River of the Damned

by Aiden James

  Ishi’s voice gained more urgency, and I knew it must be because he couldn’t save me on his own. But Shuratu’s cackles in my head had ceased, and soon after this his bodyweight was lifted from my chest and arms. A much softer weight rested briefly upon my upper torso, and I determined it was someone laying his or her head upon me, as if to listen…

  Am I dead? I hear worried talk that there’s no heartbeat.

  The sensation of a fist pounding my chest startled me, and then the weight of the person’s head—a woman from the feel of her hair—pressed against my chest again, but this time just for a moment. The ringing stopped, as did the feeling of peace.

  “I detect a heartbeat… faint!” said Mayta, above me. I couldn’t see her… but she was nearer than anyone else.

  A pair of soft lips caressed mine, but the fantasy of dying in a woman’s loving embrace left me as warm air flowed into my mouth that steadily seeped into my lungs…. In the distance, a man was shouting… Sharatu? The voice was similar, but instead of unbridled malice and anger, I detected terror… and then a high-pitched shriek that faded.

  Some might picture me smiling at the mental image of the evil shaman’s lips mouthing something different than the words ‘Nungui, no!’ that I heard. But I was too busy coughing while trying to fill my lungs with the blessed invisible elixir of life. Oxygen!

  The cavern’s stale air was sweeter than anything I could remember… at least off hand. Darkness turned to a blurred vision of shadows standing as silhouettes in front of torchlight. When it cleared, I found myself surrounded… but not by Jivaro warriors.

  “Welcome back, Boss,” said Ishi, weeping. “We thought we lost you.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  I hadn’t woken up to a room full of strangers staring at me since my sophomore year at UCLA. But unlike that awkward experience from yesteryear, I wasn’t in a hurry to sneak away from an intimate moment, such as what happened between the girl and me when we were startled awake, lying naked together on a balcony outside her room with her gawking sorority sisters surrounding us. Granted, all that had taken place between me and Mayta was her gentle caress of my lips, perhaps viewed as those of a dead man. It might’ve been a moment of curiosity, or worse, that she figured my soul had already been carted off to some unpleasant corner of the afterlife, and this was a perfect opportunity to steal a cherished touch before my body cooled to a rigid corpse.

  But, then, she did pound on my chest to try and save me, right? So, maybe it was something more than just a fleeting whim of curiosity or lust.

  All kidding aside, I was more embarrassed and self-conscious about the other folks peering down at me from all sides. And isn’t it funny how people always look different when animated as opposed to sleeping? Personalities remain undefined until a soul interacts with another… or so I’ve been told. It sure looked to be the case right then, since I almost didn’t recognize half of my audience.

  “Are you okay?” asked Mayta, with more compassion than I thought she could ever show me. Charmed by a tepid kiss, perhaps?

  “Yeah… I think so,” I said, my voice sounding hoarse and my throat feeling the residual pain from Shuratu’s powerful finger-squeeze. “I can use a hand standing up.”

  She and Ishi helped me to my feet, and for an instant the world swam around me. Most everyone was smiling, which announced to me that either Shuratu and his little army were completely vanquished or I was dreaming. Ishi was the only one not smiling as he studied my neck.

  “You have some deep bruises, Nick,” he said. “Maybe you should see a doctor?”

  “An archaeological kind of doctor, like Nathaniel Pierce, or did you mean one that can cast a spell with tree frog venom?” I teased, offering him a good-natured smile and warm pat on his shoulder. “Otherwise, it’s a day’s journey to reach a decent physician in these parts, little buddy.”

  “I can take a look at your neck,” advised the woman I recognized as Dr. Pierce’s wife. She came closer and Ishi and Mayta stepped aside to allow her into my personal space. Sandra and the little girl took after their mom in terms of their looks and the little boy favored his dad. Mrs. Pierce smiled as if she could read my thoughts, but I knew it was more my amused expression. “Yes… those bruises are going to remain uncomfortable for the next day or two, maybe three. But you’ll live.”

