The Hike To L'eau Michel

“Watch yourselves past the last river marker,” the old man said, his eyes half closed under the glaring sunlight. “The bush never forgets, and it don’t like visitors who don’t know how to tread light.”

“Every guide from here to Matura say the same thing,” Mark said. “This is not we first hike Mr. Hosein. We ain't amateurs.”

“I not talking about that,” the old man replied. “There are spirits in the forest that-”

“Really?” Mark asked. “Jumbie stories?”

​The group laughed. Mark laughed the loudest as he adjusted the strap of his heavy backpack.

​“Not jumbie,” the old guide muttered, turning his back to clean his cutlass. “You all just mind how you walk.”

Mark scoffed.

“That is just his gimmick,” Mark’s friend Sarah said. “You know how them guides is.”

​There were six of them in the group, friends since secondary school. They were flushed with the early morning heat but determined by the promise of the fabled L’eau Michel beach at the end of the trail. The path dropped away from the ridge quickly, plunging down into the dense, green abyss of the South Trinidad forest.

​Mark walked near the back. He liked the quiet of being slightly separated from the chatter. He was a tall man in his early thirties, with broad shoulders and a strong jaw. He was a pragmatic man with an air of superiority about him. He didn’t believe in supernatural nonsense like spirits. He believed in his compass, the reliability of his Red Wing boots and his physical fitness.

​The forest closed in around them. It was thick with the smell of wet earth, rotting wood and wild culantro. The canopy overhead was so dense that the sunlight only pierced through in sharp, golden spears. Cicadas screamed in a steady, metallic drone that filled the ears until they suddenly stopped, leaving behind a deafening silence.

​“Eh, Mark! You okay back there?” Sarah called out, pausing by a massive mora tree with buttressed roots.

​“Fine,” he replied. “Keep moving. We will lose the light if we stop.”

​They hiked for two hours through the undulating ridges of the narrow trail. It grew tighter, slick with red mud and choked with fern fronds that brushed against their shins. The humidity was a physical weight pressing down on their chests, the sweat from their foreheads steadily trickled down stinging their eyes.

​By noon, the others had pushed ahead, eager to reach the beach. Mark found himself completely alone on the trail, the voices of his friends swallowed by the thick vegetation. He didn’t mind. He liked the solitude. He liked facing the challenge of the steep descent alone.

His steps were heavy and reckless. He stepped on flowers, burst vines that caught up in his feet and at one point, he accidentally kicked a frog. The howls of monkeys could be heard nearby that mixed seamlessly with his tired pants. After a while, he stopped by a small, crystal stream that cut across the path, to refill his canteen. The water was cold, tasting of stone and iron. As he screwed the cap back on, a movement in the damp grass by the water’s edge caught his eye.

​It was an agouti.

​The creature was sleek, its golden brown coat gleaming under a stray beam of light. It sat on its haunches, twitching its nose, watching him with dark, intelligent eyes. It was a beautiful thing, wild and completely unafraid.

​Mark reached slowly into his backpack for his camera, but his elbow clipped a loose, moss covered rock near the bank. The stone broke away with a sharp clatter, rolling directly toward the animal.

​Startled, the agouti darted sideways, right into the path of a heavy, water logged branch that had been balanced precariously on a rotting stump. The branch shifted under the sudden movement and rolled, pinning the small creature to the muddy earth with a sickening thud. It let out a painful cry.

​Mark stepped forward quickly.

“Hey. Calm down. Easy now.”

​He lifted the branch. The agouti was still, its back leg broken at an unnatural angle, its chest heaving in rapid shallow breaths. It looked up at him. There was no sound, just a deep, dark terror in the animal’s eyes that made Mark’s stomach tighten. He couldn’t leave it to suffer in the dirt, to be torn apart alive by ants or some predator.

​With a grimace, he picked up a heavy, flat stone.

I can’t leave him like this, he told himself. I have to put him out of his misery. Right?

​He brought the stone down.

​The forest went dead silent.

​It wasn’t the natural quiet of the woods. It was an absolute, suffocating vacuum of sound. The cicadas stopped again. The wind died in the canopy. Even the distant sound of the sea seemed to retreat behind a wall of lead.

​Mark stood up, wiping his hands on his khaki shorts. His heart hammered against his chest. The air temperature dropped ten degrees in a single second, the pleasant warmth replaced by a deep, damp chill that smelled strongly of crushed moss and old smoke.

​“Dumb animal,” he muttered aloud, his voice sounding thin and small in the heavy air.

​He turned back to the trail, but the path looked different. The red clay seemed darker, almost black and the ferns on either side leaned inward, their fronds twitching without a breath of wind.

​He walked faster. He wanted to catch up to Sarah and the others.

​“Oye! Hello?” he shouted.

