Reventazón (Pt. 4)
Diego sat behind the lamps, where darkness and light meet to form a hazy border of growing shadow. This was his spot, had been his spot since his first night-climbing session when he’d stood in the middle of the light and had looked out into the absolute nothingness around him. He’d felt a surge of paranoia immediately, the very real understanding that anything or anyone could be standing behind him, watching from the shadows in silence, that he would never know that there were eyes on him, that he was so easily exposed to anything even slightly curious, that he was so willfully giving away his position to things that didn’t want to do the same.
From that moment he’d preferred to hide in the shadows, to let himself believe that they offered some sort of protection, a blanket of black that clothed him and kept his pupils just dilated enough that he could catch glimpses of the things that moved around in secret. So he sat with the stillness of the night, the white droning noise of the river’s cruising waters, the doppler buzz of an insect fly-by, and the occasional breaking twig, a possible symptom of hidden clumsy creatures or rotting humid wood.
It was then that he noticed another, less natural sound. Faint at first, and no more discernible than the inconsistent bubbling of water against the river rocks, but still distinguishable from the sounds he’d become used to hearing next to rivers. A high pitch in the distance creating dissonant chords, an unmelodic solo that syncopated unattractively with the river’s steady rhythm. The first thing he imagined was a cat. In pain, maybe, or in heat and in search of a mate by the river’s edge, the kind of sound that can ignite both fear and a certain amount of sympathy.
Diego squinted into the distance where only the occasional white foaming of the water and the dark contrast between tree canopy and sky could be seen. A whiteish point, only slightly lighter than its surrounding black was moving in the distance, slowly swinging back and forth. Diego cranked his neck and shielded his eyes from the glare reflecting off the boulder they’d lit up, hoping for a closer look. He could just barely make out a figure, could barely see its movement wasn’t so much the bobbing and swinging he’d originally thought, but really a sort of swaying walk, a human’s movement that was heading right towards him.
“Up?”
Diego looked at Jota who was staring at him.
“Huh?”
“You stupid or something?” Asked Jota. He looked at Caro and rolled his eyes. The three had stopped fighting hours ago, no real apology having been made by any of them, opting instead for a gradual increase in their interactions.
“I asked if you were gonna go again, or if you just gave up.”
“Oh,” said Diego looking back towards the figure he’d seen but finding nothing. “Yeah I’ll go again.”
“What are you looking at?” Asked Caro.
“Nothing. Thought I heard a cat,” said Diego. He looked down at his climbing shoes and tightened their Velcro straps.
“What?”
“Like crying. In heat.”
“Crying?” Asked Caro.
“I didn’t hear anything,” said Jota.
Diego shrugged.
“You get a look at it?” Asked Jota.
Diego looked again. The white figure was still gone. Caro tried to say something but was promptly shushed. Diego stood, moved closer to where he’d seen the figure, insisting on quiet.
The river was frothing, flowing as always, a moth smacked its wings hard against the lights, crickets chirped around them. The crying was gone.
“I can’t hear it anymore,” said Diego.
“Did you see anything?” Asked Caro.
“No. Nothing.”
“Fuck this,” said Caro, taking off her climbing shoes and grabbing her backpack.
“Caro calm down,” said Jota. “It was just a cat.”
“We don’t know that. He said crying.”
“And?”
“And I already stayed her after dark for you even though I didn’t want to. Enough is fucking enough,” she said, throwing her chalk bag in her pack.
“I said cat,” said Diego. “Cat.”
“You ever hear a cat crying? What if it’s La Llorona?”
“Oh come on, if anything it’s those other guys fucking with us,” said Diego.
“That’s even worse!” Caro was sitting now, her back to one of the boulders, the cave they’d been working on to her left and the river, Jota, and Diego in front of her.
And suddenly the noise was back again, the same polyrhythmic yowling Diego had heard before, only louder this time, closer.
“You hear it?” Asked Diego as Jota nodded. Jota looked around the cave boulder, towards the source of the noise off in the darkness, then grabbed one of the lights and pointed it in that direction despite Caro’s quick protests.
“You see anything?” Asked Jota, moving the light around.
