by The Behrg
Only the flowing water made any noise in answer.
“Please,” Dugan said, voice cracking. “Heal her.”
The Shaman shook his head.
“You can do this — I know you can do this! Just tell me what you want!”
“I am sorry,” the native said.
“Don’t you understand? I will do anything. Anything!”
“Dugan,” Kendall said, but Dugan silenced him with a raised fist.
“My life, my soul, what?”
“It is too late,” the Shaman said.
“No.” Dugan wiped at his nose. “I don’t believe that. She told me — Faye told me — that you want … an end to your life.”
The Shaman met Dugan’s eyes.
“I can do that. Release you from … whatever is happening. If that’s what you want. Please.”
The Shaman looked away, just a wizened old man, incapable of meeting Dugan’s request. Or any request. And suddenly Dugan knew what he had to do.
“You can’t, can you?” He rushed forward, taking hold of the Shaman’s spindly legs, then started dragging him back toward Kendall and Faye. “But the other one can. I’ve been petitioning the wrong person.”
The Shaman slapped at the water and ground with his hands in an attempt to keep his head above water.
“Let him out — the one destroying the Glimmers. The one who should be in control. He can do this.” Dugan yanked the man back harder, forcing his head back underwater. “He can do anything.”
Kendall watched with consternation as Dugan approached.
“I don’t need you anymore, old man. Your role in this is finished, Takushkansh’kan!”
Dugan let go of the Shaman’s legs, positioning him next to Kendall and Faye’s body, then raised him up out of the water. The native couldn’t keep his feet without leaning against Dugan.
“You’ve fought long enough,” Dugan said. The Shaman’s head lolled back, in the crook of Dugan’s arm. “You don’t need to fight any longer.”
The Shaman suddenly lunged, grabbing hold of Oso by the throat with one outstretched arm. Dugan turned with the man still in his arms, but the Shaman’s grip was like iron. “Mani’la’hokan,” he said, then released his hand, settling back into Dugan’s hold.
Oso’s mouth hung open. He dropped to his knees in the water, burying his head in his hands.
“This is all wrong,” Kendall said softly. “I don’t want any part of this.” He started to rise, holding Faye out to Dugan, but Dugan placed a boot against his shoulder, driving him back down.
“This is what we came for.”
“It’s what you came for. Not me. Not the rest of us.”
A green mist began to rise off the Shaman’s body, spilling from his pores, his mouth, his nostrils. Dugan wondered, for the first time, if he wasn’t making a mistake.
“The water,” Kendall said.
At their feet, or more accurately at the Shaman’s feet, the water in the stream parted, breaking and arcing around them. It had begun.
“Do you know what you ask?”
The words weren’t spoken in English, yet Dugan understood them perfectly. They also hadn’t been spoken. The Shaman’s mouth had yet to move, his head still limp in Dugan’s arms.
“Yes, I know what I ask.” Dugan concentrated on keeping his breathing even, his voice steady. He was Inktomi, and he needed whatever force this was to understand he too commanded respect.
“Your offer is acceptable,” the Shaman / force said, in that deep penetrating voice.
His offer.
I will do anything. Anything!
In his arms, the Shaman’s face seemed to pulse. It was like looking at two images that had been digitally stitched together. In one of those images he smiled cruelly. In the other, he was screaming.
The Shaman rose, stepping out from Dugan’s protective grasp. He didn’t bother to even look at Dugan, treating him as if he were a fly on a wall. A pest he had to placate. Instead, he knelt before Faye’s body, the water below him fleeing so that his knee rested on dry ground.
“What is it you want?” Dugan’s voice felt hollow, a child trying to remain confident in the face of a scolding parent.
“Free my people. They no longer need remain hidden. Once I am gone.”
[Dead]
“You will tell them. Make them see.”
“Yes,” Dugan said. “I promise.”
“And for this, you would have me … heal her.”