​No answer. The forest swallowed his voice whole, deadening the sound before it reached anywhere. No echoes.

​The trail twisted downward, steeper now, the roots of the trees forming gnarled staircases that seemed to shift under his boots. Every few yards, Mark had the distinct feeling that he was being watched. He glanced over his shoulder repeatedly. Nothing was there. Just the thick, tangled trunks of balata, the shadows pooling deep and black around their bases.

​Then he smelled it. Tobacco. Sweet, earthy and ancient.

​“Who there?” he called out, stopping dead in his tracks.

​The forest remained silent, but the shadows ahead seemed to thicken, gathering into a tall, imposing shape where the trail narrowed between two giant boulders.

​Mark squinted through the dim light. Standing in the middle of the path was a man, or something shaped like a man, standing easily over seven feet tall, with broad shoulders that filled the space between the rocks. The figure wore a wide brimmed straw hat pulled low, casting his face in total darkness. From beneath the brim, two glowing eyes, green as local limes from the market, fixed entirely on Mark.

​One of the figure’s feet was not a foot at all, but the cloven hoof of a deer, resting easily on the damp moss.

​What the fuck? he thought.

​The old man’s warning suddenly echoed in the back of Mark’s mind with terrifying clarity.

The bush never forgets, and it don’t like visitors who don’t know how to tread light.

​His breath caught in his throat. He tried to take a step back, but his boots felt glued to the red clay. He wanted to run, but his legs were like concrete.

​The entity did not speak, but a voice rolled into Mark’s mind, heavy as a falling tree.

“You take a life where you should have left nature to take its course.”

​“I didn't mean-” he choked, his voice shaking. “It was an accident and I- I was only showing mercy.”

​The green eyes flared brighter in the shadow of the hat. A heavy hand, gnarled like the root of an old tree, rested on a heavy wooden staff. The forest around them seemed to press closer, the vines twisting like serpents along the branches.

​“The forest keeps count,” the presence whispered through the damp air. “Every drop of blood. Every broken bone.”

​Mark’s chest burned. He thought of the little agouti in the mud, its dark eyes, the sudden, senseless end of its morning. A wave of profound shame washed over him, hot and sharp, cutting through his fear. He had come here to conquer the trail, to take pictures, to check a box on his bucket list and he had disturbed nature.

​“What can I do?” he whispered, his hands trembling at his sides.

​The towering figure tilted its head. The smell of cedar and pipe tobacco grew sharper, filling his lungs.

​“You must give something back to the bush,” the voice echoed. “Make an offering.”

​With a slow, deliberate movement, Mark dropped his heavy backpack onto the muddy earth. He unzipped the main compartment. He pulled out his expensive camera, his spare lenses and his canteen. He laid them in a neat pile.

​Then he reached deeper. He pulled out every single ration of food he had brought. Protein bars, bags of mixed nuts, dried fruit and a chicken sandwich he made for lunch. He knelt down in the mud and arranged everything on a broad, flat sohari leaf at the base of the boulders, right where the entity stood.

​“This is all I have with me right now... apart from my own life,” he said, his voice unsteady. “Is it enough?”

​He bowed his head, pressing his palms against the damp red earth. He stayed there, kneeling in the silence, waiting.

​Minutes passed. Perhaps hours. Time lost all meaning in the deep shade of the forest.

​Slowly, the chill in the air began to recede, replaced once more by the heavy, humid warmth of the afternoon. The sound of the cicadas returned in a sudden, crashing wave. A cool breeze drifted down from the ridge, rustling the high canopy above.

​Mark raised his head.

​The path ahead was empty. The giant figure was gone, leaving behind only the faint, fading scent of tobacco. The pile on the leaf was completely gone and the air around felt light, cleared of the oppressive, watchful weight that had held him paralyzed.

​He stood up slowly, his legs aching. He left his backpack on the trail. He carried nothing with him except the clothes on his back.

​He walked the remaining distance down the trail in silence, his footsteps light and careful, watching where he placed every boot, stepping over roots instead of crushing them, mindful of every branch and vine that brushed his arms.

​When he finally broke through the final screen of mangrove, the brilliant, blinding white light coming from L’eau Michel beach hit his eyes. The turquoise waves crashed against the golden sand in a steady, rhythmic roar and the salty breeze tasted clean and sharp on his lips.

​Sarah and the others were sitting on a driftwood log near the water, laughing and passing around a bottle of puncheon rum.

​“Mark! Boy, what took you so long?” Sarah yelled, waving a hand. “We thought you get lost in the bush!”

​He stopped at the edge of the treeline, wiping the sweat from his forehead, looking out at the endless blue of the Caribbean Sea.

​“No,” Mark said softly, smiling as he felt the sand give way beneath his feet. “I just took my time.”

Mr. Hosein looked at him and smiled. He nodded. Mark nodded back.