“Nothing,” said Diego. “Might be too far for the light.”
“Sounds closer, though.”
Jota looked over at Caro who was now breathing hard and fast, holding her hands over her ears, asking why they hadn’t left yet.
“Caro, hey,” he said, giving Diego the light and walking over. He bent down towards her and put his hands on her shoulders gently.
“Relax, dude, if it’s not a cat, then it’s those guys from before,” he said.
But Caro just shook her head. With terror in her eyes, she looked up at Jota, begging for them to leave immediately.
“Don’t tell me to relax,” she managed. “Please.”
“You’re scared?” said Jota half laughing. “It’s cool!”
Caro nodded.
“We need to go.”
Jota sighed, turned and walked over to Diego who was still trying to find the source of the noise, holding the light over his head and moving it in all directions.
“Hey man, Caro’s really freaking out,” Jota whispered.
“So?”
“So I think maybe we should just go.”
“Why? Try to calm her down,” said Diego.
“I tried.”
“Oh so you want to leave too?” Asked Diego, as he let the light fall to his side, turning to look at his friend who nodded and shrugged.
“This is bullshit,” said Diego. “Fucking perfect boulder, what the fuck?”
“I know it’s not ideal, but we can come back in the morning,” said Jota. But Diego only shook his head and raised the light back above his head.
“It’s just those two guys, that’s it.”
“Yeah probably.”
“Talk to Caro, dude. Please?”
“I’ll see what I can do to calm her down. See if you can find the fuckers.”
Jota grabbed his street shoes and walked over to Caro who was still on the ground, hugging a stuffed backpack full of her gear. He sat next to her, began to change his shoes as he spoke.
“You know cats have like barbed dicks?”
Caro sniffled.
“They get it stuck to each other and they make some really weird noises. Can’t really blame them, right? Fucking sucks. But anyway that’s probably what we’re hearing, you know?” He said. Caro said nothing.
“Listen. It kind of sounds like two animals, right?” He was slipping his last shoe on when he realized, suddenly, that the noise had stopped. Jota looked up to see Diego standing still, head tilted, having clearly noticed the same too.
“I don’t hear anything,” said Diego.
“Me neither.”
“We can still leave, though, right?” Asked Caro.
Then it hit them. A wave of cold, like walking into a building blasting AC in the summer, only without wind. Overwhelming, sharp, humid cold that freezes the marrow in your bones and stings nostrils. Jota breathed through his mouth, upward towards his eyes, watched the warm air from his mouth, a smokey vapor that disappeared into the night, felt his lungs as if they had hands wrapped around them, squeezing his breath as a line of fear ran in hot contrast from the back of his neck down to the soles of his feet.
“Light,” was all Jota heard, a whisper from Diego who had turned off the lamp in his hand and who was moving towards one of the two that were still on, the farthest from Jota and most exposed of the three. Jota scrambled forwards, straight toward the cave where the third lamp lay, crawling hard and bruising his knees on the rocky ground. They reached the lanterns almost at the same time, a blanket of dark descending on them fast.
They stayed still, barely wanting to breathe. Diego could see Jota kneeling in front of him, just under the cave’s roof, and Caro to his left, still pushing her back into the wall behind her. He waited as his pupils dilated slowly, his vision improving, a panoramic view of the river only blocked by the cave boulder. Slowly, the sound came back. Closer, even closer than before, Diego could hear it coming just from behind the cave boulder, from behind Jota, a sharp, painful screaming that ripped icy canyons in his soul. For a minute it continued with its source still unseen, pure sonic pain personified.
Then he saw her.
From what little light he had, Diego could see her move sporadically, with sudden spastic shakes that would overcome her, cause her to dash here and there, the excited near-cusp of an infinite search for the unattainable. Shin length black hair moved behind her, a schizophrenic Rapunzel, unkempt and greasy, lagging after her head’s wild veering. She wore a dress that may have been white but waw now badly torn, tattered, and discolored to an ugly deep grey that shook at the shoulders as she moaned and begged in broken language. She was barefoot, lunging in and out of the water without a splash, any shoes having been worn down and fallen long ago, the skin up to her ankles permanently stained darker, what seemed like dried blood from perpetual pacing in the dimness.
