Pray for Darkness: Terror in the Green Inferno (24 page)

At some point in the night, they heard rustling by the raft. Holding the headlamp in his hand, Ben leveled it at the bank and was about to press the ON button when Ernesto grabbed his hand. Ben turned to him in the moonlight, and Ernesto shook his head, holding a finger to his lips to show that they did not want to reveal their hiding place.

On the sandbar, the humans readied their spears, all except Auggie, who continued to stare into the jungle as though he welcomed the end. The rustling continued for a few more minutes and then went away. But before it did, Ben thought he saw the shapes of several shadows—one of them the alpha—lingering just inside the canopy, though at this distance it was impossible to tell for sure.

Even after the rustling stopped, they remained on high alert for the next hour or more, afraid that the apparent abandonment of the shoreline was nothing but a well-planned ruse. But when the inhumans did not make an appearance after all that time, they began to relax. Setting his spear down in the sand, Ben reached over and held Brooke’s hand. Eyes glittering in the moonlight, he could see the curve of her smile, the high cheekbones, the slight dimple in her chin.

We’ll finish the raft in the morning,
Ben told himself.
A few more trees and we’ll be done.

As the moon and stars slid across the sky, they watched and waited.

Forty-nine

It was Brooke who made the grim discovery.

Auggie was gone.

Sometime during the night, after the others had succumbed to the day’s hard labor, Auggie had sneaked away under cover of darkness, taking his backpack and his spear with him. Waking the others, Brooke showed them the trail of his footprints, just visible in the moonlight. Footprints that ended at the water, leading off in the direction of the unfinished raft.

Now Ben was standing at the river’s edge, trying to decide his next move. His internal clock told him it was sometime after midnight though he had no idea if this was actually true. The moon was still full in the sky, and the darkness showed no sign of the approaching day. “We have to go find him,” he concluded aloud.

“Where would he go?” asked Brooke.

“Who knows?” Cooper said mournfully. “He’s lost it. He could be up there in the woods, tearing apart our raft, for all we know.”

“Ben?” Ernesto said, shining his light. “Your backpack…”

Ben hurried across the sandbar, and when he reached his backpack he saw it was unzipped, the pouch left wide open. Rummaging through it, he began to take inventory of its contents.

“Is anything missing?”

“I don’t think so,” Ben said, and when he lifted his hand, he was holding the three protein bars he had discovered in Auggie’s pack the day before.

“See?” Cooper said, pointing. “Auggie must’ve put those in there. I told you he was crazy.”

Dropping the protein bars back inside his pack, Ben raced down to the water’s edge.

“We have to wait until the sun comes up,” Brooke said, following him.

Ben looked from the dark shore to the purple sky and back again. “I can’t wait,” he said, his jaw flexing with a look of determination. He turned and saw his friends gathered behind them, eyes full of concern. Pressing the button on his headlamp, the bright LEDs cut through the darkness like a sword. Reaching down, he grabbed his spear from the sand. Before anyone could stop him, he took three long strides and dove into the moonlit river.

“Ben!” Brooke screamed, but he was already gone.

Dog-paddling through the water with the spear grasped in his hand, Ben kicked hard against the current. Soon he arrived at the clutch of reeds, and he stood, shivering and dripping, with his weapon held before him. Wading through the grassy shallows, he started up the muddy acclivity and into the clearing.

Brooke grabbed her spear. “I’m going after him,” she said.

Cooper was looking at her with an odd expression, mouth clamped shut, chin working back and forth as he ground his teeth against each other. He nodded his head.

“Brooke,” Ernesto pleaded quietly. “Don’t go.”

She looked at the two men and smiled sadly. “I have to.”

With that, she waded into the murky water and began to swim.

***

As Ben raced up the embankment, his headlamp found the impression of Auggie’s hiking boots in the mud. There was a vertical scrape where the boy must have slipped, a handprint where he had steadied himself, and then the prints continued up and over the rise. Rushing into the clearing, Ben wondered if he would find Auggie there, dismantling the raft as Cooper had predicted. But the raft was as they had left it, and Auggie was nowhere to be seen. Flicking the light back and forth across the jungle, Ben felt the fear of a lifetime welling up inside his chest. His friend was gone.

