Out of all her friends, Aya was probably the least excited about spending Holy Week on the island. She hadn’t lost as much weight as she’d hoped after four months of intermittent fasting, which meant that she would look like a bloated whale next to Casey, Tess, and Giselle in their bikinis. In addition, nothing about El Llanto that she’d read online suggested that it offered much in the way of comfort—Marco, Julius, and Pat were eager to put long-dormant Boy Scout abilities to the test, while their girlfriends didn’t care either way as long as the stress of city living could be left behind for a while—but Aya was high maintenance, which, she supposed, was part of the reason she’d been the seventh wheel since their university days.

She’d proposed heading up to the mountains for vacation, but the others had wanted sun and sand. Considering that her parents had named her Sinaya after an ancient goddess of the sea woven into the creation myths of their native land, it was ironic that she hated the beach; her skin burned easily and she didn’t like sweating or going barefoot out of doors. But she’d lost the group vote and so here they were, crammed into a tiny wooden pump boat that swayed precariously from side to side as it navigated the sun-dappled blue waters of the Pacific Ocean.

The craggy silhouette of El Llanto loomed in the distance, growing larger as they approached. Aya squinted at it through pink-tinted Wayfarers; it was a small island, pristine shores as white as snow melting away into a backdrop of emerald green jungle. To the east, springing up from a profusion of undergrowth, was a rocky ledge on which perched a stone lighthouse that, at first glance, appeared to be the only man-made structure in the whole area.

“Where’s the cabin?” she wondered out loud.

It was Marco who replied, leaning against the cooler full of beer that separated him from Giselle. “Further inland, I think.”

Casey groaned from where she was tucked into Pat’s side, his arm draped over her slim shoulders. “We came all this way and our rooms don’t even have a beach view?”

Julius raised an eyebrow at her. “Planning to stay in your room the whole trip, Case?”

“No, that’s more up Aya’s alley,” Giselle quipped. “Staying in her room, complaining about the heat—”

“Listing everything she misses about civilization,” Tess added. “Iced coffee, wifi, laundromats—”

Aya’s cheeks flushed hot as her friends burst into laughter. They’d been a close-knit circle for more than a decade at this point, and good-natured ribbing was nothing new; lately, however, it had started to feel like she was the butt of every joke.

Marco’s deep guffaw was the most cruel-sounding of all, his perfect teeth flashing in the sharp sunlight. Aya shot him a glare that was equal parts betrayal and annoyance, and he smirked before turning away to look out over the waves that surrounded them.

Like most outrigger canoes of its ilk, the boat’s motor was a recycled automobile engine. Its roar cut through the silence of the remote location as violently as the wooden prow cut through the ocean, sending up opalescent sprays of saltwater that scattered droplets all over Aya’s face and bare arms in a fine mist. There were no other boats around despite the fact that the wharf on the mainland had been jam-packed with tourists earlier, and she heard Pat remark as much to the helmsman.

The helmsman’s name was Lito. He was short and reed-thin in a tattered shirt and faded denims rolled up above his bony ankles, his weathered skin the color of a coconut husk and his dark hair peppered through with streaks of gray. “These are the outlying islands.” He had to shout to be heard over the engine’s rattling cacophony. “No one goes here.”

Except us, apparently, Aya grumbled to herself. All the popular resorts were either too expensive or were all fully booked. They’d finalized their Holy Week plans too late, and so El Llanto it was, this spit of land miles upon nautical miles away from civilization that none of them had even heard of until Marco happened upon the listing during a late-night Google search.

Eventually, the dark sapphire waters faded into crystal-clear turquoise. Lito killed the engine and his first mate, a boy no older than fourteen who was most likely his son, latched onto the oars and steered them through the shallows. Aya joined her friends in peering down over the sides of the boat; the ocean floor below them teemed with life, with floppy pastel-hued starfishes, sea urchins as black as midnight and as spiky as exploding suns, schools of tiny silver noodlefish, smaller groups of large and vibrantly purple wrasses, and neon-colored alien-like sea slugs that darted and undulated and lay nestled amidst sand and coral and eel grass.

For a few moments, the group was united in childish wonder, and everything was all right again.

And then Aya glanced up towards the lighthouse. They were near enough now that she could note its crumbling facade and the scraggly bird’s nest poking out through a hole in the roof.

“Furthest lighthouse from the coastline and one of the oldest in the whole country. Built during the Spanish era,” Lito supplied, following her gaze. “It used to be a crucial point along the old shipping routes—it’s all open sea out here and the waters get rough during typhoon season. But it fell into disuse fifty years ago, when the islanders left.”

“People used to live here?” Aya had read that El Llanto was uninhabited. She hadn’t come across any mention of former settlements.

“Not many, but there was a small village.” Lito shook his head. “It’s not a good place to live. Too hilly for an airstrip, four hours away from the mainland by boat, soil unsuited for most crops, fish that are impossible to catch—people were starving and their houses kept getting destroyed by storms. So the government moved them out.”

“What do you mean ‘impossible to catch’?” asked Julius.

“The fish in these waters are fast, and smart,” said Lito. “My neighbor was from here and he told me they kept finding holes in their nets. The fish that they did catch were full of bones and black spots. Started rotting the moment they were pulled out of the water.”

Giselle shot Marco a glare. “You rented a cabin on a cursed island.” It was the first thing she’d said to him all morning; they were in one of their usual fights.

Marco rolled his eyes at her. “Sorry I couldn’t afford to put seven reservations for the Bahamas on my credit card.”

Aya bit back a laugh. Giselle was the first friend she’d made at university, and because of that it felt like a personal obligation to take her side whenever she was quarreling with her boyfriend.

Even if…

There was an almighty lurch as the hull of the boat hit soft sand and went no further. This was the signal for the passengers to grab their bags and coolers and wade to shore, sweltering under the hot noonday sun and groaning at the stretch of limbs after long hours spent sitting down. Aya was the last to leave; before clambering out, she pressed a wad of crumpled paper bills into Lito’s callused hand. It was a bigger tip than average but she figured that the man deserved it. He and the boy who was probably his son would be making the trip back to the mainland as soon as the caretaker was ready to go—eight hours at sea, in total, was no joke. Aya was burning up and dehydrated after only four.

Lito pocketed the cash. “I’ll be back on Monday.” That was six days from now. “You kids take care.”

There was something about the way he said it that made Aya uneasy, but she couldn’t put a finger on what it was. Marco, Julius, Pat, Giselle, Tess, and Casey had already made it to the waterline, though, and she would have to hurry to catch up before they disappeared into the trees.

It wasn’t that they purposely never waited for her, she’d often told herself. They always just got so caught up talking to one another that it invariably took them a while to realize that she was lagging behind.

She got out of the boat and slugged and splashed her way through calf-deep shallows, grimacing as her flip-flops sank into the sand with every step, the occasional ribbon of slimy, papery seaweed brushing against her legs. She was wearing a strapless pink and yellow sundress over her bikini, and she had to hike the skirt up to keep it dry while at the same time balancing her large duffel bag on one shoulder and her smaller canvas tote on the other. She nearly lost her footing on more than one occasion. It was sheer force of will that kept her upright—the determination to not get laughed at by the others if she fell.

If they would even notice in the first place.

