Is it fire light? That thing flickering in the distance over the roar of the falls? The rock against his face is just rough enough to keep him from wanting to fall asleep again. How far down had Guzman fallen? This is much deeper than an ordinary cellar. This is a cave and moss is talking to him.
He furrows a brow as he rolls his face to look away from the rock that was just looking at him. He tries to breath as he looks up at the granite he's buried under. Vines stretch everywhere and his foot brushes something in the rushing waters that soak through his pants. The rest of him is on the stone ground.
A cough escapes his lips and blood dribbles down his cheek onto his neck. He blinks and thinks about one thing; where is Ander?
Guzman is just about to panic when a scream takes all his attention. He rolls his face to look over at the battered tour guide a few paces away. Sun, their Japanese friend who'd brought them to the temple of Pai Mei, is now clutching his own wounded leg and howling like a dog caught in a bear trap. Even from here Guzman can see the bone's sticking out of Sun's knee skin. It's busted for sure.
With a heavy growl Guzman pushes himself onto his stomach and then to a kneeling position. He tries to speak but only water and seaweed slip from his lips as his lungs reject another cough. He takes a moment to let the world stop spinning and then tries things out on his feet. Another few seconds of clearing out the swirls and he takes a breath.
The cave is mostly dark aside from the firelight across the stony pathway. Shrubs sprout up and little crustacean creatures scurry as Guzman shuffles his feet to make his way past big boulders along the edge of the stream. Up through the thicket of the vines he sees the hole he and Sun fell through. A thought occurs that maybe Ander is still up there. It's only about a few dozen yards away. That current is strong and this cave runs deep. The shimmer of the flame ripples across the stone walls.
When Guzman finally reaches Sun he pulls off his own black and red tank top to use as a means to stop the bleeding and ties it tight around sun's calve getting a guttural yelp from the Japanese boy. Sun might lose his leg but the job is done. The bleeding is starting to stop.
"That Logan kid mentioned something about being involved in medicine. If we find him we can fix you." Says Guzman.
Sun shakes his head as he lies on his back fighting the hysteria. He swallows hard and says, "No. He's dead. He snapped his neck when we fell the first time."
"First time?" Guzman asks but this confirms an earlier thought for him. They did fall twice. Guzman just doesn't remember the first time because he hit his head. That's why his skull feels like an omelette and the shapes in the room keep changing. He presses a hand to the side of his face and feels that he has a temperature. A concussion maybe?
"I saw that woman fall down here -and the girl we were with at the lake but she came down after us; your friend." He tries to sit up but the agony is too much for him and so he flops back down onto the stones causing dust to swirl up around him, "She looked dead, your friend from home. She looked dead when she appeared through the door in that room."
Then sun's eyes find Guzman's and the fear in them is apparent. Sun says, "She's not herself anymore. Her very flesh is contaminated by something dark and ancient."
"Ander." Is all Guzman can say.
Sun examines Guzman again; this time more carefully. There's a study here followed by a sort of confirmation. Sun accepts Guzman's mental state and how he can no longer comprehend Gods and monsters. Sun is in the presence of a man who only has one motivation; love.
"He didn't come down here. My guess is that he's still up top. I didn't see him get hurt, if he did. There is hope." Sun tells him.
Guzman nods. They both look to the firelight in the distance. There's no denying it; Guzman would need to walk over there and find out what's causing it. There's no chance Sun could do such a thing. Sun would need a real doctors help to get out of here. Even bright young Logan, were he alive, would be useless in this situation.
There's a pounding in his head as he takes the steps to get there and then suddenly he's walking on air. Not literally, no. He's just haunted by a memory. At the very least it's a good memory. One he never mentions because back then it was so wild it could have gotten him in trouble.
In this vision he's up late in his house with his best friends Ander and Polo. The three of them are only fifteen and would never be allowed to have girls over but they spent the night breaking into his dads liquor cabinet and dancing to music boys like them usually don't listen too. There was glitter all over the room, inappropriate kissing, they even danced on top of his mother's new granite counter top in just their underwear.
These boys got so drunk that it became the first times their bare hands touched one another's bare stomachs and the tingles in their lower waist started. They danced until morning and fell asleep in a pile of blankets on the floor of the living room where the wide window panel allowed the cool blue of an overcast morning turn everything a soft silver. Guzman pressed his lips to both Polo's and Ander's in a weird half state of consciousness but he was completely aware of what he was doing.
He never forgot that day. It just got harder and harder to think about as they got older and he got involved with girls. He had an image to uphold. Then, when Polo caused all that havoc by murdering Guzman's sister all the love between them became so twisted. Carla was a smart girl and Guzman grew to care about her over the years but she manipulated Polo. She hurt Polo. She got wrapped up in the game and forced Polo to snap. Guzman blames himself. He should have just loved his boys the way he was meant too.
Maybe if he did he wouldn't be in a cave in Japan fighting for his life against Lucrecia. Maybe if he'd just kept his boys safe and looked after they wouldn't be facing the ancient Gods and Polo wouldn't be dead. Maybe Lucrecia wouldn't have murdered Polo in that night club and all of their friends wouldn't have covered it up and let that bitch go to college in america. He'd have been perfectly happy in the haze of half sleep kissing them both and loving them both and dancing with them when he was drunk. Polo and Ander were his world. Now his world is the fire Jo Taylor Knight has started in this corner of the cave and a possessed friend out for blood in the shadows around him.
"Hi." Says Guzman to the girl sitting on the log before the flame.