Shivering from the cold water, Brooke arrived a moment later, soon followed by Ernesto and Cooper.

“We have to go find him!” Ben urged.

“We don’t even know where to look,” Brooke said in a gentle, reasoning tone.

“He left us,” Cooper spat indignantly, and tossed his spear to the ground. “He abandoned us.”

Ben looked at him with disgust. “This is Auggie we’re talking about here. We’ve known him since we were kids. He’s our friend, remember? The three of us… Now tell me you’ll go with me, Coop.”

Cooper bowed his head and said nothing, overwhelmed by a sorrow too deep for words.

“Coop?”

Ben took several determined steps toward Cooper, and for a moment Brooke was sure that Ben was going to strike him. Ben stopped suddenly, as if he too realized what he was about to do. Breathing heavily, he whispered, “Say something, Coop.” There was an obvious edge to Ben’s voice, as though he were posing a dare—one that carried dire consequences.

“We should return to the sandbar,” Ernesto advised them, but no one seemed to hear him.

Cooper’s teeth clicked together as he shivered. Behind the tendrils of wet hair, his red-rimmed eyes stared off at a point somewhere beyond the clearing, unable to meet Ben’s gaze.

“Say something, Coop.” Ben clamped a hand down on Cooper’s shoulder and squeezed. Now when he spoke, his voice was much louder, practically a roar. “Say something, Cooper!”

Brooke made as if to step between them. “Ben, don’t do this…”

Cooper brought his head around slowly. There was something missing in his eyes, some vital thing that Ben could not articulate. “I—” He stopped, wetting lips that were cracked and bleeding. “I—”

In a flurry of movement, Ben lashed out at him, flinging him to the ground with a cry of rage. Cooper grunted in surprise, arms pinwheeling as he sailed through the air. He landed on his back in a palmetto bush, and the wind rushed out of him with a sigh. Ben advanced toward him. He had almost reached his intended target when Brooke stepped in front of him, holding her hands out in a calming gesture

“Ben, please. I know you’re upset. We all are. But Auggie’s gone. He left us here to fend for ourselves. But we’re still here, and we need you right now.”

Ben was breathing heavily through his nostrils, his expression sliding back and forth, alternating between anger and despair. For a fleeting moment, Brooke wondered if he intended to lash out at her as well. But then the cloud of anger seemed to evaporate all at once, his features slowly softening. Slowly, painfully, Cooper climbed out of the prickly bush. He felt tired and sick and still a bit dazed, and he could not shake the feeling that none of this was really happening.

“I’m sorry,” Ben said, and Cooper could tell by the strain in his voice that his friend was crying. “I’m sorry I hit you, man.”

Cooper smiled sadly, a dim reflection of that carefree expression of a few days hence. He had never seen Ben cry before, and the thought of it frightened him. “It’s okay,” he said softly. “Once we reach the research center, we’ll get a search party together and come back for him. Let’s just finish this goddamned raft, okay?”

Fifty

After walking for untold hours in the darkness, Auggie awoke in the middle of the jungle, frightened and alone. Shaking loose the chains of sleep, he heard the echoes of a distant cry—unrecognizable as human or animal. Sitting up, he waited for his eyes to adjust to the dark. For some reason, he thought perhaps he had heard a voice, but he quickly discounted this as fantasy, simply a remnant of his dream. The jungle throbbed around him, and now he thought he saw a dim light nearby. He started at the sight. Had Ben and the others come looking for him? No. He thought it unlikely that they would have noticed his absence so quickly. Anyway, would it really be so bad to rejoin the group, to at least regain some sense of safety? Auggie bristled at the thought. He’d made his decision, and now he was alone by choice. For better or worse, he was on his own.

