SEVERAL STRANGE SECONDS passed while the men simply stared at the group trapped behind the black bars. The men smiled with satisfaction, as if soaking up all of their captives’ panic, their terror, their helplessness. Then, like a flock of birds, the men turned at once and ascended the stairs to the main level of the fort. Without the flashlights, the cavern faded to black.

The women pleaded with them, called out their names, trying to penetrate the true selves of the men who must have been horrified to watch this atrocity from the prisons of their own minds.

Blind, Eli started to process what he’d just learned. Dorothea Marie Sauvage. She grew up and married, becoming Thea Petit, my mother. Petit must have been Margo’s maiden name. Her mother had come to this island during that long-ago war. An image of the girl he and Josie had seen earlier that day snapped into his head. Could it be …?

The women grappled the gate and rattled its hinges, begging for release. It was too complicated, too weird for them to consider the conversation they’d just heard. Though no one could see it, the water continued to rise, now tickling their shins.

“You’re wasting your energy!” Eli cried out.

“And what do you suggest we do instead?” Aimee’s voice came from the darkness.

“Listen,” he said, as calmly as he could.

“I’m listening,” Aimee answered, “but you’re not talking.”

“I’m not talking, but they are.”

Above, the men were speaking. Eli thought he could make out the exchange as it bounced down the tunnel toward him.

Otis: “Wir müssen in Kontakt treten.”

Gregory: “Sie sind sich bewusst. Bald werden sie auferstehen.”

They went on and on, their words incomprehensible. Finally, the talk was lost to the wind.

“I don’t understand,” Aimee said wearily. “Bruno hit me. He hit me.”

“It wasn’t Bruno, honey,” Margo answered. “Those people up there are not the men you know.”

“So you believe them?” Vivian asked. “You believe that they’ve all been taken over?”

“What’s our other option?” Beatrice asked. “To not believe them? It would seem that would leave us in the same predicament, would it not?”

“No,” said Vivian. “It would not. I’d rather keep my sanity, thank you very much.”

“You keep your sanity then,” Aimee argued. “I’d rather get out of here.”

“Being rude to your future mother-in-law isn’t going to help,” Cynthia chimed in. That kept Aimee quiet for a moment.

“I know something that might help,” Eli offered.

“A way out?” Vivian asked.

“A story.” Eli waited for someone to tell him to shut his mouth — there is no time for this! — but no one did. “It started almost as soon as we stepped foot on this island.”

“What started?” Aimee asked.

The water lapped at the bottom of their kneecaps.

Eli sighed. “I was seeing things. Hearing things. I shared it all with Josie. We thought it might be ghosts. It sounds stupid now, saying it out loud —”

“Eli,” said Margo, finding his shoulder with her hand and squeezing, “just tell us what happened.”