Pray for Darkness: Terror in the Green Inferno

by James Michael Rice

  Ben thought he had never seen anything so touching in his entire life. It reminded him of when they were kids, all those long ago Halloweens when they would gather at Ben’s house before heading out into the chill October air to go trick-or-treating. In that simple, golden era of their childhood, aeons before they would set foot within the cursed jungle, Ben, Auggie, and Cooper would help each other assemble their costumes, dabbing the special effects makeup and fake blood on one another’s faces in order to complete the astonishing transformation from boys to monsters. Later they would return to Ben’s house to take stock of their plunder, dumping their jack-o’-lanterns on the floor in a flood of color; snack-sized versions of Mallo Cups, Reese’s, Kit Kats, and candy corn, their joy instantly elevated by the rare appearance of a full-size Hershey bar. It was all so innocent; it was all so simple. But now they lived in a world where there were no treats, and the only tricks were tricks of the mind. A world where every night was Halloween, and the monsters were all too real.

  “Are you okay, Coop?” Brooke asked, crouching down beside him.

  “I’m so c-c-cold,” he stuttered.

  Pulling the torn-up poncho from her ever-shrinking backpack, Brooke gently placed it over Cooper’s chest and shoulders. “Th-thanks,” he said weakly.

  “No problem.”

  “Coop?” Ben asked. “Do you want anything?”

  Still shivering, Cooper looked at him and chuckled. “Yeah. I’ll t-take a real bed p-please. N-no, f-f-fuck that, I want a Tempur-Pedic.”

  “Adjustable or regular?”

  “Adju-ju-justable,” Cooper said. “And s-some f-food. M-maybe Ch-Ch-Chinese. F-f-fuckin’ crab rangoons, m-man.”

  Ben smiled sadly. “Tempur-Pedic and some Chinese food: got it. Anything else?”

  Cooper looked at him for a long time. “I ju-just w-wanna g-go h-home, man.”

  Ben knelt down beside him and patted his shoulder. “You will, man. We all will. And when we do, the crab rangoons are on me.” Ben looked up at Auggie and Brooke. “What do you say, guys? You want to go out for some Chinese when we get back? My treat?”

  Auggie nodded so enthusiastically it looked as though his neck might break. “Yeah, that sounds great. We can drink a few of those what-do-ya-call-’ems—scorpion bowls?—and make a night of it.”

  “That sounds perfect,” Brooke said, choking back tears. “We’ll all get drunk, pig out, and sing some karaoke.”

  “I d-didn’t know you could s-sing.”

  “I can’t,” Brooke replied with a strained laugh. “I can’t sing for shit. I totally suck. But what I lack in talent, I make up for in enthusiasm. But just in case, we’ll all get drunk first. Then you might actually think I’m pretty good.”

  “Now that,” Ben chimed in, “sounds like an excellent plan.”

  Smiling serenely, Cooper closed his eyes, his breathing already falling into the steady rhythm of sleep.

  “We’ll be back in a minute, Coop,” Brooke said softly, but he had already gone to wherever people go when they dream. Giving Auggie and Ben a disquieting look, she gestured for them to follow her to a place just a few yards away. When they were out of hearing distance of Cooper, she turned to them with her arms folded tightly across her chest.

  “What is it?” Ben asked in a hushed voice.

  Brooke looked away for a long time. When she looked back at them, her face was tight with a grim expression. “Those things,” she said, and she did not need to elaborate, for the two boys knew precisely which things she meant. “Those things,” she continued, “seem to be infected or something. Do you remember Felix’s bite mark?”

  Both boys nodded. Though it already seemed like a memory from another age, they could not forget the ghastly oozing pustule that had overtaken the riverboat driver’s forearm when he returned from his ill-fated fishing trip.

  “I think that’s how they become that way, from some kind of infection.”

  Ben was quiet for a moment as he considered this. “When I was a kid, there was this big old raccoon that wandered into our neighborhood one summer. It looked dirty and confused, and it tried to bite one of my neighbors as she was getting out of her car. The cops showed up a little while later, and they took one look at the thing and put a bullet in its head. They said it probably had rabies, and that there was nothing they could do for it. I remember thinking that same thing about Felipe: that he was acting like a rabid animal. Do you think it could be something like that? Something like rabies?”

