The Curse of Kunamira Island Ch. 05

...

Isabella awoke with the rising sun. She seemed to be the only one in the village with a reason to be up so early. Without wasting a moment, she shook Cassandra awake.

"What do you need? Can't you clean my room later? Clean Cecil's room first." Cassandra muttered.

"Cassandra! Wake up!" she repeated, whispering.

Cassandra slowly raised her head, and, with palpable disappointment, remembered that they weren't onboard her boyfriend's yacht anymore.

"What? Is the Coast Guard here? Are we being rescued?"

"Sorry, no Coast Guard. I don't think nobody knows where we are. If we want to be rescued, we're going to have to rescue ourselves, and that's what I'm going to go do right now. You coming?"

"You're going up the mountain, aren't you? But Soa said it wasn't a good idea."

"Oh, you feel like listening to her now? When did that happen?"

"It happened when I decided I won't want to be captured by those perverted, naked, animals again! But... fine, I'll come. Living here in the village isn't much better. Maybe we can find a way to get rid of this damn goo. And wear clothes again."

Cassandra got herself up, and as the two of them prepared to leave the hut, Soa began to stir.

"I couldn't talk you out of it, could I?" she asked, sleepily.

"I'm sorry, but we have to go," Isabella explained.

"Very well, I see this is something you have to do. Then let me come with you. If I can't keep you away from there, at least I can try to keep you safe."

Soa slipped into a pair of sandals and grabbed her spear, while Isabella picked up her pillow case full of emergency supplies.

As they hiked, Isabella pulled out a small, white cardboard box from her sack. Inside the box was a silver, vacuum-packed pouch, which she tore open.

"It could be a long hike, so I want all of us to eat something," she instructed her two companions, and handed them each a wafer.

"What is this, wood?" Cassandra asked, eyeing the rectangular biscuit suspiciously.

"It's an emergency ration I took from the ship. I know it doesn't look like much, but this whole pack is ten-thousand kilojoules worth of food. This will keep the three of us going all morning."

"Kilo... whats?" Cassandra asked, confused.

"KiloJOULES, not kilowatts. Look, never mind. Just eat it. We don't have time to go hunting or foraging for breakfast. I don't know when these 'sex-crazed' typically wake up, but maybe we can sneak past them while they are still asleep."

"They do not usually awake until the sun is high up in the sky. But, still, we should hurry," Soa explained, and took a bite of her survival ration. "Oh my... this food of yours is very dry."

"It's meant for survival, not enjoying," she explained, and handed her a bottle of water to help her wash it down.

As they hiked and finished their somewhat unpalatable meal, Isabella asked Soa more of this shrine they were heading toward.

"Where did this shrine come from? Was it always there?"

"I was very young, so I don't remember much. Mostly stories from the older women who survived the coming of the blackness. One of the men, a friend of my father's, was the one to discover it. We used to wander up the mountain all the time, so we were surprised when he mentioned seeing it. Nobody else had known such a thing to exist up there, and some did not even believe him."

"Did it just appear? Out of nowhere?"

"There was a furious rainstorm not long before he discovered it. Many think a mudslide uncovered it. Perhaps it was always there. A small party went up to see for themselves. When they came back down, they told us of the shrine he had seen, but would not answer most of our questions. They acted quiet. That night was when most of our people disappeared. Few of us have ever dared return since then."

"Have you ever gone up?" Cassandra asked, uncharacteristically interested in what Soa had to say.

"No. Not once. But have seen the shrine from far away, and I know where the path begins."

After a few miles, not far from where the women had taken Cassandra, the terrain began to climb upward. Soa bade them to tread quietly. In another few minutes, the trees began to thin out, as the rich jungle soil started to give way to rocky terrain.

Soa hid behind the last of the large trees and pointed ahead. There, blocking what appeared to be the only easy way up, were three of the savage women.

"They always guard it. Even when most of them are sleeping, some are always there," explained Soa. "But look! You can see it from here!"

Soa pointed up near the top, just between where the mountain side branched off to its two main peaks. In a narrow valley between two opposing cliff faces was a strange rock formation. It was hard to make out at this distance, but it looked neither natural nor manmade.

