The Amazon Triangle (NaNoWriMo 2016 Project)

Chapter 11 (Francis, Hank, and Janet)

He walked down a long, black tunnel. Henry, dressed in the ridiculous khaki short uniform of a Boy Scout troop leader loped beside him, talking about... what? He could hear Henry's high-pitched, animated inflections, but his mind refused to comprehend the words his friend said.

Suddenly, Henry began tugging frantically on his hand—and he realized that his feet had stopped moving, essentially trapping him in the midst of the deep shadows of the long tunnel. There was Janet, laughing and endlessly dancing away from him, and on the other side of the tunnel, just in front of him—Justin! He recognized the curve of the thick curls at the back of his son's head, the slump of his shoulders as he stood passively by. Surely at some point Justin would turn at the frenzy of shouting and laughter, so he could see his son's face. He called out to him—but his voice did not make a sound. He fought to reach him—Justin stood unmoving just beyond his grasp, surely one step forward would bring him within arm's reach—to get his attention somehow, but his fingers could only manage to graze the air between them, as the young man remained oblivious to his father's predicament.

Hands—whose hands? He didn't know who grabbed him, but the hands closed around his leg and twisted savagely, while Janet ceased her dancing and wrapped her long arms around and around his shoulders, pinning him down, laughing all the while...

Francis jerked into wakefulness, his right leg flaring with fresh pain as he gasped and fought to catch his breath. He was still shouting "No! No!" and there were someone's arms wrapped around his shoulders, pulling him back. Janet cradled his head in her lap, and stroked his temples with her gentle fingers. He could not shake the leering image of her laughing face, and jerked away.

"No!"

"Frank, don't!" she kept her hand on his back as he sat up, coaxing him to relax again. "Hush, it's all right."

"Like hell it's all right!" he growled at her. "My blasted leg is bleeding again." He could feel the viscous trickle tickling like a line of red ants down his skin, leaving behind an itch he would not dare scratch.

"It is?" It was not pitch-dark, but only just barely lighter than that, thanks to a square hole situated vertically about ten feet over their heads. He could distinguish her silhouette as she scooted out from under his head to take a closer look at his leg, leaving behind her coat as a pillow.

Francis groaned in agony as he felt her hand tug ever so slightly on the mosquito-netting bandage. Even that smallest of movements felt like sandpaper against his raw skin. A cold sensation washed over him, radiating from his core, and he couldn't keep his teeth from chattering loudly. He gave a stuttering hiss through clenched (yet involuntarily active) jaws.

Jan sighed. "I'm sorry," she said quietly. "The fall must have dislodged the netting, and I don't want to retie it here in the dark and the dirt, and risk closing over an infection when we don't have access to medicine."

"A f-f-fall?" Francis stammered, gazing around him. Now that his eyes had adjusted to the half-light, he saw that they sat in a rectangular hole about twelve feet long and ten feet wide, about twenty feet deep, and devoid of anything else—no entrance except the one too far away for them to even hope of reaching, no windows, and no kind of fixtures.

"Where am I?" he asked blearily.

"It looks to be a prison of some sort," a masculine voice answered, and Henry scooted closer to the patch of daylight. His face looked haggard and bruised, and his clothes were torn in several places. "I'm sorry that your leg has gotten worse, Frank," he said. "This one's my fault. We'd still be together with our kids, and maybe even closer to civilization if I hadn't—"

"Don't blame yourself," Jan cut in quickly. "It's my fault we fell for that stupid trap!"

"Trap?" Francis wagged his head. For some reason his memory latched onto the sensation of being trapped in the tunnel—but that wasn't real, it was just a dream! "Prison? I don't get it! How did—" He stopped as his brain registered something that hadn't happened in his dream, but sometime before it: being forcibly borne along by impossibly huge hands and giant shoulders looming high over his head. But people that tall didn't exist! What was real and what was still a nightmare?