She tried not to think about Pablo, but she couldn't stop herself. It felt strange to sit there, knowing that the vine was stripping the flesh from his bones, that he'd be a skeleton before morning. Off and on, as the night progressed, Stacy started to weep over this-over her part in it, her failure to protect him. Eric comforted her as best he could, assuring her that it wasn't her fault, that the Greek's death had been a given from the moment he fell down the shaft, that it was a mercy for it finally to be over.
They spoke of Jeff, too, of course, pondering his absence, probing at the various possibilities it presented, returning obsessively to the prospect of his having found a way to flee. And the more they discussed it, the more obvious it began to seem to Stacy. Where else could he possibly be? He was making his way back to Cobá even now; before the sun set tomorrow, they'd be rescued. Yes. They weren't going to die here after all.
Mathias remained quiet through all of this. Stacy could sense him in the darkness, four feet away from them; she could tell he was awake. She wanted him to speak, wanted him to join in the construction of their fantasy. His silence seemed to imply doubt, and Stacy felt threatened by this, as if his skepticism might somehow have the power to alter what was happening. She needed him to believe in Jeff's flight, too, needed his help to make it true. It was absurd, she knew, childish and superstitious, but she couldn't shake the feeling, was growing slightly panicky in the face of it.
"Mathias?" she whispered. "Are you asleep?"
"No," he replied.
"What do you think? Could he have escaped?"
There was the sound of the rain falling upon the tent, the steady dripping from the nylon above them. Eric kept shifting restlessly about, creating ripples in their little puddle. Stacy wished he would stop. The seconds were ticking past, one after another, and Mathias wasn't answering.
"Mathias?"
"All I know is that he's not here," he said.
"So he might've run, then. Right? He might've-"
"Don't, Stacy."
This caught her by surprise. She peered toward him. "Don't what?"
"If you let yourself hope, and then you're wrong, think how terrible you'll feel. We can't afford that."
"But if-"
"We'll see in the morning."
"See what?"
"Whatever there is to see."
"You mean, you think he might be-"
"Shh. Just wait. It'll be light in a few more hours."
It was shortly after this that they heard Pablo's breathing start up again. There was that ragged intake of air, that whistling exhalation, then the pause before it all recommenced. Despite herself, knowing better even as she did so, Stacy sprang to her feet. Mathias had also risen; they brushed against each other as they both made their way toward the tent flap. He grabbed at her, holding her wrist, stopping her.
"It's the vine," he whispered.
"I know," she said. "But I want to make sure."
"I'll do it. You wait here."
"Why?"
"It wants us to see something, don't you think? Something it's done to him. It's hoping to upset us."
Outside, there was another rasping inhalation. It sounded exactly like Pablo; even after all she'd witnessed here, it was hard to believe that it wasn't him. But she knew Mathias was right, and knew, too, that she didn't want to glimpse whatever it was the vine had prepared for them out there beneath the lean-to. "Are you sure?" she asked.
She sensed him nod. He let go of her wrist, moved to the flap, bent to zip it open.
Almost instantly, as soon as he stooped out into the rain, the breathing stopped. Then a man's voice began to shout. He was speaking in a foreign language; it sounded like German to Stacy. Wo ist dein Bruder? Wo ist dein Bruder?
Stacy sat back down. She reached for Eric's hand, found it in the dark, clasped it tightly. "It's talking about his brother," she said.
"How can you tell?" Eric asked.
"Listen."
Dein Bruder ist da. Dein Bruder ist da.
Mathias reappeared, the rain running off him, audibly dripping to the tent's puddled floor. He zipped the flap shut, returned to his spot beside them.
"What happened?" Stacy asked.
He didn't answer.
"Tell me," she said.
"It's eating him. His face-all the flesh is gone."
Stacy could sense him hesitating. There's something else, she thought, and she waited for it.
Finally, very softly, Mathias said, "This was on his head. On his skull."
He held something up in the darkness, extended it toward her. Stacy reached out, warily took it from him. She moved her hands over it, tracing its shape. "A hat?" she asked.
"It's Jeff's, I think."
Stacy knew he was right-immediately-yet didn't want to believe him. She searched for another possibility, but nothing came. The hat was saturated with water; it felt heavy. She had to resist the temptation to throw it aside. She leaned forward, handed it back to Mathias. "How did it get there?" she asked.
"The vine must've, you know…"
"What?"
"It must've taken it and passed it up the hill from tendril to tendril, then set it there, and called us out to find it."
"But how did it get it? In the first place, I mean. How did it-" She stopped, the answer coming to her even as she asked the question-so obvious, actually. She didn't want to hear Mathias say the words, though, so she veered in a new direction, straining to assert a different possibility. "Maybe he dropped it. Maybe as he was running across toward the trees, he-"
The voice from the clearing interrupted her, calling out again: Dein Bruder ist gestorben. Dein Bruder ist gestorben.
"What's it saying?" Eric asked.
"First, it asked where Henrich is," Mathias replied. "Then it said he's here. Now it's saying he's dead."
Wo ist Jeff? Wo ist Jeff?
"And that?"
Mathias was silent.
Jeff ist da. Jeff ist da.
Stacy knew what it was saying-it was easy enough to guess-but Eric hadn't made the leap. "It's something about Jeff?" he asked.
Jeff ist gestorben. Jeff ist gestorben.
Eric squeezed her hand, tugging at it. "Why won't he tell me?"
"It's the same thing, Eric," Stacy whispered.
"The same thing?"
"It's asking where Jeff is. Then saying that he's here. Saying that he's dead."
Outside, the voice multiplied suddenly, surrounding them, spreading itself across the hilltop. It became a chorus, which steadily rose in volume, chanting: Jeff ist gestorben… Jeff ist gestorben… Jeff ist gestorben…
The rain stopped just before dawn. By the time the sun began to rise, the clouds had already started to thin and part. Eric and Stacy and Mathias emerged from the tent at the first hint of light-hesitantly, stiffly-surveying the night's damage.
The vine had spread over the backboard, covering it, completely burying Pablo's remains. Half a dozen tendrils had pushed their way into the blue pouch, draining whatever water it had managed to capture during the storm. And Amy's bones had been dragged free of the sleeping bag, scattered haphazardly across the clearing. Eric watched Stacy move about with a dazed expression, stooping to collect them. She laid them in a small pile beside the tent.
Eric had developed a cough during the night, a deep-chested, hacking sort of bark. His head ached; his clothes were wet, his skin chapped from sitting in the puddle. He was hungry, exhausted, cold, and found it hard to believe that any of this would ever change.