by John Bolin
She dropped her trowel and dug with her hands, pulling dirt away from the object without worrying about the twine barriers. She gingerly worked the dirt until the object broke free. She lifted it up and brushed it off. It was small, about the size of a coffee mug. A carved statue of an owl. She turned it over in her hands. On the backside of the statue were two holes.
“What is that?” Rachel said, squinting as she stared out of the tent.
“Looks like more of the pottery garbage we’ve been finding everywhere,” Tom said.
“No, it’s definitely not regular pottery,” Alex said, smiling. “It’s a silbador.”
“A what?” Tom said.
“A whistling vessel.” Alex placed her lips over one of the holes and blew. The sound was just a breathy noise. She wet her lips, brushed off the silbador, and tried again. Sure enough, a haunting tone floated across the site.
“Cool,” Tom said and then went back to work with his device.
Rachel walked over to Alex, who was examining the artifact.
“Shamans have been using silbadors to communicate with spirits for thousands of years,” Alex said. “They are still used today as part of shamanistic rituals. It’s believed that the sounds from the whistles affect the brain in some way. The Indians believe that the silbador’s whistle helps guide departed loved ones to heaven.”
“Let me ask you this,” Tom said, still sweeping the ground. “What about all the people in the world who think they know how to get to heaven?” He stood up, leaning against the handle of the device in his hand. “I mean, how are we supposed to know which one is right? These Indians think they know the way to heaven, the preachers on TV think they know, and the Muslim extremists are willing to die for their belief. Who’s to say who’s right?”
“That’s easy,” Alex said, turning the whistle in her hands. “They’re all right.”
Tom smirked. “What do you mean?”
“No god would create a system where only one group of people could have access to secret knowledge that would send them to heaven and damn everyone else to hell,” Alex said. “It just doesn’t make any sense. I think all the world’s religious systems simply speak to our universal need to reach out to a higher power. If a higher power exists, and I think it does, then we all get access to it, not just a chosen few.” She shifted the silbador in her hands. “And this whistle is an elegant way of communicating with that higher power. Think of it as an ancient hymnal, Tom.”
He shook his head. “Sounds creepy to me.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not. Whistles are sacred possessions, passed down from generation to generation, sometimes from one people group to another. This one could even be from the Moche period.”
Rachel lifted her lip in a sneer. “That’s nice and all, but why do I care that we’ve found a whistle?”
“Because”—Alex stood up—“this one belonged to the village Shaman. I’d recognize it anywhere. The dirt it was in was soft, like he buried it, thinking he’d come back for it later. Maybe he was in a hurry to leave and he—”
“I’ve got something!” Tom shouted.
Alex felt her stomach tighten. She slid the silbador into a large pocket and ran over to Tom, who was already on his knees marking out a spot in the ground.
“Looks like fresh dirt,” he said. “There’s definitely something down there.”
The dirt here formed a slight mound, like a shallow grave. Darker soil was surrounded by lighter packed earth. Alex stopped while she was still a little ways off. Was it a mass grave? She almost turned and ran for the boat. But no, these were her people. She had to know.
She ran forward and fell to her knees beside Tom. She snatched a nearby hand shovel and dug frantically. Rachel and Bruno hurried up behind them. She and Tom dug for a few minutes until Alex’s shovel hit something. Something mushy. She pressed her shovel into it, and the distinct smell of rotting flesh immediately followed.
An anguished cry escaped Alex’s mouth. She stumbled away and fell onto the turf beside a hut.
“What is it?” Rachel said.
“Something buried here,” Tom said.
Alex forced herself to look at it. She stood and moved numbly to beside the small hole. She watched as Tom moved the dirt aside. Then, she saw it. White bone, just a bit of it, maybe a skull, covered in rotting flesh and thousands of maggots. She could feel the bile rising in her throat. She turned away, her hand to her mouth.
“Told you,” Rachel said. “They’re probably all in there.”
Alex felt dizzy. She went down to her knees. She realized now she’d been clinging to the hope that the Mek had been scared off, that they had retreated back into the safety of the rain forest. She had imagined that they were fine, just somewhere else, happily picking berries and fishing and telling stories.
But she had been wrong. She had been here, scouring over the village, all the while walking right over the dead bodies of the tribe. She shivered despite the hot sun. Could she sit there and watch the entire tribe be exhumed?
“It’s a dog,” Tom said.
“What?” Alex found herself on her knees beside the grave again. The stench was overpowering, but she could clearly see the ears and snout of the animal. A surge of emotions moved through Alex, disgust and relief.
Tom stood and began kicking dirt back over the hole. “Hmm.”
“What’s that noise?” Rachel asked.
Alex recognized her own cell phone and ran over to where she’d left it with her other things. She slipped the phone from her pack, dusting herself off, and flipped open the screen. It was a text message.