  “How do you know?” I asked, as she moved back to where her husband and kids waited. “Are you a doctor or nurse?”

  “I was an RN for almost a decade, until Nathan finished his doctoral work,” she said, smiling wryly. “Much of that time was spent in the ER at Sibley Memorial in D.C.”

  I nodded and turned my attention to Mayta and Ishi.

  “Where is Shuratu?”

  “Hopefully he’s dead. Tim and Rick threw him down into the chasm outside this room,” said Ishi, motioning to the bigger guys I had pulled down from their sleeping state first. “I listened to his screams until they were too far away.”

  “It was bad… but he was an evil man who would’ve killed us all,” said Mayta. She looked uncomfortable despite her words. If the shrieking pleas for mercy I heard had truly come from the wicked witch doctor, then I certainly understood her remorse.

  “He killed our friend, Jeb,” said one of the burly twins—impossible yet to say which was Tim or Rick. “The fucker deserved to die.”

  No remorse there, and also understandable.

  “Okay… so can we get the hell out of here?” I was ready to get this show back on the road to civilization.

  “We’ve been waiting on you,” said Dr. Pierce. He stepped forward with his right hand extended, and his powerful grip matched the charisma exuding from him. His warm brown eyes twinkled with amusement, and I recognized the kindred spirit driving the man. Some might fault him for dragging his family into such a dangerous operation, including me…until now. I caught a glimpse of what made the man tick, and the foolhardy drive was damned near identical to what steered me into similar predicaments. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Nick… Caine? Name sounds familiar to me…. Have you spent time in these parts?”

  All at once I felt incredibly naked again, like the young, foolish version of myself clambering down from a second story balcony in the Sunday morning sunshine and streaking back bare-assed to my dormitory, with a baseball cap the only thing covering my privates. Never mind the fact the rest of my clothes remained unclaimed for several days, until the sweet gal confronted me for not calling her as promised.

  I had always looked at that romantic event-gone-bad as the beginning of my less than fortuitous luck with women, having unwittingly drawn Aphrodite’s scorn ever since.

  “We spent time in Honduras—”

  “That’s where I adopted my young friend and brought him back to the States,” I said, placing my arm around Ishi and squeezing his shoulder tightly, as a reminder to shut the hell up. “We work as a team for a government operation that specifically seeks to protect prospectors like you guys from getting in over your heads.”

  “Meaning what?” Dr. Pierce asked guardedly.

  “Nothing personal, Doc,” I assured him. His eyes flashed with annoyance at my casual approach, but I hoped it was the burning spur to move him away from thinking about the unfortunate familiarity with my name. “We know you’re one of the good guys—and Ishi and I are big fans of your work. We were sent to rescue you from the Jivaro warriors who had captured you…. Why don’t we get out of this place and discuss it further on the way back to Quito?”

  “Quito? Why can’t we refresh our supplies in Logrono and continue cataloguing the Incan artifacts in the next cavern?” he said, eyeing me as if I had just insulted his mother. “My daughter, Sandra, and my wife, Marianne, need to get back to the States in the next few days for Thanksgiving, and I’d like to have this done before they leave. Then I’ll join them next week…. What?”

  I guess my mouth dropped open far enough to distract him. Either that or Ishi’s and Mayta’s similar reactions were what did the tr
ick. So, one week was really four weeks? Shit!

  “Your Thanksgiving holiday in the United States came and passed more than three weeks ago,” said Mayta, quietly. She eyed him with the same compassion she had shown me earlier, and it was tough to not enjoy the allure of this other side of her that I had failed to discern until now. “You have all been under Shuratu’s spell.”

  “But that’s impossible!” said Sandra, shaking her head. “He had killed Jeb and told us we would be next if we didn’t keep quiet. The other five Jivaro warriors had their weapons on us and we had to wait to strike back, since our guns were out of reach… and then we must’ve fallen asleep….” The look of sudden realization spread across her face.

