The Ruins

by Scott Smith

  "No," he replied.

  "What do you think? Could he have escaped?"

  There was the sound of the rain falling upon the tent, the steady dripping from the nylon above them. Eric kept shifting restlessly about, creating ripples in their little puddle. Stacy wished he would stop. The seconds were ticking past, one after another, and Mathias wasn't answering.

  "Mathias?"

  "All I know is that he's not here," he said.

  "So he might've run, then. Right? He might've-"

  "Don't, Stacy."

  This caught her by surprise. She peered toward him. "Don't what?"

  "If you let yourself hope, and then you're wrong, think how terrible you'll feel. We can't afford that."

  "But if-"

  "We'll see in the morning."

  "See what?"

  "Whatever there is to see."

  "You mean, you think he might be-"

  "Shh. Just wait. It'll be light in a few more hours."

  It was shortly after this that they heard Pablo's breathing start up again. There was that ragged intake of air, that whistling exhalation, then the pause before it all recommenced. Despite herself, knowing better even as she did so, Stacy sprang to her feet. Mathias had also risen; they brushed against each other as they both made their way toward the tent flap. He grabbed at her, holding her wrist, stopping her.

  "It's the vine," he whispered.

  "I know," she said. "But I want to make sure."

  "I'll do it. You wait here."

  "Why?"

  "It wants us to see something, don't you think? Something it's done to him. It's hoping to upset us."

  Outside, there was another rasping inhalation. It sounded exactly like Pablo; even after all she'd witnessed here, it was hard to believe that it wasn't him. But she knew Mathias was right, and knew, too, that she didn't want to glimpse whatever it was the vine had prepared for them out there beneath the lean-to. "Are you sure?" she asked.

  She sensed him nod. He let go of her wrist, moved to the flap, bent to zip it open.

  Almost instantly, as soon as he stooped out into the rain, the breathing stopped. Then a man's voice began to shout. He was speaking in a foreign language; it sounded like German to Stacy. Wo ist dein Bruder? Wo ist dein Bruder?

  Stacy sat back down. She reached for Eric's hand, found it in the dark, clasped it tightly. "It's talking about his brother," she said.

  "How can you tell?" Eric asked.

  "Listen."

  Dein Bruder ist da. Dein Bruder ist da.

  Mathias reappeared, the rain running off him, audibly dripping to the tent's puddled floor. He zipped the flap shut, returned to his spot beside them.

  "What happened?" Stacy asked.

  He didn't answer.

  "Tell me," she said.

  "It's eating him. His face-all the flesh is gone."

  Stacy could sense him hesitating. There's something else, she thought, and she waited for it.

  Finally, very softly, Mathias said, "This was on his head. On his skull."

  He held something up in the darkness, extended it toward her. Stacy reached out, warily took it from him. She moved her hands over it, tracing its shape. "A hat?" she asked.

  "It's Jeff's, I think."

  Stacy knew he was right-immediately-yet didn't want to believe him. She searched for another possibility, but nothing came. The hat was saturated with water; it felt heavy. She had to resist the temptation to throw it aside. She leaned forward, handed it back to Mathias. "How did it get there?" she asked.

  "The vine must've, you know…"

  "What?"

  "It must've taken it and passed it up the hill from tendril to tendril, then set it there, and called us out to find it."

  "But how did it get it? In the first place, I mean. How did it-" She stopped, the answer coming to her even as she asked the question-so obvious, actually. She didn't want to hear Mathias say the words, though, so she veered in a new direction, straining to assert a different possibility. "Maybe he dropped it. Maybe as he was running across toward the trees, he-"

  The voice from the clearing interrupted her, calling out again: Dein Bruder ist gestorben. Dein Bruder ist gestorben.

  "What's it saying?" Eric asked.

  "First, it asked where Henrich is," Mathias replied. "Then it said he's here. Now it's saying he's dead."

  Wo ist Jeff? Wo ist Jeff?

  "And that?"

  Mathias was silent.

  Jeff ist da. Jeff ist da.

  Stacy knew what it was saying-it was easy enough to guess-but Eric hadn't made the leap. "It's something about Jeff?" he asked.

  Jeff ist gestorben. Jeff ist gestorben.

  Eric squeezed her hand, tugging at it. "Why won't he tell me?"

  "It's the same thing, Eric," Stacy whispered.

  "The same thing?"