By the time she reached dry land, the lower half of her dress was soaked despite her best efforts, and she was sweating through the bodice. More beads of perspiration dripped into her eyes, mingling with shards of golden daylight to create a blurring at the edges of her vision.

Her friends existed as indistinct silhouettes. Unknowable, and too far away.

Aya blinked and quickened her pace, drawing level with Julius and Tess—who were bringing up the rear—just as they stepped underneath the island’s tree covering.

“God, Aya, you’re so slow,” Tess complained loudly, eliciting snickers from the rest of the group.

Aya’s fist clenched at her side. Tess was bookish and bespectacled, the quintessential nerd, and at some point in the last few years she seemed to have realized that the most effective way to stop the others from picking on her was to get them to pick on Aya.

At first the trees were mostly Indian beech, with glossy leaves that spread in wide canopies, and then they gradually gave way to bushy, towering tamarinds and sea poison trees that dripped aromatic flowers with long pink filaments. They grew close together but a rudimentary path had been cleared through their midst, marked by wooden arrows nailed to posts hammered into the ground. After a few minutes of walking, the sandy path ended at what the online listing had touted as a cozy cabin in a remote paradise, but in reality was a small concrete house painted in bright, warm colors that stuck out like a sore thumb from the dark green undergrowth.

The front door creaked open as the group approached and a plump woman with short black hair bustled out as if she’d been watching for them by the windows. She introduced herself as Marinette, the caretaker, and ushered everyone inside, wasting no time in giving them a tour of the house, showing them how to contact the Coast Guard on a radio set up in one corner of the living room (“You can also get cellular reception up at the lighthouse, but it tends to be spotty”), and how to work the generator that was in a shed out back (“You can keep the fridge running but always turn off the lights and fans when not in use, and don’t charge more than one phone at a time. No hairdryers.”)

Aya hung back, leaving her friends to absorb the information overload. Marinette was obviously in a hurry, although it was hard to blame her—if she wanted to make it back to the mainland before dark, she had to get into Lito’s pump boat as soon as possible.

After the caretaker had said her goodbyes and disappeared down the narrow path that led to the beach, the usual battle for rooms began, with Marco in charge of deliberations as he’d been the one to book the place. Although—the house wasn’t like the cabins they’d rented on previous vacations in other locales, where some rooms were bigger or had a nicer view. There were four bedrooms that were all pretty much the same, and Aya was stuck into the one nearest the loud generator.

“Sorry, Aya, I care about your comfort the least,” Marco said. Which, of course, made everyone else laugh because he played it off as a joke.

Aya knew what was expected of her in this situation. She could huff. She could come up with some kind of witty retort. What she couldn’t do was raise a stink, or else they would all blame her for being overly sensitive and ruining the trip on its first day.

“I’m going to lie down for a bit,” she announced, hauling her bags into the aforementioned room.

The generator drowned out her friends’ voices after she closed the door. It was a whirring, mechanical rumble that set her teeth on edge, and something inside her withered at the thought of having to spend six days with this sound. It wasn’t like anything in the room could take her mind off of it—it was a minimalistic, nondescript space, with a single bed, a table, and a cheap rug thrown over the bare concrete floor. In lieu of curtains, the jalousie windows had been fitted with a screen to keep out bugs, and beyond them was nothing but jungle, blocking out the sky.

Perching on the edge of the thin mattress, Aya checked her phone. As expected, there was no service, but several messages had managed to squeeze through over the last several hours. Most were mass-sent biblical quotes and prayers—everyone was more pious during Holy Week—while a few were from the family group chat, congratulating Aya’s younger sister on her acceptance to the most prestigious law school in the country (I always thought Sinaya would be the lawyer, not Alexandra, her aunt had typed, which made Aya’s stomach churn), and there was a text from her boss as well, frantically asking for the number of the hotel that Aya had booked for his own vacation in Switzerland. It wasn’t anything that Mr. Agoncillo couldn’t Google on his own, but the man would get someone else to do his breathing for him if it were at all possible.

I’ll hike up to the lighthouse later so I can reply to him, she decided. For now, all she wanted to do was sleep.

Aya lay back against the clean but threadbare sheets and lumpy pillows. The room swayed as if she were still out on the ocean, and she gritted her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut, the roar of the generator filling her ears.

⁠—

 

The floor of the cave was submerged in water, the rest in darkness. Rough stone dug into her flesh, as cold as ice but alive, breathing with the moss and snails and worms that inhabited this damp and gurgling place. She was on her back, as naked as the day she was born, tendrils of seaweed clinging to her ankles. The man who’d nestled himself between her legs rocked into her gently, kissing her neck as she clenched her thighs around his waist.

At least, she assumed he was a man, because it was impossible that he would be otherwise. There was something off about his skin as she ran her hands over his torso; it was cool and slick to the touch, and impossibly smooth. The lower half of his body past his hips wasn’t quite right, either, but she couldn’t figure out why. He was obscured by shadow, and most of her attention was focused on his cock as it slid along her inner walls, so breathtakingly hard and thick, coaxing out spark after spark of pleasure from her deepest recesses until the fire was lit, low in her abdomen, its bright heat threatening to spill over and burn through her veins—any moment now—

The man’s lips curved into what felt like a smile against her neck. Teeth that were too sharp to be human nibbled at her pulse point. Her breasts were being played with, but how could that be, when he had one sinewy arm wedged between her shoulder-blades and the rocks, and one large hand on her hip?

No, it wasn’t hands teasing her nipples into pebbled peaks. She would have believed that they were snakes, were it not for the fact that snakes were scaly and dry. These… felt like velvet. They circled and pulsated against her skin, their flexible tips rubbing softly while her lover nipped at her throat and fucked her open there on the waterlogged cave floor, where everything tasted like salt.

You were made for this, a voice as old as the tide whispered in her head.

The world began to break apart. She soared higher and higher, the massive phallus inside her increasing the speed and forcefulness of its thrusts, her ragged cries echoing through the sea cave. She was almost there, she was—

—waking up—

Aya’s eyes shot open, a gasp escaping her lips. The light filtering into her room had taken on a duller edge, which meant that it was late afternoon. She must have been more tired than she’d thought, to be able to sleep through the generator’s cacophony for several hours and to have a dream like that.

As more awareness pierced through the lingering haze of slumber, Aya realized that she was wet between her legs. She’d gotten turned on by her subconscious’ fantasy of sex with some kind of—of fish-man thing. Lovely.

It gradually dawned on her that the wetness wasn’t consigned only to her underwear.

Aya bolted into a sitting position, staring with a sort of panicked disbelief at the sight that awaited her further down the mattress. Her sundress had ridden up her thighs at some point, and the bare legs it revealed were completely drenched—as were the sheets.

Dear God, had she pissed herself?

Her friends were going to have a field day with that.

Tentatively, she sniffed the air. There was no trace of urine that she could smell—just the musk of her arousal and the tang of salt. The fluid soaking through her bed was water, but how was that even possible? She’d locked the door, so it wasn’t anyone playing a prank on her. She squinted up at the ceiling, inspecting it for holes or cracks—perhaps it had rained while she slept.

But, even if it had, there was nowhere through which the water could have trickled into her room in such large quantities. There was nowhere at all that the water could have come from.

