by John Bolin
“You said the doctor told you that she seems to be suffering loss of brain function.”
Alex shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah, what about it? You’ve seen her; she’s stronger than ever.”
“I know she looks strong Alex, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Somehow, I think her brain is deteriorating even as her body seems to be recovering.”
Alex sat for a moment, unblinking. “What are we going to do?”
Peter stood up and offered a hand to Alex. She stood. “I’ll tell you what we’re going to do,” he said, brushing off his pants. “We’re going to take her with us, and we’re going to get on that trail and bring her to her family and find whoever did this to her.”
Chapter 13
The green ceiling of forest exploded with life. Croaks and moans filled the air with a haunted, muffled quality. The twisted branches of the complex three-dimensional world seemed more alien than terrestrial. Brightly colored flowers seemed mysteriously suspended at dizzying heights as if they were frescos painted by some ancient artist.
Normally, Alex would be awestruck by the beauty. In the past she might’ve even stopped to draw a sketch like her mother would, but not today. She sensed that the beauty of the jungle was merely a façade covering darker things.
Loud shrieks echoed in the semi-darkness as gibbons and giant squirrels moved about effortlessly from limb to limb. She spotted three giant orangutans, the great sages of the rain forest, hidden in the vines and pockets of the jungle rafters, watching the visitors moving below them.
Peter and Linc had pulled ahead of the others; they were walking with baffling ease along the dense trail, stopping every fifteen minutes to check the reading on the portable GPS. Linc would pull out the video camera every now and then to grab footage of the trees or to show the whole troupe walking by and then scramble back to his position next to Peter.
Alex was content to shuffle along with Diego. Though Peter had encouraged Diego to stay at the village, he had insisted he was well enough to travel and suggested that he was the only one who knew how to handle the burros in the jungle. Peter had agreed reluctantly, and Diego was now leading their three burros. Gator and Skins had agreed to take up the rear.
Tima was situated on top of one of the burros that trailed behind Diego. Linc had devised a sort of chair so the girl could sit up relatively straight, positioned so she could see the trail and give direction like an Amazonian Pocahontas.
Their trek had started out well, with Tima excitedly pointing and gesturing at various turns in the trail, suggesting she recognized the path. But within a few hours she had seemed to be less and less sure that they were headed in the right direction. It didn’t matter. By this point Alex realized that Tima was indeed leading them along the route Peter and Linc had mapped out on the computer the night before.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Gator said, panting slightly. He had sped up a bit to walk beside Alex.
“Sure is, but this is no playground.” Alex pointed to the canopy above. “Up there, beyond the lowest branches, swarms of killer wasps are waiting for us to slow down.”
Gator raised an eyebrow as he stopped to step over a moss-covered log.
“That’s not the half of it,” Alex said. “There are spiders crawling around here that are eighteen times more toxic than a black widow, poisonous enough to cripple a cow.” She stopped and looked Gator in the eye. “Ever heard of the reticulated python?”
“Big snake, I’m guessing.”
“Biggest in the world,” Alex said, turning back to the trail.
Gator smiled. “Sounds like the bayou to me. In Louisiana, we eat snake for lunch, ya know?”
Alex laughed. “Speaking of lunch, did I mention how much I miss In-N-Out burgers?”
“Shrimp and grits, that’s what I’m talking about.”
“The Petite Filet from Outback.”
“Jambalaya any day.”
“A Starbucks mocha latte.”
They went back and forth for a while like this until they ran out of favorites.
“You win,” Gator said.
“Again,” Alex said with a laugh. They walked for a few moments in silence.
With each step, the world around them became more foreign. Without a doubt, humans were the strangers here. All signs of civilization had faded hours before. The last people they’d seen were the ones in the village, waving them on and, it seemed to Alex, looking a bit relieved to see them go.
“Hey Alex, is it worth it?” Gator asked.
Alex turned. “What?”
“Is this really worth it?” he said. “I mean, you could be driving your American car down the road with the AC on full blast on your way to Starbucks. Now you’re here being chased by some crazy jokers while you’re eaten alive by bugs in the middle of the jungle. Is it worth it?”
Alex smiled sadly. “I guess I hadn’t thought of it like that.” She stopped and pointed at Tima. “See that girl on the donkey? Do you realize what she and her people represent for us? A view of history that we’ve never had before.”
Gator nodded. “But it’s more than that, isn’t it?”
“Yes. She’s a little girl who needs her family.”
Gator walked beside her silently for several steps. “Do you . . .” His voice trailed away.
“Yes?” Alex said.
“Do you ever wonder”—Gator scratched his neck—“if maybe we’re not supposed to be doing this?”
