The Ancient Death

Some places should stay undiscovered...

It is behind me, behind me alone, the others are dead, and Eric died in a traffic accident, two month after our arrival back from South America. Linda plunged into Hudson River and drowned, not a week before. Katie, she was attacked by a dog and died with rabies; Willard was biking when his bike was torn down by a truck. Then Prof. Duncan, he died in a strange tropical fever, and Prof. Branko fell onto the subway rails and was overrun. I’m the last one of our expedition alive, and I fear it’s not for a long time.

All started a half year ago, we, five students from the botanic faculty under supervision of the two most renowned Professors searching for unknown medical plants at the Amazon’s Rainforest. Most of the jungle there is still unexplored, and most of the plants there are not catalogued, more there are plants a normal US-citizen never had seen in his life.

With the help of some native people as guides and assistants we floated up the Amazon and the Jurua in three flat boats. This area was so far away from any civilization one could think being travelling backwards in time. No one of us would have been astonished watching a conquistador or an Arawak warrior coming out of the wilderness.

We built up a small camp on the river banks where we did stay for some days to acclimatize before advancing into the forest. Besides the adverse conditions as mosquitoes, snakes and other vermin, the air moisture, the daily showers or the permanent noise of the forest animals we felt like in paradise. Yet on our way to the latrine we could see more different plant types than in the New York botanic garden. Sure, there were no species unknown, but most of them we only knew from books or photographs our professors did take on their expeditions. Also in my special subject, moss, ferns and lichen there was so much to see. For example a tree fern that was a relic from Carboniferous. Linda more was enthusiastic about the gorgeous orchids growing on every tree.

A few days later we had acclimatized so we could proceed with our intruding the forest. Prof. Duncan and Prof. Branko together with our guides had chosen an area we wanted to research into. We took our package and left the rest guarded by some Indians at the camp.

We followed a path only a local guide could recognize deeper into the forest. Here under the trees air moisture was that intensive we meant to breath water instead air. Dense clouds of mosquitoes whirred around our heads. With a big grin Lorenzo, our guide showed us a plant we could rub onto our skin to repel the mosquitoes. I could understand why, this stuff did smell really nasty.

After three days marching in which paradise for us did turn into hell or at least purgatory we reached the border of our target area. We built a smaller camp and prepared our technical equipment. We had special notebooks, cameras, a small satellite system, a radio plant and a small lab in a suitcase to make simple analysis. We decided to start our work the day after and settled in front of Prof. Duncan’s tent to arrange our missions for the next day.

***

I don’t want to talk more in here about our fascinating discoveries we made in botanic, they had been showed well enough in our bulletins. The drastic turning point happened about two weeks after we started exploring the area. Lorenzo as always went in front and made our way through the wilderness of bushes and lianas as he suddenly did stop. Branko, talking Quechua was asking for the reason after he had been looking if there was no jungle beast responsible. With fast words Lorenzo declared the ground was haunted. He didn’t say a word more, turned around and disappeared the direction we have been coming from.

I think it was Katie who found the ground we stood upon was not the same as we had been walking on before. Eric stabbed into it with his machete and he came upon stone only a few inches under the humus layer. With our spades we did help him to free a larger spot from the soil. Astonished we recognized under the forest ground there was an area of stones, accurately planed and fitted together. We could not believe we came upon the relicts of a lost culture here, in the middle of this wilderness.

Willard who handled the camera made some photographs. We reflected what’s to do next. It seemed Lorenzo did recognize the strange ground and in a trace of superstition he found the ground haunted. The forest around for us was somewhat disencouraging for we hardly could see the way arrived. On the other hand there was an enormous discovery we had made. Prof Duncan decided we should walk some way further before turning. After all it might have been we could find some botanic rarities on this ‘haunted ground’ because natives didn’t come here, if we could not find an archaeological sensation.

We went along an animal path, Duncan leading with his compass. Nearly one mile we struggled through the brush which seems to become more compact meter by meter. Duncan exclaimed a call of surprise. A dense mass of plants had been growing over a building so no one could see except standing nearly in front of it. With his cutlass Duncan cleared a small part of the wall from its plant cover. Really we stood in front of a building from a period before the Spain came to America.

***

Speechless we stood in front of the building. Conquistadors must have felt the same first seeing a town of the natives. With a kind of sacred veneration we beheld the structure looking like a hill because of the proliferating plants. With our machetes we uncovered a larger piece of the wall which was weathered but undistorted under all the greenery. As far as we could see the wall was built of a kind of granite, worked nearly perfectly, so the single boulders matched together without any interspaces. Additionally there were strange spiral patterns on the surface that seemed to move when watched for longer time. We wondered how people in former times managed to shape the stones in this masterly manner.

Duncan decided we should make a camp and take a look on the building the next day before proceeding with our real mission. We had an uncomfortable night in our sleeping bags, protected from the mosquitoes by Lorenzo’s sap.

At the daybreak we had planned to walk once around the whole structure to see how large it was. The walls to our right we walked about an hour, so the area under roof was not too wide. Duncan cogitated what’s to do further, but an unexpected accident stopped his thoughts. The ground broke under his feet and he fell into a kind of cellar. Luckily all the plants stopped his fall so he wasn’t hurt.

He lit the lamp we had taken with us. Then he exclaimed following him must be easy to do because of the roots and lianas. We did and recognized he was right; the plant’s roots grew like a kind of natural ladder we could climb down modestly. Duncan had gone a little further. We decided to light only one of our lamps to take care on our batteries.

