The Mystery of Yamashita's Map

The Mystery of Yamashita's Map, Part 15

Chapter Fifteen

After about half an hour, Joe stood up. 'OK, so we've been walking in circles but we can't give up the search just like that. We are looking for Lisa after all – we are doing it for her.' He wrung the water out of the bottom of his shirt and dragged Fraser by the arm. Fraser moaned and shouted but eventually allowed himself to be dragged to his feet. 'Come on. Come, this time we'll all listen out for the river. All we need to do is concentrate and we'll find our way, I'm sure of it. All we need to do is keep a constant course.' The three men, tired and downcast, made their way again into the jungle, pushing aside large ferns and foliage as they went. The professor was finding it hard going. He let his mind wander to his classroom, to the bright faces of the students and the easy life of the university lecturer. He tripped over a tree root and cursed his luck. Joe kept up a good pace for an hour and then let a reluctant Fraser take the lead. The speed slowed somewhat but with all three men craning their ears every second they kept a good course. They always heard the river. No matter what other noises polluted the air, they always heard the river. Joe saw the clearing up ahead that he had visited the day before. He pointed it out to Fraser and the three men headed for it, bursting through the dense trees to rest in its spacious, empty environment. The professor sighed with relief as he flopped down upon a log which, unbeknownst to him, had held his niece only a few hours before. 'Do you think we'll ever find her?' he asked, pulling a handkerchief out of his back pocket and wiping his forehead with it.

Joe looked at him, not wanting to say no, but unable to say yes. He made to speak but was gripped by a sudden, all-powerful feeling of being watched again. He looked around. Damn this jungle, he thought, there are more eyes here than any street in Hong Kong. The aswang were watching him, their eyes peering out of every leaf, their hot breath steaming in the close air of the jungle. Wherever he went the aswang were there beside him, goading him onwards, taunting him, making him go where he did not want to go. He spoke to no one in particular. 'I think this jungle is playing with my mind. Every step I take, every time I turn around I think I'm being watched.' Fraser peered nervously into the undergrowth. 'Well, if you are paranoid,' he said, 'Then I must be too because for the last half an hour I've been having the same feeling, as if there are eyes peering at me from behind every tree.' The professor shuddered. He too had been feeling the same but had failed, or had not dared to mention it. He stroked the three-day-old stubble on his chin and looked up to the tall canopy of the trees. Everything was strange here, he thought to himself, nothing was what it seemed.

Then from out of the trees there came a great blackness, something unexplainable that flew through the air and hit all three like an explosion. They reeled from the force and fell to the ground, moaning and screaming more from surprise and shock than pain. The world for Joe went black. One moment he was standing, staring through the trees, the next he was on his back fighting some invisible enemy. He shouted to the air, 'The aswang! It's the aswang!'

The professor and Fraser, though, realised this was a far more mortal foe. They scrabbled at the net that covered them and tried to free themselves but it was no use. The more they struggled the tighter the net seemed to entwine itself around their limbs and catch itself around their necks and torsos. For ten minutes the three struggled but to no avail – the net had completely covered them. Joe finally opened his eyes and the first thing he saw was the legs of a young woman. They were slender legs, legs that he might have gazed upon with lust once; legs that he might have encountered in a bar in Hong Kong, in one of the back streets where love was cheap and lasted a night if you could pay. Joe followed the line of the legs upwards until he caught sight of a beautiful young girl, about fifteen or sixteen. Her skin was brown and soft and her hair flowed in long waves around her shoulders but she had the hard face of a warrior, the look of someone who had known pain and suffering. Joe implored her to let them go but it was no good. The girl just stared and said nothing. She was joined in time by four or five others, all with the same slender brown legs and hard, almost aggressive look. Joe started to wonder whether this was his idea of paradise or his idea of hell. Each new woman that arrived carried a different and increasingly deadly-looking weapon – a knife at first, then a dagger, then a club, then a spear. Joe gulped. If there was a time to be surrounded by beautiful half-naked women, he thought to himself, this wasn't it. Beside him, in the net, the professor and Fraser were having similar thoughts. Fraser called out to one of the women, in his best pathetic tone. 'Hello, hello! Could you free us? We are caught in your net. I'm sure you meant to trap an animal or two but you seemed to have caught us.' He laughed a little but the women were not laughing. They just looked at him and occasionally jabbed him with a stick. The professor was a little more sedate. He had assumed that this entrapment was no accident. Suddenly it all became clear to him: he remembered the feeling of being watched and the noises in the jungle that seemed a little too human to be anything other than a voyeur.