by WW Mortensen
Rebecca looked from Jessy to Owen and shrugged. Why not? At this, Ed muttered something to Sanchez, and then handed Enrique the two packs he’d placed upon the ground. The younger man slung both over his shoulders.
“Ready?” Ed said. “It won’t take long.”
Minus Enrique and Sanchez, the group moved off, detouring from the path they had been traversing to one that would take them on a direct line down the slope towards the pyramid and the outer rim of the smaller bowl where the two giant moai stood guard. Ed led the way, swinging his machete. In his opposing hand was the cloth bundle, tightly gripped. This time, Rebecca brought up the tail. As she moved in behind, she glanced cautiously into the distance, scouring the pyramid and the heart of the web.
Like before, it was empty. No sign of movement—of life—anywhere.
A dark blur skittered past her, racing along the ground to her left.
Rebecca spun. Dead brown leaves kicked up in the blur’s wake, bushes parting and springing back—
“Espere! Parar! Pare imediatamente!”
Yelling and cursing, Enrique rushed past Rebecca, crashing through the underbrush in pursuit of the streaking shadow.
But Priscilla was fast, off like a shot.
The monkey’s attention was fixed on a pile of scattered fruit at the base of a tall, thin fig some twenty yards away. Reaching it, she proceeded to sort through the pile, glancing back with a mischievous grin at Enrique who arrived just as she found a suitable piece. She took a bite as he swept her up like a naughty child.
Rebecca turned from the commotion, smiling to herself, and ran to catch up to her three companions.
The two giant moai were bigger than she’d expected.
“Wow,” Rebecca said, reaching out to stroke the cool, discoloured belly of the statue on the left. Its oversized head comprised perhaps two-thirds of the total height, while the body stretched upwards a good ten to fifteen feet. Its huge, overhanging chin jutted out so far it blocked out the rain.
Rebecca glanced up at it, noting they stood also beneath a portion of the web—its outermost extremities, anyway. She stepped back to take it in, wondering if anyone else was aware of the fact. High above, the silk glistened, taut and silvery, and she found herself transfixed, keen to make an even closer examination. As she considered this, droplets of rain splashed on her face, cool on her skin.
“Oh, shit!”
Rebecca spun. Owen started to thrash about, his arms flailing wildly, his hands slapping at his face and upper torso as though he’d been set on fire.
“Shit!” he cried again, “Get them off!”
Like her, he’d stepped back from the moai to stare up at the web. Rebecca saw the cause of his panic.
They covered his face, his shoulders, even his hair—dozens of tiny spiders each the size of a small coin. They swarmed all over him.
“Owen!” Rebecca called, running to him, “Stay calm!”
“What the fuck?” he screamed.
Ed and Jessy reached Owen at the same moment as Rebecca, and together they swept the tiny black bodies from their flailing companion. “They must have been washed down from above!” Rebecca said over the rain.
Owen continued to thrash, flinging them off, squashing them underfoot. Rebecca tried to calm him. Most likely, this was a batch of recently hatched spiderlings, a run-of-the-mill, and totally harmless, species. Communal webs were commonly home to squatters.
“Jesus!” Owen cried.
“Stand still!” Rebecca said. Within moments, the last of the spiders—and several insects—were gone. Rebecca drew Owen’s attention to her own shoulder and an alien-looking insect that she proceeded to calmly remove. “The sudden downpour must have dislodged them. It’s okay now.”
But Owen was still spinning, brushing at himself.
His antics caused Ed to smile. “Come on, buddy.” He flicked a couple of critters off his own person. “You’ve seen stuff like this before. Nothing to worry about.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Owen said, clearly unimpressed by the relaxed manner of his companions. Only when he was convinced the last of the creatures had been displaced did he refit his hood, yet still he was agitated. “Nothing to worry about? You didn’t have them crawling in your hair!”
Rebecca, Ed, and Jessy had a discreet chuckle before returning their attention to the two giant moai. Ed untied the cloth bundle he’d earlier retrieved from his shirt pocket.
Sulking and grumbling away in the background, Owen continued to fidget, not caring that his efforts were lost on them. “Is there anyone who’d appreciate a bucketful of spiders tipped over their head? No, I don’t think so. Jeez.”
Ed removed the stone disc and held it up. It had been a while since Rebecca had laid eyes on it, even though she’d studied it dozens of times before. Circular and greyish-clay in colour, the relic was roughly the size of a man’s palm, flat on one side, with the other curving out half an inch or so. Charcoal-coloured spiralling grooves marked its smooth, almost polished surface. Ed’s grandfather had obtained the artefact from a private collector in Copenhagen, before later gifting it to Ed. This was the object that had originally spawned his—and in turn Ed’s—obsession with Intihuasi.
Ed held it now in the direction of the moai. As he did, Rebecca’s gaze was guided to a small indentation she hadn’t seen earlier, a flat and otherwise unremarkable circular recess pressed into the statue’s chest, sitting about five feet above the ground. The groove was the size of a drink-coaster, and as Ed held the disc before him, Rebecca sighed in realisation.
“Esperar! Priscilla!”
