Facing the two viewers, a black screen. Then a time stamp at bottom: “6/9/1966,” and various shades of gray. Leaves, trees. The violence of the jungle. The images parade by in black-and-white. A film of middling quality, probably shot with amateur equipment. Palms, vines, and ferns press in around the person holding the camera. Under his feet, on a slope, grasses creak. In front, a gap opens in the wall of vegetation, revealing huts farther below. Judging from the weak light, it must be evening, or perhaps daybreak. Unless the jungle is so dense that it keeps any light from filtering through.
The camera penetrates downward, advancing over black, humid ground: a square about 150 feet on each side, on which the vegetation tries to encroach. One can hear footsteps, the rustling of trees on either side. The lens focuses on the remains of a fire. Amid the ashes are small, charred bones, stones arranged in a circle, animal skulls.
Lucie briefly rubbed her chin, not taking her eyes off the screen.
“It looks like an abandoned native village.”
“It is indeed a native village, but ‘abandoned’ isn’t entirely accurate. You’ll see in a minute.”
What could she mean? The ex-cop felt her palms grow moist as the film progressed. Onscreen, cries perforate the silence, and the image freezes on the leafy canopy. Not an inch of sky at this point, only foliage, stretching endlessly. About three or four yards overhead, a colony of small monkeys scatters into the branches. The piercing screams are now constant. The camera zooms in to one of the primates, with a dark body and light-colored head. The animal spits in fury and disappears up a vine. Despite the vastness of the place, there reigns an atmosphere of enclosure and oppressiveness. A living prison with chlorophyll bars.
The cameraman finally loses interest in the inquisitive monkeys and moves farther forward, toward a hut. The image jostles to the rhythm of his slow, heavy footfalls. At a glance, the roofs seem to be made of woven palm fronds, and the walls of bamboo stalks tied together with vines. Archaic dwellings, each able to house four or five persons, and straight out of another age. At the entrance, one can suddenly make out a cloud of mosquitoes and flies, giving the impression of a sandstorm.
Lucie recoiled a bit on her sofa, feeling ill at ease. Her eyes prepared to meet horror at any moment.
The person holding the camera enters the hut slowly, like an intruder watching for the slightest movement. All light disappears, black spots flutter about. The sound track is heavy with buzzing. Unconsciously, Lucie scratched her neck.
Masses of insects. She feared the worst.
The beam of a lamp, probably attached under the lens, rips through the darkness.
And the horror appears.
In back, in the ray of light, six bodies, twisted like caterpillars one next to the other. Apparently an entire family of natives, completely naked. A mix of bloated faces, of desiccated eyes teeming with flies and larvae. Blood is leaking from their nostrils, their mouths, their anuses, as if they have exploded internally. Their bellies are swollen, probably with intestinal gas. The cameraman spares no detail, offering endless angles and close-ups. All the corpses have the black hair, callused feet, and leathery skin of ancestral tribes. But they are unrecognizable, consumed by anguish and death.
Lucie felt as if she’d forgotten to breathe. She could easily imagine the stench in that hut, the havoc the heat and humidity wreaked on the putrefying bodies. The frenzy of the fat, green flies said it all.
Suddenly, one of the bodies quivers. The dying figure opens large, dark, sick eyes toward the camera. Lucie jumped and couldn’t keep from crying out. A hand reaches out, begging for help; slim, black fingers clutch the air before the arm falls heavily onto the ground like a dead trunk.
Alive . . . Some of them were still alive.
Lucie threw a quick glance at her neighbor, who was twisting a handkerchief in her hands. She remembered the violence of her nightmare: the charred infant suddenly opening its eyes, just like here. In a daze, she turned back to the film. The horror continued. The cameraman nudges the bodies lightly with the toe of his boot, checking to see if they are alive or dead. An inhuman action. Lucie didn’t regain her breath until he had backed out of the slaughterhouse. Above, the monkeys are still there, oppressive, this time frozen on their branches. It is as if a heavy lid is covering the entire jungle. The respite is short-lived. The other huts contain the same spectacle: massacred families, mixed in with last survivors that the unseen cameraman has filmed and left to die like animals.
The film ends with a wide view of the decimated village: about a dozen huts, their inhabitants dead or dying, abandoned to the jungle shadows.
Blackness.