  "It's asking where Jeff is. Then saying that he's here. Saying that he's dead."

  Outside, the voice multiplied suddenly, surrounding them, spreading itself across the hilltop. It became a chorus, which steadily rose in volume, chanting: Jeff ist gestorben… Jeff ist gestorben… Jeff ist gestorben…

  The rain stopped just before dawn. By the time the sun began to rise, the clouds had already started to thin and part. Eric and Stacy and Mathias emerged from the tent at the first hint of light-hesitantly, stiffly-surveying the night's damage.

  The vine had spread over the backboard, covering it, completely burying Pablo's remains. Half a dozen tendrils had pushed their way into the blue pouch, draining whatever water it had managed to capture during the storm. And Amy's bones had been dragged free of the sleeping bag, scattered haphazardly across the clearing. Eric watched Stacy move about with a dazed expression, stooping to collect them. She laid them in a small pile beside the tent.

  Eric had developed a cough during the night, a deep-chested, hacking sort of bark. His head ached; his clothes were wet, his skin chapped from sitting in the puddle. He was hungry, exhausted, cold, and found it hard to believe that any of this would ever change.

  Mathias crouched beside the backboard, started to pull the vines from Pablo's corpse. Eric was tired enough that he didn't feel quite awake; everything had once again taken on that faraway quality, both comforting and frightening. So when he idly scratched at his chest and felt the bulge there, lurking just beneath his skin, he reacted with a remarkable air of calm. "Where's the knife?" he asked.

  Mathias turned to glance at him. "Why?"

  Eric lifted his shirt. It looked much worse than it had felt, as if a large starfish had somehow surfaced between his rib cage and his skin. And it was moving, too, inching slowly but visibly downward, toward his stomach.

  "Oh my God," Stacy said. She turned away, covering her mouth with her hand.

  Mathias rose to his feet, stepped toward him. "Does it hurt?"

  Eric shook his head. "It's numb. I can't feel it." He showed him, pushing at the bulge with his finger.

  Mathias scanned the clearing, searching for the knife. He found it lying near the tent, half-buried in the mud. He picked it up, tried to wipe some of the dirt off its blade, rubbing it against his jeans. They were still wet, and the knife left a long brown streak across them.

  "It's down there, too," Stacy said. She was pointing at his right leg, but with her gaze squeamishly averted.

  Eric bent to look. And it was true: there was a snakelike lump winding its way upward from the top of his shin to his inner thigh. He touched it hesitantly; it also felt numb. The swelling coiled almost completely around his leg, starting in front, then angling up behind his knee, before stopping just short of his groin. I should be screaming, Eric thought, but for some reason he maintained that lofty sense of distance. Stacy was the one who appeared most upset; she couldn't seem to meet his eyes.

  Eric held out his hand for the knife. "Give it to me."

  Mathias didn't move. "We have to sterilize it," he said.

  Eric shook his head. "No way. I'm not waiting for you to-"r />
  "It's dirty, Eric."

  "I don't care."

  "You can't cut into yourself with something this-"

  "Jesus Christ, Mathias. Would you fucking look at me? Do you really think it's an infection I have to worry about? Or gangrene? Either somebody comes and rescues us within the next day or two or this shit's gonna kill me. Can't you see that?"

  Mathias was silent.

  Eric held out his hand again. "Now give me the fucking knife."

  Jeff wouldn't have done it, Eric knew. Jeff would've gone by the book, would've gotten out the soap and water, would've built the fire, heated the blade. But Jeff wasn't there any longer, and it was Mathias's decision now. The German hesitated, staring at the starfish in Eric's chest, the snake coiled around his leg. Eric could see him making his choice, and he knew what it would be.

  "All right," Mathias said. "But let me do it."

  Eric took off his shirt.

  Mathias glanced about, appraising the muddy clearing. "Do you want to lie down?"

  Eric shook his head. "I'll stand."

  "It's going to hurt. It might be easier if you-"

  "I'm okay. Just do it."

  Mathias started with his chest. He made five quick incisions, in the shape of an asterisk, directly above the starfish-shaped bulge, then reached inside and slowly pulled the vine from Eric's body. There was an astonishing amount of it; Mathias had to tuck the knife in his back pocket, then use both hands to drag the slimy mass free. It emerged thrashing, covered in half-clotted blood. The pain was intense-not the cutting, but the drawing forth-it felt as if Mathias were ripping out some essential part of Eric's body, a vital organ. Eric thought of those images from Jeff's guidebook, the Aztecs with their long knives, yanking the still-beating hearts from their captives' bodies, and his legs almost buckled. He had to grab Mathias's shoulder to keep from falling.

