SSmith - Ruins

by The Ruins (v1. 0) [lit]

  Just laugh,he thought.It’s so easy. But then, without really meaning to, he started talking, his voice spilling out of him, propelling him down a different path altogether. “It doesn’t make things up.”

  Stacy was silent, watching him. She folded her arms across her chest. “Eric—”

  “It mimics things. Things it’s heard. It doesn’t create them.”

  “Then it’s heard someone having sex at some point, and it mixed our voices in.”

  “So that’s your voice? You said those things?”

  “Of course not.”

  “But you said it mixed your voices in.”

  “I mean it took our voices, things we’ve said, and it put them together to say new things. You know? It took one word from one conversation, and another word from—”

  “When did you say ‘harder’? Or ‘kiss me’?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it—”

  “Come on, Stacy. Tell me the truth.”

  “This is stupid, Eric.” He could sense how frustrated she was becoming, could feel her working to control it.

  “I just want the truth,” he said.

  “I’ve told you the truth. It’s not real. It’s—”

  “I promise I won’t be angry.”

  But he was already angry, of course; even he could hear it in his voice. This wasn’t the first time Eric had asked Stacy to confess to some infidelity, and he felt the weight of all those other conversations now, pressing down upon him, prodding him forward. There was a pattern these confrontations inevitably followed, a script for them to honor: he’d badger her, reason with her, methodically eliminate her evasions and diversions, slowly cornering her until the only choice remaining was honesty. She’d start to cry; she’d beg his forgiveness, promise never to betray him again. And somehow, despite himself, Eric would always find a way to believe her. The idea of having to pursue this course now, of having to plod through each of its many steps, filled him with exhaustion. He wanted to be at the end already. He wanted her weeping, begging, promising, and it enraged him that even here, even in their current extremity, she was going to make him work for it.

  “Look at me,” Stacy said. “Do you really think I’d have any interest in fuckinganyone at this point. I can’t even—”

  “Would you fuck him at another point?”

  “Eric—”

  “Would you have fucked him in Cancún?”

  She gave a loud sigh, as if the question were too demeaning to answer. And it was, too. On some level, Eric understood this.Calm thoughts, he said to himself.A calm voice. He was fighting hard to summon them, but they wouldn’t come.

  “Didyou fuck him in Cancún?” he asked.

  Before Stacy could answer, her voice started up again:Hold me. Just hold me.

  We shouldn’t. What if he—

  Shh. No one will hear.

  Then, once more, the panting began, gradually rising in volume. Eric and Stacy were both silent, listening. What else could they do?

  God, that feels good.

  The panting deepened into moans. Eric was concentrating on the voices, which maintained that same slightly smudged quality. Sometimes it seemed as though they definitely belonged to Stacy and Mathias; other times, he could almost bring himself to believe her, that they weren’t real, that it hadn’t happened.

  So good,he heard, and he thought,No, of course not, it can’t be him.

  Harder,he heard—that urgent whisper, so full of hunger—and he thought,Yes, definitely, it has to be her.

  The climax came, finally, and then there was just the rain again, and Pablo’s breathing, and the wet flapping of the tent each time the wind gusted. Stacy edged toward him. She reached and rested her hand on his knee, squeezing it through the sleeping bag. “It’s trying to drive us apart, sweetie. It wants us to fight.”

  “Say ‘Hold me. Just hold me.’”

  Stacy lifted her hand from his knee, stared at him. “What?”

  “I want to hear you. I’ll be able to tell if I hear you say it.”

  “Tell what?’

  “If it’s your voice.”

  “You’re being an asshole, Eric.”

  “Say ‘No one will hear.’”

  She shook her head. “I’m not gonna do this.”

  “Or ‘harder.’ Whisper ‘harder.’”

  Stacy stood up. “I have to check on Pablo.”

  “He’s fine. Can’t you hear him?” And it was true: the sound of Pablo’s breathing seemed to fill the tent.

  Stacy had her hands on her hips. He couldn’t make out her face in the darkness, but he could tell somehow that she was frowning at him. “Why are you doing this? Huh? We have so much else to deal with here, and you’re acting like—”

  “Amy was right. You’re a slut.”

  This seemed to hit home; it slapped her into momentary silence. Then, very quietly, she whispered, “What the fuck, Eric? How can you say that?”

  He heard a trembling in her voice, and it nearly gave him pause. But then he was speaking again; he couldn’t stop himself. “When did you do it? Tonight?”

  It was hard to tell, but it seemed like she might be crying.

  “You were naked when you came in,” he said. “I saw you naked.”

  She was wiping her face with her hand. The rain increased suddenly, jumping in volume; it felt as if the tent might collapse beneath it. Instinctively, they both ducked. It lasted only a few seconds, though, and in its passing, the world seemed oddly quiet.

  “Were there other times, too?”

  Stacy made a sniffling sound. “Please stop.”

  Eric hesitated. For some reason, that peculiar sense of heightened silence was beginning to unsettle him—it seemed ominous, threatening. He glanced out toward the clearing, as if expecting an intruder there. “Tell me how many times, Stacy.”

