Authors: Kristin Dearborn
Jemma blew the image up until it became grainy.
“I think it’s a ghost.”
Alex leaned in. “I don’t know. Looks solid to me.”
He could barely make out a white form in the shitty image. The curve of the hip and buttocks appeared feminine. Foliage blocked the head and face.
“I wonder what our mics will pick up.” Jemma frowned.
Alex racked his brain. He’d read a lot on the topic of paranormal investigation, and fancied himself pretty good at it.
“Could the woman on the island be doing something to the ghosts?”
Jemma thought for a moment. “Maybe.”
“We need to find her. Need to let her know we’re not going to hurt her. We just want to interview her.”
“I have to research this. Dammit, when will the power come on? Is there anywhere we can go with Internet and electricity?”
“Soon.”
Only twenty minutes.
Jemma stood up and paced. “I need to think on this. Thank you.”
Dismissing him. He wanted to ask if he could stay. He hesitated.
“Call Karen back. Go to dinner with her,” Jemma said. She pronounced Karen’s name like a racial slur.
Alex flip-flopped in his mind. He could do that. He could do just that. And would probably have a better afternoon for it. He chewed on his lip for a moment.
“I gotta talk to you,” he said.
“We’re not leaving.”
“No. We’re not leaving, not yet anyway. But I gotta…you’re acting jealous of Karen.”
“Why wouldn’t I be? You’re all over her. You can’t stop talking about her.”
“No, I—”
“Fine. It doesn’t matter. I have to figure out how the woman on the island is keeping ghosts.”
“Or maybe she sends them on.”
“Or whatever.”
“Listen to me a minute, okay?”
She sighed, a dramatic heave.
“You’re treating me like shit.”
“You can do whatever you want with your free time. You’re my research assistant.”
“I want to spend my free time with you.”
“Let’s not talk about this, okay?”
“No, not okay.”
“We can’t possibly be together. You know it. I know it. So go fuck another floozy.”
“I think we can, though.”
Jemma laughed. A harsh, brittle laugh. “I won’t put you through that. You’ve felt it. You can’t touch me.”
“I have a theory…”
“I know your theory.”
“I honestly think it would get better over time. You touch me, I get your pain, then I touch you, and you get it all…I think if we touched long enough, it would reach an equilibrium.”
“And you want to find out?”
“I’m willing to, yes. There’s no reason you should carry your burden alone.”
“Go be with someone you can touch.”
“I want to be with you.”
“No you don’t. You only think you do.”
“Don’t tell me I don’t know what I want. I make decisions for me.”
“And I make them for me. And I want nothing to do with this.”
“Don’t be crazy…I love you—”
“I have no idea why,” she spat, and tore off one of her gloves. She took three steps across the room and touched his face.
He had felt it before. All of Jemma’s pain flooded into him. She was a wobbly vessel…if she touched someone with more pain than she carried, she would take it on. Someone with less pain, her pain seeped away.
Memories flooded him. Self-loathing. How did she live with this darkness? He saw John’s face, remembered being stripped naked and tied to a table, raped and punched. Until she got a foot free. He lived the experience—not for the first time—as she kicked her husband in the face. And killed him.
Alex lived the energy pouring from Jemma—everything awful that John’s abuse bottled up in her sluiced from her and destroyed her tormenter.
She has to let it go.
He knew he was right even as the fear she’d endured for four days before he’d rescued her consumed him. He relived the humiliation as he saw her, bound and naked and emaciated on the table.
It became a loop as he touched her in the memory and learned the whole story from her body.
The initial shock of her memories passed and left him sensitive and disoriented.
“I’m sorry it happened to you,” he croaked. “But you have to move forward.”
“Move forward?”
“Touch me. Right now.”
They would pass it back and forth until it dissipated. He knew it.
“Get out.”
“Take my hand, Jemma. Hold it. Don’t let go.”
“Get out!”
He went. Maybe he shouldn’t have. Maybe he should have tackled her. Held her down and proved himself.
It wouldn’t mean anything if it didn’t come from her. If she didn’t want it.
So he left, huffing a sigh, feeling flayed, raw and bitter.
16
The afternoon sun baked through Terry’s light cotton shirt and linen trousers. Sweat pooled at the small of his back and inside his trousers. It was only Virginia. Nothing to be afraid of. Just his beloved wife. He’d had to wait a day, to make sure Mr. Lucky fed her, to make sure she wasn’t hungry when he came. He arrived at noon, when the sun shone strongest and the creatures of the night were at their weakest.
Maybe she’d be asleep, and it would be a wasted trip. Mr. Lucky was angry at him, the ghost hunters were furious, asking him why they couldn’t find a boatman. “The season is very busy,” he told them, but they didn’t buy it.
“Virginia,” he said, in barely a whisper.
