrounding Kisapmata, though very little has been recorded of him after Magellan’s death. We’ll spend a couple of episodes unpacking all of that before we move on to the cultists.”
“What’s this?” Producer One asks. “What cultists?”
An exasperated exhale from one of the other monitors. “Mark, weren’t you paying attention during the last meeting?”
“Buried treasure was all I needed to sell me on this production.”
“There was a cult,” Leo Gries tells him. “They believed that by helping the god find the deaths he wanted, they would, in turn, gain powers beyond their imagination. So they sacrificed a woman inside the cave. A pregnant woman. We found her grave—not on the island, but she is buried in the town graveyard.”
“Holy shit,” Hawaiian Shirt mutters, shocked. “You mean the altar inside the Godseye was where they’d killed her? Damn.”
The head writer clicks on his keyboard. The image behind him shifts to reveal a white woman, haggard-looking but defiant, staring back at us. She seems oddly familiar. Watson, Lindsay, is scribbled on the placard she holds before her.
“The cult leader,” the writer says. “Lindsay Watson. Museum curator from Florida charged with embezzling funds. Turns out even Lindsay Watson was an alias as well. She didn’t have any family we could find, nothing to suggest what her past life was. There are thousands of people with the same name across the US. She’d gotten her hands on someone else’s social security and forged documents to make herself a new identity. By the time anyone realized that the real Lindsay Watson had been dead for twenty years, she’d already bailed herself out, fled the United States, and resurfaced at a museum in Cebu using forged references. It was the same museum with the Cortes journal. Colleagues said she was fascinated by Cortes’s life. Seems like she was the one who found the journal in their archives and recognized its importance.”
Another slide showcases a series of Watson’s own notes.
“We checked out entries from the diary she kept. She talked about strange dreams and hearing voices in her head—we’ll keep those details as filler. She referred to Cortes’s journal as ‘The Book’ constantly, talking about it like it was the Bible. Said she’d been guided to this place from America. Like the god was going to give her powers if she carried out sacrifices for him. The irony was that when we first got her diary, no one had any idea what she was talking about. We hadn’t found Cortes’s journal yet—not until Mr. Hemslock suggested that we talk to the museum in Cebu where she’d worked, see if she’d been obsessing over any of their artifacts.”
“And I was right,” Hemslock says, with some satisfaction.
“What happened next plays out like some B-grade horror movie,” the writer continues. “She gathered some like-minded expats she’d brainwashed into believing her claims, stole the Cortes journal, kidnapped a local woman, and then made for Kisapmata. Allegedly, none of the cultists survived. None of their bodies were found, either.
“I want to highlight something else we found in Cortes’s journals, and then again with Alex Key’s, the fifth victim. Some info on Key—he’s an expat who’d been living in Cebu for ten years. Married a local, but disappeared when he came under suspicion after she was murdered. He was an avid scuba diver, so he was familiar with the islands and knew the lore, according to neighbors. Told them he wanted to explore Kisapmata one day, once the restrictions were lifted. Could explain why his body was found here. His death wasn’t pretty, either—he’d been cut in half. Recovered his journal near his corpse but the entries were mostly the ravings of a madman. But here’s what’s unusual.” Another click of the mouse, and new text pops up on the wall.
He who offers the sacrifice controls the Godseye.
The first to feed,
the second to seed,
the third to wear,
the fourth to birth,
the fifth to serve,
the sixth to lure,
the seventh to consume,
the last to wake.
“We found this riddle in both his and Cortes’s journals. Key’s is mostly incomprehensible, but the similarity of his entry to the Spaniard’s indicates he must have found something inside the cave.”
“In the last meeting you said that you’d only found Cortes’s journal a couple of months ago,” Producer Three says. “Hemslock found it at that same museum in Cebu that Watson had worked at, right? But Key’s been dead for four years. How’d he know what that Spaniard had written centuries before?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out. Since then, we’ve used Cortes’s to formulate most of our theories regarding how these deaths are selected. The people here do believe that helping the god with these sacrifices endows his helpers with supernatural abilities. They think it’s how Lapulapu was able to control these islands for so long. Cortes himself wrote about how Lapulapu killed some local criminal to appease the god—the first to eat. Another entry mentions a corrupt chieftain sacrificed during a time of drought, which he took to mean as the second to seed. And if that tree corpse is Cortes himself, then he’d be the third to wear.”
