Into the Darkness

by Margaret Daley

  She slipped over the side and felt with her right foot for a place to plant it. Nothing. Then she traded for her left one and found a small jutting of stones. Slowly she made her way down the steep incline, hugging the hillside with every ounce of energy she could muster. Rocks scraped against her. Mud and rain made it difficult to get a firm grip, but she kept going, feeling God’s presence with her every inch of the way.

  As dark descended and the rain let up, she reached Slader. He lay faceup, not stirring at all. She peeked over the ledge he was on and swallowed hard. Below them the river thundered past. Maybe a thirty-foot drop.

  She crawled to Slader, murmuring, “Father, please let him be alive.”

  The implications of him being severely hurt or dead was beyond what Kate wanted to consider. When she reached Slader’s side, with a trembling hand, she found his pulse at the side of his neck. Then she checked to see if he was breathing. He was.

  She collapsed with relief. “Thank You, Lord.”

  With the light quickly fading, she searched for his injuries and immediately discovered a gash at the back of his head from a rock. Blood covered her fingers as she assessed the extent of the wound. Three inches long. Possibly deep. But the bleeding seemed to have stopped. It was too hard to tell with dusk descending.

  What to do? Kate chewed on her bottom lip. Pray.

  “Dear Heavenly Father, Slader and I are in quite a bind as You can see. We need Your help to get safely to the river. Slader needs to wake up now. I know the longer he is unconscious, the worse it is. Please help us. In Jesus Christ, amen.”

  * * *

  Through the pounding pressure in his head, Slader heard the words, “Please help us. In Jesus Christ, amen.” Everything would be all right, he thought. Kate was here and praying.

  He felt the cool touch of her hand as it pushed his hair from his forehead. Then her fingers wrapped about his, and she began to sing softly about soaring on the wings of an eagle. He listened to her beautiful voice, focusing on the words while trying to ignore the thundering of his heartbeat in his ears that matched the sound of the waterfall below them. For the first time in a long while, he thanked God for being alive. He had to protect Kate.

  * * *

  Kate clung to Slader’s hand, willing her strength into him, as she sang, running through a repertoire of songs from church. After the fifth one, she paused, drawing in a deep breath of the moisture-laden air.

  “Wake up, Slader. Please.”

  He stirred. She sat straighter, leaning closer to get a better look despite the darkness creeping over the landscape.

  “Slader? Are you awake?”

  He groaned, bringing his free hand up to touch his head. “Afraid so.”

  “Oh, good. You had me worried. Is anything broken?”

  “Besides my skull?” He moved his limbs. “Nope, just hurting bad.”

  “I know you wanted to get to the bottom before nightfall, but couldn’t you have taken the more traditional way?”

  “Funny.” He pushed himself to his elbows and slowly examined the area. “This isn’t good.”

  “You think?” Kate barely saw the grin that appeared on Slader’s face. Soon she wouldn’t be able to see even the hand in front of her when darkness fell completely.

  “Touché,” he said with a chuckle that stopped abruptly. “I can’t laugh. It hurts too much.”

  “What are we going to do? If you hadn’t awakened soon, I confess I didn’t have a clue what to do next.”

  “Sit tight until morning. Not much else we can do. From the sound of it, we’re above the waterfall.” He felt around. “Where’s my backpack?”

  “Probably the same place mine is. Either at the bottom or somewhere on the slope above us.”

  “You don’t have yours, either?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “We’d better take stock of what we do have besides the clothes on our back.” He checked his pockets. “I have a knife, my GPS on my wrist, some matches, a flattened candy bar and that is it. How about you?”

  “A lip balm, some mints and a few useless, wet tissues.”

  “Not promising.” He touched his head. “My cap! It’s gone, too.”

  “We’re in trouble, aren’t we?” She knew the answer but was hoping he would reassure her that they weren’t.

  “Yep.”

  She sighed when she heard his answer. “We’ll make it.”

  “Of course, we will. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  “God will take care of us.”

  She had half suspected he would protest that declaration, but when he didn’t, a small ray of hope blossomed in her heart.

  Slader sagged against the cliff, bringing his knees up and resting his arms on them.

  For a long moment as the dark shadows of night took over, Kate waited for him to say something. When he didn’t, she asked, “How’s your head?”

  Silence.

  She shook him gently.

  He moaned.

  “Slader, you’ve got to stay awake. You can’t sleep tonight.”

  “I’m tired.”

  “I am, too, but you can’t go to sleep. Not with that head wound. I don’t want you slipping into a coma.” She thought for a moment. How could she keep him awake? “Slader, tell me what you know about the Quentas.”

  “The Quentas Indians?”

  She couldn’t see him, but by the tone of his voice she was sure he thought she was crazy. “Yes. After we cross the river tomorrow, we’ll be in their territory. I want to know everything you know, so I can prepare myself.”

  “I’m not sure you can prepare yourself.”

  The ominous sound to his words produced a shiver that caused her to hug her arms to her. “I’m quickly realizing that books don’t even begin to tell a person what the jungle is really like. So lay it on me. What will we be up against tomorrow?”