As his eyes adjusted, he moved cautiously, though the leaves still crinkled beneath his hands and knees as he crawled toward the vague light that hovered just outside the burrow. Perhaps a minute passed before his eyes could make out the origin of the light. There were things there, just outside the entrance to the burrow, things that clung to the wide trunk of the towering Brazil nut tree. He inched closer to the trunk. At last he saw that these were some kind of mushrooms, which gave off an unearthly light of their own. Auggie smiled in quiet wonder. He had read about such things. Bioluminescence, it was called. Certain plants and algae around the world radiated their own cool light. In his pleasure, he reached out toward one of the mushrooms. Perhaps if he touched one of them, the light would rub off on his fingers, lending him the ghostly glow. Self-preservation made him pause with his fingers in midair. What if these magical fungi were poisonous? Was it possible that the poison could seep into his bloodstream, causing illness or death? His mind flicking back to his studies of poison-dart frogs, he thought it possible. One touch, and the frogs’ poison could permeate the flesh, causing convulsions, paralysis, even death.

At length Auggie withdrew his hand. He smiled to himself. The jungle had tried to trick him, and he had outsmarted it once again.

Dragging his backpack behind him, he crawled out of the burrow, careful not to disturb the glowing spores. Sitting on the ground, he pressed the button on the side of Ben’s wristwatch (
my wristwatch now
, he thought, with a twisted sense of pride), which he had recovered from the bushes the previous day. The little blue light came on, illuminating the numbers: it was 3:17 in the morning. The sun wouldn’t be up for another hour or so, but he was eager to get moving. Shrugging on his backpack, he stood and stretched and waited for his eyes to adjust to the gloom.

Small breezes stirred the leaves, and the jungle whispered, its myriad voices rising among the peepers and frogs, a susurration that soon took the rhythm of a chant. Then, just seconds before dawn, the whispers faded suddenly, replaced by an uneasy silence. The jungle became deathly still. Something was happening, some impending event that Auggie could not perceive. The jungle held its breath, as though keeping a secret. The animals and even the insects seemed to sense this momentous occasion, and they too became hushed. The stillness was unsettling. Auggie turned in a slow circle, and the only sound was the crunching of leaves beneath his feet. Suddenly feeling lightheaded and tired, he stopped.

He wasn’t sure if this was simply a figment of his imagination, but it felt as though he was being watched. He imagined that each bud, each leaf, each sprout would unfurl, and at its core would be an eyeball that observed him intently—millions, perhaps billions of eyes, watching him, studying him. Walls of eyes that peered at him as if to say,
We can see you! We know you! We’ve been expecting you!

When you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.

Auggie shivered at this aptly remembered quote, learned from some English class or another, which floated forward from the depths of his mind as though tucked away for just this one occasion.

Who wrote that? Was it Dante? Conrad? Wait, that’s not right. It was Nietzsche. Yeah, good old Friedrich.
And now Auggie was pretty sure it wasn’t
when
, but
if. IF you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you. What does it mean?

The jungle shimmered, whispering in a tongue he did not understand. The chorus of animals and insects returned in force, seeming to rejoice in this pre-dawn drama. All at once, the jungle came alive

Auggie felt as though he were standing in the cradle of creation.

And at that precise moment, Auggie
did
understand. He understood everything. At last his mind was able to articulate the thought that had, for so long, eluded him:

The jungle had a soul.

Fifty-one

Hobbling toward them, Cooper stopped as suddenly as if he had walked into an invisible wall. A look of total serenity passed over his mud-streaked face and his mouth popped open, a dark circle of surprise. A startled moan drifted out between his parted lips—
Hhaaaah!
—and his eyes rolled back in his head as if in ecstasy. But what started as a pleasant tingle soon became a scorching heat that set every nerve ablaze, making his entire body tremble with a sudden palsy. Then something that felt like a hot needle pierced his brain, and that’s when Cooper threw his head back to the sky and screamed.

“Ben!” Brooke cried shrilly.

Ben was already moving to help his friend when Ernesto grabbed him firmly by the arm. Startled, Ben jerked his head around in anger. Though his headlamp was almost dead, emitting only a dull, grayish glow, it was more than enough to see the mask of misery that was Ernesto’s face.

