After that I figured I better toughen up. I could tell I was wearing on the kid, and really, if Nina and Professor Leclair could make it through this jungle, then so could I. I once saw a bum stringing up butchered dog carcasses along an alleyway like Peking ducks in a Chinese deli widow. I could manage this. And so the next time I saw a spider as wide as a Stetson crawling out from under a rock, I kept it to myself. Those things were all over the place, webs as thick and sticky as hoof glue. No wonder they got to be so big, what with the amount of insects flying around, they must break their jaws trying to eat 'em all.
It got dark soon after that, not that it was too bright to begin with under the canopy. Narciso and I pitched our tents and turned in. I had trouble getting to sleep. It wasn't just the heat, or the insects, or the fact that, apparently, when the sun goes down, most of the jungle wakes up. As the kid explained later, most of the bigger predators are nocturnal. The trees came alive, singing with every howling, chattering thing imaginable. It's a racket that doesn't end. I had learned to put the sounds of traffic and drunken shouting, the occasional murder or rape, out of my mind at night, actually those things were kind of soothing, but this was just uncivilized.
And on top of that, I had Nina to think about. What she'd said in her letter. Imprisoned, I thought, somewhere in the jungle. Not knowing if her letter ever found me or not. And here I was getting sore at some monkey screaming his lungs out.
We set off early the next morning. I don’t think I slept a wink. The next few days were like the first, the only difference being my proximity to soap and water growing farther and farther apart. Every daylight hour was spent hiking through the jungle. The heat never let up. Insects hovered around in clouds so dense you couldn’t inhale without sucking them in. Spiders, big and hairy as walking toupees everywhere you look. If it wasn’t spiders, it was snakes, which you only saw about a split second before you stepped on them. I never saw any tigers or jaguars or big stuff. They were well hidden during the day, and I wasn’t about to start searching for ‘em. Once I saw a line of ants cross by carrying a dead monkey. Its crinkly little old man face lolled over, and it seemed to look at me with maggots crawling over its open eyes. I hated the jungle. The only thing that kept me going was knowing that somewhere, somehow, Nina had it worse.
Trudging through endless green, hacking away at the underbrush and vines, I suddenly caught a whiff of something long rotten, and I got a bad feeling right away. It didn’t take long to uncover the source of the stench. Some unspeakable thing, I’d hesitate to call it human, had taken a man’s head and torso and impaled it on a stick. The guy had been crudely butchered, hardly any flesh left on his body, his head was a screaming skull with some hair and tendons attached. His eyes had turned to jelly in their sockets and I could see ribs curving through the ruin of remaining flesh. Bone chipped in places by primitive knives and axes. He was teeming with maggots.
The kid had trouble understanding why I was upset. “You knew him? He was a friend of yours?” he said of the corpse.
“No,” I said. “I’d remember meeting a guy without a face. I just don’t understand what sort of person does something like this.”
“I was gonna tell you,” said the kid. “But I didn’t want you to worry. We have to be careful in this part of the jungle, senor. It’s very dangerous.”
“Dangerous how? Are the spiders bigger?”
“Not spiders you should worry about. There’s tribes of cannibals near here.”
“Tribes? I said. “Like plural? More than one? How come they didn’t finish eating this guy, then?”
The kid gives me this serious look. “Maybe they’re saving their appetite.”
Its funny how expectations can change. I saw a bat strung up in a nasty web, trying to free itself. The next second its stomach explodes and out come pouring about a million baby spiders. Suddenly I had no fear of things like that because I knew there were far deadlier things in the jungle. Cannibals. Men. I know that humans could be much more savage than any animal ever to walk the planet.
A day-and-a-half later we came to a small trading outpost. The kid suspected that it must be near where Nina and the professor were last seen, and where they’d been getting mail. It wasn’t more than a couple of bamboo huts in a clearing, but it looked like Atlantic city as far as I was concerned, only instead of blackjack they had malaria.
