Pray for Darkness: Terror in the Green Inferno (21 page)

Forty-four

Upon returning from the jungle, Ernesto lit a small fire and set about the task of preparing his tea. Grinding up several strips of bark and what appeared to be a chunk of vine, he poured the resulting brown powder into a tin cup, added some river water, and placed the concoction over the flames. In minutes the water began to boil over and, moving the cup aside, he doused the flames with a handful of dirt. When the water settled down, he used his sleeve to carry the steaming cup to the place where Cooper was sleeping, and the others tagged along to watch him administer his remedy.

Ben was watching him with interest. “Will this help him get better?”

“Yes.”

Ben leaned over and peered into Ernesto’s cup. Inside was a frothy liquid that looked like rusty water. “What is that?” he asked.

“
La Medicina
,” Ernesto replied, his voice floating out in a reverent whisper. Lifting the cup above his head with both hands, he began to pray. When the prayer was complete, he brought the cup over to the Ceiba tree and crouched beside the sleeping boy. “Coo-per? Coo-per, wake up.”

Cooper’s eyelids twitched, as though he were struggling to keep from waking. Ernesto held the pungent tea under his nose, and his eyelids fluttered open. “Mmm?” he said.

“Coo-per, I’d like for you to drink this.”

Still dozing, Cooper nodded absently and opened his mouth. Holding the back of Cooper’s head with one hand, Ernesto raised the cup to his mouth with the other. Cooper’s lips groped for the rim, and as the first splash of liquid touched his tongue, he drank greedily, tilting back his head so that the tea poured easily down his throat as his body awoke at the thought of hydration. After several seconds, Cooper stopped drinking, the dark liquid dribbling down his chin and onto the poncho, which was now bunched up on his lap. Smacking his lips, Cooper’s body went slack, and he retreated back into a deep sleep.

“Is okay,” said Ernesto.

“How does it work?” Auggie asked.

Tilting the cup, Ernesto dumped the remaining sediment on the ground. He turned to look at them. “It is very good that he throws up,” he said, nodding. “This will help him to clean, like for to clean his body of the sickness.”

With their spears close at hand, the five watchers held vigil over the sleeping boy. Through the trees they could see a wall of white vapor lifting up from the river. The canopy was not as dense here, and the rising sun flooded into the clearing, forcing the shadows deep into the jungle. All at once, the jungle came awake, and the alien chorus of insects soon gave way to the cheerful, squawking cries of birds. Roughly twenty minutes later, Cooper leaned over and vomited a steady stream of rust-red water into the undergrowth. Sitting next to him, Ben had one arm around his shoulder to steady him. After emptying his stomach of all its contents, Cooper fell back against Ben’s shoulder, nuzzling his face against the filthy shirt. For the next several minutes his body twitched with the aftershocks of the purge. After, as his muscles slowly relaxed, Cooper slipped back into a deep sleep.

“Oscar will help you watch him,” Ernesto said and then turned to the stout young guide to translate.

Oscar nodded in quiet understanding and lowered his squat body to the ground on the other side of Cooper.

“After little while, he will have the visions,” Ernesto explained. “Some good, maybe some not so good. This will last for several hours.” He turned to Auggie and Brooke. “It is okay for you to sleep for a little while. We will watch Coo-per, and make sure he is okay, uh-huh.”

***

Though physically spent, neither Auggie nor Brooke slept for more than a few fitful minutes, for just as they started to nod off, they were awoken by the sound of Cooper’s fevered cries.

The visions had begun.

Currently nestled in a natural hollow beneath a mat of vines, Auggie rolled over to look at Brooke. She was lying on her back with her head propped up on her backpack and her eyes closed. From several yards away, Cooper cried out again.

“I’m going to check on him,” Auggie said quietly, unsure if she was sleeping.

Now Brooke’s eyes opened and she rolled over to look at him. “I’ll come with you.”

Climbing out of the burrow, Auggie reached back to offer her his hand. Brooke’s slender fingers brushed his palm and he paused, relishing the feel of her hand against his. Raising his arm, he pulled her forward and to her feet, dragging her backpack along behind her.