Dugan sensed another meaning behind the word “heal,” though he couldn’t understand what it was. Or if he was meant to know.
“Yes,” he breathed.
Oso looked up at Dugan with haunted eyes.
“It is done,” the Shaman / force said.
Dugan suddenly wanted to take it back, all of it — to tell this being to go to hell; there would be no deal. But somehow he knew it was everlastingly too late.
The Shaman brought his hands forward, cupping Faye’s face and turning her neck back and forth. Her head moved like some inanimate doll. Then the Shaman lowered his face to hers, parting her lips with a finger. A green mist began to pour from his mouth, falling into hers. He was vomiting life back into her.
This is wrong. This is all wrong.
Faye’s back began to arch in Kendall’s arms. The gash on her face melted away, her broken legs stretching and inflating. And still the Shaman continued with his deluge of spiritual puke, that energy rushing through Faye’s corpse. Her body returned to a state of perfection, or at least an undamaged and healthy state, her skin carrying a soft glow, wounds restitched without even the need for scarring. Even her tattoos disappeared, melting from her skin.
The Shaman finally stopped, rising back to his feet. But beyond the removal of her visible wounds, Dugan hadn’t noticed any change. She still wasn’t breathing.
The Shaman finally turned his gaze on Dugan, and Dugan knew why Kendall had tears rolling down his cheeks, why Oso had collapsed to his knees. They were in the presence of a god. Next to him, they were nothing.
“I will unravel what is done. If you fail to deliver your promise.” The being’s mouth never moved.
“Any … thing,” Dugan said, knowing, in this moment, he was giving up more than his soul.
“She will be weak. For a time. But she is whole.”
The Shaman took a step back, motioning toward Faye’s body. Her chest moved up and down with a steady rhythm, color sinking back into her cheeks.
“Holy shit,” Kendall said.
Faye opened her eyes.
Verse XLI.
“Come!”
Chupa batted a large leaf frond that was curled up at the edges away from his face. It slapped back into place, striking the whiny American in the head. Grey freaked, brushing both his arms at his face and body in case it had been more than a leaf.
A few times it had been.
“Can we slow the pace a bit?” Grey asked. The dim glow of his flashlight didn’t even reach the ground.
Chupa didn’t bother answering. The grey landscape, as seen through his thermal goggles, was filled with dense foliage that showed the clear demarcations of where the jeep had passed. Bent and broken saplings, fallen branches, and brush that had been trampled down. They absolutely could not slow the pace ‘a bit.’
He wondered why the priest hadn’t driven back toward town? Unless the old coot had lost his way. With his luck, the priest would drive the jeep straight into a cenote.
“Come,” he shouted, winding his way around a patch of thorny brush he knew Grey would end up walking through.
A few seconds later, Grey cried out. “Awgh!”
Chupa heard the briars ripping at Grey’s clothing and flesh. Ordinarily, it would have caused him to smile. But despite the fact that he could see, he felt the darkness pressing in around him. If he didn’t recover the jeep in time to meet up with Dugan and the rest of the men, he’d probably wish that darkness had swallowed him whole.
The GPS coordinator ha
d activated just prior to his encounter with the priest and this American, which meant Dugan had used the tranq dart. It also meant they were moving toward an exit. An exit they’d be relying on Chupa to meet them at.
He cursed beneath his breath; for all he knew, he was already too late.
“Why do you keep saying that?” Grey asked.
“I said nothing.”
“You muttered it, under your breath. Moo-koo? Something like that.”
“They’re the mukus,” Chupa said, motioning along the trail they followed.
“But what does it mean?”
“It’s like imbecile but worse. Someone without any reason in their head.”
“So, really, we’re the mukus. I mean, Father Shumway and Josue are the ones that came up with a plan and got away.”
Chupa stopped abruptly, turning to face Grey who didn’t notice until he almost ran into him. “They made a mistake. Not me. I don’t make mistakes.”
“Yeah, okay.” Grey’s flashlight moved from Chupa’s face to the rifle in his hand. The one pointed at Grey.
