Slowly emerging from the comfort of the dream, he found himself on the ground, staring up at the patchwork of foliage with no sense of time or place. The sunshine penetrated the forest at an angle, and as his eyes adjusted to the waking world, he saw the light glinting off the blonde streaks in Brooke’s hair. She must have rolled over in her sleep, and he must have pulled her closer, for her back was now pressed against him. Still sound asleep, and Ben was glad he had not disturbed her. Judging by the position of the sun, it was just after daybreak, which meant that he’d slept all through the night. Careful not to wake the girl, he sat up and looked around. Cooper and Auggie were a few feet away, and the evenness of their breathing suggested they too were sleeping, but Ernesto was nowhere to be seen.
Alarmed by the notion that their trusty guide was not there, Ben sat up fully and turned his head, finally spotting Ernesto outside the nest. Weird, he thought. I wonder why I dreamt of the old house. How long ago was it that Mom and Dad sold it? It must have been what, five or six years ago? Shortly after he’d graduated from high school, in any case. Strange. Why would I dream of the old house now? Then the answer came to him as quickly as the question: Because he had never felt as safe as he had as a young boy, growing up in the old house on Baker’s Lane, where his second-floor bedroom overlooked the woods out back and his parents’ room was just down the hall, and if he stuck his head out the window and craned his neck to the left, he could just see Cooper’s backyard with its chain-link fence and in-ground pool…
As Ben extricated himself from the nest, he felt a painful longing to return to his dream world, to experience the comfort and safety of his childhood, to go downstairs and eat breakfast with his parents, to taste the bacon and eggs, to chase them down with a cold glass of orange juice… Even if they weren’t real, these imagined indulgences seemed the very height of opulence out here in the jungle.
It must be one of life’s little jokes, Ben reflected sadly, how we take everything, even life itself, for granted. We waste our childhoods wishing for what we don’t have, longing for the future, dreaming of ways to speed the time so we can hurry up and see the world. And in our later years, we’d give anything just to slow things down and go back to what we once had.
As was his way, Ernesto was standing slightly apart from the others, gazing calmly at the jungle. Dwarfed by the chaos of the underbrush and the elephantine trees, he seemed not to move at all, looking very much like a lost child trying to find his way out of the woods. By the subtle context of his movements, it was obvious that he was looking for something, but what?
When Ben was certain that no one was watching, he crept out of the nest and walked over to him. Ernesto saw the muscular boy out of the corner of his eye but did not acknowledge him. Out of the four remaining Americans, Ben seemed to him to be the most… solid. There was something about Ben, some deeper perception of the world around him, that made Ernesto suspect that the boy could sense his unease.
They stood in silence for a while, and then Ben advanced an idea that had been troubling him for some time. “We’re being followed,” he said, surprised at the matter-of-fact tone of his own voice. Casting a sideways glance, he saw that the others were still lounging beneath the serpentine roots. Better to let them rest. As though hearing Ben’s thoughts, Cooper rolled over onto his side, legs twitching, hands clawing at the empty air. Janie’s abduction had broken something in him, some fundamental part of him, and even in his sleep he seemed to be struggling against some unseen foe.
The small man continued to study the jungle. After what seemed like a very long time, he nodded. “Yes.”
So Ernesto already knew about the presence. Ben was not at all surprised by this revelation. The diminutive Peruvian seemed to have an almost supernatural connection to the rainforest and its creatures. He was able to interpret the stillness and what the rustle of each twig meant; he could see, with ease, what the others could not; his ears were attuned to sounds they could not perceive.
Ben shifted uneasily. “What are we going to do?”
Ernesto turned to look at him, expressionless as always. “First, we make it the weapons.” He made a cutting motion with his two index fingers, scraping one against the other. “Make it the spears for to attack. Then keep on walking for the research center, uh-huh. Maybe two, three day. Must be moving, always moving.”
The rustle of leaves caught their attention, and they turned to see Brooke crawling out from the pocket beneath the tree. Her eyes widened questioningly and Ben motioned for her to join them.