ONE OF YOUR MEK INDIANS HAS BEEN FOUND. A GIRL. SHE IS ABOARD THE HOPE II, NEAR IQUITOS.
No way.
Chapter 6
The Hope II was built in the seventies by the Peruvian diocese of the Catholic Church. It was essentially a floating hospital. When it wasn’t bringing supplies and help to the remote Indians who lived along the Amazon, it docked here, in the jungle city of Iquitos.
It was big for a riverboat on the Amazon: a hundred feet from bow to stern, three levels high, and as wide as an American house. The boat had been retrofitted several times since the seventies and was now equipped to deal with almost any medical emergency.
It was mid-afternoon in Iquitos, and the city was humid and awake. Lively music called fokiorico[TS1] blared from various shops and homes. People dressed in wide-brimmed hats and brightly colored shirts and ponchos walked the streets, stood at food carts, or sat and paddled through the water in any of a myriad of boats.
Hot exhaust fumes mixed with the smell of boat diesel fuel. Situated just above sea level, Iquitos is a gateway city to millions of acres of Amazon jungle to the west. The jungle was still thick here, but it had been chopped down to make way for tin-roofed shacks and low cinderblock buildings.
On both sides of the river, shabby docks moored all sorts of watercraft. The Hope II was situated lengthwise on a floating wooden dock. There were several tin shacks along the dock, maybe used to clean fish or organize trips.
The taxi parked on the main road that ran near the docks. Alex leapt from the taxi and ran across the floating dock and up a ramp to the boat itself. A short Peruvian man met her at the end of the ramp. He was wearing a gray robe with a white collar. He greeted Alex with a warm embrace, but his expression was a conflict of emotions. His smile was reassuring, but there was something else in his eyes.
“Father Javier,” Alex said, “is it true?”
“Yes, it is,” the priest said, his warm smile etched into his tanned face. “I’ve seen her myself. It’s Tima, Alex. You remember her?”
“Tima! Of course I do.” Alex was already walking onto the boat. “She’s only a girl: twelve, maybe thirteen. Where is she? I want to see her.”
Father Javier touched Alex’s arm. “We are very glad you are here, Alex. The girl is very sick. She’s been asking for you. She won’t talk to anyone else.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“Soon.
I will tell you more in a moment. Please, follow me.”
Father Javier led Alex down the narrow hallway of the lower deck. The hallway felt claustrophobic after spending time in the jungle. The whole place smelled of antiseptic, like a hospital would. The ceiling and walls had been painted white, probably a hundred times. The floor was wood covered with a thick layer of polyurethane.
At the end of the hallway he led her from the lower deck up a narrow staircase to a small waiting room. A skinny old woman sat behind a small desk. A row of plastic chairs was set along the only empty wall. Four doors led into patient rooms. One of them had a sign posted to it that said Quarantined. Alex’s pulse quickened.
A man in a white lab coat stood near the desk waiting for them. She didn’t recognize the doctor but knew that volunteers rotated on and off the boat all the time. The man, maybe fifty, approached. A doctor. He was not an Indian. Or a Brazilian. He was tall and lanky, his face ashen and cold. An American, probably.
He handed her a white jumpsuit. A clean suit.
“Hello, Dr. Forsythe,” the man said. “I’m Dr. Sebastian Blackstone. I’m a guest physician assigned to—”
Alex could hear muffled cries coming from behind the door marked Quarantined.
“What’s going on here?” Alex snatched the suit and turned to Father Javier. “I want to see her now.” She walked to the door and pulled at the handle. Locked.
“Please,” Father Javier pleaded, “allow us to explain first.”
Alex stepped away from the door, her arms folded around herself. “Father, what’s happening?”
The priest breathed deeply. “Earlier today a fisherman on the Rio Negro came across the girl. She was disoriented and horribly dehydrated.”
“You’re sure it’s Tima?”
“I’m certain, Miss Alex,” the priest said. “Remember, I knew these people even before you did.”
Alex nodded humbly. “Of course I remember.”
“When the fisherman found her, she was bleeding and bruised but alive. We believe she fell from the falls upstream.”
Alex put her hand over her mouth. “Is she all right?”
The doctor shook his head. “I’m afraid the girl is suffering considerably.”
“How far did she fall?”
“It’s more than that,” Blackstone said. “We are still doing some tests, but we have reason to believe she may have contracted a serious disease in the jungle.”
Alex shook her head. First a fall and now this? And who knew what had happened to make her leave in the first place. Perhaps an epidemic? “Is it malaria?”
“No. We haven’t identified the disease yet. It seems to be an aggressive virus. I’m afraid we don’t know more than that.”
Alex felt her lower lip begin to tremble. “What do you think it is? You have to have some ideas.”
