Linda’s finger slowly closed around the trigger. She said, “Goodbye, Lewis.”
Lewis squinted as his mouth moved in a silent prayer. Then, a giant bat with a ten foot long wingspan swooped down from the sky, lifted Linda in its talons, and flew away with her.
Lewis stood for a moment in disbelief that he was still alive and then shouted, “Let’s go.”
Clare asked, “Go where?”
“We have to follow that ahool. Come on.”
“Dad, mom was just about to shoot you. How can you even think of saving her?”
“Your mother and I have a very complicated relationship. You will understand when you are older.”
Clare rolled her eyes. “I hope not.”
A gunshot rang out. Lewis cried, “She’s out of bullets. We have to go, now!”
Lewis ran off in the direction of the gunshot. Clare and the rest followed him until they reached a clearing where Linda, covered in bloody cuts, was fighting off many ahool with a heavy stick as they swooped at her from all sides, swiping at her with their sharp talons.
Lewis called, “Quick Charles, the torches.”
Charles hurriedly unpacked the torches as Dr. Stern asked, “Lewis, what do you have in mind?”
Lewis said, “Do you remember last night when we lit the torches and there was that bizarre screeching? Usually when you light torches in the jungle everything becomes quiet. That screeching must have been the ahool. The ahool are nocturnal. They must be afraid of fire.”
Lewis knelt down and lit a torch. Dr. Stern cautioned, “You have no proof that the ahool are afraid of fire and...”
But before Dr. Stern could finish, Lewis took off into the clearing, waving his lit torch in the air. Dr. Stern called out, “Get back here! This is insane!”
But the ahool were, in fact, afraid of the torch. As the giant bats screeched loudly and flew chaotically in all directions, Lewis made his way through the commotion, grabbed Linda around the waist, and led her towards the jungle, frantically waving his torch.
But, the one torch was not enough to protect the two of them, and the ahool attacked Linda from the opposite side of Lewis’s torch. Lewis reached his arm around to try to scare the giant bats away from Linda’s other side, but when he did, he left his shoulder in the darkness, and an ahool grabbed onto his shoulder with its talons, causing him to drop the torch. More bats swooped in to attack.
Clare, watching all this from the edge of the clearing, grabbed two torches from the pack, lit both of them, and ran into the clearing waving them frantically, until she reached her parents. She used the two torches to shield Lewis, who picked up his torch. She then handed one of her torches to Linda, who was covered in blood from the scratches all over her body, and the three made their way out of the clearing, fending off the ahool with their torches, but when they reached the others, they found them all sprawled out on the jungle floor, passed out.
Linda saw primitive wooden darts sticking from their skin, which she recognized as the blow darts the ebu gogo had shot her with when she first encountered them all that time ago. She said, “Uh oh.”
Then she felt a sting against her neck. Lewis and Clare also felt stings. And then as they passed out they saw Martin emerge from the covering of the jungle, leading a retinue of female ebu gogo. Martin said to the three who were in the midst of passing out, “Ordinarily, they try to scare their enemy with their war cry. But I told them all about the benefits of sneaking up on your enemies quietly. Aren’t I smart?”
And then Clare, Lewis, and Linda passed out into darkness.
Chapter 22
In a cavern buried deep within the maze of caves that runs beneath the island of Flores, lit by the eerie purple glow of foot-long phosphorescent slugs that crawled along the walls and ceiling, six cryptozoologists, Lewis, Linda, Dr. Stern, Clare, Stephanie, and Charles groaned as they slowly awakened. The ebu gogo had removed all of their clothes except for their pith helmets and boots.
Charles was the first to speak. He gave Lewis an accusing look and said, “A fine mess you’ve gotten us into.” And then, his voice dripping with sarcasm, he added, “That was a real good idea, going after Jack.”
Lewis said, “There is no way I could have anticipated this.”
Charles said, “God this internship sucks. I haven’t even learned anything.”
Dr. Stern said, “This is no time for bickering. Look, I disagree with Mr. Dare’s methodology. We rushed into the jungle without a plan, and now it looks like we’re going to pay the price. But even I have to admit, he did discover the ebu gogo.”
Linda said, “God damn it how many times do I have to remind you people that it was I who discovered the ebu gogo!”
Dr. Stern said, “Well technically perhaps, but I get the impression that your decision to go to Flores to search for the ebu gogo in the first place was based off of Lewis’s research.”
Clare said, “Oh come on Dr. Stern, even a fool has to be right eventually. This was just his time. I have traveled to six out of the seven continents with my father, sacrificing things that any normal girl my age enjoys like a steady boyfriend, a college education, and a career as a Hollywood movie star because I believed I was experiencing the romance of searching for new exotic species. But really I was just wandering around the wilderness aimlessly following a con man! I am as pissed at dad as mom is, well maybe not quite as much since I didn’t try to shoot him, but then again I didn’t have a gun, but you, Dr. Stern, have even more of a right to be pissed at dad than mom or I do.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Dad’s the one who emailed the museum director that paper of yours, which by the way is very good, in order to get you fired from your job so you would have to accept his offer of one million dollars to come on this expedition. I mean, at least he has a right to lie to mom and me and ruin our lives because we’re family, but you’re a complete stranger.”
Dr. Stern replied with icy reserve. “OK, do you know what Mr. Dare? You’re a crackpot.”
Everybody sat in an uncomfortable silence for some time and then Martin entered the cavern with many pregnant, spear-wielding female ebu gogo. He looked at Stephanie and said, “Meh kear a trom tooh rahp mua tooh…” Then he paused and said, “Excuse me, I meant to say ‘I want to kill you for what you’ have done. Lua, et yamma, excuse me I mean Lua, ‘the love’ of my life, gave her life to bring our son into the world, and then you killed him. But when the ebu gogo were inspecting you while you were passed out, they discovered that tahr coo-coo, excuse me, I meant to say ‘your vagina’ is unusually small. You see, the male ebu gogo wa-wa, excuse me I mean ‘penis’ is too small for them to have sex with the female ebu gogo. But your coo-coo is smaller than an ebu gogo’s, and they think that maybe it will be a good fit.
Martin called back outside the room and spoke in the ebu gogo language, and some pregnant female ebu gogo prodded a happy, chattering male ebu gogo into the small chamber with their spears. Martin picked up the oblivious creature by the nape of its neck with one hand, and then reached his other hand to the ebu gogo’s groin and took its penis between his thumb and forefinger. He said, “Look at this little wa-wa. How sad! How pathetic! How could this little guy ever hope to pleasure such a sensual creature as an ebu gogo female with something this small?”
While Martin was doing this, the male ebu gogo just continued to laugh and chatter, oblivious of its surroundings. Martin put the ebu gogo down and said, “But your coo-coo is so small, so tight. And now you are going to become my sister.”
Lewis stepped forward and said, “Now listen here. I won’t allow this.”
Martin said something in the ebu gogo language and ebu gogo rushed everybody in the room except for Martin and Stephanie, and pinned them to the wall with the points of many spears. Stephanie sat where she was, crying. She looked up and said, “Why… why are you doing this?”