Pray for Darkness: Terror in the Green Inferno (13 page)

Finally extricating himself from the mire, Auggie trotted up the little slope. Slippery with leaves, he took care to force the edges of his hiking shoes into the soft earth in order to gain better traction. Arriving at the top, he smiled to himself, elated by his small victory. Face flushing with pride, he felt the tension leave his shoulders. He felt lighter now, the fear having fled in the wake of his discovery and in his return to the safety of the group. He was excited, eager for them to share in his happiness. At the top of the rise, he inhaled deeply, letting the humid air fill his lungs as he composed himself. As the air hissed out between his teeth, he started back toward the bridge.

He ducked under a branch, dodged another, and stepped over a fallen tree.

“Hey, did you guys see—”

Pushing a thicket of ferns aside, he emerged in the sketchy clearing that flanked the bridge.

There was no one there.

Walking to the other side of the bridge, he stopped and listened. Straining his ears, he heard the gurgle of water, the throbbing of insects, and now something else… something that sounded like a low, rolling drumbeat.

“Hey, guys?”

Auggie stood panting in the heat. He was certain he had seen… something. Or someone. Several someones, actually. Returning to the memory, he had a recollection of seeing at least three or four people out of the corner of his eye, standing a little ways upstream. Just standing there, watching him. As though waiting for him. The identity of the individual figures had been unclear and he had initially chalked this up to his lousy eyesight, though in reality it had more to do with the fact that his only real focus at the moment had involved not falling in the mud and embarrassing himself.

The drumroll continued. A mosquito whined in his ear and he absentmindedly waved it away. There were many thin branches, a few of which were choked with vines, but no fallen trees or stumps—nothing, in other words, that would even remotely resemble the arms, legs, and heads of human beings.

Just shadows
, Auggie reassured himself. Still, in spite of this perfectly logical dismissal, he was overwhelmed by the sudden urge to run. A light breeze rippled the leaves and the trees swayed rhythmically. The leaves whispered their incomprehensible riddle. Again he felt on the verge of discovering the answer to some profound secret; yes, some ancient and magnificent secret the jungle did not want him to discover.

Run along now, Auggie. Run along.

Glancing quickly over his shoulder, he realized that the source of the drumroll was actually the sound of his own pulse as fear made the blood blaze through his veins: it was the distant thudding of a heartbeat inside his head.

Moving at a steady clip, he continued down the path in search of the others.

Twenty-two

After clearing away the vines, fallen branches, and other vegetation that had since taken over the defunct Brazil nut camp, the five Americans set up the tents while their Peruvian guides chopped wood, dug a fire pit, and scraped the moss from an old wooden table—the only relic left behind from some long-ago harvest—before arranging their provisions for later use. When the
turistas
had finished stowing away their own gear, Ernesto had taken them hiking while Felix, Felipe, and Oscar stayed behind to finish organizing the camp. Later, the hikers had returned to the much-welcomed smell of mango rice with chicken cooking over the open fire.

“This is so cool,” Cooper said in a faraway voice. “It’s like we’re really a part of the jungle now.”

Felix and the two brothers had withdrawn to find sleep inside their tent, leaving Ernesto to entertain the five Americans. Presently they were gathered round the fire pit, and their faces glowed cheerfully as they watched the flames dance inside the ring of stones. The fire created an ever-changing circle of light that gradually decreased in intensity before terminating abruptly in shadow; a darkness so palpable it seemed almost a living thing.

They had never seen so black a night.

Nor had they ever felt so content just to be alive.

An exquisite cacophony of insects, frogs, and birds enveloped them, and their senses were aroused by the delicate aroma of nocturnal flowers, as sensuous as any perfume.

Gazing into the undulating flames, Ernesto thought of home. It had been nearly a month since he’d last seen his lovely Carmen and his precious Liana, and he had one more week of guiding
turistas
before his next sojourn. Hopefully, when their vacation was over, they would be
muy generosos
and tip him well. Then, perhaps, he could bring a gift home for both his wife and child. Nothing too expensive, of course. There was that yellow dress that Carmen had mentioned… maybe a used bicycle for Liana; she was at that age where children wanted everything, and she had been asking for a bicycle for almost a year now. One could never tell with foreigners though. Sometimes the wealthiest ones did not tip at all. Although they did not appear to be especially wealthy, these young ones seemed a generous bunch…

A loud slap shattered the tranquility. “Alright,” said Auggie, feverishly scratching at the back of his neck, “who has the bug spray?”

