This Green Hell

FIVE

Ramón Reyes brought his blade down again. He and his cousin, Hector, had been struggling through the Paraguayan jungle’s mad tangle of vegetation, slashing with heavy machetes to clear the wrist-thick vines that blocked their path. Their soiled T-shirts and mud-streaked pants were already wet with perspiration, and both had plant debris and insects stuck in the streaks of sweat that ran down their faces.

Ramón stopped to lean against a tree and wondered whether his large cousin was as fatigued as he was. The drilling shutdown had left the men bored, and while most of them were content to play cards, listen to football on radios, or argue, Hector had seen it as an opportunity to explore — he always liked to explore.

He hadn’t told Ramón what he was looking for, but each afternoon, Hector had dragged him along a new quadrant of his compass, and together they had hacked for hours out, and just as many back; each time returning with little more than strained shoulders, and new and more painful insect bites.

Ramón muttered under his breath. Ever since they were small boys, he had done what his bigger and older cousin had told him. One day it would get him into trouble, for sure.

‘How much further?’ Ramón called now, blowing sweat from his upper lip. ‘I’m tired.’

Hector stopped chopping vines and turned to shrug. He pulled a canteen from his rear pocket, unscrewed it, swirled some of the brackish water around his mouth and spat it out. ‘Hour, maybe more.’ He looked at his cousin from under lowered brows. ‘You have somewhere you need to be, Ramón?’

Ramón shrugged in return. ‘Just mindful of the evening coming.’

Hector replaced his canteen and withdrew a small brass compass, flipped its lid up, swivelled on his heel for a few seconds until he must have felt he had his bearings, then snapped the lid closed. He looked above his head, obviously seeing what Ramón had — the setting sun was turning the jungle a burnt orange as it fell towards the horizon. Twilight’s purple wave would catch them soon, along with the mosquitoes.

He looked back at Ramón, and then dipped his hands into his front pockets, replacing the compass in one, and pulling a small plastic bottle from another. He uncapped it and tapped a small mound of white powder onto the back of his hand. He pushed his hand under his cousin’s nose. ‘Sniff. C’mon — for energy.’

Many of the men in the camp used cocaine. Some for fun, others to relieve boredom, and some, like his cousin, to be able to keep working long after others had given up. Ramón shrugged and inhaled hard through his nose — a punch of light almost kicked his head backwards. Immediately he felt warm, hot, horny … and less fatigued. He smiled, and then laughed.

Hector licked the remains from the back of his hand, and smiled back. ‘Okay, just a few more miles. Vamos.’

More hacking, more bites, and then Hector vanished from Ramón’s sight. When Ramón caught up, he found his cousin standing in a clearing, hands on his hips, sucking in long breaths and staring in awe at the sight before him.

‘Santa Madre de Dios,’ Ramón said softly, slowly shaking his head as he saw what held Hector spellbound.

A giant banyan tree held in its titanic embrace an old stone building that looked like a church. The tree’s muscular roots had grown over most of the building, and flowed down from its peripheral limbs to create a hanging curtain effect over the back and sides of the stone structure. The wooden doors must have rotted away long ago, but a black opening was just visible at the top of a few stone steps behind the hanging root screen. Along the ground a long crack zigzagged across the dry clearing towards the building, split the steps, and continued on up in through the dark aperture.

‘The lost church of the Jesuits — it must be,’ said Hector. Trancelike, he walked slowly forward in the twilight. ‘At last, we have some luck.’

‘It cannot be possible; it’s just a myth,’ Ramón whispered.

All Latin Americans knew the legend of the lost Church of the Jesuits. It was believed that after the fall of Vilcabamba, the last hidden city of the Incan empire, the ruler, Tupac Amaru, had ordered his people to carry the last treasures of his empire off into the jungle so that the Gold-Eaters — the Incan name for the Spanish invaders — could never feast on his wealth.

Ramón raked his mind for more of the ancient story. According to the legend, the Incan gold and jewels had been moved around for decades, before being either buried or taken in and finally being hidden, in the 1600s, by some priests in the basement of their church. Like most of the Jesuits that marched into the jungle between 1600 and 1750, they disappeared, along with their church, or any record of where it might have been. The missing church was rumoured to contain an underground vault that held something so fantastic; it would surely outshine even the boy king’s tomb in Egypt.

Hector marched forward quickly, and Ramón had to scamper to keep up with his larger cousin’s longer strides. Getting behind the structure was impossible, as the enormous trunk of the tree engulfed the back of the church and extended deep into the thick jungle. It seemed it was the only thing that dared put its roots down into the unusually dry soil around the ruined structure.