We find the postmaster, who was an English fella, and we grill him about Leclair and Nina He knew who they were alright, you don’t forget a couple of pale academic types in the heart of the Amazon. He told me they’d been staying with a tribe a few miles west, and gave us directions. Then he dropped a bombshell. “Sorry for your loss,” he says, gravely. “He seemed a good enough man.” I stare cockeyed at the postmaster, and tell him to start making sense. “Why, Leclair,” he says. “You are here to claim his body, aren’t you? Take it back and give it a burial on Christian soil?” I tell him to back up about a mile. “You didn’t know?” he says. “Professor Leclair died more than a month ago.”
Nina! That’s all I can think about. “The girl,” I demand. “What happened to the girl that was with him?”
The postmaster thinks for a long time and shakes his head. “Can’t say. As far as I know, she’s still with the tribe.”
I’m ready to go before he’s done speculating. I turn to Narciso. “Gear up. We’re heading out early.”
As we’re getting ready to go, something dawns on me. That postmaster fella might be spending too much time in the sun or something. The professor couldn’t have died a month ago. I’d been in the jungle less than a week. It takes five days for a letter to get the city from here, and Nina’s had been dated, so I know she only wrote it less than two weeks ago. The professor must have been alive when she wrote the letter. If he’d been dead, she would have said so. We headed off into the jungle, the only thing I was thinking was that even if the postmaster had got things screwed up, I had to get to Nina in a big hurry. Something wasn’t right.
It wasn’t too difficult to locate the village, about as easy as anything else in the jungle. The kid did most of the work anyway, chopping up the brush and cutting the vines. Before we get there, I ask him what sort these tribal types are, but he tells me he don’t know anything about ‘em.
“So we could be walking into a cannibal buffet without even knowing it?” I asked.
“Perhaps. But it isn’t likely. Many tribes only practice the cannibalism as a ritual in times of ceremony. Besides, your Nina, she wouldn’t live with a cannibal tribe, would she?”
“I guess not,” I Say, but really his guess is as good as mine.
Before long we can see smoke curling over the tree tops. After that we see the village, lots of grass huts, a structure like a long house in the center, some other huts that don’t quite look like homes. I couldn’t attest to the comfort of a place like this, but what did I know, they’d probably been here before America was discovered. We enter the village to no ceremony, the few sun-baked and mostly nude villagers didn’t seem to care. From what I could tell most of them were loaded, and kept passing around a gourd with some vile liquid sloshing over the sides.
I didn’t see Nina or the professor anywhere around, but knew I wouldn’t have to search too hard to find them if they were here. I was inspecting this giant totem which depicted some monster I’m pretty sure they worshiped. It was cover in all sorts of trinkets, crude twine and wooden things, but there was one object gleaming in the sunlight. I snatched it immediately. Holding it my hand. I recognized it. Nina had been here. Was still here if I knew anything else. It was a necklace I’d bought her before she left: a silver heart-shaped locked. I open it up, and sure enough, I’m looking at a photo of my own mug.
By this time Narciso has found the head honcho. The guy is old, his face is cracked like a bad sidewalk, and he’s got beady little eyes. I can tell he’s just as soused as the rest of them, must be a Saturday or something. Narciso is speaking some language at him. I don’t speak i
t, but I can tell the chief is giving him the runaround. I put my hand on the kid’s shoulder and tag him out. I hold out the necklace and he gives himself away. “I know she’s here,” I say. “You have no idea the trouble you’re going to have if you don’t take me to her right now.”
He debates it I can tell, but eventually he makes a gesture for us to follow him. We do. I ask the kid if he found out anything abut the professor. “The postmaster was right,” he says. “I’m sorry. Your friend, he’s dead. They say he’s still here.”
“They didn’t bury him?” I asked
The kid shrugs.