Standing, she looked at him with a warm smile. “Thanks, Auggie.”

He smiled back at her, and even after she withdrew her hand, he could still feel the phantom tingle of its presence against his skin. “No problem.”

Ben was sitting with his back against the Ceiba tree, and Cooper was lying between his outstretched legs with his head against Ben’s chest. Ben had his hands locked around Cooper’s midsection, both to steady him and to keep his arms from flailing. Eyes half-open, Cooper was babbling softly, jerking and twitching as Ernesto’s medicine spread through his system.

Oscar was sitting dutifully beside Ben while Ernesto was a few feet away, cutting a strip of bark from a nearby tree. The small Peruvian had gathered a dozen or so palm fronds and arranged them like a fan, using the strip of bark to fashion one end into a primitive handle. When he was finished, Ernesto crouched down in front of Cooper and began to shake the loose palm fronds in front of Cooper’s face. The resulting sound was not quite baby rattle, not quite maraca, but somewhere in between. As if on cue, Oscar began chanting softly, and the combination of the two sounds possessed a soothing, almost hypnotic quality. Almost immediately, Cooper relaxed in Ben’s arms. He was smiling now and talking happily to himself.

There was a religious quality to the chanting, and so Auggie and Brooke sat down on the ground and looked on in a respectful silence. Watching them closely, Auggie’s eyes wandered back and forth between Cooper’s sickly face and Ben’s wounded leg. It occurred to him that, only a few days ago, he had considered himself to be the weakest of the trio.
How ironic
, thought Auggie,
that out of the three of us, I’m the last man standing
. He’d wasted so much time fretting over being the weak link, and now he was the only one who was healthy and strong.

About twenty minutes into the ceremony (and that’s precisely what it was, Auggie was fairly sure of it), Cooper opened his eyes and screamed, thrashing and squirming as if to escape some unseen terror. His hair was soaked now, and the sweat ran down his face in steady streams. Hands moving in a blur of motion, Ernesto continued to rattle the palm fronds around the sick boy’s face, and Oscar chanted louder and faster until at last Cooper fainted dead away. With a pleased expression, Ernesto set aside his makeshift
chungana
and nodded at Oscar, who sang a few more bars before he stopped chanting.

“
Punku
?” Oscar asked softly.

Ernesto nodded wisely.

“What did he say?” Ben asked, feeling strangely exhilarated by the ceremony. He could feel Cooper’s breathing as it became rhythmic, and it seemed as though the worst of the fever was behind him.

Ernesto looked at each of their faces, as though deciding whether or not to share an important secret. “Coo-per has passed through the doorway,” he said. “And now I think he will be okay, uh-huh.”

Forty-five

Cooper, as it turned out, was better than okay.

By late morning, he was sleeping soundly. By mid-afternoon, the fever had already begun to break, and the sweating soon abated, along with the shivers. By late afternoon he was wide-awake, fully energized and eager to be moving again. They were sitting ducks out here in the daylight, and he knew they had all taken a great risk in waiting for him to recuperate.

Cooper never talked about the visions—in a fragmented way, he recalled trying to wash his face with some wet leaves just as the sun began to rise, as well as a few blurry snippets of conversation with his friends, but he could not remember a thing beyond his first sip of tea. Nevertheless he could not shake the feeling that he had just completed a long and arduous journey, and he felt a renewed sense of purpose as he helped the others paint their faces in preparation for the nighttime crossing.

Retrieving the last of their food, the trail mix, from his backpack, Ben joined the others by the riverbank. “Does anyone else have any food?” he asked, taking a small handful and passing the bag over to Cooper, but the others only shook their heads. Oscar and Auggie had scavenged a few bananas from the jungle, and they divided them up amongst the group. While the two guides savored every last bite, the Americans wolfed down their share in seconds, too hungry to notice the chalky, bitter taste.

Soon the sun popped like a blister, spilling its bloody light into the forest as the newly painted warriors gathered their meager belongings and began to follow the shadows back into the dense vegetation.