  Brooke shook her head doubtfully. “I’m not sure. I keep thinking about those monkeys we found, the way they were hanging. It looked as though they just latched onto those branches and hung there until they died. Almost like… like they had done it on purpose. Like they had wanted to kill themselves. I know this sounds weird, but there was something about them that seemed vaguely familiar, like maybe I read about something like that once, only I can’t remember what or when.”

  “Let’s assume you’re right,” Auggie said. “Let’s assume it’s some kind of infection. Felix and Felipe were exposed to it, and then they turned. But we were exposed to Felix and Felipe… and we’re all fine, right?”

  Again, Brooke shook her head. “It’s hard to say. We don’t know how it spreads. Maybe Felix and Felipe had direct contact with it.”

  “What are you saying? That it’s some kind of parasite?”

  “I don’t know.” Brooke took a deep breath. “But here’s the thing: malaria is caused by a parasite that is transmitted by blood. Now I don’t know exactly what this infection is; I know it’s not malaria. But what if the Malarone is protecting us from becoming infected, or at least helping to slow it down?”

  “Shit,” Ben murmured, turning to Auggie with a look of concern. “Do you still have the pills?”

  Auggie couldn’t bring himself to meet Ben’s eyes. “They’re gone, man. They turned to mush after we fell into the swamp.”

  “Fuck.”

  “The locals don’t take Malarone,” Brooke said. “They drink the tea.”

  “Maybe Ernesto’s tea will help,” Auggie added hopefully.

  “A lot of good it did for Felix and Felipe,” Ben muttered bitterly.

  Brooke looked back at the place where Cooper was still sleeping soundly, his mud-streaked face poking up from the shredded poncho. “Right now,” she murmured, “it’s all we have.”

  Forty-four

  Upon returning from the jungle, Ernesto lit a small fire and set about the task of preparing his tea. Grinding up several strips of bark and what appeared to be a chunk of vine, he poured the resulting brown powder into a tin cup, added some river water, and placed the concoction over the flames. In minutes the water began to boil over and, moving the cup aside, he doused the flames with a handful of dirt. When the water settled down, he used his sleeve to carry the steaming cup to the place where Cooper was sleeping, and the others tagged along to watch him administer his remedy.

  Ben was watching him with interest. “Will this help him get better?”

  “Yes.”

  Ben leaned over and peered into Ernesto’s cup. Inside was a frothy liquid that looked like rusty water. “What is that?” he asked.

  “La Medicina,” Ernesto replied, his voice floating out in a reverent whisper. Lifting the cup above his head with both hands, he began to pray. When the prayer was complete, he brought the cup over to the Ceiba tree and crouched beside the sleeping boy. “Coo-per? Coo-per, wake up.”

  Cooper’s eyelids twitched, as though he were struggling to keep from waking. Ernesto held the pungent tea under his nose, and his eyelids fluttered open. “Mmm?” he said.

  “Coo-per, I’d like for you to drink this.”

  Still dozing, Cooper nodded absently and opened his mouth. Holding the back of Cooper’s head with one hand, Ernesto raised the cup to his mouth with the other. Cooper’s lips groped for the rim, and as the first splash of liquid touched his tongue, he drank greedily, tilting back his head so that the tea poured easily down h
is throat as his body awoke at the thought of hydration. After several seconds, Cooper stopped drinking, the dark liquid dribbling down his chin and onto the poncho, which was now bunched up on his lap. Smacking his lips, Cooper’s body went slack, and he retreated back into a deep sleep.

  “Is okay,” said Ernesto.

  “How does it work?” Auggie asked.

  Tilting the cup, Ernesto dumped the remaining sediment on the ground. He turned to look at them. “It is very good that he throws up,” he said, nodding. “This will help him to clean, like for to clean his body of the sickness.”