“You don’t understand because you are muku too, so let me spell it out for you. Anyone who crosses me is not right in their head. Because I will find them and make them pay. Always. So they must be muku to do what they’ve done. Now get that light out of my face.”
He swung at Grey’s hand, catching him off guard and striking the man’s wrist. The flashlight launched into the air, Grey losing his grip on it, and landed somewhere in the brush.
“Come,” Chupa ordered, already leaving Grey behind.
To the white boy’s credit, he only hesitated a moment before tromping onward with tentative steps, his arms outstretched before him. He understood the consequences should he not keep up. On his own, he would never make it out of this jungle alive.
“Just, don’t stop telling me where you are. Yeah? Chupa?”
“Come!”
They continued moving through the jungle, Grey following Chupa’s voice and the sound of his movements. Chupa lost count of the number of times Grey fell. Growing tired of barking orders, Chupa decided to converse with the man who, despite everything, stood back up after each fall.
“Did you come for the girl?”
“To Venezuela? No, I — it was a job.”
“Not to Venezuela; to here. The jungle. The darkness. Following a child.”
“It was just as dark in the church.” Something must have snapped back at Grey; a root, or straggling branch, as he went down hard behind Chupa. So much noise. Grey stood, after his fall, brushing at his clothing. His arms and face bore deep gouges, blood trickling from the many ragged scratches.
“Over here,” Chupa said. Grey turned in his direction, following.
“I guess, in a way, I’m here for her,” he finally said. “Not, you know, romantically or anything, but … I owe her.”
“You owe no one but yourself. If you think you are doing something for someone else you are the worst kind of liar. One that believes his own bullshit.”
“I don’t know. How did you get down here? Mixed up with her father?”
Chupa purposely tromped on a few bushes, making enough noise for Grey to follow. “Some things you are better not to know.”
After a quarter mile they came to a clearing where trees had been scraped from the ground. The withered and dried branches covering every square inch of the scarred land looked like a sea of bones. A few thin saplings had sprouted, growing out of the remains of their fallen ancestors. Pygmies wallowing in a boneyard of giants.
Before Chupa caught the heat signature of a man, he heard the crack of a rifle firing. The air just left of his head wavered with the vibrations of the shot that passed.
“Throw it down!”
Chupa followed the sound of the voice, finding the thin splotch of heat against the grey backdrop. He was a good hundred meters away, nestled partially behind a large tree trunk.
“I can see you as well as you can see me. But you’re already in my sights.”
“Father Shumway?” Grey asked.
“Your partner there knows who I really am which is why he’ll believe me when I say the next shot won’t miss. Now throw it down!”
Chupa tossed his rifle to the left, near a grove of brush he could dive into, should the need arise. Not only had Remmy stolen their vehicle, but all of the cargo within, including an arsenal meant to take out Gutierrez and his men. “What do you want, old man?”
“It’s not what I want. If it were, I’d be long gone and you two would be out here wandering a very long time.”
“Give me the jeep and I will let you and the boy live.”
Grey glanced toward him as if he were crazy.
“The boy, he’s … sick,” Remmy shouted back. “This Shaman … he can heal him?”
“Only if Dugan brings him out alive,” Chupa answered. “Which is why I need the jeep.”
“Leave the gun, and if you have any others, get rid of them now. I won’t hesitate to shoot if I see you reaching for a weapon.”
So I won’t reach, Chupa thought. “We’re coming down.”
They trudged downhill toward the patch of forest Remmy hid within. Chupa could make out the shadows of the jeep between the layers of trees.
“What’s wrong with Josue?” Grey asked as they drew nearer.
Remmy seemed hesitant to answer. “He’s … hearing things. Voices. Since seeing the light. It’s … it’s getting worse.”
“Those voices led us to you,” Grey said.
“Yes, I know. And now they’re … well, they’re directing us to wait for you. And go back for the others.”