Both men threaded their way through the hanging tree roots, ducking below spiderwebs that, judging by the size of the dried corpses hanging within them, had been built by creatures strong enough to capture birds and small animals. Eventually they stood before the black doorway. Hector reached out with his long-bladed machete to drag aside a particularly thick web. As he did so, something scuttled away from his blade into the tangle of roots above the door. Ramón hoped it was a rat; the thought of a fist-sized spider dropping onto his neck made his stomach quiver.

‘Look at this.’ Hector was pointing at some carved writing beside the door. ‘It says something about gold, I think … debajo de … la flor de oro — what is that? “Below” or maybe “beneath the golden flower”. What does it mean, do you think?’

Ramón shook his head and dusted the carving with his fingers. ‘I think it is cuidado debajo de … la flor de oro — “beware below the golden flower”.’ He grinned, satisfied with his improved translation, even though they were no clearer on its meaning.

His smile evaporated when Hector motioned with one hand for him to go first into the dark hole. He looked left and right, trying to think of an excuse, but none came to him. His heartbeat, already speeded up from the powder Hector had given him, leapt again. Ramón reached inside his shirt and pulled free a small gold crucifix on a slim chain. He held the sweat-slicked cross to his lips for a second, then looked quickly at Hector, who nodded and tilted his head towards the opening. Ramón hesitated a moment before ducking under the web-matted vines.

‘Give me the flashlight,’ he said. ‘It is too dark; I can’t see.’

Hector grunted impatiently, sheathed his machete and pulled free the medium-sized axe hanging from his belt. He spent the next few minutes chopping away the roots that hung over the doorway. This, combined with the angle of the setting sun, allowed weak illumination into the building.

This time, Hector followed Ramón inside.

The floor was littered with broken clay tiles, probably from the roof, which had been replaced by a ceiling of massive tree trunk. Its heavy, grey body looked like a living thing, Ramón thought, with coiled, grey-brown muscles just waiting to unwind and drop down upon them.

‘Look here.’ Ramón pointed at a huge slab of granite propped at the wall just inside the doorway. In the dark, a bearded face carved into the stone could just be made out, it’s features almost lost to the gloom.

Hector sighed with approval. ‘One of the Jesuits maybe — God bless you padre.’ He patted the image and then moved ahead into the dark space behind a heavy screen of root fibres, calling to Ramón, ‘Come quickly, amigo, I’ve found something.’

He stood before a waist-high blackened dome that had been toppled from a once finely carved slab of stone split by the recent earth tremor’s crack, and strangely, its two halves slid many feet apart. When he tapped the dark shape with the iron head of his axe, it responded with a deep metallic bong that vibrated the air around them.

‘The golden flower maybe … or perhaps a golden bell?’ he said.

He flipped his axe blade around and chopped at the bell, first at one place then another. It was no use: the metal was hard; too hard to be valuable. Ramón grimaced; he knew that even the lowest grade of gold would have yielded to his cousin’s blade.

Hector kicked the bell, eliciting a duller peal. ‘Mierda! Must be fucking brass.’

Ramón turned his machete blade sideways to scrape the side of the metal, removing a six-inch crust of oxidation and ancient soot. It seemed the bell had been in a fire at some point. Underneath, the brass shone through, reflecting the weakening light from outside back at him.

‘At one time it would have looked golden,’ he said. ‘But not worth anything now, unless you have friends at the museum.’

‘Bastardo!’ Hector kicked out at the bell.

The loud curse in the small tomb-silent room made Ramón jump, and he took a step back as his cousin muttered more profanities, looking like he wanted to hit something else. He lunged at the large bell, grabbing it and tugging savagely, causing it to roll a few feet. Hector moved around behind the solid dome and put his shoulder to it, and grunted. The bell rolled some more, grinding small stones to powder beneath its rim, before picking up speed as the large man gave it one last push.

Ramón expected it to stop there, but instead it kept rolling, out through the opening and into the clearing, where it settled heavily in the dry soil. The movement shook loose centuries of oxidisation to reveal the bell’s golden hue in places.

Hector stared at the path the bell had taken, breathing in loudly through his nose and exhaling through gritted teeth. His noisy breathing suddenly broke off and he clicked his fingers, looking at Ramón with his eyes wide. ‘Not the bell; it’s not the bell — remember the words outside? It was below the bell we needed to look.’ He brought the beam of his flashlight back to the floor, and traced the path of the rolling dome.

The circle of light waved back and forth, and then came to a sudden stop. ‘Oh, gracias Jesús.’ Hector took a few steps and then went to his knees, keeping his light on the object in the ground. ‘A door.’

Ramón stood back and watched as his cousin laid his flashlight on the ground and used one large hand to brush away loose debris. He grimaced at the thought of climbing down somewhere that could be even darker than where they were.

‘Remember there was also a warning outside,’ Ramón said. ‘I think we should come back with some more men … and also maybe in daylight.’