Blackstone shook his head. “We don’t know. Whatever it is, it seems to be infecting her blood and incubating in her body. I can assure you that we are doing everything we can.”
“I need to see her.”
“In a moment,” Father Javier said.
“You said you’re glad I’m here so that I can help you treat her. So let me help you!”
“Alex, please,” Father Javier said.
Alex began to pace in the tiny room. She turned back to the doctor. “You said it was aggressive. How aggressive?”
“Again, we don’t really know,” Blackstone said. “Medicine is not an exact science. We can only estimate.” He leaned toward Alex. “Right now we think she may have three or four days until the virus becomes active again.”
Alex put her hand to her mouth. “Active? What do you mean?”
Blackstone looked as though he was searching for the right words. His eyes shifted to the floor and then back to Alex. “We don’t exactly know, but it appears that whatever has infected her seems to be affecting her neurological systems.”
“Neurological? You mean her brain?”
The doctor nodded. “Her symptoms suggest some sort of brain trauma.”
“What symptoms?”
“For the past few hours she has been babbling incoherently. We’re not even sure she’s using her native language. You can help us with that. Her heart rate is elevated, and we’ve been unable to lower it. There have been other things: dilated eyes, slurred speech, and seizures.”
Alex stood, unmoving, still holding the clean suit. She nodded slightly.
“We’ve tried everything. We’ve even called in outside experts.”
“But there’s got to be something you can do for her.”
Blackstone didn’t respond. Alex could see that Father Javier was fumbling with something in his hand. She saw what it was. A rosary.
“There is . . . something,” he said.
“What?”
He looked at her seriously. “We suspect that Tima’s afflictions may not be completely physical.”
Alex shook her head, trying to process the idea. “What are you saying?”
The priest reached up and pulled a cross out from under the robe. “We suspect that she may be host to . . . more than a disease.”
“Are you suggesting that she was somehow cursed and that is what’s causing her sickness?”
Father Javier nodded. “The jungle is full of religious counterfeits doing the devil’s bidding. If this girl was subjected to a demonic ritual, she may be unwittingly under the evil one’s control.”
It all made sense. The closed door, their delays, the commotion behind the wall. “Are you telling me you’re doing some kind of exorcism?”
“It’s the only way, Alex.”
“With a shaman, though, right?” she said, aware that her voice had risen in pitch. “You’re respecting her native beliefs, aren’t you?”
Father Javier lowered his eyes. “It’s one of my brothers. We wanted you here, but we didn’t know how long. . . . Look, Miss Alex, we need your help.”
“My help? You want my help? Well, the first thing you can do is open that door.”
She gripped the doorknob and yanked at it. Then she pounded on it. “Open up! Let me in!”
Blackstone and Father Javier pulled her away from the door.
“Oh no, Miss Alex,” Father Javier said. “You cannot interrupt the ritual.”
Alex turned on him, biting her tongue. “Get me in there,” she ordered him. “Before I call the police.”
The doctor nodded at Father Javier.
“Very well,” the priest said. He pointed at the white suit in Alex’s hand and began putting one on himself. Blackstone did the same. “Please,” the priest said, “you must wear this, for your own safety.”
“Fine,” Alex said, pulling on the suit. “Now please, open the door.”
The priest nodded reluctantly. He moved forward and keyed the door open. Alex pushed it, rushing in.
What she saw stopped her cold.
Chapter 7
The room was dark and cold. Alex could hear the sound of the AC humming and someone talking rhythmically, no praying. She also heard the sound of someone moaning. Tima, Alex guessed.
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dim lighting. Several candles were arranged around the room, providing the only light. The only window in the room had been shut and covered with a blanket, blocking any outside light. The smell of incense was overpowering. The room itself looked like one in any hospital, except smaller. There was a small sink, a few chairs, and a bed with a fabric wall pulled around it. A compact medical machine sat next to the bed, outside the wall, lights blinking green, registering the patient’s every heartbeat.
The machine was beeping incessantly. Tima?
Alex moved forward slowly. Father Javier followed behind Alex. Blackstone waited at the door.
An older priest, dressed in a clean suit pulled over the same kind of long gray robe Father Javier wore, stood at the foot of the girl’s bed. He held an ornate crucifix in one hand and a large black book in the other. He never looked up fr
om the patient behind the curtain but seemed to have his eyes locked onto something out of view. He was speaking in a foreign language—Latin, Alex guessed. Another young priest, also in a clean suit, sat near the bed in a plastic chair, rocking back and forth, probably praying.
Alex moved to the curtain.
Father Javier touched her elbow. “Are you sure?” he whispered.
Alex pulled back the curtain.
A girl was lying on the bed, her face turned away from Alex. Thick straps around her chest and legs restrained her. She was struggling under the straps. Her back arched up, and she pushed at the restraints.