Alex remembered the dream she’d had last night. “What do you mean?”
Gator seemed reluctant to spit it out. “I just . . . I just wonder if there’s more here than meets the eye, that’s all.”
“I know what you mean,” Alex said. “But . . . there’s only one way to find out,” she added, moving ahead on the trail.
The humidity was pressing 100 percent. The dense trees prevented any wind from cooling them off. Where Alex wasn’t wet from the rain or standing water, she was drenched in sweat. The rain continued, off and on, all day. Whenever the sun would emerge to warm them, clouds of tiny gnats and mosquitoes accompanied it.
The path began level but quickly angled uphill and then back down again, over and over. It was slow going. The path was narrow, wide enough for only one person in places. Exposed roots and rocks made the going tougher. Had it not been for all the gear, Alex might have asked for a ride on one of the burros.
Another hour passed and their pace began to slow, especially for Alex. They’d been hiking through a flooded portion of jungle, sloshing in six inches of standing water. Gator’s every step splashed loudly behind Alex. Half the time their boots got stuck in the mud, and they had to yank their feet out. It made for tiresome walking.
“I need to tie my boots,” Alex said to Gator. She stooped and lifted the leg of her convertible pants. “Go ahead. I’ll catch up.”
She took the moment to catch her breath.
Diego, Tima, Gator, and the burros went past. A minute later, Skins passed Alex without a word.
Alex lifted her boot out of the water and onto a fallen tree. One at a time she relaced her boots. She looked up in time to see Gator and Skins disappear beyond a wall of vines ahead. She readjusted her pant legs so that no water would get into her boots. She stood silent for a moment in the gray gloom of the jungle.
The air here was trapped under the branches of the trees. The silence was thick and oppressive. She breathed in and out slowly.
Suddenly, the hair on the back of her neck bristled. Her pulse quickened. A sense of anxiety filled her chest. Alex could feel something was wrong, but she couldn’t tell exactly what it was. Again she thought of her dream. She’d felt the same way then.
She looked behind her, thinking maybe there was someone else on the trail. But no one was there. She stood there a moment longer, trying to place it. Then, it was clear.
Silence.
The jungle, normally filled with a din of distant echoes, was absolutely quiet, as if some great hand had cast an eerie spell over the whole place. H
er own breathing was the only sound she could hear. It was too loud, like THX speakers in a small car.
Then, a noise off to the right broke the silence. It was a thrumming noise, like the purring of a cat. It drew closer. Louder.
Alex spun around.
Nothing. The sound faded. But now that she looked, she noticed that the gloom seemed thicker here. Fog was beginning to gather on the ground, swirling in a circular pattern around her boots. She could feel new sweat breaking out on her forehead and back. Then, the sound again.
What is that?
She could feel her heart beating through her chest. She could taste the fog, like a metallic tang. Then she saw something—a blur, a shadow maybe, out of the corner of her eye—moving through the low mist over the swamped jungle floor.
Something in the water? Her mind raced. Could be a snake or a small caiman. Or a not-so-small caiman. She steadied her breath.
Something bit her leg.
She yelped and jumped onto the fallen tree.
It wasn’t a bite really, she realized, just a prick right above her ankle. She reached down and swatted at her skin. She stomped her foot on the log.
She planted her foot on the ground again. The fog swirled as she stomped the ground, sloshing in the muck. Another prick.
Dang it.
She lifted her leg and slapped at it, then pulled her palm up to look at it. Nothing. Maybe ants. It felt like ants. She’d heard of fire ants moving through water as floating colonies.
Then another bite. And another. The stupid things were attacking her, stinging her. She kicked her feet wildly at the ground and slapped at her legs.
Piranha?
She wasn’t about to stick around long enough to find out. She leapt off the log and ran, her feet churning the water.
At once the jungle seemed dark and suffocating. She thrashed through the wall of vegetation, toward where the others had gone. As she ran, the trees and the trail seemed to twist and tangle with each other so that she couldn’t tell where one began and the other ended. Then the trail seemed to disappear altogether.
She fought the urge to scream. The gloom of the jungle seemed to be closing in on her. A claustrophobic sense overwhelmed her. The same sensation she’d felt in the dream. Her legs felt shaky, like she would fall over at any minute.
She found a gap large enough for the laden burros to go through and she ran through it.
I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay.
Then her chant changed. For no particular reason, her mind produced different words altogether. Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping; that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace.
It was an old Anglican prayer, one she’d learned the summer she’d stayed with her grandmother in Nebraska. She hadn’t even remembered that she’d memorized it. Her splashing footsteps still resounded around her, but she had to admit she did feel a little less terrified now.