Hector curled his lip in a sneer. ‘What are you afraid of, estúpido? Look, there might be nothing under here but more tree roots, or the graves of the Jesuits. Or it could be something more — something that could make you, me, our families, richer than a Hollywood movie star. Forget about the stupid words outside — every ancient treasure room in history had some sort of warning or curse written somewhere. It’s a good sign — there must be something down there they wanted to keep people away from.’

Hector reached out to take a swipe at Ramón’s thigh. ‘There are no real curses or evil eyes mio amigo, no horn-headed beasts, or devil-demons. Unless you count the ones you’ve seen after too much sangria.’ Hector smiled disarmingly. ‘Now come on and help me, my friend.’

Ramón shook his head as if clearing away his moment of indecision, and took another step forward. ‘All right, I’ll help you. But you are wrong Señor Ignorante. There are bad things in this world; things my mother has told me about. I just wish she was here with us now.’

On his knees, Hector clapped his hands once and waved Ramón over. He motioned to the other side of the door, and finished brushing away debris.

Ramón looked at the square trapdoor with a large metal ring at one end. In the beam of light from the flashlight, he could see the crack running across the stone blocks in the flooring, halting at the door, and then continuing on after the wooden frame once again. He frowned for a second in puzzlement, as the door didn’t carry the patina of age that the surrounding stonework did, and his eyes moved to the large slab that was broken and shoved aside.

Hector grabbed the light and held it up. ‘You pull.’ He pointed the beam of light and waited.

Ramón reached down with one hand and took hold of the ring. He immediately dropped it, and held his hand up to his face, to check his fingers. They were wet with something slick and slightly greasy. He sniffed, and only detected a hint of something salty and metallic. Rust and grease maybe, he thought and wiped his hand, getting ready to try again, when Hector barged him out of the way.

‘Too heavy for you little cousin? Let me.’ Hector spat on his hands and grinned in the dark. ‘There must be a hidden room underneath us. This is it, amigo mio: prepare to be rich.’

He hunched over the trapdoor and pulled on the ring with two hands. Nothing happened. He grunted, invoked the names of several saints, and strained. Still nothing. He changed position, counted three deep breaths and yanked quickly. The trapdoor groaned against the floor’s stone edges and then rose an inch. Hector stood up, pressed his hands into the small of his back, cursed softly, then bent back to his task. With the next tug, the door squealed open, and he let the heavy wooden square drop back flat against the ground. A set of steps led down into the blackness below.

Hector flung himself down on the floor and looked into the pit. Ramón stood back slightly, reluctant to get too close to the black hole. The inside edges of the opening were abraded, as if they had been scratched by some great beast, and he could see that the bottom of the trapdoor was also covered in the same deep gouges. He reached out his hand and spread his fingers, placing them in some of the ancient grooves — they fit almost perfectly. He frowned for a moment, then shrugged and went back to straining his eyes down into the darkness.

Hector snatched up the flashlight and extended his arm down into the pit. Ramón took a few steps closer but couldn’t bring himself to lie down and look over its edge. There was a smell, a feeling … something strange, he thought.

Hector slid the weak yellow beam across as much of the vault as he could see from his limited angle of vision.

‘There’s something down there,’ he said. ‘I think it’s gold. I knew it, amigo — we’ve found the treasure room.’ He scrambled to his feet and stepped onto the stone staircase. ‘Well? Are you coming?’

Ramón shook his head and rubbed the cross around his neck again. ‘I’ll keep a lookout. Come back and tell me what you find.’

‘Okay, but remember: La suerte favorece a los valientes.’ Hector laughed at his own wit and started down into the thick darkness.

The small stone-lined room seemed to absorb the torchlight and give nothing back in return. Hector moved quickly, as much by feeling as by his limited sight, to the golden object he had glimpsed from above. He pulled it free from several inches of what looked like flakes of mud and dried fruit skins. As he broke the crust, a pungent odour rose up, like a ripe fungus.

The golden object was a crucifix. Hector held it up and squinted at it in the weak light — the arms had been bent and screwed up like wadded paper, and the body of Christ nailed to its centre was crushed flat. He was glad Ramón had remained upstairs — he would have taken the deformed crucifix as a bad sign. He tested its weight in his hand and shook his head. It was too light to be made of a precious metal, and there were no significant stones anywhere on its surface.

‘Jesuit rubbish!’

He flung it to the ground and continued his search, waving the flashlight from side to side and squinting into the darkness. The room looked to be empty, except for a skeletal body propped up in a corner, covered in some sort of black webbing. In the weak light, it looked moist and greasy — almost as if it was still putrefying. Hector approached the remains and his brow furrowed. The head looked wrong; the jaws and teeth were misshapen. He brought his light closer and thought he could just make out something in its skull, something that quivered when the weak beam touched it. A mouse? he wondered as he leaned in to peer between the jaws.

