Elizaveta rotated her right shoulder, as if it were stiff. Then she reached her left arm beneath her right armpit and prodded the spot where the scorpion had stung her back with her fingers. She kept her eyes closed. I didn’t think she was doing this in her sleep. She was awake, or at least semi-awake. Even so, I didn’t say anything. I didn’t ask her what was wrong, or how she was feeling. What was the point? She would either tell me she was fine, which would likely be a lie, or she would tell me she couldn’t feel her shoulder, or something equally frightening. And there was nothing I could do about that. There was nothing any of us could do.

Except wait.

5

4:41a.m.

Lucinda. Was she confused when she mentioned a doll? Delirious? Speaking through a dream? The doll on the table, gone, misappropriated somehow. Did Solano take it? But why? Because he was crazy? Wanted company? A grown man?

What was I missing?

6

4:50 a.m.

The ghost of the little girl. I hated myself for even contemplating this possibility. I felt like a kid at a sleepover being dared to look in the bathroom mirror at midnight to see Bloody Mary’s reflection, sans scalp, which was said to have been torn away when she got her hair trapped in the doors of an elevator cab. Nonsense, of course. No grown adult could take it seriously. Just as no grown adult could—or at least should—take seriously the legend of a girl haunting an island in the middle of nowhere.

So why was I contemplating it?

I wasn’t.

I couldn’t help it if silly thoughts popped in my head.

Ghosts didn’t exist.

Because if they did?

Well, if they did, I’d be more compelled to believe that my out of body experience hadn’t been dead neurons firing, that I had indeed been crossing over to some other plane of existence, that the white light existed, along with whatever evil dwelled within it—

That was a dream.

But was it?

A dream—or a memory?

Fuck, Jack. Stop it. You’re going to drive yourself batshit crazy.

Ghosts didn’t exist.

Devils didn’t exist.

Eternal suffering didn’t exist.

End of story.

7

5:01a.m.

A humming had started in my skull, from fear or hunger or fatigue, I wasn’t sure. My legs had gone numb from sitting in the same position for so long. I stretched the left one out in front of me, then the right, careful not to disturb Rosa, whose head was resting on it. Her eyes were closed, her mouth parted slightly. Her breathing was deep and regular.