Lost Worlds: The Jungle Goddess

I have wrought my simple plan…

If I give one hour of joy to the boy who’s half a man… or the man who’s half a boy.

-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Our expedition party was of significantly contrasting personality types and expertise concerning why each of us was partaking in said, expedition. Myself included. I was to be our record keeper and scribe.

My specialties included being capable of quickly reading through materials, as well as conveying information by written, or typed text for the purpose of our communicating with outside parties. Like the Professor’s benefactors. Funding the voyage.

It would be my responsibility to maintain an ongoing account of our adventures and send brief accounts by typed telegram, as frequently as I could. But being that we had entered the jungle deep. Chances of that were not likely. I would instead need to make it my priority to protect my records at the cost of my life and preserve them for future dissemination later down the road.

I won’t divulge too much about myself. This early in our tale. But I am essentially just another type happy writer that wants to make it as a serious novelist but settled for a career punching newsprint. To get by, until I write something important enough to be worth remembering me in the history of literary masters, or… non-forgettables, albeit, at the very least.

My own lack of superior physical physique reflects in my somewhat scrawny frame and average height. I am nowhere near the lug of a man that Roxton is. Me and him couldn’t be more polar opposites.

Rixton is a gun expert that has made a lifelong career of hunting maneaters. Beasts that acquire a taste for human blood and flesh. Prompting the mad animals to begin to hunt mortal man, as if he were prey. Rixton has faced demon tigers and lions from hell. It’s clear there is not much on this planet, he can’t kill.

He is the peak physical specimen. Bulging muscular arms covered in air, nearly akin to that of a primate. He shaves his face but somehow, it is always lightly shaded by his growing stubble that never really relents.

Evelyn Summerly is a scholar and academic of many sciences. Ranging from biology and human anatomy to the animal kingdom, plants and botany and all other manner of subjects and topics of her extensive research.

Summerly is not only the most brilliant and awe inspiring woman I’ve ever before in my life, had the pleasure of knowing. She is equally the most beautiful. Her long curly blonde hair that cascades from her scalp like rippling waterfalls never ceases to bring me to a state of memorization, at her presence. I am so madly in love with the woman I’ve begun collecting a number of love letters confessing my love to her. Sometimes I pace in the jungle, contemplating bringing a note in an envelope and leaving it for her outside her tent… but I never do.

Her ongoing feud of wits with the leader of our expedition team, is probably the most notable characteristic of our team’s differing personality types. Which seems to bring a near constant underlying tension and conflict of academic argument between them.

Professor Challenger is a genius intellect. I suspect, Summerly is in fact more genius than he. But the man cannot be told he is none other than the greatest mind on earth after the Great Detective, Sherlock Holmes. Who the man is a formal acquaintance of.

Challenger is equal parts mind warrior and physical athlete. If I summed it up. He is every bit the man of the field, as Rixton, but has the academic scholarship that makes Summerly such an asset and formidable mind.

He can just as easily take apart a pistol, or quickly load and shoot a rifle, as he can consume an entire manutext then decipher it rapidly into notes and formalize it in fully composed prose that is vastly superior to my own.

Our expedition has resulted in our current occupation of a remote region in the jungle deep of the Amazon basin. In South America. We have a number of local people from the Indigenous population that are preparing our meals and helping to wash clothes and act as guides in our exploration of the jungle. They are receiving a far higher pay for what is for them, easy work… than they would doing it for mere, travelers, and not a greatly financed expedition party like ours.

Challenger knows a multitude of very wealthy and prominent people in positions of great social standing and political power, around the globe. His research and exploits in jungle deeps, ruin temples, and lost anomalies of the lands time forget, has earned him a notable prestige in the world of academics, adventurers, novelists, and scholars. I myself being a massive admirer of the man. Which is why I wrote to him requesting to join the party as their resident journalist and chronicler.

And so… as I type this draft. In the jungle deep. I sense a new adventure is looming in the coming rise of the South American sun… but in it, nobody can say. What wonders we will discover.

***

A number of items have begun to vanish from the campsite. We know none of the locals are taking them because they’re so grateful for the work, I would seriously doubt any of them would do anything to jeopardize their good standing with our expedition team.

Rixton loads a rifle and goes for a patrol around the jungle. To see if we have any bandits potentially hovering over us. I decide to go with him so I can get a look of the hero in action.

The man has the sincere build of a Hercules. His massive arms and swollen chest not only bulge but are compounded by the sheer density of his immense physique. Looks as though he could bench press a lion over his chest.