Something swivelled and repositioned itself, shivering in reaction to the movement or light. Hector reached for his blade, intending to poke it at the small moving creature. When he looked back, the thing had shifted again — he could see it clearly now, and it wasn’t a mouse, or anything he recognised.

He grunted in distaste and used the blade to pry open the jaws.

In an explosion of movement, the thing launched itself at Hector’s face.

Hector’s scream blasted up out of the dark, causing the small hairs on Ramón’s neck to stand upright.

‘Madra Dios! Hector? Hector, answer me!’

Ramón sucked in a deep breath and lifted the small crucifix to his mouth, placing it between his lips to hold it there. He must have fallen, or got stuck in something. He must be hurt. That must be it … that must be all.

He edged closer to the pit and called to his cousin again. There was no sound but his own rapid breathing. He peered down the staircase and saw a weak yellow beam across the floor — not moving and low down. Hector must have dropped the flashlight.

Mierda; there was no choice — he would have to go down.

Ramón crossed himself twice and put one foot onto the first step, hesitated, then silently inched down the remaining steps. At the bottom, the ground was soft and spongy. He called again, but in a whisper, as if fearful of being overheard. It was hard to judge the size of the room in the blackness, but his voice bounced back in a cramped echo, suggesting it was fairly small. Still no response. He couldn’t understand it. There was nowhere for his cousin to go, unless he had found another way out. He must be in here somewhere.

Ramón picked up the flashlight and edged along the wall towards the back corner. There was a mound there; maybe Hector was behind it. His foot touched something hard. He bent to see what it was: some kind of book. He pulled it free of the crusted floor and rubbed away some of the black sticky substance that coated its thick leather cover. There was a gold-leaf crucifix on the front, but no title. A Bible perhaps? He tucked it under his arm and waved the flashlight around again. The gouges he had seen above were more pronounced down here: deep furrows in the wall and ceiling stones, as if some great beast had been clawing at its enclosure.

Like it was trapped here.

He blinked away the frightening thought and brought the beam back to the strange lump.

‘Hector? Is that you? Are you hurt?’

His hushed tones seemed unnaturally loud in the small space. His steps got shorter, his feet seeming to deny him the forward motion his brain requested. He stretched out his arm instead, holding out the light. Even with its beam directed on the mound, he still couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing. The mass seemed to move and glisten in the flickering flame — something covered in moss, perhaps, he thought.

He took another step and saw his cousin’s mud-streaked pants just showing from under the sticky-looking lump. The whole pile looked unclean and he was loath to reach out and touch whatever it was, so he stepped to the side and crouched, extending the flashlight as far as he could. There was definite movement — the thing shifted. He could see now. His cousin was curled up on the ground, a grotesque black figure crouched over him, pressing its face into his, as if kissing him deeply. But this was no gentle caress; instead Ramón could see rows of needle-sharp teeth hooked into Hector’s cheeks, while long skeletal fingers restrained him. As Ramón watched in horror, he saw his cousin blink once, very slowly, as if the effort of the tiny movement was almost beyond him.

The glistening skeletal head seemed to burrow further into Hector’s face. Ramón could see rivulets of red running over the thing’s bony mass, as though its veins and tendons were filling with the life fluids it was sucking from his cousin’s rapidly thinning body.

There came a scream so loud it hurt Ramón’s ears. Only when his throat rasped with strain did he realise the sound was emanating from his own mouth. He stopped himself, not wanting to draw the creature’s attention, and instead moved his cold lips in prayer. But it was too late. The monster stopped its revolting sucking and detached its head from Hector.

Ramón saw something slither back between the thing’s jaws as the long face swung towards him. Hot wetness splashed his groin as his bladder released in revulsion and fear. He fell backwards and scrambled on his back along the floor to the steps, his hands still clutching the book. The flashlight remained where he had dropped it, casting a yellow halo over the monstrosity in the corner.

The creature rose up, pieces of wet blackness falling from its frame as it flexed strings and bulges of flesh that were becoming muscles and skin. We need you, it said, its voice dry and dispassionate, and sounding not in the room but within his mind.

Ramón hit the steps with his lower back, ignoring the pain. The thing moved out of the light and was now invisible in the darkness. Ramón edged up the steps, trying to pray, but only small squeaks came from his dry throat. He held the book up in front of him, brandishing its gold-leaf crucifix like a shield.

His head breached the rim of the pit. He scrabbled his way out, then turned and ran.

It took him hours to find his way back to the mining camp. Once there, he did not speak of what he had seen. Who would believe him? He had no proof — he had dropped the book during his flight. Besides, it had probably been a hallucination; a result of the powder his cousin had given him. There was no ruined church, no foul beast lurking below it in its lair. He had simply got lost in the jungle and wandered until he had come upon the camp again. And Hector? He would turn up. He always did like to go out exploring on his own.