It wasn’t freshwater, either. It smelled like the ocean. Like the cave in her dream.

There was a knock on the door. Aya scrambled out of bed and went to answer it, too stunned and bewildered to do anything but blink at Giselle for several long moments.

“Are you all right?” the other woman asked, brow wrinkling. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Her brown eyes slid lower. “Why is your dress wet?”

“I—I spilled my water bottle,” Aya stammered. Giselle would never believe her if she told the truth.

“Well, you can change if you like, but make it quick,” said Giselle. “We’re going to check out the lighthouse.”

“I don’t need to change.” Aya liked the way the sundress fit, how it disguised the flab of her stomach. The other outfits she’d brought were not as flattering.

“Suit yourself.” Giselle shrugged like she didn’t really care one way or the other, and a bitter spike of loneliness lanced through Aya’s chest. “Let’s go.”

 

⁠—

 

The lighthouse waited at the end of an uphill trek through thick, verdant jungle. Aya’s misgivings when she and her friends left the main path were soon eclipsed by regret—she should have changed. Her inner thighs chafed horribly and mosquitoes the size of golf balls feasted on her exposed skin. The dress looked a lot less pretty on her when she was covered in insect bites, with the suffocating humidity plastering her hair to her face and mud and sand caking her flip-flops. Unlike the others, she wasn’t into sports or a regular at the gym, and so her heart was hammering much too fast from the exertion.

“Can we walk a little slower?” she worked up the courage to ask.

The rest of the group exchanged half-amused, half-exasperated glances that spoke volumes.

“We have to hurry if we want to make it back to the cabin before it gets too dark to see,” Pat told her.

“Seems to me like we could’ve started hiking earlier, then,” Aya snapped, unable to help herself, “or left it for tomorrow morning.”

“You can turn back if you want,” Pat retorted. “Nothing’s stopping you.”

“Don’t worry about getting lost on your own,” Julius added. “We’ll be able to spot your hair from a mile away.”

Aya’s cheeks burned as everyone else laughed. She’d let a hairdresser talk her into getting highlights last month, and she was well aware that the platinum streaks looked ridiculously bright against her normal dark hair. She clamped her lips shut and didn’t say another word for the rest of the hike, not wanting to call any more attention to herself than she already had.

They reached the lighthouse at five in the afternoon, which gave them an hour and a half to dick around and enjoy the sunset. To their disappointment, the entrance had been boarded up—although Aya privately thought it was for the best, the last thing they needed was for one of them to lose their footing on a dilapidated staircase or get trapped under a fallen wooden beam—but the view from this height was splendid and, thus, there were minimal complaints. The Pacific Ocean stretched out below, surrounding the emerald isle’s white shores in swathes of crumpled blue silk; the sky was a rosy gold color, shedding a burnished light on everything as the sun began its slow descent.

They sat down, cross-legged, on the grass. Marco pulled out a joint and lit up, the muddy smell filling the air.

“This was a good find,” Tess complimented him. “I can’t believe we’ve got the whole island to ourselves and we didn’t have to pay an arm and leg each.”

“Whoever bought it after the villagers left must’ve slashed prices.” Marco passed the joint to Julius with a cough. “No wonder. Who’d want to spend their vacation somewhere even the locals gave up on?”

“You mean, aside from us?” Pat quipped.

Everyone laughed. Eventually, Casey passed the joint to Aya, who took a small puff before handing it to Giselle. Aya didn’t like the effect that weed had on her, how it turned her slow and sluggish, but, after the argument during the hike, she was desperate to fit in now more than ever.

Her inner voice wryly pointed out that she’d been trying to fit in for the past eleven years.

She pulled out her phone and shot off a quick text with the hotel details to her boss. Casey happened to glance over her shoulder as she did so and made a noise of disgust.

“Doesn’t the man understand that you’re on vacation?”

“A personal assistant is never on vacation,” Aya muttered. “Not really.”

There were rumblings of sympathy from the rest of the group. No, not sympathy—pity. It was rough, to be pushing thirty and stuck in such a menial position. Thinking once more about the comment her aunt had made in the family chat, Aya reached for the joint a little more eagerly this time. It might mess her up, sure, but oblivion was welcome at this point.

The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur. Aya retreated away from herself, as she always did when she was high, and she was only vaguely aware of Tess pointing up towards the peak of the lighthouse, telling them that the railed rooftop platform was known as a widow’s walk (“because it’s where the wives of mariners would watch for their husbands’ return from sea, often in vain”). She was only vaguely aware of Julius fishing out a bag of peanuts and trying to shoot each one into Pat’s mouth. She was only vaguely aware of Giselle and herself laughing together and the incredible feeling of rightness that such a moment offered, before it was swept away by the passage of time.

Aya was jolted back into a semblance of sobriety when Casey suddenly gasped after they’d all stood up and were about to head back to the cabin.

“What’s the matter, Case?” Giselle asked.

“I—I thought I saw something—” Casey pointed a trembling finger down towards the shore—”there, on the beach—” Her face was completely drained of all color in the fading light, save for her eyes, which the weed had rimmed with the scarlet of dilated capillaries. “It was—big—”

The others squinted at where she was pointing.

“I don’t see anything,” Marco finally said.

“It went into the water.” Casey wrapped her arms around herself. “Can we just go back to the cabin? Please?”

“Sure, but—” Pat wrapped an arm around Casey’s waist, dropping a kiss on top of her head—”no more ganja for you, babe.”

Casey shrugged him off. “It wasn’t because I was stoned! I know what I saw!”

“Okay. Fuck.” Pat raised his hands in surrender. “Don’t get your panties in a twist.”

“Ooh, you’ll be paying for that later, my man,” Julius told him as Casey stomped away.

The group was markedly subdued on the hike back to the cabin. It was a combination of the weed’s lingering effects, the focus it took to navigate the jungle in the gathering dusk, and all of them being a little freaked out by Casey’s outburst, although they tried not to show it.

“What was it that you saw?” Aya asked her in a low voice so as not to be overheard by the others.

Casey trudged along beside her, stepping over twigs and loose rocks, pushing aside branches. Just when Aya thought she wasn’t going to answer, she said, “At first it looked like some kind of sea creature. Like an octopus or a squid, you know? It was—slithering. Over the sand.” She stretched out an arm in front of her, mimicking wave-like motions. “But it was tall. Taller than a full-grown man. And the thing is—it had, like, a face. A human face.” Casey shuddered. “At least, I thought it did. But it disappeared into the water before I could be sure.”

Aya didn’t say anything. She didn’t have any idea what to say. All she knew was that suddenly the jungle was too dark and the ocean was too vast and they were too far away from the mainland.

“Maybe I really am just stoned,” Casey said, sounding smaller than Aya had ever heard her sound.

“Or maybe the island really is cursed,” Aya said, trying to cheer her up.

“I wouldn’t be surprised. I think that things can take on the shape of their names,” Casey muttered, high as a kite and philosophical because of it, despite the scare she’d had. “You know what El Llanto means?”

Aya shook her head. A lot of places in the country had Spanish names; it was merely a fact of life.

“The weeping,” Casey whispered, her red-rimmed eyes wide in the violet fumes of twilight.

