On top of that I knew I was now in enemy territory. Having the lighter on was like carrying a neon sign over my head advertising free food. But my intuition—or rather, terrible fear—prevented me from switching it off. In any case, I remembered that the Morcegos seemed to have developed night vision, which meant they would see me, or smell me, one way or another. My only chance was to get out of that foul sewer as soon as possible. If not, my life expectancy would be measured in minutes.
I was walking very slowly, dragging my feet so as to make as little noise as possible in the water. So, when I heard the echo of a distant splashing I knew immediately that someone was following me.
I turned the lighter off and pressed myself against the wall. I even held my breath so as to listen better.
My own heart seemed set on betraying me, its runaway beating drumming in my ears like salvoes of artillery. Even so, I managed to distinguish a breathing sound. At first I thought with relief that it might be Souza’s or one of his men.
The harsh, cavernous panting was getting slowly but inexorably closer. I stayed completely still, trying to decide what sort of lungs these were. I calculated that if it was one of the mercenaries I could take advantage of the surprise factor and, with luck, jump on him from the shadows and disarm him.
But my plan collapsed before I could even finish working it out.
A fetid gust filled my nostrils when at last I dared take a breath. I knew that what was stealthily coming toward me was not a man at all.
74
A wave of irrational panic, the kind that make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up like a cat’s, ran down from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. I was positive that the Morcego—assuming there was only one of them—had located me and was sneaking on me, anticipating an attack from the impenetrable darkness.
I was petrified with no idea what to do. I was sure that after fighting the mercenaries, however much the light might bother him, he would not be too intimidated by the miserable little flame of the lighter. With a bit of luck it might startle him for a second, but that was not much given the present circumstances.
I finally resolved to keep moving, although I would keep the lighter on for now and act as if I were unaware of the creature’s presence. I assumed that if I started running—something extremely difficult with the water nearly up to my chest—the Morcego, faster than me and undoubtedly more used to these surroundings, would soon catch me. So, trying to appear stupidly unconcerned but still straining my ears to hear, I went on walking with the lighter in front of me, with my hands shaking more than they had been a minute before.
A few yards ahead there was a faint reflection that warned me I was reaching the end of the passage. Here a wall, painted with lichen and moss, closed my way.
My heart beat faster when the thought occurred to me that the reason for that slow hunt was nothing less than a deliberate attempt to push me to the end of that cul-de-sac.
I tried to work out some unlikely solution as every step took me closer to the end—of the tunnel and my own end—but I could not think of anything. There was no possible escape.
The cloud of invisible pestilence was more overwhelming every second. I had no other option but to keep going forward. Once I came up against that stone wall, I would fight as hard as I could so that the creature would have to pay dearly for my skin. Or at least not grab it for free.
I was already taking deep breaths, filling my lungs and flexing my muscles, when a couple of yards short of the wall I realized that it was in fact a fork. Two passages opened to right and left. They were equally dark and claustrophobic, but at that moment they looked to me like the reception hall at the Ritz, doorman, red carpet, and all.
I almost let out a happy cry. Without much thought I went into the right-hand one. The moment I set foot in it, I heard a faint snort coming from within it.
Wrong way.
Slowly, turning around a hundred and eighty degrees as if I had not heard anything, I decided the other path was a better bet.
I did not dare to glance back, for fear I would see what I had no desire to. I peered out into the left passage and stretched out the lighter.
When I heard nothing, I realized that I would briefly be out of sight of the pursuing Morcego. The moment I turned the corner of the gloomy passage I ran as fast as I could.
It did not take the Morcego long to realize my move, but at least I had gained a few seconds. By the time I heard his hurried splashing, I had already gone some way into this new passage. For a moment it seemed strangely familiar in the light of the feeble flame.
The feeling was confirmed when I reached a new crossroads and found a tiny arrow hastily marked on the moss. It pointed in the opposite direction to mine. That mark was one of the several Cassie had made the day before, when we had first gone into the tunnels. I knew that if I followed them backward they would take me to the safety I craved, even though that safety depended solely on the Morcego’s hunting abilities.
I felt like a mouse being chased by a giant cat in a labyrinth. At a casino, not even the craziest compulsive gambler would have risked a cent on me.
“There’s always hope until the very end,” I said to give myself courage as I went on with my desperate race, searching for arrow marks at every turn. I forced myself to ignore the ever closer panting behind me, not to mention the sudden surge in my imagination that made me picture a long black claw stretched out toward my neck.
It may have been because my mind was caught up with things like this that it took me a while to realize two things: there were no more markings on the walls, and the tunnel I was now in seemed to be sloping upward. This meant that the water, which had come to my waist a moment before, now only reached as far as my knees. I knew then that I was completely lost and had never been in this spot before. I also realized that the more I went up, the closer I would be to the surface and the sunlight I longed for. With this last thought I quickened my pace in the hope of waking up from that nightmare.
Bearing in mind the distance I had been running uphill, I calculated I must be close to the jungle ground level by now, and began to feel uneasy. But the horrible panting was still echoing behind me, so I could neither stop nor turn around.
