The first scream didn’t come from the jungle.
It came from Matheson’s throat.
By then, the others had already stopped shouting for help. They were too busy hiding, or dying. The canopy above—so thick it bled daylight into swampy green twilight—swallowed their voices like the forest had swallowed the trail, the guides, the sat phone, and the last of their food.
Matheson staggered backward, clutching his calf. His leg wasn’t bleeding—something worse had happened. Bone poked out, smooth and white as boiled chicken. The trap hadn’t just broken him. It had claimed him.
Jared crouched beside him. “It’s a bone-snap snare,” he murmured, too calm, too resigned. “They’re getting closer.”
“Help me!” Matheson hissed. “Jared, Jesus, carry me—”
Jared shook his head once. Not no. Just done.
A wet rustle passed through the underbrush, low and deliberate. Not wind. Not birds. Something… breathing. Jared looked up. “They’ll hear him screaming.”
Matheson heard it too now—just beyond the curtain of vines, the click-pop of a dislocated jaw re-setting. Then another. Then two more.
They weren’t hunting with stealth anymore.
“Go,” Matheson begged, voice gone child-soft.
Jared didn’t argue. Just took the pack and limped toward the last red mark carved into a kapok trunk. That was all they had left—those crimson slashes. The one thing the cannibals didn’t erase.
They wanted you to run.
The game, Jared figured, was part of the ritual. Every story they’d laughed off back in Iquitos—the isolated tribe, untouched by outside culture, still practicing old rites—they weren’t myth. They were method. And now he was in it.
He hiked for hours. Or minutes. Time didn’t work right here. Heat radiated up from the ground in sick pulses. His clothes were wet, but not with sweat.
Eventually, he found another red slash.
And just below it: a ribcage nailed to the tree. Human. Split wide like a warning, or maybe an invitation.
He ran.
Twilight deepened. Jared’s breath came sharp and ragged, hitching at the edges. His flashlight died miles ago. He only stopped when he heard a voice—ragged, female.
“Help me…”
He knew the sound. Lydia.
He found her kneeling in a clearing. Hair matted, shirt missing, arms shaking. No wounds.
“Lydia?”
She looked up.
Something moved beneath her skin.
“Did they—?”
Her face split at the cheek. Not a grin. A gash. Eyes unfocused, she whispered, “Don’t let them wear me again.”
The trees behind her moved. Not with wind.
Jared turned and bolted. Didn’t look back.
He didn’t stop until the trees opened and moonlight poured in—and there, in a perfect circle, sat a mound of meat. Stacked high. Flies swarmed. Teeth nestled like trophies in the pulp. One boot lay half-submerged.
His.
A voice from above, in crisp English: “Fast one this time.”
Jared tried to run, but the roots curled around his ankles.
As hands descended—not rough, reverent—he realized the final horror.
They didn’t want him to die fast.
They wanted him to understand.