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.

avalon2020

Writing as Rikki Sharp, Jesse Arkright and the Spider Temple © Rob Sharp 2013. All rights reserved.

The right for Robert Sharp to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Further information can be obtained by contacting robsharpavalon@googlemail.com

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?”

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.

***

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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. 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

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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 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

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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.

So the alluring red-head picked up the tale again. ***

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

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landscape.

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.

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“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.

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

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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.

“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

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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.

“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

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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.

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

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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 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

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Jesse Arkwright and the Spider Temple ©2013 Rob Sharp. All Rights Reserved.

Featuring Jesse Arkwright from ‘VAMPYRE KISSES’. Book #3 of The Ladies’

Paranormal and Adventure Club. Out in 2014