"So, how do we get past those three? You're sure there's not another way?" Cassandra asked.

"Wait," was Soa's only reply.

The three guardswomen, fortunately, looked anything but attentive. Soa and her companions watched them from their hiding spot. Two of them were slowly kissing and fondling each other, pausing only every few seconds to look out of the corners of their eyes into the jungle for intruders. But their minds couldn't have been farther from their duties.

Finally, something interesting started to happen. The two women had gotten a little too involved in their foreplay, and the third, who had been watching them, approached to break them up, presumably to remind them that they had a job. The two did not take kindly, however, and a quick fight broke out. There were few words, mostly guttural grunts and screams.

In the process of the fight, the three of them ended up getting stuck together by long, stretchy strands of the goo, though this didn't seem to slow them down at all. They just took the new constraints in stride.

"This is perfect!" Soa declared with a grin! "We can sneak by now! The rest of them are probably sleeping off their orgy from last night back at the village, so these fools are all we will see here."

Staying behind the trees as long as possible, Soa made her way around to the side of the slope the three sex-crazed were supposed to be guarding. Isabella and Cassandra followed right behind. Finally, they ducked down beneath a rocky ridge where they were out of sight of the guards.

"Perfect! Well, those fools are now behind us, but there is still danger ahead."

They followed the side of the rocky ridge for several hundred feet, though the terrain was currently taking them downward, not up where they wanted to go. As they walked, Soa scanned the rocky cliff above them.

"Here," she said at last. "We go up here."

Isabella looked up the cliff face, and was more than a little nervous. It was quite a way up!

Soa, barely even waiting for a response from her companions, slung her spear around her back and began to climb up as nimbly as a monkey. Isabella tied a knot in her bag so she could hang it from her arm, and did her best to prepare herself for what she had to do. She made note of where Soa put her hands and feet, and did her best to follow her.

"Come on!" she whispered down to Cassandra once she was about ten feet up. Cassandra hesitated for a few seconds, then swallowed hard and started making her way up.

"Just watch your ta-tas. Don't get glued to the rock! I don't know how we're going to get you down if you get stuck halfway up a cliff. We might have to leave you there."

Cassandra just grunted in annoyance, and did her best to progress. When Isabella looked up, Soa was already to the top. Isabella did her best to keep moving, making sure to follow her own warning. She tried not to think about what would happen if the black goo did latch onto the rock while she was halfway up.

Fortunately, this did not happen. In fact, the distance to the top had looked farther than it was. She was surprised when she saw Soa's hand in front of her face. She graciously accepted it, and Soa pulled her up over the ledge. Much to her surprise, Cassandra wasn't far behind.

"Wow, you actually made it," Isabella teased, as Cassandra hunched over gasping for breath. "And without getting your huge, bumbling boobies stuck to anything this time!"

Cassandra's only response was a raised middle finger.

"I know your friend can be unbearable sometimes," Soa whispered into Isabella's ear, "but maybe you don't need to taunt her when she IS being agreeable."

Maybe Soa had a point, she had to admit.

Now that the three of them finally stood on solid ground again, they looked down the path. There, at the bottom of the slope, they could still see the guards quarreling. The one who had tried to break up the other two was currently thrusting her bare crotch in one of the other's face in a primal show of dominance.

After a brief laugh, the three of them continued on their way up the path.

After an hour or so, the landscape changed abruptly. The sparse trees that lined the slope of the mountain to either side of the path suddenly grew much shorter, not much taller than a person. There were also considerably fewer good patches of dirt where a tree could spread its roots. Isabella guessed that these trees were newer. It made perfect sense that a cataclysmic mud slide could have washed the old growth away, and that these trees were no more than twenty years old.

The path soon led them to the small valley they had seen from the base. In front of them, situated between two rocky crags, was the shrine.

Up close, it looked even more peculiar and out of place. The stone was an eerie dark gray, quite a contrast from the reddish stone that was found everywhere else around the mountain. There were two rows of jagged rock columns slanting toward each other and interlocking near the tips, almost like two hands with crossed fingers, forming a slanted roof of sorts. Underneath was a pedestal of the same color, about the size and height of a round end table, atop which sat a grotesque stone face.

