“I’m serious, dude. Alon saw it, too.”

“Did it seriously attack one of the producers?” Rory asks. “Cool.”

“Hey dude, this is serious. People could have died.”

“Didn’t I tell y’all to get off that haunted beach,” Jordan grumbles.

“Has Alon seen these corpse trees before?” Rory asks.

“There’s never been a sinkhole on this island,” I say.

“But this tree attacked the old man?” Rory persists.

“Yes.”

“You must be one of those sensitive people who can see and feel things,” Rory says wisely. “Those new age hippies with third eyes and lactose intolerance.”

“Did you know that there’s pirate treasure buried on the island?” Jordan asks. “Is that why they’re making a show about it?”

“It’s not pirate treasure. Some Spanish explorer with Magellan’s crew stole gold from the locals and allegedly it’s still inside the cave where he hid it.”

“And he was also allegedly killed by the ghost, right?” Rory says eagerly. “Have you seen him?”

“I’d rather not, thanks. Some of the scientists here think the corpse tree might actually be his body.”

“Alon!” Hawaiian Shirt shouts. “We need you!”

I push back my chair. “If you’ll excuse me,” I say politely. I nudge Askal with my toe, but he’s finished his food and is intent on eating the scraps people are still handing him under the table.

“So what’s the deal with you two?” I hear Rory ask impishly as I leave, “If I didn’t already have Josh, like damn it’s great to be bi!”

Chase’s embarrassed. “Rory, shut up!”

I walk faster, so that Chase doesn’t see me turn red.

What Hawaiian Shirt and Goatee want from me, as it turns out, is as many details as I can provide regarding the strange female ghost and the screams.

“We’ll set up more cameras to catch any supernatural activity that we don’t spot ourselves,” Hawaiian Shirt explains. “Orbs of light, things moving on their own when they couldn’t have, disembodied voices—all that stuff. We’re hoping for actual apparitions, of course—most shows don’t get much beyond shadows, but one time in Cambodia, Hemslock caught an actual humanoid figure running down a hallway. Any chance you saw that episode?”

I did not. Goatee frowns at me like that insults him somehow. “We want something a lot more concrete than that. We’re starting off strong, what with the sinkhole and that godawful tree, so we’ll need something to follow up with that same punch.” He sets the now-empty bottle on the ground. “Where do people usually hear the screams?”

“Near shore,” I say, painfully aware of the camera trained on me once more, recording everything I say.

“During the day, or mostly at night?”

“The day. Many don’t travel here at night.”

“But you have? Seen it at night, I mean?”

“I take care of my father most nights.”

“All right, then. Can you, you know, repeat everything you’ve told me, but in Filipino?”

“Tagalog. We have many other dialects that fall under Filipino.”

“Well, whatever you call it. Galant wanted you to lean hard on your accent, but this is better, no?”