Winner of the 2011 Rider Haggard Short Story Competition

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Jesse Arkwright

and the

Spider Temple

© 2011 Rob Sharp

Winner of the 2011 Rider Haggard Short Story Competition.

www.riderhaggardsociety.org.uk

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After the eclectic crew of the Bebe Daniels finally revived their unexpected guest,

they offered her three things, water, food and a cigarette. Jesse Arkwright took the

cigarette first. Despite the sunburn, the excessive amounts of mosquito bites and

various cuts and bruises, the lady adventurer still managed to look magnificent, which

the all-male crew appreciated by visiting her as often as possible in her sickbed.

“So,” said Captain Farouk, the half-Egyptian, half-French gentleman who

owned the rusting steamer with the movie star name. “You feel like talking yet?”

Behind him, the other members of the crew gathered like expectant children.

Jesse pushed her mane of wild Titian-red hair away from her face and

accepted a light from the Captain for the loosely rolled Turkish cigarette. Even in the

grimy steamer cabin, donated by the Captain himself after they had hauled her out of

the unforgiving river, she radiated a certain aura.

As she inhaled the sweet smoke like they did in the movies, her audience

sighed. Then the crew of the Bebe Daniels didn’t see too many white women this far

up the Amazon.

“It’s all whirling around in my head,” she replied with a strong English accent.

“Some of it doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

“That’ll be the quinine we shot you full of. I’ve never seen so many mosquito

bites on one person.”

Jesse grinned back shyly. “Good job I kept up with my malaria injections.

Okay, tell me how you found me?”

Farouk toyed with his ragged beard, weighing her up. “We took you off the

river three days ago more dead than alive. How did you end up in that leaking bark

belonging to Johnny Sorrow?”

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Jesse inhaled the rich aromatic tobacco before she replied. “Johnny put me in

it…” She faltered a little and took a long drink of water. “I’ll start my story from the

beginning, then maybe it will make better sense… to me as well as you!”

So the tale began.

My family, the Arkwrights, have a reputation for poking our noses into things we

shouldn’t. It was my father, born and bred in Yorkshire, England, who first carved a

career in the lost places around the world. When his body came back from a Polar

expedition sewn inside a sail, the torch was passed to me.

Even though he was never home, dad made sure I had an excellent education.

I studied at Leeds University and am pleased to say I came out head of my year. But

as you might have noticed, gentlemen, I am only a frail woman. This is 1934 and it’s

still a damn man’s world, but I manage, despite the odds.

My business partner and I, the Honourable Lady Sharlotte Fines, have had a

good couple of years in the acquisition of ancient artefacts. We’ve solved several of

the secret world’s darker mysteries and come away with a small profit and our necks

still intact as a bonus. When Sharlotte decided to visit friends in Washington State, I’d

heard rumours of ghost-light sightings in this region of the Amazon. So I was packed

and on the move in an hour.

She paused for a drink of water, her audience hanging on her every word. Covered in

liniment as she was, the urge to scratch those dashed mosquito bites was almost

overwhelming.

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Having had previous dealings with the local river traders, I knew getting on board a

small ship with a crew of hot-blooded men was not the best of ideas – present

company accepted. On my last trip to South America, I had to break several limbs

before they got the hint I was not in the market for their… special attention.

So I purchased a small boat myself from a Yanomamö village. The thing was

a wreck, but I made her watertight and she had a good engine of a type I’ve been able

to rebuild since my early teens. I’m known as the mad woman with the fiery hair, so

the locals were quite willing to take my money. I reckon they were confident they

would salvage the craft in a few weeks time after the jungle had swallowed me up.

Three days up-river, I bumped into the American, Johnny Sorrow. I’d heard he

had a reputation for mapping these twisting tributaries of the Amazon’s Rio Negro,

but when we first met, he was adrift and bailing out his battered canoe, in some

distress.

“Need a hand?” I cried as I steered my riverboat up along side of him. Besides

those muscles, gleaming like wet ebony under the tropical sun, the first thing that

caught my eye was the tattoo on Sorrow’s face. Across his right cheek and running

down his thick neck was a coiled snake, jaws open and ready to strike.

“Don’t mind if I do,” he replied, grinning at me, looking a little too long at my

legs for my liking. “Get me to a dry bank and I can do some quick repairs,” he says.

So that is what I did.

We set up camp on a sandy inlet. Whilst I cooked a fine pirarucu fish I’d

caught earlier that day, Johnny daubed tar over the bottom of his upturned boat to try

and make her waterproof again.

“Hit a log drifting downstream yesterday. Must have done more damage than I

thought,” he rambled on as we both worked. He nodded to my boat moored away

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from the shore. “I see the crooks west of Santa Isabel have managed to sell that death

trap again.”

“This is from a man who travels in a hacked out tree trunk?” I replied. “I

overhauled her before leaving. She’s sounder than she looks.”

I class myself a pretty good judge of character, Captain Farouk, but I always

keep my Browning pistol handy. I noticed that Sorrow never strayed far from his

razor-sharp machete. The jungle makes you like that – suspicious of strangers in the

middle of nowhere.