“What’s happening?” she asked, hugging herself. Small leaves were tangled in her hair and one side of her face—the side she had been sleeping on—was newly streaked with dirt. “Is everything… okay?”
Ernesto hesitated deliberately, allowing Ben to explain in his own words their dire situation. Brooke listened carefully, biting her lip as she considered what he told her.
When Ben had finished, he licked his thumb and cleaned the dirt from Brooke’s cheek. She smiled at him wearily, but the smile quickly vanished.
“There’s something else,” she said reluctantly, looking back and forth between the two men. “Something I’ve been wondering about. How did they find us so quickly?”
Ben looked at Ernesto, who briefly looked away. “We think they spotted our campfire.”
“Sure,” Brooke was nodding to herself, “but they must have been tracking us all day. You know how big this jungle is; they couldn’t have just found us by accident. They must have been following us ever since we left Fel—since we left the other camp. As much as I hate to say it, I think we should only travel at night. Whoever’s out there—they won’t expect that. It’s too easy for them to follow us while we’re roaming around in the daylight. And no more fires at night. We can’t take the chance of leading them to us again…” She hugged herself, shuddering at the memory of Janie’s screams.
Ernesto’s face grew pinched as he considered the idea. “Yes,” he replied at last. “We can find the safety place for to hide during the day, and at night we will walk with the shadows. For as you say, we can better use dark for to hide.”
“So we’ll stay here until nightfall?” asked Ben. “That’s not a bad idea. Auggie should be ready to go by then.”
Ernesto nodded. “Yes, we should rest. Oscar will watch over us. For now, I too am going to rest. For sleep—and for to think. We will take turns for the guard. Then we will leave when the darkness comes.”
The three of them walked back to the Ceiba tree together, Ernesto settling into his own little pocket while Ben and Brooke returned to theirs.
Auggie saw them coming and quickly shut his eyes. He had only caught bits and pieces of their secret gathering, and he did not want them to know he had been eavesdropping. Something about the clandestine nature of their meeting angered him. Why hadn’t they consulted him? Or Cooper? Who were they to make all the decisions? I’m just as important as the rest of them—no, more important. It’s always Professor this, Professor that… They all know I’m the smart one. If anything, I should be the brains of this operation, not them.
Soon the others fell into a heavy silence. Asleep, he thought. They’re all asleep. He opened his eyes, ran his tongue across his lips and tasted salt. He was sweating profusely, and the heat of the day sat upon his face like a mask.
He was not sure when he noticed the web; he could have been looking at it all along, but it wasn’t until the sunlight found the silver filaments that he noticed the beetle that was caught near the spiral center. The beetle’s legs worked uselessly, so entangled it could barely move. With a sense of fascination, Auggie fell asleep watching the web, waiting for the spider to come and check its trap.
Thirty-seven
It was just before dawn when they happened upon the monkey.
The hours of darkness had blurred together, becoming a continuous moment in time that stretched on and on into oblivion. Only when the sun began to rise did the darkness relinquish its long embrace
. And in those strange hours that filled the space between night and day, as the golden light filtered down through the canopy, illuminating little puffs of fog that drifted up from the soggy ground, hope seemed closer at hand than ever before.
The jungle stirred around them.
Birds began to flit amongst the branches. From somewhere in the distance, something cried out like a frustrated child and then fell into a deep and brooding silence. It had been ages since anyone had spoken, and they jumped at the sound of Auggie’s voice.
“What the hell’s that?”
Dangling from the bottom of a low-hanging branch, perhaps twenty feet above the ground, the wiry spider monkey was a furry pendulum that swayed to and fro in the dusty light. Moving cautiously, the imaginary path brought the humans nearer to the little creature, but the monkey did not scurry away, as was expected. At first, the americanos interpreted this as a sign of friendliness and were faintly amused. That any wild creature would allow them to get this close was something of a novelty. Then the smell hit them—the eye-watering sting of decay—and their amusement soured as quickly as their stomachs. Inching closer, they saw how the brown corpse was at the center of a swirling universe of flies. The incessant drone of the insects obliterated all other sounds; it had an almost soothing quality, a grim lullaby for the dead.