Ernesto shook his head sadly. “There is nothing you can do for to help him.”

Ben looked at him for a moment, mind grasping at the macabre implication of these words, and then turned back to his friend. Cooper’s head was bowed toward the ground as if in prayer, his long hair falling across his face in sweaty tendrils as he explored his abdomen with his fingers. “Oh—” he said in a curious whisper, and a dark stain blossomed between his legs as his bladder let go. Bile erupted from his open mouth, and, clutching his stomach, he crumpled to his knees in pain. The blood had already begun to cool inside his veins, stiffening his muscles beyond the point of function—rigor mortis for the living.

Pulling free of Ernesto’s grip, Ben raced across the clearing to help his friend. “Cooper?” he said, reaching out to touch his head. “You alright, man?” Looking down, he saw splashes of blood across the underbrush—so vivid in the dying light—and he realized at once that Cooper was definitely not alright. Some terrible voice in the back of his mind told him that Cooper would never be alright again.

Cooper’s head snapped up at the sound of Ben’s voice, and Ben snatched his hand back as though he’d been burned. “GET AWAY FROM ME!” he growled in a rusty voice that was not entirely his own. His face glistened with the scarlet horror, and his eyes were two white marbles behind the mat of filthy hair.

Ben took an unconscious step back, and then Brooke was grabbing at his shirt with both hands, trying to pull him away. “We can’t help him, Ben. There’s nothing we can do.”

Unable to meet her eyes, Ben shook his head in denial, not wanting to believe that he was powerless to save the last of his childhood friends.

Cooper tried to stand, but his muscles would not obey, and he sank back onto his knees in pain. With trembling hands, he lifted the front of his shirt. Things writhed beneath the surface between the muscle and the flesh, things that twisted and squirmed like eels trapped inside a net. Cooper lifted his head and looked at Ben, eyes full of pleading and a sort of dim acceptance of his fate. “It’s in me,” he hissed through bloodstained teeth. “I can feel it… it’s… it’s
pushing me away
!” Then he opened his mouth and howled as he felt the cold sentience of the intruder twisting deeper into his brain.

A wave of convulsions swept over him, forcing his hands into claws and the cords of his neck to stand out with a sudden paralysis. There was an excruciating stab inside his head, like a probing needle, as the invader wormed its way through his brain and into the bundle of nerves behind his eyes. Cooper blinked in dismay as a shadow crept into his field of vision. When the pain subsided, he looked up through the shadow and saw two pale blobs hovering over him. They were leaning closer, two horrifying alien visages, muttering in some primitive tongue. The presence saw the two humans (
!!Ben and Brooke!!
), and Cooper could sense its revulsion, a nauseous feeling somewhere in his brain.

Some part of Cooper that was still intact recognized the shapeless images as Brooke and Ben, and there was someone else in the background too, someone whose name he could no longer recall. In the throes of terror, he realized that this was how the presence must see them: grotesque, fleshy shells used for a singular purpose, and then discarded. Something swam forward from the cloudy depths of his mind. Reached out and touched him, and it felt distant and horrifying. An implanted instinct to strike out, to tear flesh, to spread to another being’s body and make it kindred.

Cringing, Ben watched as a hideous bump appeared on the center of Cooper’s forehead, pushing outward from beneath the flesh, like an animal trying to claw its way out of a bag. Tiny black spots were blooming on his eyes, spreading rapidly across the whites as the parasite took full possession.

“Ben?”

“I’m here,” said the now-anonymous figure to Cooper’s right. The presence inside Cooper’s head did not recognize the human words, and Ben’s voice was simply a sound, a vocalization no different than that of an animal or insect. Only the small part of Cooper that remained could grasp the voice through the pain, could hold it, could focus on it and understand it. Thoughts formed, were scattered, rendered incoherent by the presence. Words and images swam through what was left of his mind, all of them garbled, dashed apart into unrecognizable and unintelligible fragments. In the maelstrom, one word flashed briefly through Cooper’s mind—
!!!INSANE!!!
— and then it was gone, corrupted by the living darkness. Even the word itself seemed alien to him, and its meaning escaped him. He tried to speak the word out loud but it flew away from him as quickly as it had come.