  With their spears close at hand, the five watchers held vigil over the sleeping boy. Through the trees they could see a wall of white vapor lifting up from the river. The canopy was not as dense here, and the rising sun flooded into the clearing, forcing the shadows deep into the jungle. All at once, the jungle came awake, and the alien chorus of insects soon gave way to the cheerful, squawking cries of birds. Roughly twenty minutes later, Cooper leaned over and vomited a steady stream of rust-red water into the undergrowth. Sitting next to him, Ben had one arm around his shoulder to steady him. After emptying his stomach of all its contents, Cooper fell back against Ben’s shoulder, nuzzling his face against the filthy shirt. For the next several minutes his body twitched with the aftershocks of the purge. After, as his muscles slowly relaxed, Cooper slipped back into a deep sleep.

  “Oscar will help you watch him,” Ernesto said and then turned to the stout young guide to translate.

  Oscar nodded in quiet understanding and lowered his squat body to the ground on the other side of Cooper.

  “After little while, he will have the visions,” Ernesto explained. “Some good, maybe some not so good. This will last for several hours.” He turned to Auggie and Brooke. “It is okay for you to sleep for a little while. We will watch Coo-per, and make sure he is okay, uh-huh.”

  ***

  Though physically spent, neither Auggie nor Brooke slept for more than a few fitful minutes, for just as they started to nod off, they were awoken by the sound of Cooper’s fevered cries.

  The visions had begun.

  Currently nestled in a natural hollow beneath a mat of vines, Auggie rolled over to look at Brooke. She was lying on her back with her head propped up on her backpack and her eyes closed. From several yards away, Cooper cried out again.

  “I’m going to check on him,” Auggie said quietly, unsure if she was sleeping.

  Now Brooke’s eyes opened and she rolled over to look at him. “I’ll come with you.”

  Climbing out of the burrow, Auggie reached back to offer her his hand. Brooke’s slender fingers brushed his palm and he paused, relishing the feel of her hand against his. Raising his arm, he pulled her forward and to her feet, dragging her backpack along behind her.

  Standing, she looked at him with a warm smile. “Thanks, Auggie.”

  He smiled back at her, and even after she withdrew her hand, he could still feel the phantom tingle of its presence against his skin. “No problem.”

  Ben was sitting with his back against the Ceiba tree, and Cooper was lying between his outstretched legs with his head against Ben’s chest. Ben had his hands locked around Cooper’s midsection, both to steady him and to keep his arms from flailing. Eyes half-open, Cooper was babbling softly, jerking and twitching as Ernesto’s medicine spread through his system.

  Oscar was sitting dutifully beside Ben while Ernesto was a few feet away, cutting a strip of bark from a nearby tree. The small Peruvian had gathered a dozen or so palm fronds and arranged them like a fan, using the strip of bark to fashion one end into a primitive handle. When he was finished, Ernesto crouched down in front of Cooper and began to shake the loose palm fronds in front of Cooper’s face. The resulting sound was not quite baby rattle, not quite maraca, but somewhere in between. As if on cue, Oscar began chanting softly, and the combination of the two sounds possessed a soothing, almost hypnotic quality. Almost immediately, Cooper relaxed in Ben’s arms. He was smiling now and talking happily to himself.

  There was a religious quality to the chanting, and so Auggie and Brooke sat down on the ground and looked on in a respectful silence. Watching them closely, Auggie’s eyes wandered back and forth between Cooper’s sickly face and Ben’s wounded leg. It occurred to him that, only a few days ago, he had considered himself to be the weakest of the trio. How ironic, thought Auggie, that out of the three of us, I’m the last man standing. He’d wasted so much time fretting over being the weak link, and now he was the only one who was healthy and strong.

  About twenty minutes into the ceremony (and that’s precisely what it was, Auggie was fairly sure of it), Cooper opened his eyes and screamed, thrashing and squirming as if to escape some unseen terror. His hair was soaked now, and the sweat ran down his face in steady streams. Hands moving in a blur of motion, Ernesto continued to rattle the palm fronds around the sick boy’s face, and Oscar chanted louder and faster until at last Cooper fainted dead away. With a pleased expression, Ernesto set aside his makeshift chungana and nodded at Oscar, who sang a few more bars before he stopped chanting.

  “Punku?” Oscar asked softly.

  Ernesto nodded wisely.