Walking several steps ahead of the group, Ernesto raised his hand and the others stopped obediently. When he was certain he would not be followed, Ernesto continued on until he was almost beneath the dangling creature. Lifting one hand to his brow, he shaded his eyes against the arrows of light. The monkey’s mouth was wide open, its teeth firmly locked around the underside of the bough, its spindly arms and long tail hanging limply. Ernesto frowned; there was something about the monkey’s skull that troubled him. After a few seconds, he raised his binoculars for a closer look. At first, all he saw was a knot of flies, but then the monkey’s face leapt into view. The eyes were empty sockets, the lips peeled back in a frozen snarl. Adjusting the focus wheel, Ernesto zoomed in closer, this time noticing a jagged line that split the tiny skull from crown to nape, like a zipper. A whitish substance had oozed out of the crack and had hardened around the little primate’s head, forming bulbous protrusions that resembled cauliflower.
“Ernesto.”
Oscar had gone on ahead and was standing in the middle of a small clearing, his head tilted all the way back toward the canopy. He was muttering softly—something that sounded like a prayer. Without thinking, he raised his hand to cross himself, wincing at the grinding pain that shot up and down his forearm. He had momentarily forgotten about the broken bone; a mistake he would not make twice.
As Ernesto approached him, Oscar gestured toward something on the ground, something the others could not quite see; whatever it was, it seemed to be the source of his distress. His voice bubbled up and down in his excitement while Ernesto listened. When Oscar had seemingly exhausted himself, Ernesto began to respond in a subdued voice, but before he could finish, Oscar interrupted him. Shaking his enormous, boxy head from side to side, Oscar’s voice rose to a near-shout as he pointed his good arm toward the canopy.
The Americans had arrived and were watching the two men with keen interest. Conscious of their otherness in the presence of the native guides, they had stopped a respectful distance away to let them hash out whatever it was they seemed to be arguing about. Now their collective eyes followed the angle of Oscar’s raised arm and they turned their faces to the sky. High above them, scores of monkeys festooned the trees—perhaps fifty in all—their black silhouettes swaying lifelessly in the yellow shafts of light. Similar to the first monkey, they too hung by their jaws, arms dangling by their sides and tails flicking in the breeze. Also similar to the first monkey, they were all undeniably dead.
Brooke’s eyes began to fill with tears. Somehow, the sight of the monkey graveyard seemed more profane to her than anything she had witnessed these past few days. Whatever had happened to the monkeys was no accident; it had a ritualistic quality to it that made it all the more horrific. Not wanting to see anymore, she turned away. That’s when she noticed the brown lump by Oscar’s feet. In death, one of the monkeys had lost its grip and now lay on the ground as though napping. Moving closer, she saw that this was not the case. The monkey had not fallen, for its teeth were still clamped around the branch in a death-grip. Perhaps only an inch or two in diameter, the end of the branch gleamed as white as a fractured bone. So the branch must have broken away from the tree and had fallen to the ground with the monkey still attached to it. The monkey’s skull, normally not much bigger than a cat’s, had swelled to at least twice its normal size, and its eyes had burst, spilling a viscous black jelly down its misshapen face.
“Oh, Jesus,” Cooper said.
“Poachers?” Brooke wondered aloud. “Some kind of poison trap, maybe?”
Ernesto blinked sadly at the monkey. He shook his head.
Ben stepped up beside him. “Have you ever seen anything like this?”
A breeze rattled the treetops. Overhead, the thin corpses danced in a grotesque semblance of life.
Ernesto sifted through his memories, trying to grasp at anything that could help explain the unusual manner in which the primates had died. But nothing he could remember, nothing he’d been told, nothing he’d been taught, brought him any closer to an answer. “Do not touch this,” he said at last, gazing down at the fragile body with a mixture of pity and disgust. When he looked up again, his eyes were glassy and wet. “Do not touch any of these. Stay clear of the monkeys.”