The glaring cone of light showed us a terrific view. Every inch of the wall was carved to relief and painted with bright colours. We saw tall grown people in feather dresses, apparently living in a well organized civilization. There were hunters, farmers, stone cutters, goldsmiths and even magistrates regarding everything works regularly. We gazed at pictures of children playing between fine built structures, women manufacturing pretty fabric or handled field crops. We gazed at images of men breaking boulders and building houses and temples with them and others who carved pictures in this stones. And we saw colourful dressed priests praying to weird gods on platforms high above the tree tops.

But what took us by surprise was we could see no devotement we were used to see in other ancient civilizations. We were used to see these cruel rites at Inca’s, Maya’s and Aztec’s images. But this kind of scenes was missing here. Sure there were the usual bloody and mutilated corpses but we couldn’t find any picture showing how this was done. This means we didn’t see any priest depicted with a knife or a club who was tampering at a sacrifice.

Meanwhile we had closed up to Duncan. The corridor had no intersections; in a slightly curved line it leaded us deeper into the ground. We could see more and more pictures of weird gods; but perhaps weird is the wrong word. The idols didn’t match into a scheme that’s known to us. There was no jaguar, snake or quetzal as in other South American cultures. One of the deities was depicted as a mixture between a humanoid torso, the limbs of prehistoric reptiles, narrow dragon like wings and a head like a squid, crouching at a stone pedestal. Another one seemed like a strange tree from an old fairy tale book, only the branches ended in tentacles and at the root’s ends there were dozens of split goat like hoofs.

There were pictures showing priests depositing ripped bodies in front of this deities who stretched their tentacles for them greedily. Linda came close to me. As I asked her if the pictures were frightening her she replied that the images were not responsible for but she felt like watched. Also Branko, normally jocular was startlingly monosyllabic. Anyway, the whole structure became a little bit fishy to me too and Linda only told what we all felt subliminally. Evidently here existed something like an aura taking influence on one’s mind; this was it, what made Lorenzo turn around and flee.

Nevertheless Willard took some photos with the flashlight before we retreated from the complex. Slowly we returned to our camp and it was no surprise, all the Indians were gone. They didn’t take any part of our equipment, but there were only two boats left and our supplies had been minimized.

***

We drew the deduction Lorenzo had told the others we had gone to the haunted area and had been haunted too. Because of this the other men preferred to flee. With our satellite phone Duncan called up the university’s administration, who told us to abort our expedition at once and return home.

We packed our equipment and stored it in the boats except the few things we needed for one single night. Then we sat around the fire to talk about our discovery. Katie lifted her shoulders shivering when darkness fell upon the forest. A strange sound like a subterranean growl came from the forest’s edge, but no one of us dared to leave the safe circle of light to look after. Branko took one of the shotguns which did belong to our equipment and loaded it. We decided to keep watch for the night, it might have been a jaguar was prowling the area and looking at us when the fire extinguishes.

I was the first to watch. With the gun in my hand I sat at the fire and glanced at the dark wall of the forest. It was sinister, the shape of my comrades lay around the fire without any movement and from the forest there still was that ominous growl but I could not see any causer. So my watch ended without any accident only my nerves had been unsound.

Next morning we took the rest of our gear and retreated from the rain forest.

***

With tuck up legs Linda sat upon my old sofa. There were dark rings under her eyes. “You know, I’m nearly sure, Lorenzo was right”, she started. I looked at her distressed. “With what”, I wanted to know. “With the curse, or with the haunted ground”, she explained. “Since we did return from Brazil I wasn’t able to sleep one single night. I hear strange sounds in my neighbourhood; I smell unfamiliar things, like in that temple.”

“You ought to consult a doctor”, I declared dryly. “Could be you caught a tropical disease.” She shook her head vigorously. “I do think we waked something which came with us. And it wants to kill us now,” she declared. I leaned back in my chair and looked at her. I had to think about the strange feeling I had while my watch at the rainforest. But I succeeded displacing it as a superstition. “And what should that be”, I wanted to know. Linda seemed to sink down. “I don’t know”, she admitted. “But I always have to think about the pictures at the temple. There were sacrifices for any gods, you saw. But there was no one executing the sacrifice, you remember? You said this on your own. It seemed the people were afraid to depicture this. Perhaps there was a creature, a thing which executed the sacrifice. This killed the people who were provided for sacrifice.”

“And this thing was waiting more than thousand years until we carried it out of the temple”, I asked disbelievingly. “You too read the book, ‘it is not death what lies eternally…’”, she defended herself.

I rose. “The best thing will be you stay over night, perhaps you’re able to sleep a little better here than at home”, I offered.

***

Linda lay beneath me sweating and moaning in her sleep. It seemed she was tortured by a nightmare. Then I heard something other. It was a kind of sliding or floating at the suite above me like furniture becoming disarranged. There were sounds which should not be heard in a large town. There was a scrapping at my window and as I did look I thought to see highlighted eyes disappearing.

How should I describe my feelings? I wanted to believe in Linda’s feeling, but I couldn’t admit she was right. Could it be there was something following us? Something which was following us the whole way from Brazil to New York to sacrifice us?

However, Linda is dead. She fell into the river the next day, perhaps she did jump, I don’t know. All the others are dead too. I am the last one and I feel it is behind me. It will get me as it got the others. I’m writing this report, because it will help, who knows. I only can hope it’s over with my sacrifice. That it’s enough for the thing to kill us. But what if it’s not? If it’s proceeding like in former times immolating humans? If it’s offering their dead bodies to any ancient gods? I only can hope, not for me …. But for mankind …..