Normal jungle sounds answered him. How long could he justify staying here before he headed back to the boat? Back to Vista Breeze, where he would drink himself into a stupor. He’d lock himself in his cabin, close the shades, and fantasize about what would happen to Virginia and El Nido if he packed up and left.
“Hello, lover.” Her voice was a liquid purr. It wasn’t even her voice anymore…that’s not what his Virginia sounded like. She’d been sixty when she came back to the island, when she came and never left, but the years melted away, and before him stood a woman in her twenties. He hadn’t even known her when she’d been so young.
He reminded himself this wasn’t her. Her true face was a horror.
She lingered in the shadows of the gazebo, avoiding direct sunlight. He stayed in it, let it blast him in the face. Maybe he would get cancer, he thought, willing it to be so. Any end would be better than this. He wished they’d realized that before Virginia made her choice.
The version of herself she presented wore clothes in a matronly cut. The thin material showcased her nipples, and tiny black panties through the skirt. She’d never had such a body, not even back before he met her.
If it’s not her, then why stay?
he argued with himself.
It
is
her, though.
“You send me an old woman?”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“She was dying. I can tell. She was nothing. She was worse than nothing.”
“You’re going to be alone here for a while.”
“They have to come collect their machinery.” She pointed a long white finger toward one of the tripods. A blinking red LED greeted Terry’s gaze.
He glanced up as he spoke, and saw her lips droop into a frown. She changed, body and clothes, before his eyes. She melted into forty-year-old Virginia, Ginny at her most beautiful, before the cancer. The clothes thickened.
“What will I eat?” she asked.
“We need to wait a bit. A week, maybe. You can go a week without food.”
“I can’t. You know I can’t. You know it hurts when I’m hungry.”
“Dogs then. I’ll bring dogs.”
“You’d have me eat dogs?”
“What can I do?” He wanted nothing more than to hold her, but when he’d tried, he found her cold and hard and nothing like the woman he remembered.
“I can’t help it. I’m hungry. All these people here…” She pouted. “Feed me the ghost hunters. The woman smells delicious. She’s miserable.”
“They’re here to write a book about the island. About you. What you do.”
“You want them to kill me?”
Did they want to kill her? He didn’t think so; he didn’t know what they wanted. “What if she’s the one?”
“You want to leave me again?” She gazed at him with Ginny’s brown eyes. They almost melted his heart, but the whites were too yellow, and the rest too cloudy.
“You could rest.” It’s nearly impossible to kill an
Aswang
. But it could be done, the curse could easily be transferred to another. “Don’t you want to rest?”
“You can’t leave me,” she said. “You’d be alone. You’d hate it.”
“I would,” he said, and he meant it. He couldn’t imagine a final good-bye with Virginia, even after all they’d been through.
“I won’t leave you.” And he wouldn’t. He wiped sweat from his brow. “No more food for at least a week. You used to go a month or more.”
“I can’t,” she moaned. “You all smell so delicious. You intoxicate me. Your blood is warm.”
“You can.”
“You used to call me dear. Used to tell me you loved me.”
“I have to go.”
She took a step to the edge of the shadow, and held a hand up. The fingernails weren’t right…they were claws, yellowish and curled.
He turned so she wouldn’t see his tears and made his way back to Mr. Lucky’s boat. Could Jemma be convinced to take her place? Could Virginia be convinced? He imaged Alex making the same decision he’d made.
“I miss you,” she called behind him. “I’m lonely.”
He broke into a jog.
17
Alex rarely took his shirt off in public, aware most folks didn’t need to see his hairy, pasty, man boobs. But here the sun begged him to drink it in. His skin still tingled from the residue of Jemma’s touch. Every follicle of hair seemed to ache. The warm water helped.
Jemma sat on the beach, a black-clothed sulking ball. They’d spent the previous day going from boatman to boatman, asking for a ride to the island. Each man looked longingly at the wad of cash Alex offered and said no. Alex called Karen in the evening, and she coolly told him they sometimes take a day to fish for their families.
The barking motor of the
Baby Roxanne
shattered his enjoyment of the afternoon. Alex paddled in toward the shore. Jemma looked up, away from her book.
Mr. Lucky helped Terry into the knee-deep water, and he waded ashore.
Alex splashed over.
“Have you heard anything from the police?” he asked, then paused. Terry’s face was the color of cottage cheese. Red splotches stood out on his cheeks and the tip of his nose. His eyes were gray and watery.
“No.”
He gazed past Alex, at Jemma. Fixated on her for a moment. Then he moved away from Alex, and headed to shore.
“Why are you upset?” Alex asked.
“Please, I’m in a hurry.”
“I’ll walk with you. What’s up? Something upset you. Were you on the island?”
Terry stopped, wheeled around, and spat at Alex. “Please, leave me alone. This has been a most horrid day.” He wheeled around and resumed his splashing stride toward the resort.
“Does this have to do with your wife?”