I fume quietly but do as he asks.

Goatee gestures at the cameraman to move closer. “Show us which part of the beach they’ve heard the screaming, and maybe we can—”

The shriek that fills the air sounds like it’s coming from the empty space between us. It arrives with the force of an explosion. I tense, and Goatee jumps back with a shriek of his own, as does Hawaiian Shirt, the cameramen, and the boom operator.

Just as quickly, the shrieking stops.

“Shit,” Goatee says; he’s breathing heavily, visibly shaking from more than the drinks he’s consumed. “The fuck was that? Tell me you got it on tape, Harry.”

“Yeah,” the man responds, looking about ready to drop the camera and run. “Holy shit, did I get it.”

I scan the area. From behind the ring of balete, I see a pale face looking back at us. Unlike the figure from last night, this one has a face.

It opens its mouth. Something blooms out of it, like makahiya. Then it retreats into the trees and disappears.

“It is believed that when people hear the screaming,” I say, “someone is about to die.”

Goatee looks down at his pants, where a dark stain is spreading. “Pissed,” he says. “Fuck. I went and pissed my damn pants.”

Nine

Wreckage

The boom operator swore he captured the scream, but a quick review of the footage yielded nothing. There was only me talking, Goatee jumping back, and then jittery motions from when the cameraman jerked away. But nothing had been captured in the recording, our reactions to it the only evidence.

Goatee is frustrated, but there’s nothing to be done. Already the team is shifting their focus to the next phase of production.

“We’ve got two drones on standby,” says the man in charge of the show’s IT team. He pats one of the robots affectionately—a tiny helicopter with quad rotators and a list of specifications that makes no sense to me but does to everyone else. “This one will give us a bird’s eye view of the island; it’s good for any overhead shots for promo and will also keep a lookout in case anything strange is going on that we can’t see. We’ve got a station devoted to its feed, so we’ll see everything happen in real time.”

“This one, though.” He crouches down and shows us another kind of robot. This one looks like a small tank equipped with a large camera lens. “It’s the SZ-132. It’s built for rockier terrain. We’re going to lower it down the sinkhole and see how far into the tunnel it can go. See these?”

Two small handles on each side of the robot lengthen and retract. On each end is a small knob with finger-like articulations that could apparently be used to grip objects. IT Guy demonstrates, using a complicated-looking remote control. It grabs at a tuft of grass on the ground, pulls it out. “Are we clear to explore the sinkhole?”