I follow along behind him. My own jungle boots are stomping in the brush. I notice the hunter of man eaters seems to move with a superhuman stealth. Not making any noise, as he moves through the jungle. Like a stalking predator in hiding with a rifle in hand. He grips his Hemingway rifle in earnest.

“How long have you been at this, Rixton. Being a dynamic man of adventure, and such?” I inquire. Clutching my field journal against my chest.

Rixton’s eyes hunt for signs of tracks. Breaks in the foliage he can track and follow to pursue our nighttime thieves. He does not answer me right away. I haven’t had much extended dialogue with the man thus far on our expedition. He is often talking with my love… Summerly. I notice a seemingly mutual attraction between them. Not that I could compete with such a titan of a man. It would surely be no legitimate contest, if it was a choice between the two of us for her suitor proper.

“My father was a big game hunter.” Rixton says to me. “I grew up in the savannahs of Afrika. They call it, Dark Continent, but there’s nothing dark about it.” He pauses and kneels to the jungle floor. Grabbing a handful of soil. He sniffs it and lets it sprinkle through his fingers back down to its native dominion among the scattered leaves from the trees, and dense jungle brush.

“Most beautiful sights of natural scenery I ever saw in my life, were in Afrika. The people too.” He declares sternly. “But I also… encountered demons.” The tone in his voice suddenly drops in pitch a few octaves.

“Demons, you say?” I question. Swallowing hard as I try to stomach my immediate and growing fear. The reality of being immersed in this jungle deep is beginning to bare its weight on me, as well. I feel a bit, unwell. But I try my best to hide the face.

Rixton seems to instinctively pick up on my apprehension. “You’ll be fine, as long as you stick with me Malone. I won’t let nothing happen to you in this jungle. I’ve been through a lot worse than this, in the Congo.” Rixton brushes some low hanging vines out of his path using the barrel of the long rifle’s impressive snout.

I breathe a sigh of relief. The competence and sheer omnipresent strength of the man is admirable, and inspiring. I must admit, as much.

“About those demons… as you were saying.” I try to coax more details from him.

Rixton crouches low. He gestures for me to mirror his movements. I too seem to be acting on some informal state of raw instinct. I follow his instruction immediately without any vocal expression or exchange between us. It’s as if we are two brethren members of the same indigenous tribe, and we have done this jungle crawl a million times before.

“Man eaters.” Rixton looks back and says to me. He inches forward and I follow in his exact shadow. Trailing behind him. Crawling through the jungle.

“You mean, animals that have acquired the taste for human blood, and flesh?” I ask.

“No.” Rixton replies sharply. “I mean… demons.”

I nod my head but don’t say anything else to further showcase my ignorance on the matter of bloody hungry beasts that slay men as prey.

“A lion, or a tiger, or even a leopard. That develops the practice of systematically hunting and killing a man. Isn’t an animal anymore, at that point. They cross a sacred and cherished boundary between us, and the beast kingdom. A man eater becomes an ancient apex predator. A distinction worth scribbling down in that field journal of yours, Malone. If you ever find yourself face to face with a man eating beast. Shoot the damned thing before it leaps.”

His words hang in the air like a barrier between us. Formed despite the seeming sense of growing closeness that I had felt. I knew then that this man had seen things I could not imagine. He’d faced beasts indescribable in human tongue. Monstrous, and hellish in their quest for human blood. And flesh.

There’s a sudden break in the foliage. A crunching sound. I look up and there it is, an animal. Crouched low in the jungle brush. It appears to be a primate, but something in its overall appearance is distinctive in a way that is… unsettling. It seems to be a bit too big in size. Far larger than the descriptions I’ve read of chimps but not big enough to be a gorilla, though it does have a large proportion of torso to overall size ratio in its bulk and mass.

The creature snarls flashing massive fangs like daggers. But it happens so quickly its hard for my mind to properly register the image. It breaks away into the jungle. Feet carrying it up into the trees.

Rixton remains fixed. Boots planted… where he stands.

“What was that, a primate?” I question. My startled state betrays me in the shrill pitch of my voice. Elevated by my fear and gradual unease that has rose to a head.

Rixton’s hands tighten on the rifle. “That wasn’t no ape. It looked too much like a man.” He declares. “We found our bandits. “But I think we may have found a bit more than we bargained for, all the same.” His voice lingers in the back of my mind as we hike back to the campsite. To inform the Professor.