  “What did he say?” Ben asked, feeling strangely exhilarated by the ceremony. He could feel Cooper’s breathing as it became rhythmic, and it seemed as though the worst of the fever was behind him.

  Ernesto looked at each of their faces, as though deciding whether or not to share an important secret. “Coo-per has passed through the doorway,” he said. “And now I think he will be okay, uh-huh.”

  Forty-five

  Cooper, as it turned out, was better than okay.

  By late morning, he was sleeping soundly. By mid-afternoon, the fever had already begun to break, and the sweating soon abated, along with the shivers. By late afternoon he was wide-awake, fully energized and eager to be moving again. They were sitting ducks out here in the daylight, and he knew they had all taken a great risk in waiting for him to recuperate.

  Cooper never talked about the visions—in a fragmented way, he recalled trying to wash his face with some wet leaves just as the sun began to rise, as well as a few blurry snippets of conversation with his friends, but he could not remember a thing beyond his first sip of tea. Nevertheless he could not shake the feeling that he had just completed a long and arduous journey, and he felt a renewed sense of purpose as he helped the others paint their faces in preparation for the nighttime crossing.

  Retrieving the last of their food, the trail mix, from his backpack, Ben joined the others by the riverbank. “Does anyone else have any food?” he asked, taking a small handful and passing the bag over to Cooper, but the others only shook their heads. Oscar and Auggie had scavenged a few bananas from the jungle, and they divided them up amongst the group. While the two guides savored every last bite, the Americans wolfed down their share in seconds, too hungry to notice the chalky, bitter taste.

  Soon the sun popped like a blister, spilling its bloody light into the forest as the newly painted warriors gathered their meager belongings and began to follow the shadows back into the dense vegetation.

  Half an hour later the sky disappeared, devoured by a layer of billowing black clouds. A light drizzle began to drift down through the canopy, and though it did little to preserve their mud-masks, they welcomed the coolness of the mist against their faces. Ben pulled off his shirt and the others followed his lead (even Brooke, who quickly folded her arms across her braless breasts), letting the moisture kiss their skin and wipe away the sweat and grime. They raised their arms to the sky in rapture, grateful, so very grateful for this unexpected respite. Thunder boomed, so close they could feel the percussion inside their chests, and the trees began to tremble. They put on their filthy shirts and had just started to pull on their ripped-up ponchos when the clouds unleashed a proper deluge; big fat drops of water that tapped against the foliage like BBs on a tin roof. Then the thunder boomed again, shaking the trees, and the rain
began to fall from the sky in ropes.

  By the time the sky cleared, they had not seen or heard another living creature for well over an hour. In a place known for its rich abundance of wildlife, this particular section of the jungle—the densest, most inhospitable area they had encountered thus far—was a veritable graveyard. In the absence of nature’s song, the silence was deafening. Even the trees remained solemnly still as they dripped with the aftermath of the storm. All sense of time slipped away from them, and they shuffled along in a dreamlike silence, their legs moving mechanically across the soggy terrain. Hacking his way through a wall of creepers, Ernesto paused with the machete in mid-swing. Sensing rather than seeing a change in the cadence of their slow march, the others came to a dead halt. Dripping with rain, they stopped and listened.

  Somewhere ahead, a high, girlish laughter floated through the stillness. It was not a joyful kind of laughter; it had a secretive, insidious undertone that set them immediately on edge. Ears strained, eyes searched, and muscles tensed, and still the jungle refused to give up its secret.

  Then, like a ghost, the sound faded away into oblivion.

  A local village, maybe?—No me gusta—That sounded like a little kid—Must be hearing things—Impossible, that’s impossible—Next thing you know, I’ll be seeing things, too—A bird, just a bird—Yes, that must be it—

  Myriad thoughts flitted through their minds, but when the sound returned, it was unmistakable.

  A child’s playful giggle. Somewhere up ahead.

  “What is that?” Cooper whispered, squeezing past Ernesto.

  “Coo-per,” Ernesto hissed in a warning tone, but curiosity had already overcome the boy.

  Moving ahead of them, Cooper began to thread his way through the densely woven thicket. Pushing the final screen of branches out of the way, he gasped.