Don’t Look
Shouts echo as people stumble into each other in the darkness. I can hear chairs overturning, plates and utensils clattering as they fall to the floor. I hear Leo stand up, his chair falling. I hear Chase’s startled cry beside him. “Dad?”
“I saw her,” Leo Gries whispers. “I saw her—at the window—”
Armani is once again irate. “Who’s in charge of the set?” I can hear him hollering. “Someone get the lights back on!”
“The generator should be functioning,” comes the stupefied reply. “We did multiple checks—we have backups—”
“Then bring in the replacements! I want everything up in the next hour, or someone’s going home without pay!”
Flashlights flicker in and out of the gloom. Leo Gries has a pocket light, and his terrified face is illuminated in the glow. Hemslock carries a much more powerful version, splaying the room with its beam. The screens before us are now blank gray slates, the producers wiped clean off their surfaces.
“What’s the status of the generators?” Hemslock asks, a calmer contrast.
“We can’t find anything wrong with them,” one of the crew admits. “It’s the ones for the mess hall and the other two cabins. But a team’s swapping it out. It shouldn’t take long.”
“My cabin’s one of those affected,” Armani says hotly. “You better get your asses on it immediately. I’m going out for a smoke, and I want this resolved by the time I get back.”
“Stay calm, Steve,” Hemslock says. “This happens all the time when we’re out in the middle of nowhere. The team knows what they’re doing.”
“It’s only the first day, Reuben.”
“Shit happens. If you wanted the Ritz, you could have stayed in California instead of bitching here. Roll with it.”
Grumbling, Armani shuffles toward the door, the slam letting us know he’s left.
“Alon,” Leo says to me. “Melissa’s going to be busy, so can you stay with Chase at our cabin while we figure out what’s going on? They say the electricity there’s still working. Chase, wait for me there until I return.”
“I don’t need anyone to escort me back,” Chase grumbles.
“Unlike you, he knows his way around the island. Don’t make this difficult.”
“Fine.”
I stand when he does and walk with him to the door. There aren’t many stars, though it’s not as dark outside as it was inside the pre-fab duplex.
The crew has already scattered and is hard at work with the generator. The lanterns are still glowing. Askal waits patiently for us at the door. His tail is wagging—unlike the others, the darkness doesn’t affect him.
The corpse tree is where we had left it. Armani insisted that cameras be trained on the balete, just in case. Some lanterns have been placed around the sinkhole, warning lights to ensure that no one accidentally falls in. They cast an eerie glow over the hole’s inhabitant, illuminating the dark hollows of its face, highlighting the ruins of what it had once been.
Chase takes a glance at the pit and shudders. “That is so seriously fucked up,” he mutters, though he can’t seem to look away, either. “It’s like a Halloween prank gone wild. Are you—have you ever seen anything like—?”
I keep my eyes concentrated on the sinkhole, half-expecting something to happen but not quite sure what. The body doesn’t move. Its limbs hang loosely from the cobweb of branches it’s impaled against, and the face continues to stare into the nothingness. “No,” I finally say. “This is a first for me.”
“I thought you were the island expert?”
“I’m not. This is the first time that I’m not the only one in Kisapmata, save for when I was with ’Tay.” Movement. Makahiya are blooming along the edges of the hole, opening and closing as if buffeted by a sudden breeze. I am certain that they were not there earlier.
The rest of the regular balete around us look forbidding, spindly shadows against a moonless sky. One of the branches slowly lowers, and I know it is from no wind.
I hear a faint creaking.
Something white and bulbous-looking emerges from behind one of the trees. My eyes have adjusted well enough to the night that I can make it out despite the dim lighting.
It’s built the way humans are. Arms and legs. A dark head resembling a rat’s nest, frozen against the air. But there is no face, just a stark whiteness that gleams, and with a strange depression at its center, a slight concaved twist to its lack of features. There are no hands, just a mimicry of the branches it hides against, long and gnarled and curled. I do not think that it has feet. It looks like a bleached white tree, but with long, moving, human hair.
I remember Goatee’s fear, the way his eyes started when he saw the figure among the trees. The solemn girl who had stared back at him had looked like a different creature entirely, but she had tilted her head in the same way this being does, shuffles like it did.
It stops moving, content to stand and watch us.
Askal doesn’t bark. He simply plants himself a few feet in front of us like he could shield Chase and me from this thing.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say. Chase’s too busy looking down at the corpse tree to realize there is something else nearby. I reach out and give his sleeve a light tug. He starts at that, reddens, and then steps away in silent agreement.
When we are far enough away from the circle of lanterns, I risk a look back. This time there is nothing among the trees. Askal lets out a low, satisfied bark.
Chase doesn’t say much as he follows me back to the cabin he now shares with his father, and neither do I. The place is ablaze with light from within, the complete opposite of the cabins beside it. I pause by the door, waiting as he fumbles with the key, accidentally dropping his phone in his haste. Askal reacts to the phone worse than he responded to the tree-like creature, growling and barking as if warning it away before he hunts it down. His shaggy body blocks Chase’s path and his attempts to reach for it.
I bend down to pick it up for him. The screen is aglow. He’s posted a picture of himself online—bare-chested and grinning, looking smug. The waves behind him and the setting sun tell me he took this sometime after the sinkhole but before dinner.
