This Green Hell

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 Ramon 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 Ramon’s neck to stand upright.

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

Ramon 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.

Ramon 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.

Ramon 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 Ramon could see rows of needle-sharp teeth hooked into Hector’s cheeks, while long skeletal fingers restrained him. As Ramon 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. Ramon 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 Ramon’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.

Ramon 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.

Ramon hit the steps with his lower back, ignoring the pain. The thing moved out of the light and was now invisible in the darkness. Ramon 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.

SIX

Aimee sat quietly in the shade of the stretched canvas sheet that was doing little to block out the pervasive humidity. Her eyes followed the activity of the men as each worked smoothly, but noisily: changing pipe segments, calibrating penetration force or drill speed, or simply yelling out data to Alfraedo on the other side of the platform.

Her stomach roiled from the impatience she felt over the time it was taking to break through into the deep cavern, and also from the images of the ruined bodies just past the jungle’s edge. She thought she could still smell a hint of the ripped and torn flesh as it sat slowly baking in the sun and heat, and a tiny shot of bile hit the back of her throat; wishing she could have another sip of Francisco’s whisky, she swallowed hard.

Aimee grimaced when the acidic taste refused to leave her mouth, and began searching for the small doctor just as the background noise of the drill thumped, making her start, before taking on a smoother sound for a second or two, then stopping as its rotational brakes were applied.

A shout went up from the rig foreman — they had broken through into the gas chamber.

Aimee got to her feet, her stomach still threatened more discomfort, but she was thankful for some action at last. She strode a few feet closer, but had been cautioned to keep her distance from the heavy machinery while it was being operated, and settled for hovering just behind the workers and their furious exertions.

The drill head had to be carefully extracted and the toothed bit drawn back up inside the drill shaft. It was a