Sacrifice Island Read online

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  Epilogue

  About the Aswang

  About the Author

  Join the Kindle Book Club

  First Edition

  Sacrifice Island © 2013 by Kristin Dearborn

  All Rights Reserved.

  A DarkFuse Release

  www.darkfuse.com

  Twitter: @darkfuse

  Facebook: www.facebook.com/darkfuse

  Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/jOH5

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  To Steve B, who decided that two weeks in Palawan was an excellent idea. And also for being a most excellent friend.

  Acknowledgements

  First round of thanks go to Steve B, Ruban, and Warren, who were with me on an inspirational adventure to the Philippines. Steve meticulously planned our routes and travel, so all I had to do was show up and enjoy.

  The next round goes to my beta readers: Mom, Christina, Brian, Steve and Mac. They read the book before you did, and pointed out parts that maybe didn’t work so well. Thanks to Dave at DarkFuse, who taught me the difference between “that” and “which.” I’ve taken your Post-It suggestion to heart.

  Thanks to supportive friends, who stand by as I write, and to everyone at Seton Hill, who have always pushed me to be better. Thank you to Scott, the strongest, bravest guy I know. Thanks to Karen, for letting me use her name. Finally, thank you to Steve M, for a seemingly endless reserve of patience.

  Prologue

  “How about the special tour? After dark only.”

  Marissa’s head spun and she giggled. Colored light spilled from the bar to illuminate their patch of beach. Reds, greens, and blues winked on the calm seawater.

  Her companion, a tall German whose name she couldn’t remember, asked, “What is this special tour?”

  The boatman’s white smile glowed in the moonlight. Marissa remembered him—he’d been her guide this afternoon. Low on personality, high on competence.

  “He was my guide this afternoon, he’s cool,” she whispered to the German. He hushed her.

  “How much?”

  “Eight hundred pesos.”

  “The price is steep. Where do you take us?”

  “Past Helicopter Island. To a beach not on any of the maps.”

  “Why isn’t it on the maps?” Marissa asked.

  She and Suzanne spent ten and a half months planning this trip. Marissa saved and scrimped to get here, but Suzanne’s dad paid her way. Marissa’d pushed for the Caribbean—much closer (and cheaper), or for Thailand—more developed, more to do. But Suzanne convinced her, and she’d gotten a night job. She deposited all the proceeds in a jar marked “Palawan.”

  And now they were here. It was every bit as beautiful as Suzanne had assured her it would be. Six daiquiris later, she couldn’t feel her sunburn anymore. She’d loved the limestone islands by day, towering karst cliffs and jagged rocks, beaches with sand as white and fine as flour. The best part? Palawan was still mostly off the beaten path, a South Pacific paradise. It wasn’t trashed like the beaches in Thailand. She couldn’t help wonder…what would those same islands look like in the moonlight?

  The guide answered her question. “It’s not on any maps because it is a special place. Tourists bring litter and damage the corals.”

  “Can we do a night dive?” Marissa asked.

  “You’re drunk.” The German kissed the top of her head. They met on the bus from Puerto Princesa yesterday afternoon.

  “So’re you.”

  “Let’s just go for a swim.”

  “A swim on a secret island. Let’s go.”

  The German frowned at the guide. “The price is high.”

  “I’ll pay for it. I want to go.” She leaned in, close to his ear. “I bet he won’t care if we fuck on the beach.” If only she could remember his name. It wasn’t a super-German name like Hans, or Lars…what was it?

  “If you want to.” He carefully pronounced the words against alcohol. “I don’t have so much money left.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” To the guide she said, “We’ll go.”

  The guide grinned wide in the moonlight. “Bring a sweatshirt. The ride across the bay can be a little cold at night.”

  * * *

  Marissa hadn’t brought a sweatshirt, but her German did, and they both huddled inside it, stretching the material. The ocean spray, refreshing in the ninety-degree afternoon sunlight, chilled her in the glow of the moon.

  “Don’t worry,” the guide said from behind them, where he sat by the loud motor. Flimsy pontoons jutted from either side of the boat. It was painted white with a seafoam green interior that became dark in the moonlight. The name Baby Roxanne stood out on the hull in fuchsia paint. All vehicles here—trikes, boats, trucks—were named, and half of the names seemed to include Baby. Crowded in with eleven people, the boat felt cramped and claustrophobic. Now it seemed massive, as she and the German (what, what, what was his name?) huddled on one of the long, empty benches.

  This afternoon’s ride took almost an hour coming back against the wind. Tonight’s would be farther. Marissa shivered, thankful for the German’s warmth. She wished she wore more than her bikini and a sarong converted into a halter dress. Back at the beachfront bar she’d been plenty warm.

  She resisted the urge to ask the guide how much farther. Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea. She suspected Suzanne wasn’t shivering. When Marissa last saw her at the bar, she’d been flirting with an Australian surfer and a redheaded British girl. Marissa leaned into her German.

  * * *

  Marissa woke to a sudden silence as the guide killed Baby Roxanne’s engine.