⁠—

The group made it back to the cabin without further incident, eating their fill of cheese sandwiches for dinner before stumbling off to bed. Aya flicked on the light in her room, afraid of what she would find, but there was nothing. The sheets and the mattress were as dry as bone.

When she fell asleep that night, she dreamt of the cave again. This time she was on all fours, the rocks grating harshly against her knees and her palms but in such a way that the pain only added to the pleasure coursing through her system. Her lover thrust into her from behind, so big that she felt like she was being split into two. Those strange, velvety appendages wrapped around her like vines, teasing her nipples and her clit.

Was that you, earlier? she wanted to ask. Were you the one my friend saw?

But all she said, in her dream, was—“Harder.”

⁠—

 

Aya woke up to sunlight, and a bed that was drenched in seawater once more. The funny thing was that she was no longer panicking—she was bewildered, yes, but it was the same sort of niggling, fleeting bewilderment with which one might respond to finally noticing that they’d been pronouncing a certain word wrong all their life. The mind shifted to correct itself, to make space for this new information. Twice now she’d dreamt of fucking someone in a waterlogged cave and woken up with wet sheets like she’d actually been there; the longer she dwelled on it, the more it settled into place as if it were just another fact of life.

She and her friends spent the whole morning swimming and sunbathing—or, in Aya’s case, going for a quick dip and then hiding in the shade of the palm trees. She was rather of the opinion that, once you’d seen one beach you’d seen them all, but even she had to admit that El Llanto was beautiful. The sand was as white as snow and the aquamarine shallows teemed with life. She and Tess sat in the water and wiggled their toes at bright orange clownfish that darted through the coral, before the sun got too hot and Aya scurried off to safety.

The others beckoned her over for group photos every once in a while, to which she grudgingly acquiesced until she’d had enough of reviewing the pictures to find that she looked like a lumpy troll in each one, no matter what angle it was taken from. She’d always been the ugly friend, the fat friend, the perennial ruiner of all their mementos. She probably would have been less conscious of it if Pat and Julius didn’t keep zooming the screen in on her stomach and her thighs and cackling—at least, until Casey told them to cut it out.

They trooped back to the cabin for lunch. Afterwards, Aya announced that she was going to hike up to the lighthouse to check her messages.

Unsurprisingly, no one offered to go with her.

She didn’t mind too much. She needed a break from Pat and Julius, and walking alone through the jungle was its own secretive thrill, especially now that she’d wised up and put on a pair of comfortable leggings.

When she reached the top of the cliff, however, she nearly turned tail and ran all the way back down. The boards that had been plastered over the entrance of the lighthouse were scattered on the grass, as if they’d been ripped loose.

Aya would never in a million years understand why she went inside.

It was like being in a trance. Like wanting to throw one’s phone out the window of a moving car or to jump off a cliff for no reason. Aya had read that the phenomenon was known as the call of the void, and right now the void was calling her into the lighthouse, which had been opened for her as if it were a present by some mysterious force.

Upon pushing open the heavy door, she was immediately confronted by a wooden stairwell that curved upwards. She shone her phone’s flashlight at the ancient, rickety-looking steps for several long moments, biting her lip, and then she steeled her shoulders and began to climb.

If I end up falling and breaking my neck, who would care, anyway? she thought with a burst of rebellion—and also that odd, exhilarating rush of freedom at allowing herself to think such a thing. Her friends would probably just be annoyed that she’d gone off and died during what was supposed to be a fun, relaxing vacation. Her family would be relieved that the problem child—the one who was still a P.A. at almost thirty—was gone.

Aya blinked back tears even as she cursed herself for her own silliness. An abandoned lighthouse in the middle of the Pacific Ocean was the weirdest fucking place to be having the epiphany that her life was going nowhere and no one would miss her if she left.

A thick layer of dust puffed up in a cloud around her flip-flops as she stepped onto the second-floor landing. It was a living area of sorts, which she estimated to be somewhere around the middle of the tower. A window beamed meager daylight on a narrow cot with moldering sheets that Aya was most definitely not going to touch, as well as some cupboards and a desk and a chair.

There were several papers on the desk, strewn around a bulky, utilitarian emergency lamp that was quickly proven to be defunct with the futile flick of its switch. Aya studied the papers in a combination of the daylight and her phone’s flashlight; they were handwritten daily logs of sunrise and sunset hours, weather, and tides, but one in particular leapt out at her. Under rows of data penned in a crude hand, the lighthouse keeper had drawn—

—something—

The lines were rough, but the detail was there, painstakingly sketched in by someone whose job was to observe. The upper half was a man with a long, angular face framed by a halo of dark hair immortalized in squiggles of faded ink. Membranous slits that looked like gills were carved into each side of his neck. His torso was bare and muscular, his lean hips tapering off into a mass of tentacles.

Like an octopus, Casey had said, or a squid.

Aya stared at the paper. She was afraid to pick it up—afraid that the brittle, yellowed sheet would crumble into dust at the slightest pressure—but surely she had to show it to her friends. She reached out, and—

“I don’t think it’s a good likeness, personally.”

The voice filled the tiny, circular chamber, echoing off of the old and beaten stone. It was as deep and as vast as the ocean, as sonorous as the waves. It sounded like the voice in that first dream she’d had.

It was coming from directly behind her.

She didn’t dare turn around.

“It’s not?” Aya asked, marshaling nonchalance the way a rabbit would freeze up and not make any sudden movements when it scented a predator on the wind.

“My nose isn’t that big.”

The man—the creature—the whatever he was—sounded amused. Aya breathed in and out, slowly, there in the dimly lit tower room that smelled like rotten wood and dust and seaweed.

Marco had lit up a joint before lunch. Maybe the secondhand fumes had affected her.

Yeah. That had to be it.

Something snaked into the air over her shoulder, nuzzling at her cheek. It was black and warm and thick, rubbery and familiar. Just the slightest bit damp. Her gaze lowered to the drawing again. The man with the tentacles. The thing that Casey had seen slithering on the beach.

“Are you ready to come with me now?” the voice inquired, as softly as  how the tentacle was caressing her face.

Aya’s eyes narrowed at the wall in front of her. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“In that case—” The appendage drew back, and she told herself she didn’t miss it, told herself that those fleeting touches hadn’t been not enough—“I’ll wait a little longer.”

And then he was gone.

 

⁠—

 

She didn’t go further up the lighthouse. She didn’t bring the drawing back to the cabin, and she didn’t tell the others what had happened. Who would believe her? Even Casey seemed to have accepted that what she’d seen had been a hallucination, or a trick of the light.

The group drank on the beach in the evening. They built a bonfire and guzzled rum cokes under a blanket of silver stars, their spirited voices mingling with the roar of the surf and the night breezes ruffling their hair and clothes.

It was fun. That was the main thing, Aya reflected as she perched at the edge of a large, solid chunk of driftwood with paper cup in hand. No matter how much her friends frustrated her, no matter how many times they made her feel small and unwanted, she couldn’t part ways with them. In so many respects, she was still that awkward seventeen-year-old fresh out of high school who couldn’t believe that she’d landed a spot at the cool kids’ table, all because she’d sat next to Giselle in Sociology 101 and they’d struck up a conversation about nail polish.