  She shook her head again. “You’re being a bastard.”

  “I’m not angry. Do I seem angry?”

  “I hate you sometimes. I really do.”

  “I just want the truth. I just want—”

  Stacy started to scream, making him jump. Her fists were clenched; she was yanking at her hair. She yelled, “Shut up! Can you do that? Can you please just shut the fuck up?” She stepped forward, as if to strike him—her right arm raised over her head—but then stopped in mid-stride and turned toward the tent flap.

  Eric followed her gaze. Mathias was standing there, stooping, one foot in the tent, one foot still outside. He was completely drenched. It was hard to discern much more than that in the darkness, but Eric had a sense of the German’s confusion. He seemed as if he were about to retreat back into the night, deferring to their privacy.

  “Maybe you can tell me,” Eric said to him. “Did you fuck her?”

  Mathias was silent, too startled by the question to offer an answer.

  “The vine was making sounds,” Stacy explained. “Like we’d had sex.”

  Eric was leaning forward, peering at Mathias’s face, trying to read his expression. “Say ‘God, that feels good.’”

  Mathias still had one foot out in the rain. He shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

  “Or ‘We shouldn’t. What if he—’ Can you say that?”

  “Stop it, Eric,” Stacy said.

  Eric spun on her. “I’m not talking to you. All right?” He turned back toward Mathias. “Just say it. I want to hear your voice.”

  “Where do you think you are?” Mathias asked.

  Eric couldn’t think of a response to this.Hell was the word that came to him.I’m in hell. But he didn’t say it.

  “Why would you even care—at this point, I mean—if Stacy and I had fucked? Why would it matter? We’re trapped here. We don’t have any food. Henrich and Amy have both been killed. I can’t find Jeff. And Pablo—”

  He stopped, cocked his head, listening. They all did.

  The silence,Eric thought.

  Mathias vanished back out into the rain.

  “Oh God,” Stac
y moaned, hurrying after him. “Oh please no.”

  Eric stood up, the sleeping bag still wrapped around his shoulders. He stepped to the flap, peered toward the lean-to. Mathias was kneeling beside the backboard; Stacy was standing behind him. The rain poured down on both of them.

  “I’m so sorry,” Stacy kept saying. “I’m so sorry.”

  Mathias rose to his feet. He didn’t say anything; he didn’t need to. His expression of disgust as he shoved his way past Eric into the tent was far more eloquent than any words he might’ve uttered.

  Stacy lowered herself into a crouch, the rain spattering her with mud. She hugged her legs, began to rock back and forth. “I’m so sorry…. I’m so sorry…. I’m so sorry….”

  Eric could barely make out Pablo on his backboard, beyond her, just visible in the darkness. Motionless. Silent. While they’d argued in the tent, while the storm had beaten down on them from above, the vine had sent forth an emissary. A single thin tendril had wound itself around the Greek’s face, covering his mouth, his nose, smothering him into death.

  Even after the rain had begun to fall, Jeff had maintained his post at the bottom of the hill. If the Greeks had set out that morning, then it seemed possible the storm could’ve surprised them on the walk in from the road. Jeff spent some time attempting to guess how Juan and Don Quixote would react to its arrival, whether they’d turn around and try to flee back to Cobá, or duck their heads and hurry onward. He had to admit that the latter of these two options seemed least probable. Only if they were nearly there, if they’d already left the main trail and were making their way along that final, gradually uphill stretch, could he envision them persisting through this downpour.

  He decided he’d give them twenty minutes.

  Which was a long time, sitting out in the open, unsheltered, with that rain beating down upon him. The Mayans had retreated into the tree line, were crowded together beneath their tarp. Only one of them remained in the clearing, watching Jeff. He’d fashioned a sort of poncho for himself, using a large plastic garbage bag, from which he’d torn holes for his head and arms. Jeff could remember making a similar garment once, on a camping trip, when he and his fellow Boy Scouts had been caught unexpectedly in a two-day rainstorm. As they’d made their way home, they’d been forced to ford a river. It was the same one they’d crossed on their hike into the woods, a week earlier, but it had risen dramatically since they’d last glimpsed it. The current was fast, chest-deep, very cold. Jeff had stripped to his underwear, floundered across with a rope slung over his shoulder. He’d tied it to a tree so that the others could follow, holding on to it for support. He could remember how daring he’d believed himself to be for attempting this feat—a hero of sorts—and he felt slightly embarrassed by the recollection. It came to him now that he’d spent his entire life playing at one thing or another, always pretending that it was more than a game. But that was all it had ever been, of course.

  The rain fell in a steady torrent. There was thunder but no lightning. It was nearly dark when Jeff finally checked his watch, stood up, turned to go.

  The trail had grown muddy, slippery with it; climbing was hard work. Jeff kept having to stop and catch his breath. It was during one of these pauses, as he glanced back down toward the bottom of the hill, struggling to judge how far he’d come, that the idea of fleeing occurred to him once more. The light had faded enough that he could no longer see the tree line. A mist was rising from the cleared ground, further obscuring his view. The downpour had doused the Mayans’ campfires; unless they were prepared to spend the night standing guard almost shoulder-to-shoulder along the jungle’s margin, it seemed perfectly possible that Jeff might find a passage through them.

