All forests are similar, I interrupted him.
I know, but these are identical. I’ve seen that window many times, at every Ceremonial. Sometimes it’s closer than others. And it’s this place, I could distinguish it from among thousands of similar images.
Laura gave him her hand and he took it, interlaced his fingers with hers. Let’s keep going, he said.
On the other side of the river there was more forest and a gentle hill that we could barely see in the darkness. We went back to the path of bones and to the ornaments: the femurs arranged in intricate shapes, the skulls hanging as though on door knockers, very still, the little bones of hands and feet mounted like delicate jewels, and on the ground, trampled bones. How many meters of them? How long until the bones turned to dirt? Some of them edged the path like sentinels, complete ribcages upright, and there were delicate tracks of vertebrae, some of them whole, with the little tail of aquatic animals.
Then something strange happened to me. I felt nauseous. A bitter taste filled my mouth and I started to retch. We are profaning this place, I told Juan, and he placed his hands on my belly and managed to soothe me so I wouldn’t vomit there, on to the bones. The retching took all the air I had left, and we headed for the exit.
On the other side, Laura and I dropped to the floor to recover. Stephen turned all his attention to Juan, who was pressing on his eyes and blind from his headache, a monstrous migraine. Stephen led him to bed. I followed them, and Stephen asked me to get ice and water. He didn’t want to hear anything about the expedition, not just then. We have to take care of him, he told me, and I went down the stairs squeezing my fists. I left water and ice on the night table and went back to Laura, inexplicably irked. She and I weren’t about to rest or sleep, we were too excited. We had to put oil on our lips they were so dry, the Place turns your skin rough, the air scrapes your nose, and if we stayed any longer it could draw blood. We discussed whether it would be better to open the door again soon or if we should wait before returning. I talked to her about San La Muerte and the bones of the Guaraní, and how it was so obvious something was looking for Juan, that it had come here to seek him out. Laura drew the path on the floor: she remembered it in incredible detail, while I’d been more distracted than I thought. I hadn’t looked at the sky, for example, hadn’t ever raised my head. Laura had, and she’d seen a black sky with no moon or stars. I feel like I’m giving away a secret, drawing the map of a forbidden land, she told me. We have to document everything, I replied. And she copied the map from the floor on to a piece of paper she had with her, because she’s always drawing her maps and alternative plans. The good thing is that no one who sees this map will think anything of it. It could be a map of Middle-earth, I laughed.
I felt enormous that first time, because that place was ours. We can use this to take control, I thought. I went back to our room to check on Juan, and I found he was fine, calm in Stephen’s arms.
We went on a second expedition when Juan decided he was going to make an offering to the Other Place and ask for something in return. What will you ask for? I enquired. To be able to have my secrets, he replied. I thought it was so strange. Why not ask to be cured? It needs me sick, he said, pointing to the door. It’s only capable of finding me because I’m close to death.
This time, there were more bones on the path. More in quantity, I mean. The number of ornaments hanging from the branches had also grown. Juan took off his shirt, knelt down on the bones, and plunged his arms into the remains. His bare back grew broad, and we heard the sound of his knees breaking ancient skeletons. The river sounded like it had more rapids. It grows because it eats. Juan is its mouth, and the gods are always hungry.
Being on the other side of the door for too long is like spending hours looking through a telescope. From so much looking at the stars you feel lost, outside the world. In space, human life has no meaning. Not in this place, either. Juan crumbled the bones with his fingers. He was bleeding, and he left his blood as an offering. Laura shaved part of Juan’s scalp, above his left ear. I tried not to look, because I thought bringing a razor into the Other Place was a mistake; I said as much, but they didn’t listen. Juan used the sharp edge of a bone to draw a design on his scalp. He barely bit his lip from the pain. I don’t know how he could do it without a mirror, but the sign came out perfectly.
That communion was dangerous but necessary. We needed Laura to decipher the drawings on the ornaments. We needed to keep those incursions, that place, a secret. And in order to do that, a gift from Juan was necessary. When he finished drawing the design on his skull and set the bone down atop the others, an ornament, a small one, dropped from a long tree branch in front of him. He looked around, and I think his eyes held gratitude.
There was a new path now, besides the path of bones; it was the gray color of night and the very dark green of a strange vegetation, mosses and lichens on the trees. The floor was like that of a pine forest. I sensed that the silence was going to be broken long before I heard a distant sound. I can’t call it music; it was like a wind instrument, but disjointed and clumsy, sporadic, as if the flautist was out of breath. It lasted less than a minute. Someone was there, but very far away from us.
I don’t know if it’s an instrument, said Juan. Maybe it’s an animal. Something or someone’s mouth. A chant. I leaned against his shoulder and he ran his bloody thumb over my lips. His blood is delicious. What would happen if we had sex here, under the moonless sky? What kind of child could we conceive?
We kept walking. There was more oxygen now, too. The trunks of the trees grew thinner. Laura noticed what was on the trunks before we did: it wasn’t easy to distinguish at first glance. There were hands gripping them. Many: one on top of another. Amputated hands, severed, clutching the trunks, the whole palm bent and the fingers arched. Human hands, rigid in the position of claws. The whole forest was like that along that stretch. Trunks and trunks with dead hands. Someone had mounted them when rigor mortis set in. The first trunk we saw had twelve hands. Some had more. Others just one. I thought of the Hand of Glory I longed for.
It’s a collector, I said. An artist. Or several. To the right of the Forest of Hands, as we baptized it, was what Juan would later mark on the map as the Valley of Torsos. They looked like upright stones, or headstones: a cemetery of soldiers, so symmetrical. But they were human torsos. No arms, no heads, no legs. Torsos with the spotted skin of elderly men, torsos with young girls’ lovely breasts, torsos of children, of fat men, of thin men, torsos with dark skin and torsos with very pale skin, flat bellies, huge obese stomachs, torsos of women who had breastfed. I recognized claw marks on one back, like the ones Juan gives in the Ceremonial, like the ones Stephen has on his back.
Never leave us alone in this place, said Laura. We couldn’t survive away from you. This is a mouth. Maybe it’s asleep, maybe it’s eating somewhere else, but it only respects us because we’re here with you.
At that point, Juan told us he’d had enough, and we should go back. His head was hurting again. His eyes were irritated and he looked like he was about to cry.
Laura deciphered the meaning of the ornaments the next day. Surprised, she told us she had been distracted by other possibilities instead of considering the one that was the most obvious, because it was the closest to her. I was looking for different symbols, seals, and I couldn’t find any meaning. But they’re letters. I looked at the details, the imperfections in the bone ornaments. They’re notched, and they’re trying to communicate precisely and exactly. It’s just one word, she said, and a number.