Lewis put on his backpack and left the hut. Shrugging their shoulders, everybody else put on their packs and followed him.
Lewis walked through the village, past the cultivated fields, and right up to the solid-looking wall of jungle as everybody else followed. He pulled out his machete. With a few swings of his muscular arms he cut away the foliage in front of him, and stepped through the opening he had created. The rest followed, and they entered another world.
It was a green, alien world out of some bizarre dream. The heavy mist that clung to the ground gave every object a mysterious pallor, and the light from the sun, which only broke through the canopy of leaves overhead with a beam here and there, instead of illuminating as light normally does, hit the mist at such an angle that it added to the opaqueness of the jungle floor, instead of detracting from it.
As Lewis led the others through the dense jungle, chopping away brush with his machete, everybody grew exhausted. Everybody except for Lewis and Clare, that is. Both were in excellent shape. Lewis was tall, muscular, and powerfully built. Clare had always been very athletic. For them, trekking through the jungle was invigorating. For them, it was a reason to be alive.
The jungle around them teemed with life, and the cacophony of chirps, whistles, clicks, growls, howls, and roars was a constant presence. All seven wore nearly identical uniforms of black boots, khaki pants, beige shirts and jackets, and off-white pith helmets. Other than Lewis and Clare however, none of them even came close to looking like they belonged in the jungle. They sweated in the moist heat and struggled to keep pace with Lewis and Clare.
The short fat intern was having the most difficult time of it. He breathed heavily as he walked, constantly wiped the sweat from his brow, and looked like he was going to sit down and refuse to go an inch further at any moment. He breathed a sigh of relief when Lewis lifted his hand in the air and told everybody to halt.
Lewis stared at the ground at his feet with a look of deep concentration on his face. There was something so focused about his stare that it commanded the complete attention of everybody present. The interns were in awe of the contemplative look on Lewis Dare’s face, and they inspected his face closely, looking for clues as to what was going on in that famous brain of his. Even Dr. Stern, as cynical and world weary as he was, had no choice but to feel respect for Lewis at that moment.
Everyone watched in silence as Lewis knelt to the ground and inspected something. Lewis motioned for Dr. Stern to join him, and Dr. Stern complied, getting down on both knees. Lewis pointed to a pair of bipedal tracks. “What do you make of that?”
Dr. Stern barely glanced at the tracks before speaking. “Some sort of primate tracks. Could be orangutan.”
Lewis said, “I brought you here at great expense, as you are so fond of reminding me, and that is the best you can do? Could be orangutan? Look at the way the tracks go straight through the jungle. Orangutans spend most of their time in trees, and only spend a few minutes at a time on the jungle floor. And orangutans tend to drag their fists when they walk, so you would see fist marks too. And the foot is narrower than an orangutan’s.”
Dr. Stern gave the tracks another brief, dismissive glance and said, “OK. OK. Fine. They’re not orangutan.”
Lewis asked the interns to get out the plaster of Paris and mixed it with water from his canteen. He poured the plaster onto the ground until it filled one of the little footprints. Then, everybody waited for the plaster to set.
Forty-five minutes later, Lewis lifted the cast he had made from the ground, rinsed it with water from his canteen, held it up for everybody to see, and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I have discovered the ebu gogo.”
Dr. Stern said, “No you have not. Making a cast of an animal print isn’t the same thing as discovering a new species.”
Lewis shouted, “I brought you here to verify my findings, not argue with me. Are you telling me that you are unwilling to do the job I am paying you to do?”
Dr. Stern stuck his nose in the air and said, “I would be perfectly willing to verify your findings, once you have made them. What you have in your hand isn’t even evidence, let alone proof that there is such a thing as ebu gogo. In order for the cast to rise to the level of evidence that an unknown species exists, we would at the least have to compare it to other casts in order to determine that it isn’t of an already known species. Do you have a guidebook of Indonesian animal tracks handy?”
“No.”
“Then we will have to wait until we return to civilization in order to study the cast.”
“Well, perhaps you are right and the cast isn’t proof or evidence or whatever, but it is certainly a clue. Let’s follow it.”
Lewis went off following the tracks. The spell cast moments earlier by his intense concentration was broken, and the three interns all moaned and groaned as they reluctantly followed Lewis deeper into the jungle.
Dr. Stern stood where he was for a moment and rolled his eyes, a gesture which was not missed by Clare, who looked at him and shook her head. “Well Dr. Stern,” she said, “what did you think we’d be doing? I mean, we are looking for an animal, so we follow animal tracks. That makes sense, right?”
Dr. Stern said, “It just makes me sad sometimes when I see how stupid most people are,” and walked following the rest, staying at the rear, while Clare caught up with her father.
As they walked the sun began to set. Expecting Lewis to stop at any moment in order to make camp, the interns and Dr. Stern said nothing in protest, and soon everybody had to make their way through the jungle in the inky blackness of a tropical night. The sounds of daytime jungle life were replaced by the unintentional rustling noises of the kinds of animals that operate secretively, under the cover of darkness.
The sound of a twig snapping under her foot startled the petite Asian intern, who jumped and grabbed the short fat intern’s arm, which startled him and made him jump. She whispered “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”
The short fat intern breathed heavily a couple of times, and then stuck out his chest and said, “Scare me? You didn’t scare me. Nothing scares me. It’s just that I can’t see a thing in this awful darkness.”
Then he went to the front where Lewis was cutting away with his machete and said, “Mr. Dare, I think it’s time we break out the torches.”
Lewis turned to his daughter and said, “Clare, would you tell this intern that we are searching for an elusive cryptid, and that if we do too much to make our presence known, we might scare it away.”
Clare was about to comply when Dr. Stern said, “I agree with the intern. I can hardly see where I am going.”
The short fat intern said, “I have a name, you know.”
Lewis let out an annoyed grunt and said, “Fine, we can all carry torches, but I don’t want any more complaining. Bunch of babies.”
Lewis took off his pack, removed a torch, and lit it. The moment he did, bizarre screeches came from everywhere around them, as well as rustling in the trees. The Asian intern grabbed the fat intern’s arm and held tight, the tall skinny intern looked around in fright, and even Lewis looked a little worried.
Recovering quickly in order to avoid the others seeing him display weakness Lewis said, “Well, we have been hiking a long time now. I think it’s time to set up camp.”
The interns dropped their packs with relief. The fat intern whispered to the others, “Let’s get our tents up as quickly as we can so he can’t change his mind and make us go again.” All hurried to set up their tents as quickly as they could.
That night as everybody lay alone, fast asleep in their tents, the front flap of the Asian intern’s tent zipped opened and the fat intern poked his head in. The Asian intern sat up startled, and then when she saw who it was smiled.