There was no other way out except forward, wherever that sinister passage might take me.
Perhaps the Morcego was simply driving me exactly where he wanted, like a cow to the slaughterhouse, I thought.
Just then, the lighter revealed the remains of a collapse a few yards further on. When I got there, I climbed the small mound of rubble in the middle of the tunnel and raised the lighter, hoping it would show some way of escape through the ceiling. Unfortunately, the cave-in was only superficial and the hole over my head was no more than three feet deep.
It was obvious there was no way out through there.
And yet…
75
I huddled in a narrow gap nearly six feet above the ground, with my knees and elbows squeezed into the nooks and crannies of the rock, trying desperately to hang on, suspended in the air and without a sound coming out of my mouth.
After I switched off the lighter the darkness had become deeper. Only the hoarse breathing of the Morcego and his growing stench allowed me to guess he was getting closer all the time.
I had a simple plan.
I just had to wait for my hunter to pass below without him seeing me. Once he had gone past and up along the passage, I would let myself down and retrace my steps back to the labyrinth, where I knew there was at least one way out to the surface.
I did not have to wait long before an almost palpable pestilence impregnated every breath of air. At the same time, right beneath me, I heard the sound of harsh, labored breathing. I could see nothing in that absolute blackness, but I had no doubt that the head of the Morcego was just inches from my own. If he thought to look up, he would see me clustered in that hole, totally vulnerable. I did not need to be a fortune teller to imagine what would happen.
> For a moment, I was afraid I was going to find out that for myself, when the almost soundless steps of the creature stopped abruptly. I was aware that he was sniffing the air, perhaps scenting the closeness of my smell, even above his own.
I pressed my lips together and held my breath trying to keep my teeth from chattering. I was terrified. I kept telling myself it was impossible for him to see me and that he would soon be on his way.
At last, after several anxious seconds, my prayers were answered. The steps started again and the echo of his breathing began to recede until I could no longer hear it… but not in the direction I had expected.
I swore to myself as I realized the Morcego had turned around completely and was going back the way he had come.
My plan had just fallen apart.
When I could no longer hear the Morcego, I let myself down very carefully from my precarious hiding place until my feet were back on the ground. My muscles were cramped from the contortionist position I had been forced to keep up.
There was absolute quiet now. For an instant I feared my hunter was playing with me, hiding in the shadows not far away. But I had no way of knowing. Since I could not risk using the lighter again to check, I forced that fear down to the back of my mind. I keep going up, blindly, barely touching the wall with my fingertips.
As the Morcego had retraced his steps, I had nowhere to go but upward. I trusted there would be a way out further on.
I walked with my hand outstretched, careful not to make any noise in case there were more Morcegos lurking around, straining my ears to hear what my eyes could not see, but it was useless. A silence like that of the grave reigned in the endless tunnel, and the absence of any sight or sound to refer to made me so uneasy that I cleared my throat a couple of times just to check I had not gone deaf.
I also felt a tremendous urge to use the lighter and bring some light to that absolute darkness. With a great effort I forced common sense to impose itself over instinct and kept the lighter where it was, in the back pocket of my pants.
Luckily, a few minutes later the dilemma of whether to light the Zippo or not became meaningless when I turned a corner of the tunnel and found out that it opened into a great cavern. In the middle of it a thick beam of light, as though from a reflector, shone in through a hole in the ceiling about sixty feet above me.
That beam of sunlight, wide but faint, illuminated the place enough to show a vast spherical grotto a hundred feet or so wide. The walls were vertical and symmetrical, covered with cuneiform writing, so that I had no doubt of its human origin.
Apart from the writing, the walls had been carved in a rather disturbing style with blood-curdling, life-size human skulls, with empty eye sockets that seemed to stare at me. I had seen something similar in Aztec and Maya sites in Mexico and Guatemala; though on a smaller scale, they must have some connection to these.
The feeling which emanated from this place was one of threatening and terrible grandeur. Yet what finally caught my attention in that indescribable space of dream and nightmare was something that rose right in the middle of the colossal hall nearly up to the ceiling, just under the beam of light.
It was a pyramid, apparently made of branches and yellowed stones about thirty feet high piled haphazardly like a mound of waste.
Impelled by curiosity, constantly looking to right and left, I went over to the mound and the light shining on it like a promise of freedom.
But in that instant a new, intensely putrid gust assaulted my nose. I was petrified. Stuck to the spot. I could not even blink.
I strained my ears, trying to ascertain the by now familiar sounds the Morcegos made when they moved and breathed.
Nothing. Absolute silence.
Either they were sleeping, or else the disgusting smell had some other origin.
In any case, I sensed that as long as I stayed in the open away from the cover of darkness, I was running a serious risk. If there was any hidden Morcego watching the place he would certainly discover me at once and be delighted with the home food delivery.
Even so, I could not simply leave without checking that possibility of escape. It lured me like a light lures moths. I summoned up my courage and prepared to cross the enormous distance to the light, determined to get out of there as soon as possible.
