Obsession

“You’ve got to remember, this is one of the hardest places in the world to access. Thick rainforest, high humidity, tropical rain, deadly snakes. If you tell someone you’re thinking of going in, no one expects you to come out again. Getting to the temple of the monkey God makes finding the arc of the covenant like finding a lost pair of car keys down the back of the couch, it’s that difficult.”

“How did you know it was there in the first place”, Alice asks. “I mean, someone must have got in and out if you know there is something there called the temple of the monkey God.”

“Good question”, Logan says. “The truth is that lots of would be treasure hunters can’t hack the hard work, can they Jack”, - his eyes go briefly to his brother who shrugs and waves him on - “so they lie about what they’ve found. For the record, I’m not one of those people.”

A different waiter comes back with the original one, eight glasses on each tray, and Logan pauses as they distribute them around the table. I can’t help but rearrange the glasses again so they are lined up as I li

ke them, careful to adjust the volumes of the water so there is the same amount in each glass. When I’m done, and Logan has waited patiently for me to finish without reproach, he continues.

“There were six people in our team, one of whom gave up almost immediately and only two others including me who made it all the way. There were reports of two previous expeditions, both of which described a giant monkey head temple, half buried in the dirt, and made entirely of gold, so that was what we entered to look for, whether we believed the reports to be true or not. Both of those expeditions ended with several team members dying before finally making it out, either from snake bites, falls, hypothermia or something else, and then the only person that did make it out in both cases, either going insane or dying in mysterious circumstances.”

“And you still went in?” Alice asks. “After all that, you still went in?”

“I didn’t believe the stories”, Logan says. “I didn’t believe there was anything in the jungle at all except stories and hardship. Those two people that made it out and spread the stories about the temples, one was institutionalized for a medical condition he already suffered, while the other died in what the newspapers described as mysterious circumstances to make the story sound more interested. His was killed by Guatemalan gangs for failing to pay back a debt for a subsequent expedition. They talked about a curse from the monkey God, but I didn’t even believe a temple existed, so I decided to go in and find out.”

“And it nearly killed you”, Jack says.

Logan smiles mischievously, “At least I found out”, he says.

“What did you find?”, I ask, wondering if the heat rising through my body is because they’ve turned up the central heating or because my entire erogenous network is on task force red alert.

Logan pauses dramatically to sip his beer and the staging makes Jack giggle.

“Like I say, we didn’t know what we were looking for. We had the vague descriptions from two expeditions, but quickly realized that once we were inside the jungle, the maps that we had, if that’s what you can call them, were essentially useless. We had modern equipment, but the humidity fried the computers after two weeks, and left us practically carving through jungle with a compass and a machete.”

“That does sound like Indiana Jones”, I say.

“It was worse than that”, Logan says. “At least Indy had an escape plan, after a while we had absolutely no idea where we were. I honestly thought I was going to die, and it could have been from any one of about fifty different ways. It was then, when our moral was at the lowest point I saw it.”

“The temple of the monkey God?” I ask, on the edge of my seat.

Logan’s eyes go wide, as though reliving the moment.

“I’ve never seen anything so beautiful in my life”, he says. “We were cutting through jungle, trying to get round a river and back to one of our previous camps. We’d all decided we’d had enough. Six weeks had passed, we’d been bitten by so many mosquitos there wasn’t space left on our skin for new bites, our clothes were constantly wet, the rain wouldn’t stop falling and we’d crossed paths with so many snakes it felt like we really were cursed. We were off route and getting deeper and deeper into the jungle, trying to find a new crossing point that wouldn’t see us swept down the river by the violent current, and that’s when we happened upon it.

At first I thought it was the gnarled wood of a long dead tree, grand enough not to yet have toppled, but that didn’t explain the sound when my machete hit it, nor the rough stone like texture when I drew my hand across it. Evidently, it was some kind of stone construction, but until we cleared some of the vegetation around it, it wasn’t immediately clear just how big the thing it belonged to was. It took the rest of the day just to clear enough to get a decent enough view, and an understanding of exactly what it was we were really looking at.”

“The temple of the monkey God?” Alice asks.

Logan shakes his head slowly. “Not quite”, he says. “This wasn’t a temple, not like the temples we know, at least. This was something else entirely. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. The whole thing was a giant skull, rising out of the earth about three meters high and wide, mouth gaping open and eye sockets big enough to walk through, a huge stone complex beyond.”

“A giant skull?” Alice asks.

My eyes go to hers and then back up to Logan’s.

“That wasn’t just it. This skull had words carved into it. The whole thing looked like the pages of a book, but a book written in about a million different languages. I recognized it in two or three of them, the same pattern, the same word repeated over and over again.”

All of us but Jack, who’s undoubtedly heard this story before, are on the edge of our seats.