It turns out they’re keeping Nina in one of the grass huts, why she hadn’t just walked through the wall and made a break, I couldn’t say, though I was glad she hadn’t taken off into the jungle solo. There were two rough-looking hombres standing guard. Well, as tough as a fella can look in grass underwear, anyway. They’re both tight as dick’s hat band. They’re holding it together as best they can, but I can smell whatever’s in that gourd they’re passing around, and it is high octane. I shove past them, and they move to rough me up, but the chief tells them to lay off, so they do. I run into the hut and grab Nina.
“Oh, Roger, I’d almost given up hope,” she cries when she sees me.
“Don’t ever give up. I’m like an abacus, babe; you can always count on me.”
She’s turning on the water works. Her head’s buried in my chest. “I never thought I’d hear your voice again, she says. Are you real? I feel like I’m dreaming.”
“This is no dream, Doll, it’s a nightmare. I’m here to wake you up. You’re alright now. We’re leaving, first thing, so pack a bag. But first, why don’t you tell me how you wound up in this mess to begin with.”
“It was the tree, Roger. That damned tree. Uncle knew of a legend about a tree in the heart of the Amazon. It was said to be eternal, with roots that sank down to the very core of the Earth. A pure white tree that glowed in the sun, whose leaves never fell, whose limbs never wilted. It was said that its roots that draw life from the center of the Earth itself, would transfer eternal youth onto those who had eaten of them. It was a botanist’s dream, the mixture of legend and science. Uncle was mad for it. He was desperate to find it. I told him it was only a myth, but he said that every myth had roots in reality. He was determined to find it. What could I do, Roger? As his assistant, as his niece, I had an obligation to accompany him. We journeyed through the jungle and eventually found a tribe who claimed to have knowledge of the tree. We found a member who would take us there, called Kentu. The journey was perilous. Kentu succumbed to fever and died along the way, but he left uncle and I instruction on how to find the tree. It was hopeless from there on out. I begged uncle to turn around, but he refused. He could think of nothing but the tree. He was quite mad by then, you see. He stopped eating. He didn’t sleep. He muttered to himself. He became obsessed. And one day, he had an accident. I heard him crying out to me from the bottom of a ravine. He must have slipped. He was gravely injured, both legs broken. I constructed a pallet and spent the next several days dragging him, inch by inch through the jungle. He raved and screamed and moaned to carry on to the tree. He insisted we were close. Even in his pain it was all he could think of. We were never to find the tree. It was only a myth after all. I eventually got him back to the village where they immediately locked me in this hut, and uncle in another. It seems that Kentu had taken us deep into a forbidden land that is sacred to the tribe, and they were to decide how to punish us. I bribed a young boy with my locket to mail a letter to you. I didn’t think you’d gotten it. I’d nearly given up.”
“That’s a hell of a story,” I said. “You should write it down when we get back.”
“Let’s leave. I can’t stand another minute in this place.”
“Babe, you read my mind.”
I took Nina by the hand to lead her out, but the chief and his goons were blocking the way. The next thing I know, Nina’s being forced back inside while the other two grab me and drag me away. I struggled and managed to clock one of the heavies square in the jaw, but if he felt anything, he sure didn’t want me to know about it. I searched frantically for the kid to make sense of all this, but he was nowhere to be seen. Before I know it, I’m tossed into another hut.
It was pitch black inside. I can’t see as far as the wall. I move around with my hands out in front of me. I don’t plan on staying long, but I figure since I’m in there I might as well get acquainted with the room. And that’s when I discovered I wasn’t alone.
“There’s a pallet about six feet to your left,” I hear a familiar voice say.
“Cripes,” I answer. “You can see in this mess?”
“I don’t need eyes to see. Not anymore.”
I didn’t know whether to shudder or shake his hand. The voice belonged to the professor. The way he’s talking is slow and low, and drawn out, and I don’t mind telling you it was giving me the willies. “Professor,” I say. “I hear you’ve had quite the journey.”
“Yes,” he says. “But one never knows when one’s journey is complete. One ends, another begins. A door opens before you, while behind, one closes forever.”
