Hemslock edges closer and reaches out a gloved hand.

The tip of his finger sinks into the cheekbone. “Hey, you,” Hemslock says. “Hey. How’s it hanging up there?”

The corpse gapes back at the rest of us through the camera’s viewfinder.

It moves.

The camera jerks away as Hemslock rears back in alarm. Gasps rise up from those gathered by the monitors. Through the other screens, I can see several safety crew members, hanging on their own lines, slowly inch toward the actor, intending to yank him out of harm’s way.

The corpse’s skull shakes. Insect legs stretch out of its left eye socket, and a large black spider slowly pulls itself out, climbing lazily up the decaying head.

Hemslock relaxes, chuckles. Nervous titters follow from the rest of the group.

“You got me there, old fella. You really got me.” Hemslock pokes at the face a few more times.

I exhale slowly, sensing instinctively that whatever danger there would have been had passed.

“For the rest of you back home, that is most definitely not a tree carving. Despite all the stories claiming otherwise, no balete trees of this species have ever been recorded outside of Kisapamata Island. Some locals assert that balete trees grow upside down within the island. All you can see of them, they say, are the occasional roots sticking out from the sand.”

He moves away, and the camera slowly pans to reveal the whole of the balete tree in its terrifying glory once more. “It isn’t technically upside down,” Hemslock says, “but it’s not every day you find a whole tree growing underneath the ground either. Given the island’s porous soil, I’d say there may be something to the legends after all. We shouldn’t dismiss their stories. But here is the million-dollar question: Which of the so-called victims of the Godseye is this beauty? No one found Alex Key’s body, did they? Or—and this is an even bigger speculation—is this the body of Oliviero Cortes, the famed Spaniard himself?”

Hemslock continues to film for another hour before climbing out of the sinkhole unscathed, grinning from ear to ear. He’s brimming with energy, not lethargy. “I have a good feeling about this, Steve,” he says. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime shot. And we’re only on the first day.”

“You got in some excellent closeups,” Armani praises him. “That thing didn’t even faze you.”

Hemslock laughs. “This is the best in-your-face moment in all my years ghost hunting. We’re gonna make a killing off this show, Steve.” He strips off his gloves and tosses them to an assistant.

Hawaiian Shirt checks his pad. “We’re going to ask Lachlan and the others to take a sample of the soil growing near the tree, plus whatever DNA they can scrape off the body itself to send for analysis. Maybe we can find a match during post prod, trace for any living family members.”

“I’m betting money that it’s the Spanish explorer,” Hemslock says assertively. “Obviously not the local woman who was supposedly sacrificed. They only found Key’s lower body, but they did find part of his hand. Unless he’s got three limbs, this isn’t him. You saw those pieces of rusted metal? That’s gotta be armor, man. Cortes, or maybe another fellow conquistador. A few of them went missing during that expedition. Out of the five ships Magellan commanded, only eighteen men survived the voyage back.”