Half an hour later the sky disappeared, devoured by a layer of billowing black clouds. A light drizzle began to drift down through the canopy, and though it did little to preserve their mud-masks, they welcomed the coolness of the mist against their faces. Ben pulled off his shirt and the others followed his lead (even Brooke, who quickly folded her arms across her braless breasts), letting the moisture kiss their skin and wipe away the sweat and grime. They raised their arms to the sky in rapture, grateful, so very grateful for this unexpected respite. Thunder boomed, so close they could feel the percussion inside their chests, and the trees began to tremble. They put on their filthy shirts and had just started to pull on their ripped-up ponchos when the clouds unleashed a proper deluge; big fat drops of water that tapped against the foliage like BBs on a tin roof. Then the thunder boomed again, shaking the trees, and the rain began to fall from the sky in ropes.

By the time the sky cleared, they had not seen or heard another living creature for well over an hour. In a place known for its rich abundance of wildlife, this particular section of the jungle—the densest, most inhospitable area they had encountered thus far—was a veritable graveyard. In the absence of nature’s song, the silence was deafening. Even the trees remained solemnly still as they dripped with the aftermath of the storm. All sense of time slipped away from them, and they shuffled along in a dreamlike silence, their legs moving mechanically across the soggy terrain. Hacking his way through a wall of creepers, Ernesto paused with the machete in mid-swing. Sensing rather than seeing a change in the cadence of their slow march, the others came to a dead halt. Dripping with rain, they stopped and listened.

Somewhere ahead, a high, girlish laughter floated through the stillness. It was not a joyful kind of laughter; it had a secretive, insidious undertone that set them immediately on edge. Ears strained, eyes searched, and muscles tensed, and still the jungle refused to give up its secret.

Then, like a ghost, the sound faded away into oblivion.

A local village, maybe?—No me gusta—That sounded like a little kid—Must be hearing things—Impossible, that’s impossible—Next thing you know, I’ll be seeing things, too—A bird, just a bird—Yes, that must be it—

Myriad thoughts flitted through their minds, but when the sound returned, it was unmistakable.

A child’s playful giggle. Somewhere up ahead.

“What is that?” Cooper whispered, squeezing past Ernesto.

“Coo-per,” Ernesto hissed in a warning tone, but curiosity had already overcome the boy.

Moving ahead of them, Cooper began to thread his way through the densely woven thicket. Pushing the final screen of branches out of the way, he gasped.

“My God!” he said excitedly. Swiveling his head around, his eyes were bright with hope. For a second or two, his jaw moved but no sound came out as he looked at the group with an expression of joyful astonishment. At last, the words erupted from his lips: “It’s Janie!”

Ben was struggling to catch his friend, but he could not match Cooper’s natural agility. Ernesto was the closest to him, and now he reached out to grab Cooper’s arm, but Cooper shrugged him off and tore ahead through the forest, shouting Janie’s name at top volume.

“Cooper, no!”

“Janie! Janie! Over here!”

Cooper raced through the underbrush with reckless abandon, using his spear to beat aside the tangled vines and fanlike leaves that leaped out in front of him. Ahead of him was open ground between the trees. And then, at last, he could see her…

In a small grove of leafy ferns, Janie stood looking away from him, staring into the jungle as though trying to determine from which direction Cooper’s voice was coming. Naked to the waist, her body was covered in filth and—it was hard to tell from this distance—something that looked like splashes of fresh blood.
Oh, my God, Janie! What did they do to you?
But she was alive! Janie was alive! For the first time since this ordeal began, Cooper was certain that everything was going to be fine. Everything was going to work out. They were going to get back to the research center and catch the first boat back to Puerto Malaka. Then… home. They were going to get out of this godforsaken place and go home.

“Janie!”

“Cooper!” Her voice echoed around him, urging him onward.

Hurling himself through the final clutch of thorns, he began running at full speed. Later, when he had time to reflect on this moment, he would realize that it was Brooke’s voice he had heard, but right now all he could think about was

(Janie, my God, Janie! She’s safe! Please God, let her be okay. Let her be okay. It was my fault she was taken, my fault I couldn’t stop them. Please, God, please, please, please let us get out of this place…)

wrapping his arms around the leggy brunette and holding her close.