Then Cooper saw a glimpse of something—or rather, the presence saw a glimpse of something, and Cooper’s mind was dragged along for the ride. Within the group-think of the inhumans, Cooper could see some other part of the jungle where they lurked, could feel their cold, collective thoughts and the unified purpose of their existence. Then a sudden noise snapped Cooper back to the here and now.

The two humans were arguing.

Who are they?
Cooper tried but could not remember; he only knew that he had to tell them this vital new information. “I know,” murmured Cooper. He wasn’t sure if what he was saying made an iota of sense, but he pressed on. “I know what it wants. It wants to use us.” He winced as the presence shifted, encroaching on some other region of his brain to steal another part of him. “It wants to use us. To spread. It can’t
think
, not like we do. It just
is
. Like those trees that walk to move closer to that thing in the sky…” Closing his eyes, he could see the image in his mind—a glowing circle in the heavens, a circle that gave off warmth and light—and though he searched and searched, he could not find the proper word to match the image. “That thing in the sky,” he repeated. “But it doesn’t want the thing in the sky. It wants darkness. It
needs
darkness, cold.”

Brooke had positioned herself beside Ben, both to protect him as well as console him. Now she was the one who needed steadying. Head swimming, she put an arm around Ben’s waist and he held her close. “Cooper…” she sobbed.

Cooper paused at the sound of the feminine voice. There was something about the tone of it, some strange, soothing quality that attracted him.
Cooper? Cooper? Coo? Per?
The word meant nothing, something, nothing; he could not remember what it meant, nor could he recognize the designation of his own given name. All he knew was that there was something about the tone of the girl’s voice that drew him
(It)
, something about the female species that gave him
(It)
pause. Cooper’s eyelids flung open and what Brooke saw made her cry out in fear. His eyes were gone, replaced by two black orbs that ballooned from their sockets as if ready to burst. Strangely, the shrillness of her cry brought on a moment of clarity, and all at once Cooper could remember the name of the thing in the sky. Suddenly, for better or worse, he remembered almost everything—and he understood all too well what was happening to him.

He turned his head to the taller of the two blurred figures and recognized this as Ben, his best friend since grade school, the boy he’d always thought of as his older brother even though they were the same age. “The sun! Ben, listen! You can’t let it spread,” Cooper said. “You can’t let it get out! You can’t let it—”

Ben felt something bump his fingers. Glancing down, he saw that Ernesto had placed the machete in his hand. “No,” Ben protested weakly. “We can…” but his voice trailed off as he groped for words. “We can get him away from here. We can get him help,” he blurted. Yes, the idea was crazy, but there had to be some other way, some other solution. Ben wasn’t sure for whose benefit, Cooper’s or his own, but he felt a compulsion to repeat himself. He only hoped the words sounded far more convincing the second time around: “We can get help.”

There was another jolt of pain, and Cooper saw the living world begin to fade before his very eyes. He was drowning. He could visualize it: a raggedy, mop-haired boy slipping beneath the dark waves. Even worse, he could feel it, that overwhelming sense of helplessness, resignation, the inevitability of the end. His body was now little more than a marionette, a hollow shell devoid of memory, devoid of personality, devoid of the very soul that once resided there. As his conscious mind slipped away, Cooper cried out against the all-consuming darkness. “Ben!”

“I’m right here.”

“Ben?”

Ben dropped the machete and took his friend’s filthy face in his hands. “I’m right here, Coop.”