  Mathias tossed the writhing mass aside; it landed with a wet sound in the mud, coiling and uncoiling. "Are you okay?" he asked.

  Eric nodded, let go of Mathias's shoulder. Blood was streaming down his torso, running into the waistband of his shorts. He balled up his T-shirt, pressed it to his wound. "Keep going," he said.

  Mathias lowered himself into a crouch, drew the knife in one smooth movement up and around Eric's leg. Again, it wasn't the incision that hurt; it was when Mathias reached in and pried the vine from his flesh. Eric cried out: a moan, a howl. It felt as if he were being flayed. He dropped heavily to the ground, landing on his rear end. Blood was pumping thickly from his leg.

  Mathias held the tendril up for him to see. This one was much longer, its leaves and flowers more developed, almost full-sized. It twisted in the air, seemed to lift toward Eric, reaching for him. Mathias threw it into the mud, stepped on it, crushing it-the first one, too.

  "I'll get the needle and thread," he said, and he started for the tent.

  "Wait!" Eric called. "There's more." His voice emerged shaky and thin; it frightened him how weak he sounded. "It's all up and down my leg. It's in my shoulder, my back. I can feel it moving." It was true, too: he could feel it everywhere now, lying just beneath his skin, like a muscle, flexing.

  Mathias turned to stare at him, one step short of the tent. "No, Eric," he said. "Don't start." He sounded tired; he looked it, too-slumped and sunken-eyed. "We have to sew you up."

  Eric was silent-dizzy suddenly. He knew he didn't have the strength to argue.

  "You're losing too much blood," Mathias said.

  For a moment, it seemed to Eric as if he might faint. He lowered himself carefully onto his back. The pain wasn't diminishing. He shut his eyes, and the darkness waiting for him there was full of color: a bright, flickering orange deepening toward red at the margins. He could feel the voids the tendrils had left behind in his chest and leg-somehow this seemed central to his pain, as if his body were experiencing the vine's removal as a sort of theft, as if it wanted it back.

  He heard Mathias entering the tent, then returning, but he didn't open his eyes. He watched the colors pulsate in the darkness, saw how they jumped in brightness when the German bent over him and began to stitch shut the wound on his leg. There was no talk of sterilizing the needle; Mathias simply set to work. The incision was a long one; it took him some time to finish. Then he gently pushed Eric's hands aside, lifted the blood-soaked T-shirt away, and started in on his chest.

  Eric grew slowly calmer. The pain didn't lessen, but that familiar sense of distance was returning, so that it almost began to feel as if he were observing his body's distress rather than inhabiting it. The sun had climbed free of the horizon now-it was becoming hot-and this helped, too. He finally stopped shivering.

  Stacy was on the far side of the clearing; Eric could hear her moving about there. It seemed to him that she was avoiding him, that she was afraid to come near. He lifted his head to see what she was doing, and found her crouched over Pablo's pack. She pulled the remaining bottle of tequila from it. "Does anyone want any?" she called, holding it up.

  Eric shook his head, then watched as she bent to peer into the pack again. Apparently, there was an inner pocket. He heard her unzip it. She rummaged about inside, lifted something out. "His name was Demetris," she said.

  "Whose?" Mathias asked. He didn't glance up from his stitching.

  Stacy turned toward them, holding a passport. "Pablo's. His real name. Demetris Lambrakis."

  She rose, brought the passport across the clearing. Mathias set down the needle, wiped his hands on his jeans, took it from her. He stared at it for a long moment without speaking, then handed it to Eric.

  The photo inside showed a slightly younger Pablo-a bit plumper, too-with much shorter hair and, absurdly, a mustache. He was wearing a jacket and tie; he looked as if he were trying not to smile. Eric noticed-again, as though from some great distance-that his hands were shaking. He gave the passport back to Stacy, then lowered his head. Demetris Lambrakis. He kept repeating the name in his mind, as if trying to memorize it. Demetris Lambrakis…Demetris Lambrakis…Demetris Lambrakis…

  Mathias finished with the stitching. Eric heard him move off toward the tent again. When he returned, he was carrying the can of nuts. He opened it and divided its contents into three equal piles, counting them out nut by nut, using the Frisbee as a platter. Mathias was in charge now, Eric realized. All three of them seemed to have agreed upon this, without anyone needing to discuss it.