She was on their side of the river, just far enough that it should have been impossible to hear her, the noises coming from her body drowned out by the water. But somehow, that was not the case. Her crying, whimpers of pain at the moment, was clear and dampened the noise around her. It was a quiet, resigned sort of moaning, a polyrhythmic and painful agonized jazz that danced with the occasional ounce of hope as she jumped at rocks that most resembled the shape of a child’s head.
Diego stared in horror, frozen by the cold air around him and holding his fists tight so as to not let out a whimper of fear. This was without any doubt, the same thing he’d seen earlier, the same thing that had turned to look right at him, the same thing that had sent shivers down his soul.
“Diego,” a barely perceptible whisper came from behind him. Caro. Diego turned to look at her as she huddled wide eyed and trembling. Tears flowed from her eyes, slow and constant like the river around them and her finger, held close to her body was pointing to his left. Diego’s eye’s widened as he turned quickly in sudden realization.
It wasn’t Caro who had whispered his name.
But there was nothing around him, Nothing had been standing behind him, nothing that he could see at least. La Llorona was completely gone. Diego turned a few more times, then looked at Caro again, confused. She was still, frozen in the same position, pointing behind him. Diego turned again to look towards the river, towards where he was sure La Llorona would be, but again he found nothing. She was gone, and suddenly Diego realized her crying had stopped.
He looked to his left. He’d seen Jota’s kneeling there as he’d been moving his head around in a panicked search, had just barely noticed him out of the corner of his eye, an unconscious mental note. But his eyes only landed on shadow, the full darkness of the open cave he’d hoped to climb. There was no lightness of skin anywhere to be found. Jota was gone.
“Jota?” He let himself whisper, barely, terrified of being heard, desperate to find his friend. There was no answer. He turned again, another half circle, dizzying, in a search for Caro, to maybe lock eyes with her and ask her somehow in silence if she had any idea where Jota had disappeared to. His eyes landed on Caro’s spot on the ground and found nothing.
Diego was alone.
Darkness fell hard on him. Alone, he panicked, breathing heavily and still searching, searching for the friends who had somehow disappeared without a sound, without any sort of warning. Caro who had been sitting, Jota who had been kneeling. He turned in circles between each, hoping desperately that they’d somehow reappear where he knew they were supposed to be. The shadows around him grew, darkened the already dim light, erased the stars, killed the sound of the river.
Alone.
Then the crying started again. It broke through his ears and zapped down his spine, sending flashes of heat that rattled his bones and shook his skin until the hairs on his body stood magnetized and itching to leave him. The crying came from behind him, from the river.
With a cold dead breath, Diego managed to turn his body one last time to look directly into the eyes of La Llorona.
Leaking dead eyes. That was all that Diego saw before he ran, before his legs burnt with exertion and he fell on the riverbed rocks he’d so easily hopped over before and twisted his ankle. Leaking dead eyes, black pain and the hopelessness of a fruitless hunt were welded in his mind, a vision impossible to forget or even ignore.
Diego ran and ran as the air pierced his ears with the high pitched sounds of complete anguish, terrified to face those eyes again, to look at grief personified. He ran, heart exploding, ears ringing through the sand and rocks, limping and screaming at his ankle’s sharp protests at every footfall. He ran without looking back until he reached the small opening in the foliage where he and Jota and Caro had come through from the road. He ran and jumped between banana leaves, smashing his way through green with machete arms that chopped through everything and bruised themselves in his desperation.
In his mind he could see the car on top of the hill they’d slid down. That was all he needed to get to. After that he could figure out some way to find Caro and Jota. But first would be safety, the black metal box above the mud. Diego chopped through one final branch of leafy green and screamed.
The river was in front of him. The same beach he’d come from. The same bend to his left that hid the boulders where he and his friends had been all afternoon and night. He was back. Somehow in the same place despite not having turned around at any point.
And again, the darkness around him descended from the sky and the air turned even colder than before. And Diego felt a hand, cold and thin and wet, that pulled him steadily toward the river.