Priscilla was at it again. Like before, Enrique ran after her, bolting now in circles and figure-eights.
“She’s giving him a hard time this afternoon,” Jessy commented.
“Perhaps it’s the ‘terrible twos’,” Owen mused.
Rebecca wasn’t as flippant. As she watched, the game of cat-and-mouse took Priscilla and Enrique farther afield than earlier, closer to the lip of the bowl. Enrique stooped as he ran, arms outstretched.
Rebecca was overcome by a sudden unease. She glanced back at the pyramid, the web. Again, deserted. A ghost-town, just like Ed had described. She turned back to Enrique, watched as he bent down to lift Priscilla from where she had finally paused, again to eat.
Something didn’t feel right.
Priscilla clambered onto Enrique’s arm, another piece of fruit in her tiny hands. She skipped up to his shoulder and resumed eating.
Something was wrong.
“Okay,” Ed said, attempting to swing the attention back his way. He held out the stone disc. “Watch this.”
But Rebecca ignored him, her eyes fixed solely on Enrique. Seemingly unaware, Ed moved the disc anyway, tracking it towards the recess in the moai’s chest.
Enrique looked up, caught Rebecca’s gaze, smiled.
For Rebecca, everything moved in slow-motion.
Get out of there.
She swivelled from Enrique to Ed, and then back again.
Enrique. Get out of there.
The stone disc was only an inch away from the indentation. Rebecca opened her mouth. She had to warn him, had to warn Enrique.
Ed smiled, looked back at Owen and Jessy. “Showtime,” he said, still grinning.
And then… all hell broke loose.
19
Enrique met Rebecca’s gaze a split-second before the forest floor behind him exploded upwards.
In that moment, and though he wouldn’t have understood why, he must have seen her eyes go wide.
Rebecca had no chance of warning him. It happened fast. She could only look on, horrified.
Something huge had launched itself with terrifying, blinding speed from a hole in the ground behind Enrique’s feet—a hole that a moment before hadn’t existed. It was big enough for the dark, blurred shape to squeeze most of the way out—and the thing hit Enrique hard. Under its weight, Enrique pitched forward, shrieking as the creature grasped him by the haunches a
nd in the same, practised movement pulled him forcefully downwards, slamming him face-first into the ground.
In that horrifying split-second, Rebecca got a good look at what it was. Pivoting in response to Enrique’s cry, Jessy must have too, and she screamed.
Astride Enrique’s back, horrible legs twitching and flailing as it tried to subdue its prey, was a spider more than a yard wide.
Enrique bucked violently beneath it, tried to shake it from his back, his eyes wide with terror, but it was too strong, too fast. Long before any of them could move to help, it was over.
With a great, violent tug, the creature dragged Enrique screaming into the hole in the earth. He was gone in the blink of an eye, his cries suddenly muffled and lost.
Then there was nothing.
Enrique had vanished; so too the spider, and the hole itself.
There was only the forest floor again.
New screams erupted. Male voices shouted. Rebecca, tears in her eyes, could only stand in disbelief, rooted to the spot. Though she could no longer see it, she knew that the hole Enrique had been dragged into was still there, had been there all along, but was now, as then, simply covered—cleverly disguised—by a flap of earth.
A trapdoor.
They had to get out of there.
“Oh shit!” Jessy said.
Staggering, Rebecca followed Jessy’s gaze and through a mist of tears stared straight into two big, glassy black orbs.
Eyes.
The anterior median eyes of a huge spider.
Its dark, hair-covered body was almost perfectly camouflaged against the kapok it clung to—Rebecca was vaguely aware of pale green and brown stripes running across its dorsal surface, heightening the concealment. But she could see it well enough, and it stared straight at her. She froze, her gaze locked with the creature.
It’s studying me.
The creature’s dark, monkey-like face remained still, tufts of whitish hair framing eyes from behind which burned an intense alertness. The lifeless specimen back at Base Camp was one thing; this was altogether different…
It’s sizing me up. It sees me as prey.
Suddenly, Rebecca was aware of more eyes upon her—to the left, another set, and another on the ground not far from that.
There were three of them.
Three that she could see…
All were huge—the size of large dogs—their forelegs lifting in aggressive threat-poses…
Time stopped. Rebecca knew she had to run, because at any moment these creatures would pounce. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t make her legs move. A flush of panic washed over her. Why wouldn’t her legs move? Yet in the back of her mind somewhere, she already knew the answer. Even so, she couldn’t believe it.
She stared again at the first spider. Once more, their gazes locked.
The megarachnid pounced, its strong back legs propelling it through the air towards her.
In a sense, it was strangely compelling. Rebecca watched as the creature arced her way, twisting gracefully in the air from its vertical hold on the tree so that at the peak of its leap, and on its descent toward her, she could see its soft, smooth underside, delicately exposed. She noticed, too, how its legs were spread wide, poised to embrace her.
She stood her ground, waited for it to come.
She was hit hard.
20
The impact didn’t come from the direction Rebecca was expecting.
A split-second before the pouncing spider had finished its descent, something else had leapt across from the side, from somewhere to her right, hitting her and snatching her from the creature’s embrace.