The ground around the shrine was made of the same grey stone, forming a round patio of sorts maybe forty feet wide.

Isabella swallowed in fear, but forced herself to walk forward. Soa and Cassandra followed reluctantly behind her. As she stepped onto the grey stone floor, she noticed there was no clear edge to it. The rough, reddish stone of the mountain slope simply changed to the smoother dark grey, as if the material had been transmuted from the ambient stone, rather than laid down. It felt noticeably cooler to the touch as she stepped onto it with her bare feet.

While the otherworldly shrine couldn't have been a natural formation, she started to doubt it could have been manmade either. The columns and the pedestal didn't seem to be separate pieces from the floor of the shrine. It was like they had grown out of it.

Isabella was close enough now that she could see the details of the gargoyle head on top of the pedestal. It was clearly animalistic, looking something between a dragon or a dog, with an open mouth and jagged fangs, though something about it had an oddly human look. Its eyes were a translucent orange-red, like amber.

Suddenly, as she was within ten feet of the shrine, she felt movement around her nipples. The black goo was moving on its own, and like never before! As she looked down, she saw little tendrils were protruding, and writhing around as if feeling for something to grab onto. She could feel it squirming around restlessly inside her milk ducts, and the feeling made her skin crawl!

Acting more on instinct than by any rational plan, Isabella frantically untied the sack and rummaged around for a bottle of alcohol. She bypassed the vodka and went straight for the small bottle of isopropyl alcohol she had been saving for medical use. By the time she had it uncapped, one of the tendrils had already latched onto her upper arm. She dumped the concentrated alcohol over her breasts, and immediately the black goo began to writhe and twitch as if in pain. A second later, the tendril, which had already started to thicken and tug on her arm, thinned and dissolved away. She poured another splash over each of her nipples, which further washed the black goo away. Thin, black rivulets of the dissolved substance ran down her breasts and belly. What was left of the goo was no longer moving.

She heard the cries of Soa and Cassandra behind her. She turned, and saw each of them were also struggling with the goo coming out of their nipples. It had spread much farther, and was creeping out over their bodies like vines, attempting to bind them.

Isabella quickly ran over to them, Cassandra first, and poured a generous portion of alcohol over her. Just as before, the goo seemed to react in pain, before melting away and freeing Cassandra. Without wasting a moment, she hurried over to Soa, who's arms were now tightly bound at her side. There wasn't much left in the bottle, and she hoped it would be enough.

But as she brought the bottle over her one of her nipples, before she had even poured a drop, the black tendrils suddenly released her arms and retreated back inside her breasts. Isabella gasped in shock: not only was this stuff alive, it was intelligent! But at least they were free.

"Wow! That stuff works!" Cassandra shouted. "Why weren't we using it before?"

"Because this is all we have left!" she said, shaking the remains around in the small bottle.

Isabella looked down at her nipples, then at her companions. The goo that was left on the outside had hardened into a tough skin. She prodded it with a finger, and it was barely even sticky. It had formed a shell to protect itself.

"And I don't think it was just what kind of alcohol I used. The more liquid it makes itself, the more vulnerable it is. That's why the vodka worked so slow on the stretchy tendrils earlier. It had already toughened up a little. But if it's bold enough to come alive again, I think the vodka will do the trick, too. But I don't think the goo is coming out again any time soon."

"I've never seen the blackness do that before," said Soa, looking disturbed by what she had just seen. "I've seen it move plenty of times when it gets excited, but... it's never attacked me before."

Despite her own fear, Isabella smiled grimly. "I think it's afraid. It doesn't want us here. It was trying to stop us... and it failed."

She turned back toward the shrine and slowly walked toward it. Her companions, meanwhile, stayed back. The grotesque on top of the pedestal gave her the creeps, but she refused to let herself avert her eyes. She didn't want to show it any weakness.

Similar to the darker gray floor around the shrine, the amber gems that formed its eyes didn't seem to be separate pieces from the statue. An uneasy feeling made her want to look away from its unearthly gaze, but she fought this impulse and stared directly into its eyes. As she looked at its face, she tried to work out what emotion it was meant to express. It's snarling maw certainly looked menacing, though there was something about how its comically long tongue draped out the side of its jaw, and how the corners of its mouth curved upward, that almost seemed to convey an animalistic lust. But if it was lust, it certainly wasn't the fun kind. It was predatory.

