Demons in the Jungle

Chapter 17

  "It sounds like murder."

That was Ariel's voice. I looked all around me, struggling to comprehend what I saw. All I could see were people, but they all faced away from me, forming impenetrable walls. Everything was dark, everyone was quiet, and it all felt very wrong.

"You're not seriously thinking about this, are you?"

I spun around as I heard her speak again, finding a hole in the group of people. I took it, squeezing past and entering a tunnel lined with yet more people. All I could see around me were the shadowy backs of heads, everywhere. Where the hell was I? How did I get out of here? Where the hell was Ariel?

"Your woman would like you to reconsider, mate." That was Amy's voice, speaking from right ahead of me. I continued to push past the mute living barricade and then finally burst through, falling on my face into deep sand. I stood and looked around, realizing finally where I was.

This was the beach where the gang and I had found the party, the night I snuck away. I could see the place where the jealous men watched their pretty girlfriends. The fire where the drum circle had sat was stomped out. Everything was empty and lifeless now, but this was it. I was all alone on the beach.

"I don't even know who you are anymore."

I turned and followed Ariel's voice down the shore, jogging. She sounded so sad, so hurt...I'd never heard a more heartbroken voice in my entire life.

I found her sitting in the sand, facing away from me, in front of a camp fire. As I came close, she stood and turned, facing me. There was something wrong with her eyes. She looked haunted, like she had seen something terrible. With a growing horror, I realized the change. Ariel didn't have any eyelids anymore. She was staring at me with the same horrible, too-wide glare that the Kokowai warriors had.

"You're losing control of yourself, Tommy." She said, though her mouth didn't move. And then, very suddenly, she fell backward into the fire. I saw her clothes catch and go up in an inferno, consuming her skin, her mouth opening wide and distorting as she seemed to melt before me. Then, the entire eerie image disappeared suddenly, vanishing into swirling blue smoke and leaving me alone on the dark beach again.

I kept walking. I would find her somewhere, surely. Maybe she was in that hut, the little thatched building down the beach. Was that her there, standing by the door? No, that wasn't her. But I knew who it was.

"You gotta, you know, keep your wits about you." Jay said calmly, pushing away from the hut and then stepping casually toward me. As he came, there was a horrible tearing sound, like leather, and I saw beads of blood appear across Jay's neck. He stumbled in his step, the beads becoming a thin red line of gore as his head tilted back, the jugular wound ripping open wide. Then he fell, collapsing in a pile to the ground and disappearing in a cloud of mist. I shuddered as I walked past where he had been, approaching the hut reluctantly. Someone was screaming inside.

It was pitch black within the hut. I couldn't see, so I held my hands out and stumbled forward, trying to find the source of the voice filled with shrieking terror. Very suddenly, a light flickered on, and then off again, and then on once more, giving me a strobe-like glimpse at the inside of the hut. There was a table there, and over it someone was bent, the person who was screaming. Behind them, muscular hands gripping the victim about the waist, was Amy. The screaming person lifted their head for an instant, and I realized that it was Debra. Her face was covered in blood, her hair matted with it, her expression twisted in pain and fear.

"There is a well-documented link between sex and violence." She said calmly, and then suddenly she shrieked again and held out a hand toward me, but then Amy grabbed the back of her head and shoved her down. I felt the blood rushing through my veins, my hands tightening into tight fists as I saw the way Amy's hips were thrusting forward into Debra relentlessly. Her head came up again, and suddenly, it wasn't Debra's head. It wasn't even Debra. It was Ariel, her lip swollen with a bruise, her nose bleeding.