Suddenly I didn’t want to touch the thing any longer, and I set it back on the table. I moved on to an adjoining room, the floorboards once again creaking beneath my weight. I poked my head into what turned out to be a kitchen. I wrinkled my nose at the smell of something rotten. Dishes were piled on the top of a roughly hewed counter. Alongside these were a knife, a spoon, and a fork. Staples such as pasta, salt, rice, and sugar occupied a single shelf. A basket on the floor was filled with dry corn which Solano likely ground into flour. There was no sink or stove because he wouldn’t have had running water or electricity. I assumed there would be a fire pit nearby where he would have boiled water from the canal and cooked his food. Pepper mentioned the locals traded him dolls for produce he grew. I hadn’t seen a vegetable garden anywhere, but then again I had only seen a small slice of the island.

My eyes swept the floor, the shadowed corners, for a dead mouse or small animal, something that had crawled in here to die and was responsible for the stench. I didn’t see anything.

Back in the living room I went to one of the two rooms I had yet to explore. It was a Spartan bedroom: bed, dresser, window, that was all.

The door to the second room was closed. I gripped the doorknob and was about to twist it when a sneeze originated from the other side of the door.

I froze, dumbstruck.

Please, Jack—first a doll opening its eyes, then another talking to you, and now one sneezing?

But then what had I heard?

I pushed open the door, half-expecting a Chucky doll to scuttle toward me on its small child’s legs, a big knife gripped in one hand.

The room was empty save for a bed and a dresser.

“Hello?” I said, regardless.

No reply.

I didn’t want to check beneath the bed. It was something a child would do, to assuage their paranoia and superstition. Nevertheless, I knew I couldn’t avoid doing so, because I’d heard something after all. I hadn’t imagined that.

I touched a knee to the floor and looked.

6

The little girl was on her belly, hands at her sides, fingers splayed on the floor, like a sprinter about to bolt from the starting blocks—or come straight at me. Matted black hair obscured much of her face. She wore an embroidered cheesecloth top and pastel-colored jeans.

When I regained my wits, I cleared the lump in my throat and said, “Hi.” This sounded not only lame but, given the circumstances, sinister as well, what a stranger says to lure an unsuspecting child into his car. “I’m Jack,” I added.