Together, they walked along the front of the collapsed cave mouth. There were a few deeper holes, but they either ended after a few feet, or were far too narrow to allow even Emma’s slim body to slide into.
Emma crouched staring in longingly. “Could we maybe widen it somehow?”
Ben crouched beside her. “We’d need equipment, or at least heavy tools… and a few weeks. The rock here is too dense and all we’ve got is a few hunting knives and our bare hands.”
“So no.” Emma found a rock and sat down, her hands on her knees. “Getting late.”
Thunder cracked and made her cringe. Ben’s head swung around, but he couldn’t see where the storm front was. In fact, it seemed like it had come from all around them. The wind was a constant now, and Emma had to hold the hair back from one side of her face.
“What the hell was that?” Her teeth were gritted.
“Dry storm maybe. Like you said, we’re gonna need shelter soon.” Ben reached up to wipe a sleeve across his damp brow. The constant perspiring was another way they were being drained, and meant they needed to take more water in than was going out.
“Just remember, Benjamin got down, somehow. And he didn’t climb back into the temple.”
“These tabletop mountains are riddled with caves,” she replied. “From the top, bottom, and sides. He must have found another one that took him down.” Emma rubbed both hands up through her hair, the sweat making it stay slicked back for a moment even in the wind.
Ben sat down beside her, and she turned to him.
“I don’t get it. These things up here; all these monsters. Why aren’t they down there, in the jungle? I mean, if Benjamin was able to climb up and down, and the ancient Pemon Indians, why don’t these things get down? Why isn’t the jungle overrun with them — not exactly too many predators to challenge them?”
“Maybe they have.” Ben turned to her. “In Benjamin’s notebook, he talks about coming across the body of a large animal at the foot of the plateau, dead, but there was something alive inside it that the natives killed. He thought it might have fallen… now, I think he was right.” He picked up a small stick and then started to doodle in the sand at their feet.
“But when I was doing research before we came down here, I read about an ancient Amazon legend. Every country has them.” He half smiled. “Remember, we’ve got Bigfoot, Scotland’s got Nessie, and in the Congo, they even have their own local dinosaur legend called a Mokele Mbembe.”
But in this place, there is something called a Yacumama; means mother of the river. It’s supposed to be a monstrous snake that eats people whole.”
“Don’t remind me.” Emma shuddered, and then looked up. “You think they’re down there already?”
“Maybe. I don’t know anymore.” He sighed. “I wish Jenny was here; she’d know more. But if you remember, she told us about that fossil they found in a coal mine in Colombia, it was a giant snake called a Titanoboa. Colombia is real close, so this thing lived right here, so it makes sense.”
She shook her head. “I just think that if these things are here 365 days a year, then there should be more evidence. Nature has a weird way of getting out, up, off and down, from any confine.”
“Hmm.” Ben had wondered about that himself. He looked down and saw that he had drawn a long coiling body in the sand. He quickly wiped it away. Jenny had told him that the monstrous snake was alive at the time of the dinosaurs, but outlived them by another 10 million years. How?
Jenny had thought the massive snakes were alpha-alpha predators and fed on dinosaurs. They were the ultimate survivor and with a body that was so heavily muscled, they gave off a lot of heat and so could live through periods of cooling — there was no reason for them to go extinct. Emma was right; why weren’t there more of them down on the jungle floor?
Emma picked up a handful of small stones and began to flick them from her palm. “I can’t see the jungle anymore.” She scoffed. “Is it even still down there?”
Ben sat back. The cloud hadn’t lifted as he expected, and the weird thick clouds swirled like they were in the centre of a bath and the water was draining down the plughole. Except it all seemed to be being drawn towards them, and then upwards into the sky. Ben looked up; there was nothing but a boiling ceiling of clouds there too.
“So, we need to find the canoes and travel along those rivers again. If they’re still there.” Emma laughed bitterly. “If we get down.”
“When we get down.” He smiled back at her, trying to radiate a confidence he didn’t feel.
Emma stood and held out a hand. He took it and she groaned as she helped in hauling his 225-pound frame to his feet.
“Then we search along the plateau edge — further down.” She turned to look back in at the dark foreboding jungle just in from them. Mist twined in and around the trunks and dripping fronds. “Besides, I don’t exactly feel like going back in there yet.”
Ben felt a little lightheaded and knew the search for food and water would eventually drive them in whether they liked it or not. “Let’s just remember what Jenny told us; things live in caves.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Oh, so you’re saying we should be careful?”
He chuckled. “Yeah, right, I didn’t need to say that, did I?”
Emma watched Ben walking a little in front of her. His broad shoulders and large frame were carried lightly. The man knew what he was doing, and he chose to walk between her and the jungle as a shield. She knew that too.
She smiled. She always liked him, and him coming back had made her heart dance with excitement, anticipation, and the promise of something good. Her Joie de vivre had vanished and she just wished now that when they all sat around talking about searching for the missing notebook, she had stopped them at that. There had been multiple opportunities along the way, and she had ignored them all, allowing her curiosity to override her judgement.
Maybe it’s her fault, she thought darkly. Maybe she had urged Ben to go along with the adventure as a way to keep him interested and not leave town. Great plan, and now there was just the two of them, and instead of them sitting home together or in some bar and grill having cold beers and ribs, they were stuck in some prehistoric hell.
Emma looked at the roll of his shoulders again; the raw power of the man made her feel safe. She imagined what it would be like if he was gone — she’d be soon dead, and she probably wouldn’t even care. But while he was alive, more than anything she wanted to be alive too.
They came to a stream that had pooled at the plateau edge. It poured over the lip and an updraft brought a veil of water mist back up at them. At its center, the swimming pool-sized pond looked quite deep, and more interestingly, they saw darting fish there.
Ben looked to the plateau edge, and then back to the jungle. “We’re going to have to re-enter the jungle here. Not sure I want to take my chance wading out into that water without knowing what else is living in there.”
Emma nodded. “I don’t think it’s big enough for some big beast to live in. But I guess a lot of little things with too many teeth is just as bad.”
Ben took one last glance at the jungle before staring into the water. “One thing’s for sure, we are at least going to try and catch some of the fish.” He looked along the pool edge and saw where there were some marshy edges closer to where the jungle started.
He took a last look at the pool’s center and then sucked in a breath. “Okay, I’m going to wade into the shallows, and try and coax some of those babies into the reeds. And that’s where you’ll be waiting for an ambush.”