At one of the most secluded and most exclusive beaches in the world with a new love and new opportunities, his caption reads. Don’t know what the future will bring. In the meantime—take a look at that view.
He must be popular, because the number of likes and replies are still rising as I look on. One of the latter caught my eye—answer my call!!! by someone named RileySmiley—and the growing comments gathered underneath it, some supportive and others mocking, indicate a debate has been going on for some time now.
Maybe if you hadn’t slept with Tad while Chase was at football practice—
You tell him, girl!!
POV: watching someone throw a tantrum in the comments while her ex takes a pic with someone new in a swanky celebrity resort—
—I’d dumped my girlfriend too if it could give me that glow up—
Chase snatches his phone back, red-faced. “Didn’t give you permission to look,” he snaps angrily.
“I didn’t mean to—”
His phone lights up again, brighter this time. Someone named Cheating Bitch is calling.
Chase hits the Reject button hurriedly, his face turning even more scarlet. “It’s my ex,” he mutters. “She’s been doing this almost nonstop since I got here.”
“You haven’t blocked her number?”
“I don’t want to. I don’t want her thinking she’s won.”
I’m not sure what he thinks his ex would win from doing that, but I stay quiet. After a moment, he groans aloud, running a hand through his hair.
“Blocking her wouldn’t have done much unless I blocked her and half the school on all my socials, too. That’s what she is—a cheating bitch. Turns out she slept with someone on the football team—one of my friends—for almost two months, and I found out only a week ago—on the last day of class.”
“Why is she calling?”
“Probably to apologize and swear she didn’t mean to do it. Like our relationship still means something to her. But I bet she’s only calling because I posted that picture. I implied that I met someone else, but it wasn’t because I wanted her back or anything. I just—I don’t know. I wanted to make her mad.”
“Why did you say you were at a glamorous beach resort?”
He looked embarrassed. “It sounded better than some boring film set with no one else but suits for company, you know? And I can’t back down now. They won’t let me live it down.” He cleared his throat. “Look. I know you have no reason to help me. I’ll understand if you say no. But could you get her off my case, at least for tonight? Just, you know—there’s not many people my age on set, only Melissa and you. You don’t mind if I post a photo of us hanging out or something?”
“Why?”
“Why?” he echoed. “Because it’s what everyone else is doing. And pretending for a little while lets everything die down until they move on to some other gossip.”
“Is this really what you want?”
He pauses. Hangs his head. “No. I don’t.”
As if on cue, the phone vibrates again. Cheating Bitch.
Chase shoots me a pleading look. “Just for a couple of days?”
I sigh. It’s not like his friends would ever meet me. “Okay.”
“Yes! Thank you. I owe you a billion.” Chase pushes a button, his voice now stern. “For the last time, Riley, go away. I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Chase,” the girl on the video responds, pleading. She’s an attractive blonde with clear blue eyes and a dimple on one cheek. “Let me explain. I’m sorry; I know I fucked up. I swear Tad didn’t mean anything. You mean everything to me. I—”
She breaks off when Askal inserts himself into the drama. He leaps up so that his front paw is practically on Chase’s shoulders.
“Askal!” I yell. “Baba!”
Askal ignores me. He pushes his nose right at the camera and growls.
“Oh my God! What is that—”
“It’s a dog, Riley. And it doesn’t like you, either.” Chase lifts the phone over his head, out of reach. Cheated of his prey, Askal barks importantly, and then licks Chase’s face, who laughs.
“Like I said,” he says, “I’m busy, Riley. Stop calling me.”
From the phone’s angle, Riley spots me behind Chase as Askal returns to me, nuzzling at my neck and yipping smugly as if to say, See how I chased her out? “Is that who you’re with?” she shrills. “That’s who you dumped me for? I can’t believe that you would—”
“What I do here has nothing to do with you!” Chase fires back. “We’re over. It’s done. Go back to Tad or whoever else you want to be with. I don’t care anymore.”
“You love me,” Riley insists. “I know you do. And I know that this isn’t like you. If pretending to be with someone else is your way of getting back at me, then fine; I deserve that. But don’t lie and tell me that you’re hooking up with someone else. I love you, and I know we can work things out—”
“Who says I’m not with him?” I interrupt calmly.
Three faces look back at me—Riley’s pinched face on the phone screen, looking shocked; Askal’s cheerful expression, tail curled behind him the way it does whenever he’s impressed by something I’ve done; and Chase’s, looking stunned but rallying quickly.
“This is Alon,” he says. “Alon, this is Riley, my ex.”
Now I see real anger, the jealous possessiveness. “I’m going to get him back, you hear me,” Riley shouts furiously. “You’re just a rebound he’s going to dump soon! It’s me that he really—”
Still smiling placidly back at her, Chase ends the call. “Sorry about that,” he apologizes.
“Like I said, it’s okay.”
“I can explain more inside. Guess I owe you that.” He looks around nervously. “And I really don’t want to be alone right now—”
One of the small electric lanterns that lines the paths between the cabins starts to flicker. I look down. More makahiya that had not been there before curl around our shoes.
There is something that stands shrouded just beyond the light, a figure too well formed by the night to be visible beyond a faint human shape and too swallowed by the darkness for distinguishable features.
It’s followed us.
“Sure.” I grip the door tightly, push it open. “I don’t mind staying.”