The whole time he’s talking I notice something ain’t right. His voice is coming at me from all angles, like it was just another part of the dark. “You’re gonna surprise a lot of people when we get out of here, you know,” I tell him, trying not to let my nerve show. “I don’t know if you’ve heard the latest rumors, but you’re supposed to be dead.”
“They’re all true, I’m afraid.” His voice is oily, like a snake sliding through Vaseline.
I fake a laugh. “Yeah, that’s a good one. Nina told me you got banged up pretty bad. Says you busted your legs. That must have been hell.”
“If it were only hell.” His voice is bouncing around in the blackness. I still can’t draw a bead on him. “If only it were hell after we die. If only it were that simple. My legs,” the professor laughed, an icy sputtering sound that made me cringe. “Is that what she said? It seems she understated the severity of my injuries. They were quite mortal, you see.”
“Well, that’s Nina for you. Always sugarcoating things.” I could smell meat roasting somewhere outside. I guess it was dinner time.
“Perhaps she told you that we never found the tree, then eh? Tha gleaming, white tree set in the middle of the darkest jungle.”
“As a matter of fact . . .”
“Oh, but we did. I saw the tree myself, and so did she, large as life and blinding bright beneath the canopy. It was . . . magnificent. Samples were taken. The leaves, the bark. The branches . . .The root.”
His voice was liquid. Flowing. Sickening somehow. Turned my stomach to hear. “Is that a fact?” I asked.
“Oh, yes. But our darling Nina did tell the truth about my fall. Foolish, really. I was only admiring the view, and then.” He trailed off. “And from then on, the view was different indeed. Poor Nina. She did everything she could to revive me. Everything she could think of, but I was stone dead. She was desperate. And then she remembered. The root. Ah, yes, the root. The magical properties. Supernatural. Restorative properties. She didn’t believe in it, but as I said, she was desperate. Needless to say, it worked. I was alive once more. But death had changed me, you see. I could no longer continue as a mortal man after seeing what I’ve seen. Knowing what I know. You cannot simply put a mind back into a body after it has glimpsed the infinite, do you understand?”
“I understand completely,” I said. I understood he was nuttier than a fruit cake.
“You don’t.” That oily laugh again. “But you will.” And suddenly I began to smell an awful stench, it was just under the smell of roasting meat, but I could sense it now completely. It was the sickly-sweet smell of rotting flesh. Something reached for me in the darkness. I searched my pocket for a book of matches. I struck one with trembling hands. In that instant of brief flame. What I saw. I know I’ll never have a full night’s sleep again.
&
nbsp; The professor stood inches from. Or at least what was left of him. His body was crushed from the fall. The splintered white ends of broken bones ripped through his skin in places. His jaw was broken and dangled off the bottom of his face revealing the few shattered teeth he had left in his gums. But what was worse was the decay. His skin was rotting, swollen bulges of it had split open and maggots boiled within. His eyes were completely gone, and he stared back at me, sockets teeming with insects, spilling out and down his face. Suddenly his hand shot up and he began to claw at himself, ripping through his rotting flesh. “Oh, how it itches,” he screamed. “I can feel them under my skin!”
The match went out and there was only darkness between us.
I knew when I’d overstayed my welcome. Maybe a grass hut was enough to imprison my delicate Nina, or a living skeleton like the professor, but for a healthy man it was like the homecoming football team splitting a paper banner.
I was out in the daylight at last, and the smell of barbecue was strong in the air; a welcome scent considering I’d just been inhaling putrid academia. I headed straight for Nina’s hut, and when I got there I surprised the guards posted out front with a little bit of survival gear I’d packed. You see, every cab driver knows never to leave the house without a gun. It’s a cash business. Might as well be wearing a rob-me sign if I didn’t. I’d pulled mine out from under my seat before the flight, and now I was waving it in front of the two sloshed guards. The nickle plating sparkled in the sun, but the guards only stared at it like they didn’t know what it was, which of course, they probably didn’t. I gave them a crash course in modern weaponry, and they dropped like ripe coconuts.
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