There was a commotion a few feet away, by the waterline. Tess and Julius seemed to be arguing—a rare thing, as Tess was the most easygoing partner anyone could have asked for. But it was happening, and pretty soon Tess was stomping over to where Aya sat while Julius marched off in the opposite direction, towards the bonfire.

Aya wordlessly held her half-empty cup out to Tess, who took it and downed what remained of the drink in one huge gulp. Ah, Aya thought. Tess only knocked alcohol back like that when she was already drunk; it made sense why she’d forgotten herself enough to actually fight with her boyfriend.

“What were you and Julius arguing about?” Aya asked.

Tess sat down on the sand, leaning against the driftwood. “I don’t even fucking know. Everything, I guess. I’m going to break up with him, I think.”

“Don’t say that. He loves you.” It was a hollow, well-rehearsed chorus. It had always been what the other girls wanted to hear every single time they fought with their boyfriends over the years.

Which was why it came as something of a shock when Tess snorted. “No one loves anybody in this group,” she slurred, fixing a moody gaze on the dark waters in front of them. “Julius and I, we’re only still together because of the kid—Joshua keeps asking me why his dad and I aren’t married, and I never know what to tell him.” Tess pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Look at Casey and Pat. He treats her the same way he treats everyone else—like shit. If he really loved her, he’d go easy on you like she’s asked him to a million times.” Aya fidgeted, but Tess had hit her stride. “And Marco and Giselle? The gorgeous, Instagram-famous couple who look so perfect together? They’re miserable. But they won’t break up because they’re, like, this feedback loop of toxicity, and because everyone will say that it was such a waste.” Tess shook her head wearily. “I honestly think we all kind of hate one another. But neither can we let each other go.”

Then she passed out, falling over on her side at Aya’s feet.

“Wonderful,” Aya said out loud, in a voice that only the ocean could hear. “Just—really great.”

 

⁠—

 

It was Marco who carried Tess back to the cabin, with Aya tagging along to shine her phone’s flashlight on the path. Everyone else was too drunk to be of much use. Even Marco had had one too many, he was lurching and weaving through the dark jungle, coming close to dropping his unconscious burden every few minutes.

With Tess effectively out of commission, it was the first time that Aya had been alone with Marco in several months. She didn’t know what to say to him—she never knew what to say to him at every beginning, he’d always been the one to break the ice ever since they’d met as college freshmen and he was still just the up-and-coming varsity basketball star who seemed to be everywhere Giselle was.

True to form, he spoke first. “God, we should ban Tess from drinking altogether.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Aya replied as they walked beneath the leafy, hulking trees.

“Fucking lightweight.” Marco shifted Tess in his arms, then glanced over at Aya. “How’ve you been? I feel like we never talk anymore.”

“Oh, so now you’re nice to me. When no one’s around to see it.” Maybe the alcohol had loosened her tongue as well.

He laughed. A warm, husky sound. “Come on, Sinaya, it’s all in good fun. I’ve missed you.”

Aya made a noncommittal noise in the back of her throat. Marco could be charming when he wanted to be, and she fell for it every time.

Upon arriving at the cabin, they put Tess to bed. “I think I’m done for the night, too,” Aya told Marco. She didn’t think she could go back to the beach and continue drinking rum cokes and pretending nothing was wrong.

He nodded. And then, when she went to her room, he followed her.

“We can’t,” Aya said. “Not again.”

But Marco drew her into a booze-scented embrace, pressing his lips to hers in a sloppy kiss that tasted like liquor and ashes, and she kissed him back because she’d been half in love with him ever since they were seventeen. She kissed him back because he was tall and handsome and there were times when he wanted her more than he wanted her thinner, prettier friend. She kissed him back because she was not a good person, and she was lonely, and the others didn’t like her, anyway, so she might as well give them a reason.

The door clicked shut and Aya and Marco kissed up against it. His hands dropped onto her shoulders, gently pushing down, and she knew what he wanted without him having to say a word. He’d complimented her before, said she gave better oral than Giselle, and it was a sordid, pathetic thing that Aya held to her heart like a triumph. She fell on her knees before him, shoved his beach shorts and his underwear down to his ankles, encircled the base of his erection with her fingers and the tip of it with her mouth.

She sucked him off as the generator outside her room whined into the humid jungle night. He leaned back against the door, gasping and shuddering, his fingers tangled in her hair.

And that was when she felt it.

The first tentacle wrapped loosely around her waist, the head of it slipping underneath the band of her leggings. Underneath the thin cotton of her underwear. There was a certain possessiveness to the way it nuzzled at her clit, and despite herself she moaned around the cock in her mouth.

“Shit,” Marco hissed. “You’re so bad, Aya.”

I really am, she thought distantly. He had no idea just how much. He assumed she was getting off on giving him a blowjob—it almost made her laugh. He couldn’t see the creature, and in all honesty she would never know if she was just imagining it. Just reaching for the echoes of her dreams.

The second tentacle wedged itself under her leggings from behind, curving down her backside, caressing the cheeks of her ass with its velvety touch, with that same possessiveness. She spread her thighs a little wider to grant the invisible appendages better access, the spot between her legs completely soaking through the gusset of her panties now, and then—

—both tentacles plunged in, one into her cunt, one into her ass, at the same time—

If Marco’s cock hadn’t been in her mouth, Aya would have screamed from both shock and mind-numbing pleasure. The tentacles fucked into her in an almost lazy rhythm, stretching her out completely. Her eyes fluttered shut and she started rocking her hips to meet their thrusts, and it was too much stimulation, she was going to—

The tentacle in her ass drove itself deeper in one smooth stroke, pushing her forward. The tip of Marco’s cock hit the back of her throat just as the tentacle in her cunt flicked against her G-spot—she gagged and she came, and then Marco was coming, too, with a muffled curse, his semen shooting down her gullet, the metallic, salt-laced taste of it flooding her tongue.

Through the haze of her aftershocks, Aya was only vaguely aware of the tentacles slipping out of her.

Don’t go, she wanted to tell them as she swallowed.

“Holy shit.” Marco peered down at her with shining brown eyes and a smug, crooked grin that she all of a sudden yearned to smack off of his face. “That was amazing.”

Aya stood up, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “You can leave now, if you want.”

“You sure?” He looked… relieved. He hadn’t even noticed that she’d also already orgasmed. “You’re the best, Aya.”

Then why won’t you be with me? she wished she could ask him, although she already knew the answer. It would be a scandal if he broke up with Giselle for one of their mutual friends. And, as far as physical appearances went, it would be a downgrade.

Aya locked the door after Marco left and she lay in bed without falling asleep. She heard the others coming back from the beach—shuffling footsteps, drowsy voices, slammed doors. She stared up at the ceiling until dawn began to break, then she showered and changed into fresh clothes, telling herself that she would go to sleep right after.

But she crept out of the cabin and made her way to the lighthouse instead.

⁠

—

 

The derelict wooden boards that comprised the floor of the widow’s walk creaked under Aya’s feet. There had been nothing of interest in the lantern room—just the dust-coated Fresnel lens mounted on a pedestal, eerie by nature of its disuse—and so she’d stepped out onto the balcony. The structure had been weathered by exposure to the elements and fifty years of neglect; if it gave way, she would plummet with nothing to break her fall save for the jagged rocks that rose up from the swirling waves below.

