The doll continued to laugh.

“Shut the fucking thing off!” Jesus said.

Jack produced his Swiss Army knife and lifted the doll’s dress with the tip of the blade, revealing a cobweb that was as thick as cotton candy and crawling with more spiders.

“Move back,” he told Elizaveta even as he cut the string from which the doll depended. It dropped to the floor. The impact sent spiders flying off it. Jack raised his foot and crushed the plastic torso where the electronics and battery would be located.

The laughing stopped.

4

In the stunned silence that followed Pepper blurted, “What the hell just happened?”

“It was the thunder,” Jack said.

“What are you talking about?”

“The thunder set off the doll.”

Spiders continued to pour out from beneath the doll’s dress, searching for refuge between the floorboards. Elizaveta kicked the ghastly doll into the far corner.

“Thunder?” Jesus said. His back was pressed to the opposite wall, by a window. “It started laughing right after Eliza asked if the killer was still on the island!”

“At the same time as the thunder,” Jack said.

“Thunder doesn’t make—”

A scream cut him off.

5

Nitro burst out the door of the hut first, Elizaveta right behind him. Pita stood rooted to the ground, staring into the rain-thrashed jungle, still screaming.

Elizaveta saw the woman immediately. She was twenty meters away, leaning against a large tree, supporting herself with one arm. She was naked, her pale skin standing out in stark contrast to the gathered darkness.

All Elizaveta could think was: It’s the ghost, ghosts are real, I’m seeing the ghost, we summoned the ghost, oh my God ghosts are real!

Then, from behind her, Rosa cried, “Lucinda!”

Lucinda! Elizaveta sagged with relief. Of course it was, of course—

Nitro rushed past Pita to help the woman. Elizaveta forced her legs to move and went to Pita. “It’s okay,” she told her, slipping her arm around her friend’s waist and turning her back toward the hut. “It’s Lucinda, the friend of Rosa’s brother. It’s okay.”

Pita stopped screaming and started to mumble gibberish.

Elizaveta led her to the hut and eased her to the floor where she had previously been seated. Nitro came in a few moments later, carrying Lucinda, telling everyone to get out of the way. He set her down on the floor. Her head lolled to one side, limp. Long black hair, wet and tangled, spread away from it like a bed of snakes. Her face was ashen and muddied. Elizaveta’s eyes flicked over the woman’s body, almost guiltily: slender shoulders and large breasts with light brown nipples, the left one pieced; an hourglass waist and wide hips; a pierced bellybutton above her pubic hair; long, toned legs; fingernails and toenails painted plum.

Everyone was crowding around her. Rosa, clutching Jack’s legs, said, “What’s wrong with her?”