“What word?” I can’t help but ask.

“Hell”, Logan says, before leaning back into his seat and taking a sip from one of his drinks.

“Hell?” Alice asks.

“It was written everywhere, in some places carved into the bone, in others written with a red ink that could equally have been dye or blood. A huge monkey’s skull that looked like it could be the gate to hell itself.”

“So what did you do?” I ask.

“I went inside of course”, Logan says. “There wasn’t anything else to do.”

“Hang on a minute”, Alice says. “The skull wasn’t real was it?”

“Look, I know it’s hard to believe”, Logan says. “And I swear I checked for signs that the thing had been faked or was a composite of other skulls or that it was some kind of sick joke, but I didn’t find anything that suggested that. I’ve seen a number of skulls in my life, I know how the cranial bones form and what they are supposed to look like, and this was exactly the same. It was from a species of monkey similar to what we know of as the gorilla and it was big enough that I could walk into the mouth and not be able to touch the sides or top at a stretch.”

“That’s insane”, I say.

“I know, right?” Jack cuts in. “A monkey skull as big as a house.”

“I’m just telling you what I saw”, Logan says.

For the record, I believe him, but it wouldn’t matter if I didn’t. Logan is so hot he could be describing what he had for breakfast and I’d still be hanging on his every word. The fact he’s describing something that actually gets me physically wet, means I’m not only crushing on him, I’m wondering when he’s going to let me have his babies.

“Sorry”, Jack says, “I’m being rude, please continue. The best bits coming up.”

I’m not sure if Alice can tell, but I can, just by the subtle body language he’s displaying. He’s not saying it, but it’s explicit to me that he’s overwhelmingly proud of his brother. The way they are with each other is just a game most siblings play. “Anyway”, Logan says. “I couldn’t not go in. I’m like that. If someone tells me I can’t press a button, there is nothing I want to do more than press a button. I’m the kind of guy who goes around art galleries setting off all the alarms because I want to get so close to the paintings I can practically taste them. If there’s a warning, I want to find out why. Jack will be able to tell you when we were growing up. I was always getting in trouble for doing things I shouldn’t.”

“And I was always getting him out of trouble by coming up with a reasonable, well-structured, watertight excuse”, says Jack.

“But wait, one thing is touching a painting you shouldn’t, another is climbing through a giant monkey’s head that looks like the gates of hell” I say.

Logan shrugs “Who believes in hell?” he asks.

“”The same people who believe in gigantic monkey skulls”, I point out.

“What would the gates of hell be doing deep in the rainforests of Honduras?” Logan says. “That’s not very practical is it?”

“Maybe the real estate costs are too high in Manhattan”, Alice says, and it makes the whole table laugh.

“Okay, so what happened next?” I ask.

“The thr

oat section opened up into a chamber, which disappeared down into the earth. There were stone walls for a while, more writing - you know hell, hell, hell, blah, blah, blah - and after that mud, tangled roots, and darkness. I got what I estimate was about thirty meters deep and five to ten meters down, before the passage corkscrewed into a gap too small for me to crawl through. I had no option but to turn back, and that’s when things started getting really weird.”

“Go on”, I say.

“It took me over four hours to find my way back to the entrance.”

There is a long silence around the table until Logan continues.

“I retraced the very same steps that had taken me five minutes before and no matter how long I walked for, I couldn’t seem to find the entrance again. I thought I’d taken a wrong turn, but there was no wrong turn to take. It was a tunnel in and a tunnel out, it was just that on the way back out it took fifty times as long. You can all imagine just how terrified I was.”

He doesn’t look like the kind of person that would get terrified even at the prospect of finding himself trapped in hell. Not with those broad shoulders and finely tuned arms.

“That doesn’t make sense”, Alice says.

“No”, Logan agrees. “It doesn’t make any sense at all. I still can’t wrap my head around it. All I know is that I was lucky to find my way out at all. I could have been walking in darkness looking for the gates to hell for the whole of the rest of eternity.”

“So then what?” I ask.

“After panicking, going back on myself so many times I wasn’t sure whether I was heading deeper or making my way out, I eventually stuck with what I knew had to be the right way and walked and walked until I heard the other guys shouting to me. That was when I began to run and I’ve never run so quickly in the whole of my whole. I was in there for over four hours, and it was past midnight when I eventually emerged.”

“Wow”, I say, actually stunned.

Logan pauses to take a sip of his beer, leaving what remains in both of the glasses at the very same level. I’m not sure whether he’s done it subconsciously or because he’s seen me do it too and wants to join in, but either way I feel accepted.

“After that, no one else wanted to go in. We camped the night but I couldn’t sleep. We made our way out of the jungle the following week and none of us have spoken about it since. This was two years ago now, and still none of us have reported our findings.”