“You will never die here,” that vast, deep, ocean voice said from behind her. “I won’t allow it.”

“What are you, then?” Aya asked, staring at a horizon aglow with the pink and orange hues of the rising sun. “The—the master of this place, or whatever the fuck…” She trailed off, not really knowing where her question was going. Not really knowing what kind of answer she was expecting him to give.

There was a brief pause, as if the creature was considering his words. “I am the island,” he finally rumbled. “The island is me.”

She definitely should be freaking out. It was freaking her out that she wasn’t freaking out. “Are you the reason the villagers left?”

“They left because no one was meant to live here. Some places are for earth and water alone. This is one of them.”

Aya took another breath. She wasn’t going to turn around. This moment was as fragile as glass, and she knew that if she turned around and saw the thing from the drawing it would break. “What’s your name?”

“I don’t have one.” Another silence, punctuated by the ceaseless crashing of the ocean against the pure white shores. Then the creature added, in a tone that could almost be called gallant, “You may name me, if you desire.”

Strange how that made her crack a smile.

In the distance, a seabird took wing from a nest of verdant treetops. Aya’s gaze followed it as it sailed through the air, into the radiant place where the water met the sky. She wondered how it would feel to be so free.

“I can give that to you. Freedom. Paradise.” The wooden floorboards creaked, as if the thing behind her was moving closer. Cold, soft lips brushed against the shell of her ear. “Are you ready to come with me now?”

“I thought no one was meant to live here,” she whispered. “If I went with you, I’d have to stay, wouldn’t I?”

“You will be earth and water.” A hand that was large and felt so human curled at her waist. “And mine.”

“Why me, though?” God, she sounded so bitter. “There’s nothing special about me.”

He fell silent for a while, as if he didn’t understand her question. “Why not you?” he said at last. “Why does the sun rise in the east? Why does the moon call the tides? Why wouldn’t you be the one?”

Aya shook her head less firmly than she would have liked. “I can’t.”

“I’ll wait,” came his immediate reply. The hand that was at her waist and the lips that were at her ear faded away, like they’d never been there at all.

 

⁠—

 

The next few days passed slowly. Aya and her friends drank, smoked up, slept in, and explored the island. It turned out that El Llanto was all shoreline and steep jungle, so they mostly kept to the area around the cabin and the beaches. Aya was the only one who ever hiked up to the lighthouse during this time; the others had made some dumb hippie pact to eschew texting and social media, and she was glad that no one else would see that the boards over the entrance had come undone. She continued to dream of the cave and of the nameless creature that played her body like the finest instrument. She continued waking up to sheets drenched in saltwater.

Aya also noticed that her friends were getting bored. This was one of the longest holidays they’d ever been on as a group in years, and certainly the one with the least number of things to do. Other beaches had spas, jet skis, and bars; El Llanto had nothing but scenery, and Aya could tell that for everyone else it was starting to get old.

It had the opposite effect on her, though. For someone who’d never been a huge fan of the outdoors, she wasn’t missing the luxuries of civilization as much as she thought she would. Something about the island’s wildness soothed her soul. As her friends grew meaner with nowhere to redirect their energies to—their taunting of her increasing, their bickering with one another adopting a real vehemence—Aya took longer and longer walks by herself, discovering mangroves and tidal pools and breathtaking views of the Pacific. Each new find felt like a gift, wrapped in summer sun and salt-tinged breeze. There were times when she had the eerie sensation that she was being watched—like there were eyes peering out at her from amidst the undergrowth or from somewhere in the shallows—but even that was comforting, in its own way.

Could I live here? she found herself wondering more than once. And most of the time the answer was yes, and she didn’t know how that made her feel.

“You like it here?” a hopeful voice intruded on her solitude on Saturday morning, when that same question had once again flickered through her mind.

Aya rolled her eyes. She was sitting in the shallows of the mangrove forest, clad only in her white bikini. Here the branches offered shade from the hot sun while the muddy water lapped gently at her thighs, and her friends and their meanness were all the way on the other side of the island.

“Get out of my head,” she snapped at the creature. “Are you this annoying with the other girls, too? Or the boys?”

It was a sneaking suspicion that she hadn’t dared examine until now—the suspicion that maybe she wasn’t alone in experiencing this. That El Llanto was shrouding everybody else in its peculiarly seductive brand of dark magic. That she wasn’t one of a kind and never had been.

“I come to no one else but you, Sinaya,” he intoned. He sounded so warm, like the sunlight. “Other mortals may catch glimpses of me from time to time, but you are the first I have ever spoken to. The first I have ever held.” A stout, velvety tendril curled around her waist from behind. She looked down and it was as black as ink against her olive skin. “And you will be the last,” the creature promised.

How else could she respond to something like that but with a mollified sort of silence? What else could she do but arch her back and sigh when the tentacle around her waist snaked up to her chest, popping her breasts free from the cups of her bikini top, while another one slid between her legs? Aya closed her eyes and summer’s radiance beat against her shut lids as she undulated with the mellow tide, the sand like wet silk and her lover pulsating on her skin. Papery mangrove roots scratched at her back and every once in a while there was a flick of a fin along her ankle, or dragonfly wings rustling against her cheek, or some slimy, wriggly thing brushing past her arm, but they all added to this lushness, to this emerald green sensation. She could be a wild thing here. She could be debauched and unashamed.

Aya didn’t resist when a new set of tentacles lifted her up, tugging the crotch of her garment to the side, and sat her down on that long, thick cock that split her in two like it always did in her dreams. It was too big to be human; she was shocked and somehow inordinately proud of herself that she could take it so well, that whatever pain she may have felt was fleeting.

“It could always be like this,” soft lips whispered in her ear as tentacles swirled over her nipples and bounced her on the creature’s lap. “You will always have power here. I will always give you power over me.”

Yes, Aya thought in a daze, feeling him everywhere, feeling him all around her. Freedom. Paradise. Take me there, and let me stay.

It wasn’t long before she was crying out as the orgasm tore through her, whiting out the edges of the world in blazing pleasure.

When she came back to herself, she was alone in the shallows, a slight breeze ruffling the mangrove leaves over her head. She made her way through the jungle—she limped, more like it, still so stretched out, still so exquisitely used—and when she returned to the beach her friends were talking about setting up a grill for lunch.

How mundane it all was, she realized as the hours dragged on and she weathered more taunting. How wrapped up everyone was in their own head, sparing no thought for what else could be out there.

She woke up on Easter Sunday with a pounding headache, a result from having drunk too much the previous night. They were leaving tomorrow and had thus descended on their remaining alcohol supply with fervor, not wanting to cart full bottles back to the mainland. Aya’s dream had been an especially good one—the nameless creature’s face buried between her legs, his clever tongue making a mess of her while she took one tentacle in her mouth and the other in her ass as the dark waters of the cave gurgled and sloshed all around them—but the lingering glow was quick to fade, replaced by the splitting skull and sawdust mouth of what was undeniably the worst hangover she’d ever had since college.

The others were already flocked around the table in the dining area when Aya finally managed to stumble out of her room. She sat down between Casey and Julius, helping herself to the scrambled eggs, bacon, and rice that someone had somehow mustered the strength to cook. There was coffee as well, in abundance, and halfway through her second cup Aya felt vaguely human again.