  “Probably nothing. They’ll most likely watch us for a while before deciding what to do about us.”

  “Will they give us a chance to talk to them?”

  For a long moment, Slader didn’t respond. Kate placed her hand on his arm.

  “Kate, I don’t know their language. It’s different from the other tribes in the area.”

  She sucked in a deep breath. “That could be a problem.”

  “Yep. Most definitely.”

  “How do they hunt? What kind of weapons do they use? How many are there?”

  “Whoa, Kate. My head is spinning as it is. I can only answer one question at a time. No one knows for sure how many Quentas there are. The last we heard, at least several hundred.”

  The idea of several hundred Indians standing in a large circle around them with their weapons all pointed at her and Slader took over her mind. “That’s a lot. What kind of weapons?”

  “The usual I suppose—spears, bows and arrows. I wish I could tell you more. I just don’t know much. There are stories circulating about the tribe, but so much of it is probably exaggerated.”

  “Like what?” Kate relaxed and sat back against the cliff right next to Slader, her arm touching his. He was talking, which meant he wasn’t sleeping. That would be her job the whole night, she decided. No matter how much she wished she could sleep herself. She needed Slader, and he needed her.

  “One is what your brother heard about their extraordinary abilities to heal. No one knows that for sure. Where their village is located is a secret. Even pilots flying over this part of the jungle haven’t been able to find any sign of a large village. Of course, they may not live in one large village but several small ones. No one knows.”

  She heard the weariness in his voice and again touched his arm, trying to convey her support the only way she could. “How are you feeling?”

  “Like a few hundred drums are pounding inside my skull. Other than that, I’m great.” He shifted so he faced her. “How about you? That was a long way down.”

  “Next time, let’s not take the shortcut.”

  His chuckl
e warmed her. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Tomorrow I’ll be sore and bruised, no doubt, but my injuries will not slow us down.”

  “Speaking of down…we’ll still have to find a way to the river, preferably not the way we came to be on this ledge.”

  “You know the first thing I want when we get back to civilization is a long hot bath. I have mud caked everywhere and this second set of clothes is as bad as the first one.”

  “Some people pay big money to have mud baths. So, where’s your appreciation?”

  “I think I left it up on the hillside next to my backpack.” A loud explosive call sounded over the noise of the waterfall. Kate scooted a little closer to Slader. “What was that?” She didn’t dare voice out loud what she thought it was.

  “A screaming pia. Don’t worry. It’s only a bird.”

  She relaxed some but didn’t move away. “What do you want first when you get back to civilization?”

  “Hmm. A butter-drenched lobster.”

  “They have them in Mandras?”

  “No, but then I don’t consider Mandras civilization.”

  “Stateside?”

  “Too much civilization. Belem is far enough for me.”

  Kate dragged a deep breath into her lungs and held it for a long moment before asking, “What are you running away from, Slader?” She felt him tense next to her, but she wouldn’t take back the question. It was time they got to know each other beyond polite strangers and even the polite part was questionable at times.

  “What makes you think I’m running away from anything just because I don’t want to go back to the United States?”

  “I think a better question is, what are you hiding from?”

  A long silence followed her statement, and Kate wondered if he had fallen asleep. She had started to reach for his arm to wake him up when he cut through the quiet with, “Myself.”

  His solemn tone of voice underscored a shift in their relationship. “Why?”

  “I killed my wife.”

  Chapter Nine

  Slader’s words struck Kate like a swift blow to the head, their implication reeling. Her mind went blank while tension claimed every inch of her.

  “Or, to put it more accurately,” Slader continued in a voice full of self-loathing, “I might as well have killed her. She would be alive today if I hadn’t wanted to come to the Amazon to hunt for a lost Amazonian civilization.”

  “What happened?” she asked, hoping he hadn’t felt her go stiff at his declaration. She sensed that this bond forming between them was still so fragile that even a light breeze could break it.

  “I met my wife in college. Renee and I were both studying to become archaeologists. I got her interested in South American civilizations and the idea that there was a lost sect of Incas that established an empire within the Amazon that survived much longer than the Incas in Peru after Pizarro and the Spanish destroyed them. After we got married, we scraped together funds for an expedition to seek evidence of this empire.”

  Slader stopped talking for a long moment, and Kate sensed him slipping into unconsciousness even though she couldn’t see him clearly. She quickly laid her hand on his arm, feeling his warmth, and asked, “Did you find it?”

  He jerked up. “Find it?”

  “The Inca empire.”

  “No,” he replied in a thick, raw voice roughened with emotions she suspected he was trying to control.

  “What happened?” For once she hoped he let her glimpse the real man behind the front he presented to the world.

  “Renee became pregnant not too long after we started. We decided to stay another month since we hadn’t been in the jungle that long, then come back to the States for her to have the baby. We hadn’t given up our dream. We intended to return later to the Amazon.”

  Again, Slader went quiet, but this time Kate knew he was fully awake. The muscles beneath her hand bunched, and he drew in ragged breaths. She waited for him to continue, sensing he was trying to compose himself.