  The rain maintained its onslaught, but for the moment Jeff was hardly conscious of it. He was famished; he was completely used up. He wanted to go back to the tent, wanted to open the tiny can of nuts they’d brought and parcel it out among them. He wanted to drink from their jug of water until his stomach began to hurt; he wanted to close his eyes and sleep. He fought against these temptations, though—and that sense of failure, too, which continued to cling to him, promising him yet another disappointment—and struggled for something like hope, a sentiment that was already beginning to feel oddly unfamiliar. He asked himself:Why shouldn’t it work? Why shouldn’t he be able to creep down the hill and find the clearing deserted, the Mayans huddling together beneath their plastic tarps, hiding from the deluge? Why shouldn’t he be able to slip past them, undetected, vanishing into the jungle beyond? He could hide there till dawn, start for Cobá at first light. He could save them all.

  But no—he was doing it again, wasn’t he? More foolishness, more pretending. Because wouldn’t the Mayans have anticipated something like this? Wouldn’t there be sentries waiting for him, arrows nocked? And then Jeff would just have to retrace his footsteps back up the hill, all the more tired and cold and hungry for the wasted effort.

  Round and round he went like this, tilting first in one direction, then the other, while the rain fell upon him and the darkness continued to deepen. In the end—despite his hunger, his fatigue, his anticipatory sense of failure—it was Jeff’s upbringing that finally triumphed, his New England roots asserting themselves in all their asceticism, that deep Puritan reflex always to choose the more arduous of any two fates.

  He made his way slowly back down the trail to the bottom of the hill.

  And it was exactly as he’d anticipated—the mist, the rain, the gathering dark—he couldn’t see more than fifteen feet in any direction. If the Mayan with the makeshift poncho was still on duty in the center of the clearing, he was hidden from sight now. Which meant, of course, that Jeff, in turn, was equally invisible. All he had to do was edge to his left, twenty yards, thirty at the most; this would put him midway between the Mayans sheltering beneath their tarp here and the ones at the next encampment. And then, if he crept forward, cloaked in the darkness, the mist, the rain, he might very well manage to reach the jungle unobserved.

  He turned to his left, started walking, counting his strides in his head.One…two…three…four… The rain had already saturated the clearing, transforming its soil into a deep, viscous mud that clung heavily to his feet. Jeff thought of his earlier attempt to flee, that first night, when he’d tried to sneak down through the vines, how the tendrils had cried out, alerting the Mayans of his approach, and he wondered why the plant was remaining so quiet now, so motionless. Surely it must’ve sensed what he was intending. It was possible, of course, that this silence betrayed how negligible Jeff’s chances were, that the vine could perceive the Mayans standing guard even through the darkness, the mist, the rain, that it knew he’d never make it—he’d either be turned back or killed. At some remove within himself, Jeff could even grasp what this portended, could recognize that the logical course, the sensible one, would be to surrender now, to retreat up the hill to safety.

  Yet he kept walking.

  Thirty strides, and then he stopped. He stood there peering toward the jungle. All he could hear was the rain slapping down into the mud. The wind tugged at the mist, stirring it deceptively. Jeff kept pulling shapes from the darkness, first to his left, then his right. Every cell in his body seemed to be warning him to turn back while he still could, and it baffled him why this should be so. Here, after all, was the moment he’d been yearning for, was it not? This was escape; this was salvation. How could he possibly renounce it? He tried to gird himself, tried to imagine what it would feel like to be lying in that tent five days from now as the hunger started to take hold, his body failing beneath it, how he’d think back to this moment and remember his hesitation here—the fury he’d feel with his cowardice, the disgust.

  He took a single step out into the clearing, then went still as another shape materialized from the mist, quickly vanished. This would be the way to do it, Jeff was certain—one cautious step at a time—but he knew, too, that he wasn’t equal to such a path, that if he was going to venture this, he’d h
ave to do it at a run. He was too worn-out for any other method; his nerves weren’t equal to the challenge of the wiser, more wary approach. The risk, of course, was that he’d end up charging straight at one of the Mayans, stumbling directly into him. But perhaps it wouldn’t matter. Perhaps, if he were moving quickly enough, he’d be past the man, vanishing once more into the darkness, before a weapon could even be raised. All he had to do was make it to the jungle and they’d never find him, not in this weather—he was certain of it.

  Jeff understood that if he kept thinking, kept debating, he wouldn’t do it. He either had to make the leap now, immediately, or turn back. Perhaps this alone ought to have given him pause, but he didn’t let it. To turn back would be to accept yet another failure here, and Jeff couldn’t bring himself to do that. He thought back to that long-ago riverbank, the rope slung across his shoulder, the aplomb with which he’d plunged into the current—the utter self-confidence—and he struggled to reclaim that feeling, or some shadow of it.