It slammed into her, collecting her around the waist, the collision sending her flying sideways through the air.
She hadn’t seen this new attack coming but had a flashing thought of the two arachnids she’d noticed just before the first spider had leapt.
They were hunting as a pack.
The first spider had held her in its gaze long enough for one of the others to take her by surprise…
Rebecca hit the ground hard, she and her attacker falling together in a painful heap. She grunted as the wind was knocked from her lungs, her back driving against something solid and unyielding. Immediately, she twisted into a sitting position with her attacker still attached around her waist. Feeling its weight, she kicked out, punching and thrashing with all her strength. Then she heard a voice, a male voice, screaming her name, and realised she hadn’t been hit by a spider at all, but by Ed.
Ed!
Ed had pushed her out of the path of the arachnid that had leapt for her. They’d tumbled sideways together, a tangle of limbs. Now, they found themselves tightly wedged at the base of a massive tree, jammed between two huge, flaring roots that soared higher than Rebecca’s head and fanned out like great blades on either side of her body. Rebecca was pressed up against the main trunk, Ed lying on top of her, facing her. He moved to stand, got to his knees…
“Ed… the spiders!” Rebecca shouted, but even as the words left her mouth the first of the creatures leapt flailing onto Ed’s back, slamming him down on her. A second huge shape followed instantly. Rebecca let out a terrified scream. Ed’s face was now pressed flat against hers, and the two spiders, twitching and jostling for position upon his back, were themselves only inches away. She could see the lightning blur of their legs above him, could hear them scratching against the tree. Ed folded his arms protectively around her. For some reason, the creatures seemed to be ignoring him, trying to get at her, their frenzied efforts hampered by Ed’s body and the flares of the buttress roots to either side. She couldn’t understand why they were so intent on her. As their efforts became more frantic, the noise of their legs scraping and ripping at the tree increased, amplified by the buttress roots around her.
Fangs flashed, terrifyingly long, only inches away.
They couldn’t get at her.
As though accepting this, both creatures abruptly changed strategy, striking instead at the next best target.
Rebecca could only watch in horror as the two arachnids sank their venomous mouthparts hard and fast into Ed’s back.
Together—and repeatedly.
21
Jessy sprinted, foliage slapping at her face, clawing at her clothing.
Shit…
She’d seen the spider leap for Rebecca. She’d been aware of at least two more, one of which had pounced at her. She’d turned and fled, unaware if her companions had done likewise. She wondered if she was still being pursued but was too terrified to stop; it sounded as though something was tearing through the undergrowth behind her.
Having strayed from the path, her bearings were shot. Underfoot, leaves and twigs crunched loudly—despite the rain the ground remained hard and uneven and her boots had to fight for purchase, her ankles straining with each impact—but then alarmingly her next step was into mid-air and she was tumbling through space, plummeting through nothingness. Suddenly, the ground reappeared. She hit it hard, and a lightning bolt of pain shot through her, and she rolled, bouncing downhill, now alternating between the air and the earth, over and over. The underbrush ripped and flayed at her skin and she squeezed shut her eyes until finally, mercifully, she rolled no more.
Breathless, Jessy came to rest facedown at the base of the steep embankment. She lay there unmoving until a fiery agony in her left leg flared, urging her to roll over and crane her head. The limb was a mess of blood.
Oh God…
Another throb of pain. She averted her gaze and stared skyward through slitted eyes. She could see nothing but waist-high ferns. Birds called overhead, and rain pattered on fronds, and then dimly, a male voice drifted through the trees. It seemed a long way off. She didn’t have the strength to answer.
Where was her pursuer?
Heart in her mouth, she tried to get up, knew she faced certain death if she didn’t get moving. But she couldn’t muster the strength. Her head fell back to the ground.
The last thing sh
e knew before she blacked out was a sudden rustling in the bushes to her right.
22
Rebecca had seen the shadow fall across her less than a second before the two spiders disappeared from her vision. Until then she’d watched helplessly as the creatures struck at Ed not once but several times with blinding speed, finally leaving their fangs embedded in his back to pump more venom into him. He had lain on top of her, eyes shut, selflessly absorbing their wrath. Rebecca tried to strike at them, but her arms were pinned.
Then there was the shadow and they were gone. In all the chaos Rebecca thought the creatures may have fled, but then realised that wasn’t the case. She heaved upwards. Expecting the worst, she was surprised when Ed moved with her and stood, seemingly uninjured.
“Ed?” She spun him around—
—to find his shredded backpack in tatters, its shattered contents spilling to the ground and coated in a viscous, watery-grey liquid.
The spiders’ fangs hadn’t penetrated.
He was okay. She threw her arms around him, tears in her eyes.
They shared a quick hug, then separated, and Rebecca cast a lightning-glimpse at the surrounding trees. There appeared to be no further threat. She shot a grateful glance at Sanchez who stood a few feet away, his machete blade stained with a long, dark smudge. Lying at his feet were the bodies of the two megarachnids—one of them in two separate, grisly pieces, the other intact but with a great rend down its length and its contracted legs curled into its abdomen.
The shadow had been Sanchez. He’d saved them, but there was no time to rejoice.