Ben tossed him the tube of DEET. “You’re still getting bitten?”

“Yeah,” Auggie said, trying but failing to conceal his displeasure. He slapped his arm. “It’s these damned sand flies. They keep crawling up my shirt.”

Ernesto gestured with his hands. “Mmm. Try it, moving closer to the fire, Aug-gie.”

Nodding at the suggestion, Auggie squirted the repellent on his hands and applied it on his forearms and the back of his neck. After, he slipped the tube into his breast pocket for safekeeping. Scooting on his behind, he moved a little closer to the crackling flames.

Earlier that day, Ernesto had taught them how a certain termite nest could be used as a natural insect repellent. He had used the machete to remove the nest—roughly the size of a basketball—from the tree to which it had been attached and had brought it back to camp for just this occasion. Now a thin feather of smoke rose into the air as he tossed another chunk of the nest into the flames.

“Is good for to keep the insects away.”

But as the fire died down and the insects swarmed in, Auggie decided to call it a night.

“I’m going to sleep,” he announced.

Ben and Brooke murmured in agreement.

“Hey, Coop, you coming?”

Cooper was whispering something to Janie, who was smiling from ear to ear. “We’re going to stay up a little bit longer,” Cooper said, draping an arm around the brunette’s shoulders.

The others soon dispersed.

“Too bad we couldn’t see the stars tonight,” Ben said with a touch of nostalgia. The light from his headlamp bobbed along the ground as he walked Brooke to the entrance of her tent.

Brooke turned to him with a smile. “The stars are always shining,” she said simply, “even when you can’t see them.”

Something about these words resonated with him, and he was struck silent. Standing on her toes, she gave him a kiss on the mouth. Taking her face in his hands, Ben held her there, savoring her soft lips, savoring the moment, savoring the night. Reluctantly, after a very long time, she eased out of his arms.

“See you in the morning.”

As he watched her unzip her tent and slip inside, he stood there for a few minutes, smiling to himself. Still reflecting on the deeper meaning of her words, Ben shuffled off to his tent. Once there, he paused a moment to appreciate his surroundings, turning in a slow circle, trying to commit every detail to memory—the jungle, the stars, the slow kiss goodnight. Clicking off his headlamp, he turned and headed into the womblike darkness of the tent, eager for sleep and whatever new and exciting experiences tomorrow would bring.

Twenty-three

Auggie and Ben are going to freak the fuck out!

Cooper was walking alone down the circuitous terra firme trail, admiring the trees and soaking up the sounds of the jungle when this sudden thought filled him with pride. In his hand, dangling at the end of a small length of twine, was the source of this pride: a plump, speckled fish, roughly eight inches in length from nose to tail and nearly just as wide. Filtering down through the canopy, the afternoon sun sparkled along the flank of the silvery fish, throwing needles of light in every direction and accentuating the reddish-orange coloring of its underbelly. The barbed hook was still embedded in the side of its mouth, and the plumpness of the fish pulled the line taut, causing its jaws to remain open in a look of permanent shock. Inside, the mouth was packed with tiny triangular teeth, menacing even in death.

A fucking piranha!
Cooper thought excitedly. The memories came in a flurry, like shards of a dream: the first sharp tug of the line. The bending of the rod, which was really little more than a wooden switch Felipe had carved from a sapling. The fierce, albeit brief, struggle that followed. Then, at last, the landing: the wet shine of its body, the final frantic struggle against the line as it tasted the poison air, the revelation of the snapping jaws and pointed teeth. As the piranha lay dying on the floor of the
peki-peki
, he had felt sorry for the little fish. In the end, once removed from its natural element, even the fearsome piranha had stood no chance at all. Ordinarily this would have troubled Cooper, but Felix had made a series of cutting and shaking gestures—like filleting and then frying something in a pan—that assured him the fish would not go to waste that evening, and Cooper became intrigued by the prospect of living off the land as the natives did.

I wonder what it’ll taste like. Chicken, probably. Everything always seems to taste like chicken.
If Felix’s smiling face and belly-rubbing were any indication, then piranhas were known for being yummy.
I’ll have to ask Auggie to take some pictures before we cook it.
Of course Auggie would want to take pictures; Auggie took pictures of practically everything. And Ben—he’d definitely want to make a recording for posterity. Maybe Cooper would even do one of those documentary-style videos like what’s his name, recounting the tale of how he’d caught the ferocious beast, all the while dramatizing the ordeal. Cooper smiled to himself.
Yeah, that’d be funny. People back home will trip their shit when they see it.