  “We’re here.”

  She must have dozed off. He dropped the wooden stairs into the water with a splash. The Baby Roxanne rocked in gentle waves, moored in a cove protected from the wind. Here the sea lapped a luminous beach with gentle kisses. The moon pulled all color from the vista, but replaced it with a blue filter that gave everything a magical mood. With no light pollution, a million stars glittered in the sky, the thick band of the Milky Way clearly visible. She saw Orion, just like at home.

  Warm calf-deep water, still heated from a day in the baking tropical sun, lapped at Marissa’s legs. She waded to shore, and sunk her toes into the cool sand. Her German followed.

  Their guide, perched on the seafoam green bow of the boat, pointed behind them.

  They turned. So beautiful! Nestled in a shallow cave stood a statue of the Virgin Mary, her hands holding a giant clam, eyes demurely lowered. Her marble edifice seemed to glow with its own light.

  “There’s more.” The guide pointed at the dark jungle. He lit a cigarette and settled onto his haunches.

  Squinting in the moonlight, Marissa saw more marble, dappled with shadows. She took the German’s hand and squeezed. He smiled at her. They went forward to explore.

  * * *

  The guide watched them go. He took a long pull on his cigarette and rubbed at his chin. The girl’s peal of loud laugher rolled a
cross the water.

  They spoke to each other in hushed tones. He couldn’t make out words, but he heard her voice, then his, then hers again…back and forth. Sound carried far on a calm night like this one.

  From a ways off, the girl gasped. The sound echoed up the limestone cliffs. The guide smiled. Not a gasp of pleasure—he’d heard them discuss having relations on the beach. Neither of them would ever have relations again.

  Not even enough time to smoke a full cigarette. She was hungry tonight. The German shouted, terror in his voice, and the girl screamed, a high, pure sound. “No, no, no!” The sound rolled across the water. The girl’s voice was lovely. The guide carefully extinguished his cigarette so he could finish it later, and tucked the remnants behind his ear.

  As the man’s screams joined the woman’s, the guide poled away from the beach, into deeper water. With two good tugs, he started the outboard motor. The roar almost drowned out the screams. They were fading, anyway. He turned into the breeze, and headed for home.

  1

  The piano paused as Alex let himself into the apartment. He plopped down in an overstuffed chair to listen. Jemma sat at her piano, dressed in black, her rod-straight back to him. He didn’t recognize the piece; something classical, impossibly complex-sounding. He, a Luddite, would never even hope to play like she did. He’d never progressed much past “Heart and Soul”—both parts—on the piano.

  She’d left him a voice mail, breathless and excited. He should come over after he got out of work: she’d found the fourth chapter for the book.

  Gray light from the window made her pale skin glow. He watched her long, thin fingers, her skinny wrists. Watched the way her hands peeked out of baggy sleeves to flit over the piano keys. She wore a long, flowing black garment; from here he couldn’t tell if it was pants or a skirt. Her shirt was more of the same. Believe it or not, this was an improvement. She bought a pair of jeans recently. She didn’t dare wear them, but she owned them, and he was proud of her.

  She finished with no flourish. She would never be a great pianist because she didn’t insert any of herself into the music. She could recreate the sounds perfectly, but Jemma Labasan was never present in the melodies.

  “I know what we’ll do for the last chapter.” She beamed at him from behind a shank of black, silky hair. She wore it long, a fence between herself and the world. Her few years growing up in Britain, as well as her parents’ accents, left the slightest lilt to her words as she spoke.

  “Great!” Alex also dug up a pretty great last chapter, right here in New York.

  “I found a journal,” she said.

  So far, off to a good start. Journals made for good beginnings.

  “Her name was Rebecca St. Germaine. She had an abusive husband, but he died—”

  Alex studied her. Would this hit too close to home?

  “—and after his death she went to an island. It wasn’t a convent, not exactly, but it is a holy Catholic place, with shrines and a dormitory. The journal shows her slowly going mad and being enticed by spirits on the island! Then she killed herself!”

  Alex listened and it all sounded promising. He could tell, though, this wasn’t the whole story.

  “Where’s the island?” he asked.

  “The book is called Spirits Around the World, right?”

  Where did she want them to go? They’d been to England, to Canada, up to New England for chapters. Her evasiveness suggested somewhere more exotic.

  Jemma drifted to the table to get her laptop. She never merely walked anywhere. She moved with the grace of a dancer, and the way her clothes flowed around her made her seem to float. She handed the computer to him, careful their hands didn’t touch.

  He saw images of palm trees, cerulean skies, turquoise water, and white sand. Beautiful. Hell yes he wanted to go there. But…

  “You hate the heat. And the sun. And you hate bugs. Jem, are you sure this is a good idea? Where is this?”

  “The island is called Palawan. In the Philippines.”

  “Jesus, that’s like, twenty-four hours on an airplane. Security’s going to touch you.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “Maybe not,” he agreed, though he remembered what happened when they had.