  Eric had to sit up to eat, and it hurt to do so. He spent a moment examining his body. He looked like a rag doll, handed down through generations of careless children, sewn and resewn, its stuffing leaking between the seams. He couldn't see how he was ever going to make it home from here, and this reflection settled, siltlike, inside him. He felt himself growing heavy with it, resigned. But his body didn't appear to care; it continued to assert its needs. The mere sight of the nuts filled him with a fierce hunger, and he ate them quickly, shoving them into his mouth, chewing, swallowing. When he was finished, he licked the salt from his fingers. Mathias offered him the plastic jug, and he drank from it, conscious of the vine once more, shifting about within him.

  The sun kept climbing higher, growing stronger. The mud was beginning to dry in the clearing, their footprints solidifying into small shadow-filled hollows. All three of them had finished their rations, and now they sat in silence, watching one another.

  "I guess I should go look for Jeff," Mathias said. "Before it gets much hotter." The idea seemed to cause him great fatigue.

  Stacy was still holding the bottle of tequila; it was resting in her lap. She kept twisting its cap on and off. "You think he's dead, don't you?" she asked.

  Mathias turned to peer at her, squinting slightly. "I want it not to be true just as much as you do. But wanting and believing-" He shrugged. "They're not the same, are they?"

  Stacy didn't answer. She brought the bottle to her lips, tilted her head back, swallowed. Eric could sense Mathias's desire to take the bottle from her, could see him almost doing it but then d
eciding not to. He wasn't like Jeff; he was too reserved to be a leader, too aloof. If Stacy wanted to drink herself into some sort of peril here, then that would be her choice. There was no one left to stop her.

  Mathias climbed to his feet. "I shouldn't be long," he said.

  Instantly, Stacy set the bottle aside, jumped up to join him. "I'll come, too." Once again, Eric had the sense that she was frightened of him, terrified of what was happening inside his body. He could tell she didn't want to be left here with him.

  Mathias peered down at Eric, at his shirtless, bloodied, mud-smeared torso. "Will you be okay?" he asked.

  No, Eric thought. Of course not. But he didn't say it. He was thinking of the knife, of being alone in the clearing with it, free to act as he chose. He nodded. Then he lay there in the sun, feeling strangely at peace, and watched as they walked off together, disappearing down the trail.

  Stacy and Mathias stood for a while at the bottom of the hill, staring out at the cleared swath of ground and the wall of trees beyond it. The sun had already baked a thin, brittle skin across the dirt, but beneath this the mud was still ankle-deep. The Mayans were moving laboriously about in it, the muck sticking in clumps to their feet. Stacy watched two of the women spreading things out to dry. They had a big pile: blankets, clothes.

  There were three Mayans standing beside the campfire. One of them was the bald man from that first day, with the pistol on his hip. The other two were much younger, barely more than boys. They both had bows. The bald man's white trousers were rolled to his knees, in what Stacy guessed must've been an effort to keep them clean. His shins looked very thin, almost withered.

  Mathias stepped out into the clearing, his shoes vanishing beneath the mud. He glanced to the left, stared. His face didn't change, but Stacy knew what he was looking at, although she couldn't have said how. The tequila had settled into her stomach with a sour sensation, making her light-headed; sweat was running down her back. There was only one thing for her to do now-she had no choice-but she took her time with it, not wanting to join Mathias quite yet, wanting to find some buffer between his seeing and hers. She carefully removed her sandals, one after the other, set them in the center of the trail, side by side. Then she stepped forward, out into the mud. It was colder than she would've guessed possible-it made her think of snow-and she concentrated on that (white like the bald man's trousers, white like bone) while she peered off toward the little mound twenty-five yards away from them, a tiny peninsula of green protruding into the cleared soil, like a finger. The day's growing heat threw a shimmer across it; Stacy could've easily convinced herself that it was nothing but a mirage. She knew better, though, knew it was Jeff, knew that he'd abandoned them, just as Amy had, and Pablo, that it was only the three of them now. She reached for Mathias's hand, half-worried he might not let her take it, but he did, and they started forward like that, in silence.