That was when she noticed that Marco and Giselle weren’t at the table, and it wasn’t long afterwards that Giselle toddled out of their room, yawning and bleary-eyed; she blinked, and then frowned at them.

“Where’s Marco?”

It was because Aya was sitting right next to Julius that she noticed him exchange a look with Pat. It was the kind of furtive, mutually accusing look that could only be shared between people who were starting to realize that they might have done something wrong.

“He’s not in your room?” Casey asked.

“Obviously he’s not, I just came from there,” Giselle snapped. “The last time I saw him, he was dancing around the bonfire like an idiot. Tess and I left the beach at around one in the morning and I passed out right away.”

Aya had gone back to the cabin a little bit later than Giselle. She remembered stumbling through the woods with Casey, abandoning Pat, Marco, and Julius to their own devices.

Arriving at this realization at the same time Aya did, Casey turned to her boyfriend. “What happened after we left you guys on the beach? Where did you see Marco last?”

“We, uh…” Pat scratched at his stubble-flecked chin. “He kind of fell asleep, so…”

Giselle advanced, her eyes narrowed. “What the fuck did you do?”

“Calm down.” Julius rose to his feet, chair legs scraping against the floor. “We buried him in the sand. You know, as a prank. He probably just hasn’t woken up yet, dude was as drunk as a—”

Aya was already running out of the cabin, Giselle hot on her heels.

 

⁠—

 

Marco wasn’t on the beach when they got there. The six of them split up and scoured the entire shoreline on that side of the island, calling out his name to no avail. There was no response save for the roar of the waves, the whistling of the ocean wind, and the caws and cries of birds flying overhead.

Giselle was crying when they all met up again. “You sons of bitches,” she raved at Julius and Pat, tears sliding down her cheeks. “You just left him—”

Casey and Tess put their hands on each of Giselle’s shoulders, a wordless and futile attempt at consolation. Aya glared at the two men, her own hands on her hips.

“You really don’t remember where you put him?” she demanded. “Was it at least beyond the tidemark?”

“Hey, get off our case!” Pat was scared, and it was making him belligerent. “Julius and I were drunk, okay, we all were—”

“That’s a frat boy’s excuse!” Aya shouted. “You’re literally twenty-nine years old and you don’t even know if you had the common sense to leave your unconscious friend out of reach of high tide!”

Giselle burst into a fresh round of even louder sobs.

Pat narrowed his eyes at Aya like it was her fault. “You know what your problem is, Aya? You never shut up. It’s no wonder we can’t stand you. We only brought you along on this trip because Casey felt sorry—”

“Patrick!” his girlfriend hissed at him. His gaze darted to her, unrepentant, and all of a sudden Aya felt incredibly sorry for Casey. How painful it must be to have been with someone for so long and to be confronted, time and time again, with the fact that they didn’t respect you.

“It’s all right, Case,” Aya said levelly. “It’s good that it’s all finally out in the open. I don’t like you guys that much, either.” The others flinched—even Giselle, who had stopped blubbering and was now watching the exchange like a deer frozen in headlights. “So,” Aya continued, “this is what we’re going to do. Tess, you go back to the cabin and radio the Coast Guard. The rest of us will search the island. Maybe Marco woke up, wandered off, and got lost. He could be hurt somewhere.” She waited for them to nod, then turned to Pat once more. “And—Pat?”

“Yeah?” he grunted.

Aya stepped closer to him. Stepped into his space. He was taller than she was by a couple of inches but one wouldn’t have known it from the way he shrank back. It had been stupid of her to let this small man whittle away at her self-worth for over a decade. “If you ever speak to me like that again,” she said in a voice that was as hard as steel, “I’ll cut your balls off and make you wear them as a hat.”

 

⁠—

 

After Tess went back to the cabin, the rest of them separated to cover more ground. Aya was the one who hiked up to the lighthouse, spending a good thirty minutes or so trying to contact emergency services on her phone before giving up and braving the rickety widow’s walk once more. This time she stood on the portion of the platform that faced the island, careful not to put too much of her weight against the rails as she leaned over and desperately scanned the shores and rolling hills below for any hint of movement that could be Marco. She wondered how many before her had stood on structures like these, looking out, waiting, asking the sea or the earth for answers that neither could give.

But Marco had never been hers to wait for.

The smell of damp and salt rushed up her nose.

Aya didn’t turn around. She still wasn’t ready. Maybe she would be, soon, but not now. Not right this moment.

“Do you know what happened to him?” she asked.

“Yes,” the creature solemnly admitted. He then hesitated for far too long, and that was how she already knew. Even before he continued—”He was still asleep when high tide came.”

What Aya did next was stupid. She knew it was stupid while she was doing it, but she couldn’t stop herself. She ran over to the side of the platform that faced the ocean and she stared out at the endless blue Pacific through eyes blurred with tears. Her rational mind had shut off—had blanked over with sorrow. Maybe she would see Marco out there, clinging to something that had miraculously kept his head above water these past several hours. Maybe she’d see him swimming to shore—he was an athlete, he could manage it, surely—or maybe she’d see his corpse, floating on the surface, buffeted by the currents.

She didn’t know. She just wanted one last look.

The creature had followed her. She could feel his presence, near enough to touch if she were to turn around. “You could have done something,” she said bitterly. “You could have saved him.”

“I am the island,” the creature whispered. “I do not save. What happens here happens.” A tentacle crept forward, as black as ink, wiping the tears from Aya’s face. “But I am sorry that you are grieving.”

She batted at the appendage with a furious swipe of her hand. “Stay away from me!” she yelled, spinning on her heel to give the thing a piece of her mind.

But there was no one behind her. She saw only the dirty glass panels that enclosed the lantern room, surrounding a lamp that had gone out fifty years ago.

Aya stumbled down the winding steps, grabbing the drawing on the table in the living quarters on her way. The aged paper did not crumble like she was half-expecting it would. Upon exiting the lighthouse, she saw Casey and Giselle approaching, both covered in sweat and visibly exhausted.

“We couldn’t find him,” Casey announced. “Do you want to check around the mangroves—”

“Marco’s dead,” Aya blurted out. “He drowned.”

Giselle blinked. She looked frightened and confused—and so young. For a moment she could almost have been that girl in sociology class again, leaning over and asking Aya what exact shade of red she’d used on her nails. “How—how do you know that?” she asked, her voice quavering.

Aya was crying harder than she’d had in years. She couldn’t think straight anymore. There was a wind that had picked up, pushing the clouds over the summer sun and churning both the treetops and the waves; it was blowing away all of her restraint, too. “There’s a—there’s some kind of creature that’s here with us on the island. He’s been watching us this whole time. He watched Marco drown.”

“What are you talking about?” Giselle cried.

Aya turned to Casey. Appealing to her. “The thing you saw on the beach—this was him, right?” She held out the drawing, but it was Giselle who snatched it from her and examined it furiously. “He’s been talking to me. I’ve been dreaming about him,” Aya continued. “He said that Marco was swept out to sea—”

As Casey gaped at Aya in disbelief, Giselle suddenly bared her teeth, crumpling the paper in her hand. “What the fuck, Aya? Did you draw this?”