  Outside, sleet tinged against the window of Jemma’s cozy one-bedroom apartment. Wet slush and ice drenched New York. Alex allowed himself to fantasize about tropical sunlight baking his skin, the feel of hot sand under his bare feet, and bathwater warm seas. He’d been to Florida once, and couldn’t imagine what this paradise would be like. He clicked through some more pictures. Heaven.

  Jemma’s hands, porcelain white and painfully thin, would burn in tropical sun.

  “Can you fund it?” She peered at him, unable to keep a smile off her lips.

  Alex could write a grant better than anyone she knew. He bragged he could fund anything, and so far he’d never been proven wrong. “Of course I can get funding.”

  “I want to go for a month.”

  He breathed out a puff of air. “Okay, start at the top. What’s the ghost?”

  In Connecticut, they visited a haunted boarding school. In Canada, a haunted forest that turned out to be a hoax. For the England trip they visited a haunted castle, which would sound like a cliché, but actually had been the stuff nightmares were made of.

  “Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrows shrine on Sakripisiyuhin Island.”

  “What island?”

  “It’s a mouthful, eh? Means ‘Sacrifice’ in Tagalog. People used to go there to pray and feel closer to God. Rebecca and four other women killed themselves there in ’94. It closed, and tourists stopped visiting. Locals won’t go near it.”

  “And ghosts?”

  “How can there not be ghosts?”

  “You want to head to the other side of the world because there are probably ghosts there?” To be fair, there probably were ghosts there.

  She lighted on the chair opposite him.

  “In her diary she described spirits coaxing her to do sinful things.”

  Alex wondered what kind of sinful things, and if maybe Jemma simply stumbled onto some kind of weird Letters to Penthouse.

  “It’s every bit as sordid as you’re imagining.”

  Alex chuckled. How well she knew him.

  “Have you found recent intel on this?”

  “No, no one goes there.”

  “What if we don’t find anything?”

  Alex wanted to go, simply because he’d love to have a trip to a place like this, like Palawan. But he didn’t much look forward to getting there, finding nothing of interest to Jemma, and heading back early.

  “You’re going to hate it, you know?” He decided to be blunt. “People will think you dress funny.”

  “I do dress funny. Read the diary,” she said. She studied him with big brown eyes. “And it’ll be a wonderful holiday for you. We can come back before a month if we need to. I feel—I really think this will be good. That it will make a good addition to the book.”

  “All right,” Alex said. Canada had been similar; Jemma insisted they go. He’d had a hard time finding anything about the place she’d chosen. Yes, the ghost part wound up being a hoax, but their investigation provided key details that helped solve a park ranger’s murder. Jemma was sensitive, and if she said they needed to go to the Philippines, then he believed her. She’d never led him astray.

  Yet.

  2

  Terry Brenton made his way down the crowded side street, breathing dust and dodging vehicles. A trike—the Carla-Baby—nearly struck him as it wove around a parked delivery truck. A couple nearly walked into him, an average-looking middle-aged white man and a pixielike Filipino girl. Terry used to love El Nido, but sometimes…

  He pushed away fantasies of leaving, of heading back to the UK. He didn’t have children there, or any family left, but it was home. Sometimes even the hot air and the palm trees and the cerulean seas all made him miss the drab, gray, dreary weather he grew up with.


  All around him stood buildings converted to guest houses, painted in bright colors to attract backpackers. He passed massage parlors (some of them reputable, some of them not), stalls that sold bootleg DVDs and cheap plastic toys, little restaurants, the signs all in English. Like it or not, this was home now.

  He paused in front of Louie’s Backyard, the best place to get a drink on the island. Downstairs hosted a gift shop packed with expensive Palawan and El Nido souvenirs, upstairs sat the bar and café. Terry trotted up the stairs. Even five years ago such an endeavor wouldn’t have made his heart pound. He felt old.

  The owner of Louie’s Backyard was no Louie, but an American named Erica. She sat at the edge of the balcony, a sloe gin fizz parked in front of her. She rarely could be found without one, never drunk, always sipping.

  “Terry! Just the man I wanted to see,” she called, her voice a welcoming smoker’s growl.

  He waved, ordered an old-fashioned from a shy Filipina at the bar, then made his way to the balcony to join Erica. She hailed from Cleveland or someplace comparably dreadful.

  “Good afternoon.” Terry dropped into a plastic chair.

  “There’s a pair of paranormal investigators on their way up here from Puerto Princesa.”

  “Paranormal whats?”

  “Ghost hunters. They’re going to check out the island. They got some kind of a grant from the University of Oregon.”

  Terry’s drink came. His heart pounded. Goddammit. He couldn’t have people out there, poking around.

  “Made me think of Virginia.”

  Terry’s chest clenched—a merciful heart attack? Then he wouldn’t need to worry about any of this.

  He plastered a smile on his face.

  “Where will they stay?”

  “Not sure. Maria down in Puerto said they took the eleven o’clock up here, so they’ll arrive sometime in the next”—she checked a thin, expensive watch—“half hour? Hour? Depends on the roads and how the lunch stop went.”