“Your gun is in your backpack,” Farouk felt he had to add.

“I know. It was the first thing I checked when I woke up in your cabin. No

offence meant.”

“None taken,” smiled the man, liking this insane English woman all the more.

Johnny got straight down to it, as the two of us shared the fish I had cooked, hunched

close to the cracking fire.

“You’ve come looking for the lights,” he said.

“I won’t deny that. You’ve seen them?”

“Used to, years ago. Lights moving in the sky. This place is a home of dark

spirits – the natives’ superstitions, not mine. Atlanta has its own share of legends!”

“Used to… So there’s been no recent sightings?”

“Not in the sky,” he replied, obtusely. Staring at me, he pointed, deep into the

jungle. “Now they come from the ground… way in there. Different lights.”

“That’s what I heard. That’s why I’m here,” I told him, honestly.

About then the insect life was starting to annoy, as it grew dark.

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“I’m sleeping back in my cabin. I’d offer to share, but I’m afraid there’s

hardly enough room for one.”

“Now ain’t that a shame.”

“If I thought you were that kind of gentleman, Mr. Sorrow, I’d have left you

sinking in the middle of the river. Besides, it’s too hot for any sort of shenanigans!”

Sorrow laughed in response. But I could sense him watching me as I waded

out to my boat.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” I heard him whisper into the growing darkness, as

he went to set up his own hammock back in the tree line.

“Johnny Sorrow,” the Captain interrupted Jesse’s tale. “You sure it was him?”

“The snake tattoo?” Jesse touched her own right cheek. “Plus that wicked

smile. I’d heard tales of him across most of Brazil and further afield.”

“Sounds like him,” responded Farouk, still sounding unconvinced. There was

a confused expression on his face, which he was trying hard to conceal. “My

apologies, Miss Arkwright, please continue.”

The next day was as hot and as humid as the previous one. Johnny Sorrow agreed to

help me trek into the bush where the lights had last been seen in return for a lift back

to civilisation. That boat of his was still taking in water when he tested it. With what

provisions we could carry, we left the river behind us and began to cut a swathe

through the dense undergrowth, Sorrow taking up the lead and myself behind. Then I

saw the worth of a machete rather than a pistol in this jungle landscape.

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The day wore on, as high above in the jungle canopy the heavy rain began to

filter down, dripping from every lush green leaf, giving some relief from the intense

heat.

“Am I going too fast for you?” Sorrow grinned back at me.

“I was wondering what the hold-up was,” I quickly replied. “These lights…

You’ve seen them before?”

“Oh, I’ve seen them. They tend to do odd things to folk… make them believe

stuff that ain’t real. I can show you where the sightings have occurred, but I’m not in

a hurry to see what’s causing the display!”

“That’s where we differ, Mr Sorrow. I can’t wait to find out that answer,” I

told him.

We moved deeper into the jungle for the next few hours, until I began to

notice an eerie silence.

“We’re close,” was all Sorrow would say.

Then I suddenly saw my first blink of colour. It was like a slow burst of blue

light, like a flashbulb going off, only longer. Almost immediately a second blink

followed.

“Did you see that?” I whispered. My companion only nodded.

The light display continued around us as we pushed on. About then, Sorrow

began to get a little nervous.

“We should turn back,” he said.

“No! Press on! We’re nearly there, I can feel it!” I cried.

No truer words had been said, for two steps further on I felt something large

and hairy land on my back… moving feelers becoming entangled in my hair. Then

there was a sudden sharp pain in the side of my neck and the world went black.

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How long I slept this drugged sleep I have no way of telling. Eventually I felt Mr

Sorrow moving next to me, finding it near impossible to open my eyes. There was a

leaden feel about my limbs and a black pain in my head that blocked out all reason.

When I did manage to look around me at the trap we had so neatly fallen into, it

beggared description.

Suffice it to say we had found the source of the mysterious lights… or rather,

it had found us. Emitting colours never before seen by the human eye was a strange

shattered shape. Once it had been a metal wheel, about as long as this ship, with a

bowl shaped glass canopy over its top. Now it lay burnt and tangled in a new growth

of jungle, the canopy smashed with lichens and moss beginning to camouflage its

form.

As I watched in my stupor, it pulsed with a vibrant rainbow of alien energy,

wisps of luminescence drifting off into the jungle and bursting like bubbles of light.

But it was what had been spun around it that left my mouth dry, unable to speak. Up

towards the heavens had been created a massive funnel-web at least sixty feet high. A

thing of arachnid architecture so fine, so beautiful that it struck me dumb. That its

base fanned out and enclosed the trees, the bushes, Sorrow and myself rather spoiled

my enjoyment.

Crawling in every direction, thickening and repairing the web structure, were

as many spiders as I have ever seen. They varied in size from as big as your hand to a

leg span as tall as myself. All terrifyingly working in unison, with the hive

intelligence of either bees or ants.