“And you’re listening.”
“He thinks … he thinks God is speaking to him.”
“What if He is?” Grey asked.
Chupa smiled, knowing Grey couldn’t see the look of disdain across Remmy’s face. The old priest had a set of the goggles strapped atop his own head, one of the pairs the others had left behind. His rifle was squared tightly on his body, though Chupa believed the priest’s injured arm in the sling was actually his dominant. Oh, the possibilities.
“Grey, search this man. From behind, so that if I have to fire you’re less likely to get in the way.”
“I don’t have any other guns. They’re all in the jeep,” Chupa said. “But I have a knife.”
“Show Grey where it is and let him remove it.”
Chupa raised the right cuff of his pant leg, motioning for Grey to take the thin blade sheathed within his boot. Grey bumped awkwardly into Chupa.
“He can’t see a damn thing, probably cut his own fingers off.”
“So give him your goggles. Then we’ll all have less to worry about, won’t we?” Remmy said. “And if you’re wondering whether I’ll pull this trigger, Josue says we don’t need you to get to Dugan. Now give Grey the goggles.”
“I don’t believe you would go to rescue him, like you say you would,” Chupa said.
“I don’t care what you believe.”
“But you believe Josue,” Grey interjected. “Don’t you, Father?”
“Did you believe him when he said he could find me in the dark?”
“Honestly? No, not really.”
“Yet you came.” Remmy glanced back at the Jeep. “Likewise, I feel … compelled to believe. I don’t fully understand it myself. Any of this; the light, the darkness, this … Shaman? It’s all a bit … fantastical, for my tastes. If I weren’t here living it, I’d say we’d all gone mad. But Josue, he insists we go back for Dugan and this Shaman, and the only thing I agree with, is that going back to the village won’t stop what’s happened.”
“Or what might happen next,” Grey said.
Remmy nodded, apparently forgetting that only Chupa could see the movement. Throughout the priest’s speech, Chupa had edged forward, almost imperceptibly. A few more inches, and he’d be able to take the old man out.
“Somehow the boy’s connected, I fear, to everything that’s happening. Stop!
Right there,” Remmy said, sliding the barrel of the rifle towards Chupa. “One more movement, and it will be your last.”
Chupa couldn’t keep the smile from his face. He had never backed down from a challenge at Russian roulette, and he could feel the chamber spinning in his head. One in six. One in eight. One in twelve. His chances continued to improve. He prepared to launch toward the priest in a crouched lunge when another being of light stepped between the two of them.
The child. Josue. His heat signature glowing through the thermal goggles. He raised one hand out toward both Chupa and Remmy, as if separating boys from a fight on a playground.
“We need you,” Josue said. “To drive. We must hurry.”
“He’s a trained killer. What’s to stop him from turning on us?” Remmy asked the boy.
“He is wrong about how many bullets are in the chamber. If he tries, his odds will be less than fifty, fifty. Much less.”
Chupa almost gagged. The boy hadn’t just read his mind, he had read his intentions, his thought process. He felt like a sharp drug was pulsing through his veins, that repulsive yet sweet sensation, both carrying him away and simultaneously making him want to vomit.
“I don’t understand,” Remmy said.
“It’s okay. He does,” Josue said. “No one needs to know that we stole your jeep. But we need to leave. Now.”
Compelled to believe.
Chupa reached down, removing the blade from his boot cuff. Despite the desire to use it, to thrust it into the old priest, he held it out, pressing it into Grey’s hand. He had always been a patient killer. “What are we waiting for?”
Verse XLII.
Carefully Dugan draped Faye over his shoulder. He felt her breaths, in and out; her heart beating. They were the only things that eased his mind — she was as close to unconscious as if she were still drugged.
Or dead.
She will be weak. For a time.
He remembered swimming in and out of consciousness after his own miraculous recovery. Brought back from death’s very edge.
But Faye had tumbled over that edge. She had been gone; dead.