“This isn’t natural,” Auggie muttered. “How did—”
“Let us be going now,” Ernesto interrupted. He spared one more glance at the monkey graveyard. “There is nothing here but death.”
Thirty-eight
Pushing on through the night, they drank water from vines to slake their endless thirst and foraged for Sachamani blossoms and fruit to appease their nagging hunger. Sometime later, the sky opened and the rains came. An eerie hush fell over the jungle as creatures big and small retreated to their secret hideaways. Only the six nocturnal humans continued to roam, for even as they flirted with starvation and delirium, they knew their only hope of survival was predicated on movement. Little breezes stirred beneath the canopy, shaking the foliage and flinging gusts of rain in every direction. Water pooled in the low-lying areas, and the soil, naturally spongy even during this, the dry season, soon became a kind of sludge; a jelly-like mud that threatened to suck the boots off their feet. With this latest hazard, their progress—already impeded by the dense mats of underbrush—slowed to a near-crawl.
Lost in thought, Brooke was still walking on autopilot when a hand suddenly clamped over her mouth and pulled her down to the soggy ground. She dropped her spear and flailed wildly, attempting to counteract gravity. Instinct told her to kick and claw and scream, but her assailant had anticipated this response—his other hand snaked around her, thin but strong; pinning hers uselessly against her chest. She could feel the tight cords of his muscles as he held her fast, rendering her helpless.
After a moment, the panic dissipated and she allowed her body to go limp. Sensing her complacency, he relaxed his hold on her, but the hand that covered her mouth remained. It was small and wet and smelled vaguely of the earth.
“Don’t move.”
Ernesto’s voice was barely a whisper, his mouth so close she could feel the stir of his breath against her cheek. Breath that smelled acidic and coppery, like blood. The smell of fear, she thought. Ernesto knew the jungle better than any of them, and it unnerved her to think that he of all people was afraid of something—afraid of anything at all, for that matter. She sat without moving, straining her ears to listen but hearing little beyond the beating of her own heart.
Wait—
Something was moving through the underbrush. She had not noticed it before, would not have noticed it at all were it not for Ernesto and his extraordinary senses. Whatever was out there moved wit
h such calculated patience that she had at first mistaken it for the sound of raindrops plinking down through the foliage. It was only after the thin arms hastily forced her to crouch on the wet ground that she could differentiate the rhythm of the footsteps from the white noise of the rain.
One by one, the others came to a clumsy halt and hunkered down beside her. One of the boys pressed against her, seeking her warmth. Judging by the weight and slender musculature of the body, she was certain it was Cooper. Yes, Cooper. She remembered how he and Janie had fooled around at the bar
(in a different life)
on their first night at the Amazonia Lodge, and the memory touched her heart with an icy finger. She couldn’t really say how she knew it was him. The boys were more or less the same size, each one different in appearance and personality, but their frames were otherwise indistinguishable in the darkness. Even so, she felt fairly certain it was Cooper pressing against her right now, and she would not have minded his warmth were it not for the fact that he was shivering all over—or trembling, she reasoned, he could be trembling—so violently that it occurred to her, in a brief moment of panic, that he might be experiencing some kind of seizure. Thankfully, the tremors soon abated, and she could feel the rise and fall of his chest as his lungs labored against the soupy air.
Where’s Ben? Brooke knew it was probably just wishful thinking, but she thought she could just make out his silhouette in the darkness, crouching a few yards away: the well-defined shape of his shaved head, the aristocratic nose, and strong, square jaw. She even imagined she could see the flash of his ocean-blue eyes as they reflected a sliver of moonlight. Eyes that were at once intelligent, wise, and full of compassion. It was impossible to think of anything bad while looking into those eyes.
Pray for Darkness: Terror in the Green Inferno Page 18