The Mystery of Yamashita's Map

The Mystery of Yamashita's Map, Part 12

Chapter Twelve

The jungle was sighing as the professor and the others pushed their way through it. Time was getting on and the sun was getting hotter. Fraser and Joe tried their best to forge a path through the dense growth but it sapped their strength and made them perspire with the effort. With every step they felt themselves getting weaker, until Fraser slumped down onto the jungle floor, his eyes rolling in his head, his hair matted underneath his cap. The professor looked at him closely. 'What do you think?' he said to Lisa. 'He looks bad.' Lisa bent over Fraser and felt his forehead. 'I think we'd better rest a while here,' she said, and sat down beside Fraser while Joe rested against a tree and began to suck at a twig that he had found digging into his shoe.

Suddenly there was movement all around them. There were no shapes, no tangible sights, just the sense of bodies flying through the canopy. Lisa covered her ears as the noises got louder and louder. All around them they heard the flapping of wings and the sound of the air being torn apart. The professor tried to stand but was knocked to the ground, his face flushed and scarred by tiny invisible talons. He put his hand to his face and felt warm wet blood on his fingertips; something that he could not see, something that was beyond his comprehension had struck him. Up against the tree, Joe stood transfixed, his eyes flickering from place to place, following as if in a trance. Lisa called to him but he made no reply. She crawled over and tugged on his legs, but Joe was somewhere else. His eyes darted this way and that, searching for something, tracking something that Lisa was not a part of. She screamed at him, pulled at his trouser leg, anything to shake him out of the trance he had fallen into. 'Joe! Joe! Wake up, we need you.' But Joe didn't hear her. He merely stood, transfixed, looking at the sky and following the demons that were playing in front of his eyes. Lisa knelt on the ground, put her head on her knees, closed her eyes and felt her hair being played with by whatever it was that was surrounding them. As quickly as it had started it stopped. There was silence. Lisa lifted her head and looked around her. Fraser was seated on the ground, exhausted, barely able to move. The professor was flat on his back with pinpricks of blood on his cheek and Joe – Joe was smiling a huge smile as his head slowly lowered to the vertical again. 'What was that?' Lisa asked. The professor wiped his cheeks. 'I don't know for certain,' he said. 'But I would guess that that was our first meeting with the aswang.' They looked at Joe, who had by now recovered. 'The aswang?' he said. 'I see.' And he moved off, through the jungle.

On the other side of the island, Kono and Tanaka were setting up camp. They had spent their first night in the open air of the Filipino jungle and they were little used to roughing it. Kono heaved his bulking frame over the guy ropes that held their canopy up and tripped over it, sending its canvas roof to the ground. 'Idiot!' Tanaka admonished. 'Watch where you are going, can't you?' Kono apologised for the fifth time already that day and began to tie the roof back up.

Tanaka made his way down to the beach, where the pilot was moored, bobbing up and down on the soft waves. 'You stay here,' he motioned, 'Until we return. We will give you the money when we come back.'

The pilot began to get suspicious and he mimed that he would fly away if they had not returned in two days, then showed Tanaka a bag with what looked like rations in it.

'You'll be able to buy plenty of that when we return,' Tanaka said. 'Just be sure to be here when we come back.'

He turned and walked off up the beach again, making his way through the slight undergrowth to the camp where Kono was fixing the stove. 'I have a bad feeling about that pilot. We should have got a decent one, I think.'

Kono sighed. 'But where do you get a decent pilot that would come on a trip like this?'

Tanaka began to argue, then thought for a moment. 'Yes, you might be right there,' he said. 'Don't bother making yourself too much at home, we are moving soon.'