Come on, Alex. Get a hold of yourself. You’re an anthropologist, for crying out loud. You’re an expert. This is what you do for a living.
And yet she didn’t look behind her. The sensation of being followed made her stomach knot up high in her chest. It was the kind of feeling she got when she turned off the lights in a house and went racing toward the only illuminated room. She ran faster.
She burst through a tangled vine and nearly crashed into Gator, who was now walking at the back of the line with Skins.
“Alex? What is it?”
Alex passed Gator and Skins. Then, with them between her and whatever it was, she turned to look back the way she’d come.
Nothing. Nothing but jungle. It didn’t even seem that dark anymore.
“Alex?” Gator said.
“I’m fine,” she said, panting.
“Are you sure?” Gator said, grabbing her shoulders. “You’re shaking.”
“I don’t know. I think the lack of sleep is getting to me.” Alex looked at him warily. “Back there, when I was tying my boot, I thought I saw a shadow. Maybe it was nothing.”
Gator moved closer. “A shadow? Of what?”
“That’s just it. I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t actually see anything.” She stepped closer to Gator and lowered her voice. “But I know I felt something.”
“Felt?” Gator said. “You mean like a snake bite or something?”
“No, not a snake. Something biting me on the ankle. I thought it was fire ants in the water. Or piranhas or . . .” She looked at her shins. They were scratched and speckled with tiny pinpricks.
Thunder crackled in the darkening skies. The rain was still coming down, and it would soon be dark.
“Go on,” Gator said.
“You’ll think I’m nuts. Heck, I think I’m nuts. This whole thing is getting to me. Tima and the guys on the boats and the village and . . .” And the dream.
“Alex?”
“I think there’s something else out there, Gator,” Alex said. “Something . . . spiritual.”
Gator nodded and then turned and began to walk on the trail. “Of course there is.”
“Shut up,” Alex said, following him. “You don’t believe me.”
“Of course I do. I believe you felt something,” Gator said. “Look, as much as I want to embrace these tribal people and their religion, I can’t help but feel like at least some of them have tapped into something other than God . . . something darker.”
“What do you mean? You mean like—”
At that moment, Tima began to shout in a loud, excited voice. From the sound of it, she wasn’t more than twenty yards ahead of Alex but was hidden behind a cluster of trees. Gator pulled his gun from its holster and ran up the trail, Skins and Alex in his wake.
Alex turned the corner to see Tima swinging her leg off the burro. She’d seen something and was pointing toward an indistinct patch of jungle and rock. Peter stood near the girl with his hands on his hips, waiting for Skins and Alex to interpret. Linc had the video camera rolling.
“What is it?” Alex asked Tima, catching her breath.
Tima spoke excitedly to Alex, all the while pointing at the jungle to the side of the trail.
“What’s she saying?” Peter asked.
“She says that over there, just beyond the trees, is a cave. She says that she came from the White Shaman’s village through that cave.”
“Are you sure?” Peter asked.
“She says she’s positive,” Alex said.
Gator was already stumbling into the trees in the direction Tima had pointed. A few moments later, he called back to the group. “She’s right! I found a cave.”
Diego was standing with the burros’ ropes in his hands. The ropes were pulled tight, and Diego was violently shaking his head. “No go, no go, no go!” He pointed upward, where Alex could see three giant condors circling above the valley. “Tapya millay. Tapya millay.”
“What’s he saying?” Gator asked Skins.
“He says he’s not going any farther. Not into the cave.”
“Why not?” Gator asked.
“He says the devil lives in caves.”
Peter laughed. “Superstition.”
Alex stepped forward. “Come on, Peter, the guy really believes this. He has the right to believe whatever he wants. You and I may not believe in evil—I certainly don’t—but we must respect his beliefs. Maybe we can just go around the mountain and find where the cave comes out the other side.”
“No way.” Peter’s expression took on a wild aspect Alex hadn’t seen before. “We’re close now,” he said. “I’m not going to turn back or get sidetracked. If Bo—” He stopped himself and looked hard at Gator and Linc. “We’re going in.”
Chapter 14
Peter pulled back the vines that hung in front of the entrance to the cave, allowing him to duck inside.
The air was dank and musky and smelled old. It was pitch dark, even blacker than Peter would have expected. He snapped on his flashlight, and the beam was swallowed in the darkness. It didn’t h
it a wall in any direction.
“Hello!” he yelled. The sound echoed back to him, reverberating off distant walls. It was big in there, real big. Perfect.
He ducked back out to the others, who stood huddled in the rain, stamping their feet, as if they were waiting at someone’s front door in the wintertime. It was definitely getting darker, both from the approaching night and the storm clouds overhead. Diego was frowning and shaking his head in disapproval.