  “For three weeks? Wait…. You’re saying we were asleep for more than… four goddamn weeks?” Dr. Pierce asked incredulously, while the rest of his team mumbled amongst themselves about it. Only his youngest offspring remained quiet, the girl looking at me as if she were reliving what had happened earlier.

  “Somehow he created Jivaro warriors from your essences while you slept,” I said, hating how silly the words sounded as they left my mouth. “Your youngest daughter saw them… and likely others did, too. There was a helluva lot more than five warriors, and most were guarding your bodies, as if they knew that if you died, so would they. How you all survived without food and water for damned near a month is… hell I don’t know what it is.”

  Dr. Pierce was about to say something else, but stopped himself, as if he suddenly recalled the crazy scene of warriors disappearing into thin air going on around him. He looked at his companions, and all but a few seemed to be having the same recollection of events that supported my absurd claim.

  “We can get your journal maps and other observations to the Minister of the Interior for Ecuador, along with any photographs you have taken, and secure what is here as we leave,” offered Mayta, tentatively presenting to him the leather-sleeved journal we had found on the way to this place. He grabbed it as if she had stolen it from his backpack just moments earlier, adding further confirmation that he was having a tough time reconciling what had happened to him, his family, and his exploration team. “But we really should leave this place before anything else happens.”

  She didn’t have to elaborate on what she meant, since a palpable negative current of energy moved through the cave, carried by a cool breeze. It could’ve been inspired by anything and it could’ve been nothing to be alarmed about…. But just the same, after what Mayta, Ishi, and I had witnessed—hell, what most of them had seen with their own eyes—it meant that more craziness was just a Mad Hatter’s hop away.

  In our case, that would be a stocky forty-ish male of ‘Jivaroan’ descent, whose crazy bonnet was a ceremonial feathered headdress.

  “Not to be paranoid, but it truly is time to go now,” I emphasized, when the professor and his wife quietly debated Mayta’s advisement as if they had all morning available to reach a decision. “We can discuss everything in greater detail when we’re on our way back to Quito.”

  “You parked off the main entrance to the area, I take it? Or did you try to drive in here?” asked Dr. Pierce.

  “Yes, we are not parked far from there… and we took a canoe to cross the waterways,” Mayta replied.

  “The area flooded from the rains?” Dr. Pierce shook his head, as obviously this information further confirmed what we had been trying to pound through his thick skull about the past three weeks of life he had missed. “We parked further to the south… our trucks and the Jeep could be lost!”

  That could certainly be inconvenient. Very much so, if the sudden moan emanating from where Rick and Tim had deposited a certain ‘master of the black arts’ meant anything.

  “I have a radio in my Jeep and can call for help,” Mayta advised. “We can either get your vehicles pulled out, or arrange rides for everyone to travel to Quito—or even Cuenca, if my contacts won’t go that far north—”

  “What was that?” Ishi interrupted her, while nearly everyone else gasped at the approach of a thick shadow that had steadily crept to where we were gathered.

  Several torches had been lit in this small cave, and one by one the flames flickered and died. But not before the shadow lengthened into a ghoulish representation of the sulking figure whose unusual headdress inspired it.

  “This can’t be possible,” mumbled one of the burly guys—unknown to me whether it was Tim or Rick. “He’s dead!”

  A deep-throated chuckle erupted from the dimness that steadily swallowed up the cave. The burning rage within a pair of inflamed eyes announced the debate on what to do next was officially over. From here on out, it would be a footrace between prey and predator…. All of us scrambled to escape the cave system, running for our lives to reach the main entrance in faint hopes of escaping the powerful wiles of a wicked and furious shaman.

  Shuratu had returned.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Near-blinding sunlight greeted us as we emerged from the cave system. It was unexpected, since overcast skies and heavy rain had been the extended forecast. Of worse concern, our companions who had spent most of the past month in torch-lit dimness immediately shielded their eyes, momentarily forgetting the pathway’s narrowness. Several members of the Pierce group nearly slid to their deaths after staggering dangerously close to the path’s edge.

