Pray for Darkness: Terror in the Green Inferno Read Online Free

his unopened water bottle. “You can have mine if you want.”
    Auggie smiled and waved away the proffered bottle. “Thanks, man. I should be good now.” Feeling a little lightheaded, he untied the thin strip of bark that held the banana leaf closed. Unfolding the leaf with care, he probed the contents with his fork. After a brief inspection of the food, he took a small portion onto his fork. He ate slowly, tentatively, and when he didn’t drop dead from food poisoning, he finally allowed himself to relax a bit.
    Ben was right, thought Auggie. This really is an adventure.
    And someday they’d tell their grandchildren all about it.

Two
    Some four and a half hours later, they came upon a wooden stairway that protruded from the jungle like a long brown tongue. There were no other visible traces of civilization, no welcome signs, no porters waiting to greet them or to help them with their luggage. The jungle loomed before them, awaiting their arrival.
    “Hey, check it out,” said Cooper. “This must be the place, huh?”
    “Uh-huh,” replied Ernesto, shouldering his small daypack. “From here we walk it to the main lodge.”
    Ben’s eyes were wild with anticipation. “Awesome,” he murmured.
    Felix adjusted the tiller and aimed the peki-peki straight for the shore. At the last moment he cut the engine, and they drifted forward in silence until the prow pressed softly into the muddy bank. Ben, Auggie, and Cooper retrieved their backpacks and exited at the bow. It felt good to be on solid ground, to stand and stretch and feel the solid reality of this strange new land beneath their feet. Checking their gear, they waited while Ernesto and Felix exchanged a few words in Spanish. The two men shook hands, and then Ernesto came ashore and helped to shove the canoe back into the deep water.
    “What were they saying?” asked Cooper.
    Ben only shook his head. He turned to Auggie, who did the same.
    The driver gave the motor some juice, and the peki-peki lurched forward into the rushing current. As the propeller churned the brown water, the driver’s face erupted into a cheerful, gap-toothed grin, and he waved to them as he continued upstream.
    Auggie followed the shrinking peki-peki until it disappeared around a bend in the river. The stark reality of their isolation suddenly overwhelmed him, and he found it difficult to breathe. “Felix… he’s not… coming with us?”
    Standing slightly apart from them, Ernesto was gazing at the gap in the forest from which the stairway descended. Against the dark profusion of the jungle, he suddenly looked laughably small, undeniably fragile. Now he turned to them with his calm, dark eyes. “The drivers, they stay in house on the other side of the river, uh-huh.”
    As they started toward the stairs, a flotilla of insects fluttered up from the coarse grass that grew along the water’s edge. Their iridescent wings shimmered in the sunlight, intensely green and veined with ornate patterns.
    “Whoa,” said Cooper, stopping abruptly. “Check out those butterflies.”
    Auggie was already searching frantically for the proper depth-of-field setting on his camera.
    “Mmm, these are moths,” Ernesto murmured softly, as if fearful of frightening the insects away.
    “Wow, those’re moths?” marveled Cooper. “The ones back home sure don’t look like that.”
    “Mmm. Is very pretty.”
    Suspended in air, the moths pirouetted in lazy circles, twirling round and round as though caught in a vortex. After several seconds they landed, one by one, on a patch of mud by the water’s edge. Ben was momentarily hypnotized by the slow dance. He turned to Auggie, who was already reviewing his pictures. “Did you get a good shot?”
    “I think so.” His eyes were bright as he looked up from the camera.
    Ernesto turned to them. “Hey, guys? We go to the Amazonia Lodge now. Is just a few minutes through the jungle.” He turned and started down the narrow path leading into the cavernous