He was still shouting her name as he reached her.

He was about to throw his arms around her in a joyful embrace when some fearful inner voice made him reconsider. Perhaps it was her nakedness, or the filthy appearance of her hair, which was knotted with twigs and leaves and something that might have been a dead beetle. Or perhaps it was the strange, stinging smell that suddenly filled his nostrils and made his stomach do somersaults. Or the hundreds of flies that hovered around her in a living cloud. Cooper could only imagine what horrors she had experienced on her own; surely, two nights alone in the jungle would be enough to traumatize anyone, but there was something else, some deep-rooted instinct he did not fully comprehend, that made him hesitate.

“Janie?” he asked, and the odd quality of his voice only deepened his uncertainty. There was something about her immobility that filled him with a sudden, overwhelming dread.

When he called her name a second time, her head canted to one side and remained there, lolling at an unnatural angle against her shoulder. It was then that Janie, with small, deliberate steps, slowly turned to face him.

Janie Castellano’s face was no more. In its place was a deformed parody of the carefree, beautiful girl he had lusted after since their first encounter at the Amazonia Lodge. The lovely brown eyes were gone, replaced by watery black orbs that probed the darkness with a kind of dim, insectile awareness. Her bottom jaw had been broken, nearly ripped from the hinges, and her mouth hung open like a trapdoor, spilling out the rotting stub of flesh that was her tongue. She was still grinning dementedly as the childlike giggle spilled out of her, as if from a speaker inside her throat.

Heee-heee-heeeeee—

Cooper wanted to scream. He actually tried, but the only thing that passed his lips was an involuntary gasp, something close to a whimper. Part of him was convinced that this was all just some nightmare, some feverish dream, and that he’d awaken at the research center or the hostel back in Cusco or home in his own bed—somewhere, anywhere—and everything would be fine, everything would be normal. And even as he embraced this idea, another part of his brain was telling him

(ohmygodsweetjesuspleaseletmewakeupwakeupwakeup!)

to RUN! RUN! RUN! but his legs were slabs of cement, and his feet remained rooted to the earth.

“Cooper!”

His friends were still shouting his name. He heard it from a distance that sounded too great to be real.

“COOPER!”

The Janie-thing sauntered toward him, raising its hands, which were no longer hands at all but claws, ragged, yellow extensions of the bone. Now she was so close that he could feel the searing heat of her breath upon his face, and the smell made him cringe with black revulsion. A series of images flitted through his mind

(rancid meat)

(rotten fish)

(road kill)

until at last he recognized that stomach-turning smell for what it was: the sour stench of decomposing flesh as Janie’s body surrendered to the infection.

Heee-heee-heeeeee—

Janie swung her arm, dragging her claws across Cooper’s midsection, shredding shirt and flesh into a bloody confetti. With a startled cry, he dropped his spear to the ground. In the white-hot panic of fear, he stumbled backwards, and then the ground rushed up to greet him with a hard slap. One moment he was standing; the next he was sitting in the mud with the wind knocked out of him, with no real sense of how he had gotten there.

All around him the trees shook and the branches clicked together like old bones. Someone—he wasn’t sure who—was calling out his name. And standing above him, the Janie-thing hovered like a phantom, dripping strings of black saliva onto his boots.
Just a dream,
thought Cooper.
Just a stupid, fucked-up dream. Soon I’ll wake up and when I tell the others about this, they’ll laugh their asses off, and so will I because this sort of thing just can’t happen in the real world…
But the cold reality of the mud oozing between his fingers as he crab-crawled backwards insisted otherwise. No, not a dream, but a nightmare. One from which he would not awaken. Raising his arms to shield himself, he closed his eyes to the approaching horror, and in the darkness he saw a fleeting glimpse of his mother’s face. It was not the face of the middle-aged woman she was, but the face he remembered from his childhood. A youthful face, smooth and beautiful and glowing with love—the first face he had ever seen.

In the darkness behind his closed eyelids, Cooper prayed it would not be the last.