Boots moving soundlessly across the damp foliage, Cooper sauntered down the path as casually as if he were strolling down the sidewalk of his own hometown, occasionally stopping to admire a particularly interesting tree or insect. On several occasions, he spotted those unusual trees with the phallic roots and was happy to discover that he could identify them as Walking Trees. Once, he even thought he recognized a bullet ant crawling around on a mossy log, though it crossed his mind that it could have just been a different species entirely. Without Ernesto there to confirm it, it was difficult to say for sure; everything, even the ants, seemed to grow bigger in the jungle.

The Professor would know
, thought Cooper. Auggie was like a sponge. By now, Cooper was pretty sure that Auggie’s head was ready to explode from all the information he’d absorbed on this trip.

For some reason, his friends had decided not to accompany him on the fishing trip led by Felix and Felipe, instead opting to stay behind at the campsite. Cooper wondered what they were doing. In all likelihood, Ernesto would have taken them for a short hike or something. Probably they had also collected firewood in preparation for the evening. Whatever they were doing, they were going to be jealous as hell when they saw his lucky catch.

He was still beaming when he arrived at the stream that marked the halfway point to the camp. Finally, a landmark! So he was still on the path. That was good. For a fleeting moment he had suspected he was lost, but not wanting to ruin his happy mood, he’d convinced himself not to worry over it, that his feet would remember the way. Still, he was happy to see a familiar sight, if only to set his mind at ease. Up and over the bridge, he paused at the halfway point to take in the view. The stream shimmered in the crimson light, passing under the bridge, and then traveling a little ways in the opposite direction before being obscured by the underbrush and disappearing into parts unknown.

A noisy bee lit upon a nearby flower, a pretty white lily that sprouted from the side of a tree. Cooper followed its dizzying progress, marveling at its ungainly body, its miraculous ability to fly. A splash of color drew his attention farther downstream where another flower, this one tall and gloriously pink, grew straight up from a mossy stump. Cooper smiled happily. In these moments before dark, as the birdsong softened to a reverential tone and the crickets and frogs became a deafening choir, he felt a sudden, spiritual connection to all living things. Utterly absorbed in the sights and sounds, shirt soaked with perspiration and the heat pressing in around him, Cooper forgot where he was and what he was doing. After a time, he forgot
who
he was. A sense of warmth and contentment came over him as he retreated somewhere deep within himself. In the moments that followed, he stopped living and started
being
.

Perhaps ten minutes passed while he stood there, mesmerized by the peaceful scenery. It could have been much longer, for time was a river that flowed away from him. He struggled to touch it, to grasp it, but the more he tried, the more it seemed to escape him, slipping effortlessly through his fingers.

Eventually, his musings became the very abstraction of thought, full of images and sounds that seemed to have no common thread, and the urgency of the hour was soon forgotten.

Then, as though waking up from a dream, he remembered who he was and what he was doing there. As his senses returned, he was somewhat startled to find himself still standing in that same place on the bridge, a dead fish dangling from the string in his hand. The white lily fluttered emptily; the buzzing bee was gone. Darkness crept across the sky and the sun was a dying ember. While he was lost somewhere in the ether, evening had come upon him.

Totally Zen,
thought Cooper, although his fascination was cooled by the touch of fear.

He held the piranha up to his face, and its dead eyes stared at him without interest. “Time to go, little dude. The others will be wondering where we are.”

Walking briskly down the path, he wondered why Felix and Felipe had not yet caught up with him. They had dawdled at the
peki-peki
, apparently to finish stowing away the fishing gear, and in his restlessness he had wandered down the path without them, assuming they would catch up. Considering how long he had lingered, they should have met up with him by now.
Maybe
, thought Cooper,
they’d gone off to smoke a joint or something.
This brought a flickering vision of the two native Peruvians, the stout river boat driver and his towering assistant, sitting in the middle of the jungle getting stoned. Would they speak in Spanish? Yes, of course they would. What would they say? Something in Spanish, probably. He chuckled at the image of two stoned Peruvians conversing in their native tongue.

Still visualizing this, Cooper did not notice the company of shadows that stalked beneath the trees.

Night was coming quickly.