  Hell, it also took a moment for Ishi, Mayta, and me to adjust to the brightness and the crowded path that only allowed for a single file descent. It left us vulnerable from behind, and a steeper decline in slope when we reached the roaring waterfall enhanced the path’s slipperiness, further slowing our escape.

  “Shuratu is going to catch us from behind!” worried Ishi, presently one spot ahead of Mayta. I pulled up the rear, keeping a constant watchful eye out for the witch doctor’s emergence through the main entrance. “They’re moving too damned slow!”

  He pointed ahead, where Rick and Tim prevented their comrades from trying to navigate the more slippery section leading under the waterfall until Dr. Pierce was ready to give the okay to proceed.

  “No… I don’t think he will catch us,” said Mayta, squinting her eyes as she peered beyond me into the cavern’s darkness. “Not yet.”

  Her closeness stirred something uncomfortable in me, and the onslaught of her sudden allure continued to surprise me. Even my efforts to try and focus on Marie’s face in memory failed to provide relief.

  “What in the hell do you mean by that?” I asked, glancing at the murkiness beyond the entrance. “If he jumps out here, we’ll be in a world of hurt.”

  But something seemed different about the netherworld we had just exited. The ominous feeling that had pursued us through the immense cavern filled with Inca treasure had waned when we reached the initial passageway that sat partly awash in daylight…. As we emerged to freedom, I was going to make a snarky remark that the bastard could reach out and pull the three of us back into the cavern, but the sound of his laughter and angry threats had long ceased and it would’ve been a jest in poor taste—not to mention a possible invitation for added retribution if Shuratu continued to follow from a discreet distance. Meanwhile, I wondered what had become of my latest nemesis…. Had he changed his tactics and now planned to surprise us from another location along our retreat to safety? Or, was what happened moments ago merely the last gasp from a wraith now confined to where the murderous shaman had perished?

  “Where do you think he disappeared to?” I persisted with Mayta, when she hadn’t responded to my earlier question and comment, while the line poised to travel beneath the waterfall was finally moving.

  She wouldn’t answer, offering a wan smile as she shook her head. Her eyes seemed warmer to me… but they were also filled with worry. She was still frightened.

  A glance from Ishi confirmed the same thing from him, and I offered an assuring nod to let him know I had his and everyone else’s back…. But when they refocused their attention to the treacherous pathway ahead, I allowed my gaze to
linger behind us.

  Nothing. Or, I should say nothing I could physically see… although it felt like we were being followed, or tracked. I kept my hand on the handle of my Bowie knife that I had reclaimed from Ishi, its holster attached to my belt near the buckle.

  A prickly feeling along the back of my neck grew stronger as we moved through the waterfall, where footsteps from behind would’ve been impossible to detect.

  “What’s wrong, Boss?” asked Ishi, raising his voice above the din, and attracting the attention of Dr. Pierce and others moving ahead of us. The path had widened as it descended to the jungle that separated this waterfall from the others, and where the exploration team had set up their camp before running afoul of Shuratu and his initial band of five Jivaro warriors.

  “Nothing,” I lied. “Just making sure we don’t get any unpleasant surprises.”

  Mayta shot me a look with an arched eyebrow that so reminded me of Marie when she thought something coming out of my mouth was a load of bull.

  “What became of the five warriors, you think?” she asked, quietly, pulling back to where we could chat for a moment. “They obviously weren’t of the same essence as the ones who vanished before our eyes…. Maybe they are real.”

  We had now been out in the wild for more than a day, long enough to begin to ripen, as humans are apt to do in a warm, humid jungle. I tried not to think about anything other than her question, since despite our condition her close proximity stirred me to consider things—sensual urges and naughty notions I previously believed would remain foreign to me for months, if not years, after my long misadventure with Ms. Da Vinci.

  As for her question? I honestly hadn’t thought about the five potentially ‘real’ companions of Shuratu.

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “So, you think they’re real?”

  “Yes,” she said, her voice even more hushed than before. “And, I think they are watching.”