“Tell me I’m dreaming,” I managed to whisper to Mr Sorrow.

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“If you are, we’re both having the same nightmare,” he managed to reply,

coated in gossamer web, as was I, up to the neck. Spun into bundles like captured

flies. And by the bones that hung about the massive web, we were not the first people

to fall for this trap.

“Are those skeletons?” Johnny Sorrow whispered back to me.

“I’m afraid so. Previous victims kept alive until this colony of spiders needed

to… feed.”

“Did you have to tell me that bit?” he muttered, and began to struggle all the

harder.

I watched with a grim fascination as the spiders went about their business, in

this webbed city spun between the trees. Something in the lights from the crashed ship

must have changed these creatures and given them a new purpose.

Night had fallen unnoticed in the spider temple flooded with alien lights. As

Mr Sorrow continued to struggle against his bonds, I was more fascinated with the

funnel-web that reached up between the tree canopy. As I looked up, it seemed as if

holes had been picked in that perfect structure here and there. Looking from where we

were parcelled up, I could see stars shining through each perfect hole.

They aligned exactly with the constellation of Orion.

Staring back at the fallen ship, I saw for the first time the silhouette of another

skeleton slumped forward beneath the shattered dome. The head, grossly enlarged,

was sat upon a puny body. Putting all the clues together, I realised where our strange

visitor had come from.

“Mr Sorrow, if you’d be so kind, I believe you can reach my trousers pocket

with your left hand,” I finally spoke, some of my senses returning.

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“Miss Arkwright… Isn’t it a little late for that?” He had to make a lewd

remark even in the face of certain death.

“Seriously, my father’s lighter is in there. These webs are too strong to break,

let’s see if they will burn!”

It took the man far too long to extract the lighter for my liking, but when he

finally retrieved it, it was damp from the earlier rain. Time after time he flicked the

casing open and the flint refused to spark. By then, the spiders were beginning to

swarm above us and things were looking grim.

Finally, there was a solitary spark. I felt the heat from the fire up my back as

the webbing ignited and we both struggled free. Sorrow pushed me to the ground as

the web-funnel began to draw up the flames like a chimney, as he spotted his machete

discarded on the jungle floor.

There came a terrible screaming that I shall never forget. As their home

burned, the spiders began to launch themselves at us in rage. Pushing me in front of

him, Mr Sorrow yelled, “That way!” and we began a headlong flight through the

jungle.

First illuminated by the flames behind us, then by the agitated lights exploding

from the crashed object, we could just see well enough to stumble forward. Suddenly

we were on the path we had hacked through the previous day, but in the middle of our

escape I felt a familiar jab of pain on my right arm. Looking down I saw one of the

smaller spiders clinging there – its jaws embedded in my flesh.

As my legs went from under me I smashed the beast against a tree branch, but

it was too late, I was beginning to succumb to the spider venom once again. I felt

Johnny Sorrow lift me up in his arms and the mad flight continued.

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After that…? I vaguely remember him placing me in that leaking canoe of his,

as in a haze I saw him standing on the riverbank as the enraged spider hoard swarmed

out of the trees on every side. Then I was suddenly here.

The crew nodded to each other and whispered together in Portuguese, having enjoyed

the yarn, then they returned to their posts leaving Captain Farouk alone with Jesse

Arkwright.

“That is how you remember it?” asked the Captain.

“It sounds insane, but yes. I can tell by your voice that you have doubts about

my story.” Jesse swung her long legs off the bed and rose shakily to her feet. At a

comfortable six feet tall, she rather dwarfed the Captain, who look a little threatened.

“My main concern about your story, Miss Arkwright, besides this spider

temple, is the fact that Johnny Sorrow vanished into the jungle two years ago. We

have no body to prove it, but I fear he has been long dead.”

Jesse looked at her arm where the arachnid bite was lost in a sea of angry

looking bumps left by the mosquitoes. “Maybe you’re right, Captain. I’m just a

Western woman out of her depth with too much sun and too many insect bites – of the

conventional kind. I must have just come across Mr Sorrow’s boat in my fever,

abandoned all those months ago, and only good fortune and the spirit of the river

brought me to you.”

The captain smiled. “Good. I’m glad you see the truth of it now. That is the

way I will instruct my men to tell it. You look tired, my dear. You should get some

more rest.”

As he left, Jesse resisted some stinging comment about being referred to as,

‘my dear’. Alone at last with her back against the cabin door, she lifted her pack off

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the chair and gently opened her jacket. Inside was the slightly squashed, but relatively

intact body of the giant spider that had bit her. Along side that, a dull and notched

machete baring the initials, J. S.

“Yes… Just the silly fantasies of an English woman out of her depth,” she said

to herself, wrapping the specimen and Sorrow’s blade away from prying eyes.

The adventure had happened, although who, or what Johnny Sorrow had been

remained to be seen. Once she was healed, there might just be time for a final

expedition to see what if anything had survived the fire, before the rainy season set in.

Then maybe she’d cross paths with her saviour again… if he were real, of

course.

END