In a final show of dominance, Isabella reached her hand out and touched it. She held her hand against the side of its face, as her mother used to cradle her chin when she was being scolded. She kept her fingers well clear of its jagged teeth, however.

After a few seconds of nothing happening, Soa spoke up. "Well, here we are. This is the shrine you insisted on seeing. So, what now? Was there anything you intended to do here? If you only came here to see it, you have now seen it."

"No, no plan," she answered, finally turning away from the gargoyle. "I guess I would figure something out once I saw the shrine, maybe at least learn something about the curse."

"Then if you have nothing else to do, we should leave! This thing is dangerous!"

"Of course, it is. An animal is always the most dangerous when you have it backed into a corner. It clearly doesn't want us here, so there must be something it's afraid we might do. But what?"

She returned her attention to the stone face, this time resting her hands on the edge of the pedestal. After a moment, she spoke to it.

"Hello. My name is Isabella, and I am looking for the friends I came to the island with. Toby... Cecil... Pierre... Buck... They disappeared without a trace. I want them back. Or at least to know they are safe."

There was no response from the stone face. Soa began speaking in her native language. When she repeated the names of Isabella's missing crewmates, Isabella knew she was simply translating what she had said. But the gargoyle didn't respond to that, either.

"Do you have any other plans?" Soa asked, after several seconds of silence.

"I guess we could just try to smash the altar. Maybe if we find a big enough rock..."

Suddenly, the eyes seemed to darken, as if something had retreated from the statue. That had gotten a response out of it!

Isabella turned to move away from the altar, intending to act out her new plan, but was stopped short. Her hands wouldn't come away from the altar! The tugged a few times, but the skin on the palms of her hands clung tightly to the stone, as if glued to it. She tried to lift up her fingers, but each fingertip was similarly welded to the side of the table.

"Carajo! I... I'm stuck to this thing!"

She tried to reposition her feet to get a better angle to pull from, but found the soles of her feet were similarly stuck to the stone floor. She heard two shrieks behind her, and turned her head to see Soa and Cassandra struggling to pull their feet off the stony floor. Cassandra, flailing wildly, ended up falling over backwards and landed on her hands and butt. As soon as she tried to move, her hands and butt were stuck fast to the rock, too. Meanwhile, Soa braced the butt of her spear against the ground and tried to use it for additional leverage, but her feet were completely immobilized.

Terrified, Isabella turned her attention back to her own hands. She didn't see any of the black goo between her hands and the stone altar, so whatever was doing this must have been something else. It was interesting that the statue had waited until she had threatened it, so maybe this was its last resort.

Well, if this was its last resort, once she got free, there would be nothing stopping her from smashing its arrogant face into pebbles!

She pushed off with her right hand and focused all her efforts on pulling her left hand free. She strained her muscles and pulled hard, until she could feel the stone tugging painfully on her skin. The unnatural stone absolutely refused to let go of her flesh! She pulled harder, until she was afraid her skin could be torn from hand. She tried pulling on her other hand, but had no more luck. She kept struggling, straining her muscles and pulling as hard as she dared on her hands and feet, but any piece of her skin that had touched the stone was completely inseparable from it!

She looked behind her again, and saw her companions were still stuck fast. Cassandra was stuck on all five points, with her knees up in the air. She struggled to lift her hands and feet, then gritted her teeth in a mighty effort to lift her bare butt off the ground, hard enough that Isabella could see her skin stretching, but it was all hopeless. Soa had dropped her spear, and was now hunched over, both hands clutched around her ankle, yanking frantically!

"What... what's happening?" Cassandra screamed.

"I don't know! I've never seen this before!"

"Everyone, stay calm!" Isabella ordered. "The spirit here is fighting back, but we already outsmarted it twice! We snuck past its idiot guards, and dissolved its fucking goo. We already got this far, so we just need to outsmart it again. Soa, your hands are still free. Is there anything you can do? Can your spear reach the statue? Poke its eyes out or something?"