“What?” Aya blinked. “Why would I—”

“I don’t know—because you’re crazy!” Giselle’s words were a scream, torn loose from a ragged throat, muffled by the wind that was howling now, grasping at their hair and their clothes as daylight faded over El Llanto. “You’re crazy and depressed because you’re going nowhere with your life, and you’re the most fucked-up person I know who made it out of college alive, and you’re not as subtle as you think you are because I could tell you were in love with my boyfriend! I’ve known it since senior year!”

A heavy silence fell over the three women on the cliff. It was masked by the noises of an oncoming storm. It was masked by the blood pounding in Aya’s ears.

Giselle let go of the drawing and stomped down the peak. Casey shot one last glance at Aya—a glance that made it clear where her loyalties lay, even before she ran after Giselle.

Aya wasn’t surprised. No one ever picked her first, and she couldn’t really blame them. She watched the wind carry the drawing over the trees and then out of sight. She thought about how the creature had vanished when she turned around to face him.

I’m hallucinating. The stark realization settled over her like ice down her spine. I’ve been hallucinating ever since I got here. I took the salt and I took the air and I made up someone who loves me.

Her phone beeped, the sound so ludicrously normal given the circumstances. She fished the device out of the pocket of her shorts and read the new message.

Mr. Agoncillo had not been impressed by the tardiness of her response a few days ago. When she got back from vacation, he expected her to clear out her desk.

She was fired.

Aya walked over to the edge of the cliff. The tumultuous Pacific dashed against the rocks as a light spattering of rain began to fall upon the island, lightning streaking across the gray sky.

This isn’t what was supposed to happen, Aya thought. This isn’t what I meant to become.

She listened to the call of the void and hurled her phone into the ocean, turning away before she could see it vanish beneath the waves.

 

⁠—

 

It was ten in the evening. The storm had broken out in earnest over El Llanto, all downpour and fierce gale, lashing at the concrete facade of the cabin. It had put a stop to the group’s search and forced them indoors. Aya had locked herself in her room; the others were still trying to make contact with the unresponsive Coast Guard—a lost cause at this hour and in this weather and everyone knew that, but there was nothing else they could do to fill the empty span of time. Pat and Julius seemed like they were going into shock; in a way, Aya felt sorry for them. They would have to live with this until the end of their days.

The pump boat was coming for them at nine in the morning tomorrow. Once on the mainland, they would file a missing person’s report and the government would send out search parties. Aya wondered how long it was going to take before they closed the case; maybe Marco’s body would wash up somewhere, if not on this island then on some other. It wasn’t like she could tell the authorities what she’d told Giselle.

It wasn’t like she’d be there to tell them anything.

After seeing the light flick off through the crack under her door and hearing the others go to bed, Aya waited a few more minutes and then crept out into the living room. To her chagrin, she realized that she’d done this too early—the walk-in kitchen’s light was still on, and in its feeble glow Casey was pulling out one of the remnants of their alcohol stash from the fridge.

“Hey,” Casey said, a quiet greeting. “Want a beer?”

“No, thanks. I was just going to get a glass of water.”

“All right.” Casey took a long pull from her bottle, regarding Aya somberly. Finally, she said, “Do you remember our first beach trip back in freshman year, just us girls? It was during Holy Week, too, I think.”

Aya smiled faintly, so that she wouldn’t cry. “On the second night, we finished off five boxes of chocolate and a bottle of Jack Daniels. It was not a good combination.”

“It definitely wasn’t,” Casey agreed with a small laugh. “We went skinny dipping at, like, three in the morning. It was fucking cold.” She sipped at her beer again, then sighed. “I’ve just been thinking about that trip lately. It—I don’t know. I don’t know what changed.”

Aya shrugged. Whatever happens here happens, the creature that she was no longer sure was real or a delusion had said. Maybe everyone was an island and had to bow to the turn of the seasons, or to fate.

But that doesn’t mean, she decided with a rush of sudden fierceness, that we don’t get to save anybody else.

“Case,” Aya said, “I really, really hope that you’ll break up with Pat.”

“Yeah,” Casey startled her by saying. “I think I will. I think it’s been a long time coming, but especially after this…” She trailed off, then stepped closer, asking in a lower tone of voice, “What you were saying earlier—was it true? Is—is Marco really dead?”

Aya looked into the other woman’s eyes, and they were the eyes of someone who’d seen the creature from the drawing slithering over the beach. They were the eyes of someone who had, for a fleeting moment, glimpsed another world.

“I don’t know what’s true and what isn’t anymore.” Aya turned away and went through the motions of pouring herself a glass of water. “But tell Giselle I’m sorry.”

“I will,” Casey promised. “She’s sleeping now, but Tess and I are staying with her tonight. We can all talk in the morning, okay?”

“Okay. ‘Night.”

But Casey didn’t leave right away. She paused just outside Giselle’s room, her hand on the doorknob. Without turning to look at Aya, she said, “It was strange, wasn’t it, that the entrance to the lighthouse wasn’t sealed anymore—Giselle thinks you ripped the boards loose, but I don’t see how you could have.”

With that, she stole back into Giselle’s room. Aya put the glass of water in the sink without drinking it and she crossed the living room, slowly unlocking and opening the cabin’s front door. The worst of the rain was kept at bay by an awning but, beyond that, the deluge swept mercilessly through the air. The trees tossed and turned in a chill wind, illuminated every so often by splinters of white-hot lightning that were followed by deep peals of thunder.

Aya stared out into the labyrinth that was the jungle, her heart beating against the bones of her ribcage with the rhythmic certainty of the tides.

“You’re ready now, aren’t you?”

The voice was low in her ear. It was carried to her on the crests of the wind. It was in every rustling of the branches and in every rumble from the sky above. It was the island, it was the weeping, and maybe—just maybe—it could be home.

“Yes,” Aya murmured. “Wait for me.”

She stepped out into the wilderness, and it swallowed her whole.

 

⁠—

 

The cave looked exactly the way it did in her dreams, carved into the base of the same cliff where the lighthouse was perched. She could somehow see in these shadows, as if there were rays of moonlight filtering in through the storm, through unseen openings. The creature rose before her, his bare torso alabaster-pale in the gloom.

He could almost have been human. Thick hair the color of a raven’s wing fell in messy waves, framing a face of sharply chiseled features and piercing dark eyes that were softened by a pair of full, unexpectedly sensual lips. The membranous grooves in each side of his neck fluttered and pulsed in time with the rise and fall of his broad chest. He was all lean muscle and impossibly smooth skin before the lower half of his body tapered off into a mass of black tentacles, each one long and thick, the whole of them too many to count, some of them swirling lazily in the ankle-deep waters and others curling up the stone walls of the cave—all while he gazed down at her with an intent, burning hunger.

She nearly wept in relief when she saw him. Whether he was real or not, it didn’t matter anymore⁠—as long as he was with her at the very end. She didn’t know why she’d been so scared for so long. He was beautiful. Every part of him was beautiful.

“Sinaya.” The syllables rolled off of his tongue like the most sacred hymn. Perhaps it was true that things took on the shape of their names. She was named after a sea goddess, and perhaps this had always been her fate—to be earth and water, to be eternal, to be his.

The creature lumbered forward. Aya closed her eyes as he wrapped himself around her.