Mrs. Taylor-Knight looks up at him and nods. Then she's looking back at the fire. There's a hatred in her eyes but he knows it's not directed towards him.
"I'm going to kill her." Says Jo and Guzman notices she's wearing some kind of yellow cardigan she didn't have before that he doesn't know belonged to her murdered husband, "She killed my Kendall. I'm certain she killed my son. I have to kill her."
Guzman just stands there with his arms crossed over his chest to cover his pecks. It's not that he's cold or insecure. It's simply that he doesn't feel appropriate being this exposed when a woman is in such grief. She's covered in blood and it's most likely her own but it could be her husband's or her son's and that makes it so much worse. Down here. All messy and defeated. Wanting revenge. It makes sense to anyone who isn't Guzman. Guzman only cares about Ander and getting back to Ander.
There's a brief moment of silence between the two of them. Then, oh so softly, they hear it. Laughter. It's coming from beyond the thicket of vine and branch to their right. Jo is quick to rise to her feet. The two of them cross over to the edge of the stone path and peer down at the thing creating the all questionable noise. Down, in the water, woven into the vines like a fly caught in a net, is Lucrecia all twisted up like a pretzel at a mall and laughing. She's got her eyes on them and a deep nonsensical chuckle in her belly.
The laughter gets louder and louder. It grows into this mocking and unnatural display of comedic morbidity. Then she gasp so harshly that her throat widens like a frogs to pull in the oxygen. The spirit is letting the flesh live only to do it's bidding.
"You think you're capable of slaying God?" Says Lucrecia, "God cannot kill himself. You most certainly aren't even capable of touching me without turning to fish. All you could do, at the most, is destroy my flesh. The damage is done. I am awake and I will do as a God should. I will own your soul."
It laughs again and this time Jo stumbles backwards falling to sit on her ass. She weeps and presses her hands to the sides of her face. A panic sets in her as her eyes dart all around the cave. Guzman watches her hysteria.
"What have you done!" Screams Jo, "Why can't I see?"
The deep guttural growl of a creature speaking through Lucrecia echoes up at them from below all deep and aboding, "Silly mortal. You've always been blind. To your husbands ways, to your son's arrogance, even to your own lack of talent. There's a reason you didn't get the part. You weren't even strong enough to tell them you never got the call back. You lied about being the final choice. Your entire life is a lie."
"No. No. No." Says Jo as she shakes her head and rocks back and forth and this is when Guzman notices the silver glint and jingle in her fingers, "No. No. No."
This continues for some time. Her repeating the word. Her trembling. Her locked into the trance.
Guzman realizes there is no hope when she begins withering away. Jo Taylor-Knight's very flesh begins to fall away from her body in thin sheets like stripping away of beef if beef were autumn leaves in a sharp wind. He backs away slowly certain this is all a trick. That there is no girl before him dying and stuck in an eternal revelation of despair. There is only the cardigan of her husband around her thin shoulders and the keys dangling in her hand. It's as though a God isn't laughing in mockery down below and causing the cave to become thick with heat and condensation. A cloud even forms above his head as he works his way back to the place he left Sun.
How disappointing to find that even Sun has died. Not from blood loss, or even the knee injury. A not so simple death left his sclera black and wide open. Perhaps it was a memory that took Sun. A dark, black memory. This God toys with the mind and therefore Guzman must get as far away as possible. So he runs. He runs as fast as he can from the laughter, from the death, from the creatures crawling in the shadows. He runs all the way to the vine wall and climbs it quickly and stealthily. He climbs out through the hole in the cave into the cellar of the temple.
He's on his feet in a flash and a wave washes over him when he looks up to see that Ander and Valerio are sitting together on the staircase. He stumbles as he makes his way to the partial wooden floors and he doesn't go unheard. His sound are loud as the roaring waters rushing through the center of the room.
Ander stands up first in a state of delusion worried it's only a trick of his mind, "We waited for you! It was Valerio's idea. He really cares about you. Me. Us. He's a good guy. You're alive."
There are tears in Ander's eyes and Guzman sees what all this time without Ander's medicine has done to Ander's body. He's in pain and panicky. His anxiety is high. He needs to get out of here soon.
More panic spills out when Guzman doesn't answer him, "Valerio didn't want me getting hurt. I've been hallucinating. I'm not doing the best."
Guzman's calm as can be when he explains, "Sun is dead. That woman is dead. Lucrecia is still alive but I don't know what to do. We need to leave."
Valerio is at his side in a flash and Ander watches from the staircase riddled with his own weakness as the two boys treck across the cellar floor. The three of them climb out to the main hall through an open doorway and out into the gardens of Pai Mei. The rain is only a drizzle now. Together they they make their way through the pathway and down the long exhausting stair case. to the main road.
Guzman hands Valerio the keys to the jeep Kendall Knight and his family left behind and mumbles something about the hotel before he and Ander climb into the back seat. Valerio nods and crawls in through the driver's door, cranks the engine, and drives away from the temple of Pai Mei. He goes through the jungle, out into the streets of Tokyo, and only stops when they reach their hotel. It's so late no one notices them slip in and take the elevator to their floor.
Valerio helps a tired Ander to the room they share of the hotel suite five of them had rented for a week long trip. He's got Ander sitting on the mattress and he turns to find Guzman standing there with a cup of water and the medication Ander needs. He and Guzman help Ander take this medicine and then both boys help him take off his wet, blood soaked clothes. Then they too strip down and crawl into bed with him allowing a dark, dreamless sleep to take them.