But Cooper was no longer there to answer him. There was a muffled crunch as the long-haired boy’s skull broke apart. A crack appeared just below his hairline, carving a bloody seam down his forehead, over the bridge of his nose, all the way to the tip of his chin. Rivulets of wine-red blood began to trickle from the rift, dribbling over his nose and across his mouth, forming tiny bubbles along his lips. Ben pulled back just as Cooper’s head broke open and a milky liquid oozed out, instantly calcifying to form a kind of hardened shell, like an exoskeleton. Cooper’s body gave one final shudder as the invader swallowed up the last bit of his mind. Then, lifting its head slightly, it began to speak.

“Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Bennnn…” Cooper’s final word became a mindless incantation as the presence adjusted to the strange mechanics of its host, manipulating the vocal cords by rote.

Snatching up his weapon, Ben staggered backward. There was a flash of silver as he raised the machete above his head. Arms trembling, he hesitated, envisioning the downward swing, the far-reaching echo of the blade after it came crashing down upon his friend’s head. Sensing someone beside him, Ben glanced to his side, certain it must be Brooke come to console him, but when he turned it was Ernesto’s compassionate face he saw.

Ernesto stepped up beside him, lips slightly parted, his face etched in shadow. He nodded encouragingly. “You must do this,” he whispered.

Drifting out of Cooper’s throat, the vocal manipulation continued with the sound of a record caught in a groove: “Ben. Ben. Ben. Bennnnnn. Bennnnn. Ennnnnn. Nnnnnnnn.”

Now the words were no longer words at all but a strangled, guttural sound that came from deep within the throat of the thing that was no longer Cooper. Its mouth yawned wider and wider until the muscles ripped loose and the lower jaw sagged against its chest in a deranged grin.

“You must do this,” repeated Ernesto. “It is your final gift for to set him free.”

The inhuman looked up at Ben with its mangled face—a face that still held some of Cooper’s features, now twisted and distorted into a haunting parody of the attractive young man whose body it had stolen—and its filmy eyes studied him with detached interest, as though detecting his hesitation. From within the occupied regions of the brain, something peered out through the bulbous eyes, some malevolent presence too terrible to comprehend. Ben could sense it growing stronger and he had to lower his head; he knew if he looked into those soulless eyes for one more second it would drive him mad. A new sound bubbled out of the gaping maw, a deep vibrato, like someone trying to sing underwater.

It’s laughing
, Ben thought. Then:
It’s laughing at my
pain
.

Ben bit back a scream as the remaining chunks of Cooper’s scalp began to break away, falling to the forest floor in a snarl of bloody hair. Two hornlike stroma punched up through the gore, glistening with the whitish goo of brain matter. Things were spilling out of the opening, tiny squirming things that looked like maggots. They spread across his face and then stopped, seeming to die in the air. As they died, they hardened into something that resembled bone. When all was done, the thing that used to be Cooper looked to be a thousand years old, its head encased in a calcified shell, withered as a mummy.

“Cooper, if you can hear me, I’m sorry.” Ben trembled, choking back tears. “I’m so… sorry.”

The inhuman stumbled and fell to one knee as it tried to learn the mechanics of its new host.

Ben gripped the machete in both hands, raising it high above his head. Now the inhuman was rising slowly on muscles that creaked and bones that popped. Mind racing, heart thumping, Ben searched the upturned face for something recognizable, some sign of the familiar boy from his childhood. But the hostile takeover of Cooper’s body had rendered him an empty shell—the obsidian eyes and the fragmented skull with its twisted horns and leering smile held no trace of the handsome, good-natured friend he once knew.

Ben was still considering these things when he caught a sudden flurry of movement out of the corner of his eye. Something streaked past him, nearly bowling him over. As he regained his balance, Ben turned and saw Brooke racing forward with her spear.

Ernesto reached for her, but he was too late.

The sharpened point punched through the creature’s mouth and emerged, glistening, on the other side of its skull. Pushing forward with all her weight, Brooke forced the body backwards and staked it to the ground. The obsidian eyes glared up at them with a cold, alien hatred as the impaled body twitched and writhed like an insect on a pin. The bulbous eyes popped with a hiss, leaking black vitreous fluid across the bonelike crust of its face. The creature’s feet continued to dance for a few more seconds. Then, at last, it was still.