“A tree, wearing what remains of him,” Hemslock says. “Poetic justice. And it would explain why the cult would have chosen a pregnant woman to sacrifice. Fourth to birth.”
“No local court records of the cultists, though,” Leo Gries murmurs.
“We’ll find more proof sooner or later,” Hemslock insists. “Did you all know that the Godseye was the first documentary I ever wanted to produce? I couldn’t get any of you asses interested in it then. Information has always been scarce. Rumors of the cult and Alex Key’s journal were the only thing we had to go on at first, until the plane crash a few years back.”
“The same plane crash where my wife died,” Leo Gries says. “The plane went missing in the area. The island was searched, to no avail. And then—a body was found a year later. Giles Cochrane. He was on the passenger list. They found him buried here. No one knows who did it, or why. Authorities searched the island again but couldn’t find anyone—or anything—else.”
Silence descends on the table. I see Chase looking down with his jaw clenched, abject misery on his face.
“I’m sorry, man,” Producer Two says sincerely. “I know coming back here must be hard on you.”
“I want closure,” Leo says. I glance at his hands, gripped in his lap, knuckles white with effort. “I want to know what happened.”
“And we’ll do our best to figure that out,” Hemslock says reassuringly.
“So you’re saying that the god caused the plane to crash?” Producer Three asks disbelievingly.
“That’s one of the things we’re here to find out.” Hemslock looks at me. “Am I right so far? What do you know about the cult?”
“The cult were outsiders,” I say. “That was long before my time.”
“What about your father? He ever mention them?”
“Only with disgust, but he knows very little of them.”
“The plane crash investigators found nothing inside the Godseye,” Hawaiian Shirt says. “But that’s part of what I want to talk to you about, Rube. Christie says the cave system is way different than what the crash investigators described. You’re the cave expert, so thought you’d like to know.”
“Thanks. Send word back to Jesse, see if he can grill the locals. It’s only been less than a couple of decades since the cult died here, someone out there knows something.” Hemslock points at the projection on the wall. “The fifth, and last known, death—Alex Key. He’s the one we’ve got the most concrete proof about. We have a body—half of a body, but it’s a start. And as I said, he’d left behind a notebook full of ramblings that make the curse sound even more insidious. And again—Key died four years ago. How did he wind up writing the same riddle Cortes had hundreds of years before? Fifth to serve and damn if Key isn’t living up to that.”
“I’d like to get more stories about the island,” Armani says. “Any more scary stories you can tell us about this place, Alon?”
“It would be easier to leave,” I say frankly. “Conduct your research outside of Kisapmata. The corpse tree isn’t an accident.”
A long silence follows. Hemslock breaks it by laughing. Armani and the other producers join in. “I’m afraid we can’t do that, kid,” Hemslock says with a chuckle. “We’ve put in too much money to pull out now, and some withered old corpse in a pit isn’t going to scare us off. We’ll take our chances. So spit it out. Regale us with your scary stories. You do want money for your father’s treatment, right? Is fishing going to be enough to support you both if we fire you?”
I look around, at the smiling faces, the amusement in their eyes. This is how Americans make threats, I think. “Fishermen have reported seeing a woman near shore. They also hear screaming from within the island.”
“And have you seen and heard both?” Hemslock asks intently.
I meet his gaze. “Yes. Cortes, Key, the cultists—they still suffer here.”
Leo Gries looks nervous, the others uneasy. I can see some hesitation on the three producers’ faces. Only Hemslock and Armani receive this with delight. “Then it’s our duty to know why they are being punished,” Hemslock says. “Free their souls if we gotta.”
“You’re going to point us to where this so-called lady has been sighted,” Armani adds. “We’ll have you on tape to explain as well. We don’t want to coach you on your responses, by the way—gives the anecdote a more authentic feel. Do you know what the riddles surrounding the last three deaths mean? Sixth to consume, seventh to lure, eight to wake?”
I shake my head.
“At this rate,” Armani says, chortling. “I may as well ask for volunteers to be the last three victims so we can finally find the treasure and get the curse lifted. All the life insurance they can get. Heck, I’d pay for their kids’ college if it comes down to it. I believe that—”
I never find out what he claims to believe, because at that moment, the power goes out.