  “She developed an infection and died before I could get her back to civilization.”

  The terse way he’d said civilization chilled Kate. She squeezed his arm, hoping to convey her support.

  “I buried Renee and my unborn child in the Amazon.”

  Telling him she was sorry for his loss seemed so inadequate, but the words slipped out anyway.

  He grew stiff. “I told her we should go back right away, that the Inca site would be there for us later, but she wanted to press on for a while longer. It had been an ordeal just getting to where we were. She was sure we were close. I didn’t argue with her because secretly I was glad she wanted to stay. I knew we would be successful any day, and our future would be secured. A find like that would take years to excavate. Renee and I would be famous in the academic world with such a discovery. We would be in demand to write our find, to lecture about it. The thought was intoxicating…and my downfall.”

  The sarcastic twist to his last sentence conveyed his scorn, all directed at himself. But beneath the contempt, a thread of hurt laced each word. Kate’s heart wrenched with a need to comfort, something she was sure he would rebuke. Lord, show me the way to help him.

  “Have you tried to find the Inca site? Is that why you stayed in Brazil all these years?”

  He laughed, a sound filled with such coldness that Kate shuddered in the warm night air. “I stayed because Renee is here. That’s the least I can do.”

  “So, the Amazon is your prison?”

  “My prison? I suppose it is.”

  “When do you think you’ll have done enough penance for your wife’s death? Another five years? Ten? How long?”

  He yanked away from her, putting a few feet between them, and she suspected if he could, he would have put more. But the ledge was small, and he had to be precariously close to the edge. Silence pulsated between them. Tilting her chin, she balled her hands and prepared to fight him for his soul.

  “Is that why you drink?”

  “Drink? Alcohol?”

  “Yes.”

  “I haven’t had a drop in four years.”

  Puzzled, Kate remembered the first time she had seen him in the Blue Dolphin with a glass of liquor in front of him. “I don’t understand. Back at the bar you had one.”

  “It’s there to remind me of the depths I sank to after Renee’s death. I won’t go there again. I hardly remember that first year after her death.”

  Relieved that he hadn’t resorted to alcohol to solve his problems, she asked again, “How long do you plan to stay here?”

  “I don’t know,” he practically shouted the words at her, silencing the rainforest around them for a few seconds, the water tumbling over the cliff in the distance the only sound.

  The blast of his reply frosted her. She was getting to him, tearing down the barrier he had erected around his heart. Good. It needed to come tumbling down.

  “It’s none of your—”

  “Business?” she asked, cutting into his tirade. “You’re right. It isn’t. But I’ve decided to make it my business. After all, you and I are stuck on this ledge all night. For that matter, we are stuck in the middle of a jungle with men after us and possibly an unfriendly tribe of Indians ahead of us. So, I think that warrants me getting to know something about you. In exchange, I’ll tell you something about me. I think that’s fair.” Kate knelt with her palms flat on the ground, mud oozing up between her fingers. Never in her life had she been so bold as to say something like that to another. But the words had flown from her mouth as though God himself had spoken them, challenging Slader—for that matter, challenging her.

  “Fair? There’s nothing fair about this—situation.” Slader’s voice was now deadly quiet, as though he were gathering his frayed composure about him, shoring up his barrier against her assault.

  “Haven’t you heard that life isn’t fair?” Kate said.

  His laughter penetrated the night yet held no humor. “Many times. My life is a go
od example of that saying.”

  “Self-pity from you? I’m surprised.”

  “Not self-pity. I’m just stating the facts, ma’am.”

  “Zach’s all the immediate family I have. My parents and a sister died in a fire when I was in high school, so you aren’t the only one who has lost someone special to them.” She splayed her muddy hand over heart, momentarily shocked that she had told him something so personal. Only Zach knew her pain. Their loss still wrung her emotionally dry. “They’re with the Lord now. I’ll see them again one day.”

  “How do you know you will?”

  His question hung in the heavy air between them, his challenge to her. “Because like my faith, theirs was strong.”

  “But you don’t know for a fact what happens to a person after he dies.”

  “No, that’s what faith is all about. Believing in something that isn’t necessarily concrete, something you can’t put your hands on. Did Renee believe in the Lord?”

  “Yes, and it didn’t do her any good. She died in my arms with a prayer on her lips. A prayer that went unanswered.”

  “How do you know it went unanswered?”

  “She died! Haven’t you been listening to what I said?” His voice rose, drowning out the constant noise from the waterfall.

  Kate sensed Slader shifting on the ledge until he was closer to her. “Maybe God’s answer was that it was her time to die. That you would be reunited after death. That might not be what you wanted, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t best for Renee.”

  The sound of his snort centered her attention on Slader. Even though it was too dark to see him fully, she could picture the wry slant to his mouth, the derision in his expression.

  “What would it take to shake that faith of yours? Not finding Zach?”

  “If the Lord wants Zach, I won’t stand in His way. But I don’t think that’s what the Lord has planned for my brother. We will find him.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  “In here.” She clenched her hand over her heart. “God is with us. We will make it. I just know it.”