In fact my plan was indeed simple enough: move as stealthily as possible in a straight line, and run like hell at the slightest sign of discovery, muttering the few prayers I could remember.
What could possibly go wrong?
I began to tiptoe, using the strange mound as a reference, trusting I would make no unintentional sound and hoping there was no invisible crack in the way, because I might not see it until I was falling into it.
I advanced feeling the ground with my foot like a blind man without a cane. My heart was racing, my mouth dry as esparto grass.
That was the effect of terror, an old travel companion I had been running into too often lately for my taste.
The stench of rotting flesh was becoming more unbearable with every step, as if the source of it was the mountain of rubble itself.
Cautiously, I went on even slower.
I raised one foot and brought it down, heel first then sole, shifting the weight of my body on flexed knees, then I lifted the other foot. I moved it forward and brought it down slowly… and suddenly, with a massive thump and an involuntary cry of pain, I fell on my back. I had slipped on something slimy.
For a minute that seemed an eternity I stayed there, absolutely still, lying on the floor without even daring to breathe, sure I had been discovered.
The fall had been loud enough to attract the attention of any Morcego in the vicinity that was not deaf. But, unbelievable as it might be, there was no immediate reaction, which might mean that there was no one else there after all.
Taking that unlikely possibility as a certainty, I raised myself to see what had made me slip. I felt the floor and realized with surprise that some kind of thick liquid stuck to my hands. I put it to my nose to try to identify it and… I could hardly stop myself from gagging when I discovered it was nothing other than fluids from rotting flesh.
Disgust made me retreat instinctively, tripping over my own feet and almost falling again.
That fetid liquid could only be coming from a decomposing creature.
Summoning courage from nowhere, convinced that no Morcego was lurking near, I risked lighting the Zippo. With my hand over it to dim the flame I took a few steps forward.
The ghastly scene which appeared in front of me made my stomach such a lurch that I retched and vomited all over the place in uncontrolled spasms of repulsion.
What I had taken at first to be a mountain of waste was now revealed as an apocalyptical dump of bones, skulls, and rotting flesh.
Amid it all was a headless, limbless torso of a man being devoured by a legion of small white maggots.
Wherever I turned my eyes there was nothing to be seen but skeletons, an infinity of them, accumulated perhaps over centuries.
Struggling to ignore the smell and the repugnance I felt, I came closer to the dismembered torso. It still wore a T-shirt stained with dried blood bearing the ironic inscription Amazônia é vida and a vest with many pockets like the ones photographers or hunters use. This might be one of the lost members of Valeria’s group, I thought. I pressed my lips together to stop myself from throwing up again and set myself to look into the pockets, just in case there was something in them I could make use of.
I felt mean for robbing a dead man, whoever he might be, but I had no choice and, besides, he was past beyond caring.
I found a packet of cigarettes, some aspirins, a ballpoint pen and, luckily, something that could come in genuinely handy: a flare. Still very disturbed, but with my little treasure safe in my pocket, I left the remains of the poor wretch behind and began to climb up skulls and shinbones to the top of that macabre grave, toward what I hoped would be the way out of that hell.
With a mixture of na
usea and horror, I did my best not to break any bones as I stepped on them, or squash any head. A metallic sound made me stop to check something buried under my feet. I bent over and moved aside some yellowed, decidedly human bones, then thrust my arm in up to my elbow. What I pulled out left me momentarily frozen.
It was a sword, no less: an unmistakable, rusty steel sword, like the kinds the conquistadors had used five hundred years before.
I studied it as I held it in my right hand, realizing that those creatures must have been killing for centuries, to protect themselves from human beings. Not to eat them or drink their blood, as the legends would have it, but because of an instinct that was territorial, or self-protective. They were brutal and merciless, no doubt about that, but I was beginning to suspect that their motive was pure survival. Maybe somehow they felt that if the outside world was to find out about their existence, or the city’s, their days would be numbered.
This would also explain why no one had ever heard anything about this place, given that no one had ever returned to tell… and it also explained why they would not let any of us escape alive.
I left the sword to one side, my attention drawn to what I soon identified as a soldier’s uniform which was wrapped around another skeleton, also headless. It wasGerman, as I realized when I bent down beside it. A silver eagle with a swastika between its claws was still pinned to the shirt front. It came off the material as soon as I touched it, and to see it better I raised it to my eyes.
“Unbelievable,” I muttered in awe as I held it with two fingers. “This is a bloody museum.”
It was a unique, extraordinary place. For a moment I imagined the disbelief on the professor and Cassie’s faces when I told them of my discovery, at least if I ever managed to get out of there. The thought brought me back to reality fast. I realized that every second I spent in that cavern was one more second in which I risked being found out.
I wasted no more time, but went on climbing up that terrible hill of corpses to its highest point: a pinnacle crowned by a rounded stone platform, covered by what appeared to be a crust of thick dried blood.
BLACK CITY (Ulysses Vidal Adventure Series Book 2) Page 33