The Green grave

CHAPTER 3

LOGICAL INVISIBILITY

From the confidential report of an inspector of the Atlantic-Mutual Insurance Company, Boston. Appraisal Sheet No. 412-B, dated August 18, 1905:

“…I hereby confirm: heavy equipment purchased by Mr. Blackwood’s syndicate, including depot drive belts, pressure gauges, and brass valves of switching engines, is insured against damage and sabotage for the sum of forty thousand dollars in gold. Loss of these components renders movement along the mainline impossible, turning locomotives into dead metal. Risks are assessed as minimal. American engineers exercise full control over the warehouses, and the local climate is incapable of affecting the durability of steel structures…”

Pencil note in the lower margin:

“Syndicate liquidated due to bankruptcy. Payments annulled. File closed.””

The mist at the depot gates was so dense that it seemed as if someone had thrown a wet blanket of gray cotton over the entire station, saturated to the edges with swamp water and rotting leaves. It settled on the skin like a sticky film, seeped deep into the lungs, and lodged in the throat, turning every breath into a painful, exhausting effort — as if breathing through damp, thick rags. Large droplets of condensation slowly ran down the log walls, leaving dark damp streaks on the blackened wood, like the tracks of giant tears.

Cat ran after Rick, feeling each step echo with sharp, unbearable pain in her chafed heels. The heavy work boots she had hastily pulled on at dawn were a size too large, and the rough leather seams cut mercilessly into her ankles, leaving bloody blisters. The sticky moisture quickly soaked through the thick leather, mingling with the serous fluid, and the wet fabric of her socks wore the inflamed spots to the raw flesh, turning every movement into agony. But stopping was impossible. Rick stubbornly dragged her forward, his hand clenching hers with such fierce force that her fingers had long since gone numb, and Cat understood clearly: if she allowed herself to fall now, she would never get back up.

“Rick… stop… for God’s sake…” she breathed out when they finally reached the corner of the depot.

Her voice had completely cracked into a hoarse, barking cough that shook her entire body, and Cat felt the bone plates of her corset dig painfully into her ribs with each new spasm, cutting off her air.

“I… I can’t run in these clodhoppers anymore… Wait… give me a minute… just one minute… I’m suffocating…”

Cat tore her hand from her husband’s grip and collapsed back against the wooden wall of the depot, her strength gone. The logs were slick with moisture. Her fingers immediately sank into the soft, damp mold that had turned the sturdy timber into a kind of breathing sponge overnight.

She tried to take a deep breath, but the air, thick and smelling of rotting leaves, stuck in her throat. From the rapid walking, the whalebone of her corset dug mercilessly under her ribs, forcing only a dry, whistling sob from her chest. The metal fastenings on her back were red-hot from the suffocation and burned the skin between her shoulder blades, echoing with a throbbing pain in time with her racing heart. Cat frantically tore at her collar, smearing her fingers in the hot sweat that streamed down her neck, washing away the old coal grime.

The gray mist of the swamps swirled around them, and Rick appeared in it as a blurred, unreal silhouette. In this suffocating murk, Cat suddenly fancied a ghost — the white, majestic columns of her father’s mansion in Boston. The mirage stood so close that she blindly reached out, hoping to touch the cool stone, but her fingers caught only emptiness and sticky mist.

“Rick… stop…” she broke into a barking cough, clinging to his wet sleeve. “Back… let’s go back to the barracks and lock ourselves in. This is a mistake, don’t you understand? Someone confused the telegrams at the port. My father has connections in Boston, senators, the law… The government will send cavalry or a ship for us. We just need to wait it out, close the doors and wait! The ships are already coming, Rick, I know it… If we abandon the station now — we’ll lose our last chance of rescue!”

She was choking on her words, and this panicked flood poured out of her like water from a burst dam. In her dilated, dark pupils was frozen a blind, childlike hope — the kind that appears only in people on the very edge of despair, when they are ready to grasp at any illusion rather than face the approaching nightmare.

Rick spun around sharply, grabbed her shoulders, and shook her with such force that her teeth clattered. His fingers dug deep into the wet emerald silk, crumpling the expensive fabric at its roots. Cat felt his hands trembling violently with tension. The engineer’s pale, soot-creased face breathed close to hers. In his inflamed gaze burned a feverish, almost insane resolve — the same that had appeared to her before only in the most desperate moments of their lives.

“Catarina, wake up!” his voice cracked into a hoarse, furious whisper. “What mistake?! Look at that square! Look at those people! Do you see a consular ship here? Do you hear the whistles of rescue steamers? There is no syndicate, Cat. The paper burst. The Boston notes on which we built our illusions have turned to ash. We’re alone here. Do you understand? Completely alone! Only Hale and his damned flask are with us. No father, no senators, no government. There’s only us, the depot’s metal, and that glowing green strip cut through nowhere.”

He stopped, clenching his fingers until they were white. His knuckles answered with a dry, bony crack. Before, Cat would have recognized that sound among a thousand others, but now it was not the familiar gesture of irritation. It clicked like a gunshot — a warning that Rick’s patience was at an end. The engineer was on the edge, ready to scream, to smash his fists against the slimy logs, just to release the rage that had been building in him for months.

“We can’t go back, Cat,” he said, quieter now, his tone softening though steel still rang in it. “Back there, in the barracks, only death is waiting for us. Slow, rotting death in the dark. We’ll fade from fever or starvation, our bodies will dissolve in this mire, and no one in the world will ever know we were here. Is that what you want? Do you dream of your flesh becoming food for the red ants? Of MacGregor lazily picking at his festering nail over your grave?”

Cat looked at her husband, and a shadow of doubt flickered in her eyes. She wanted to object, to cry out that he was wrong, that a rescue expedition was being prepared in Boston, but the words stuck in her throat. Rick was right. She had known it from the first second Hale crossed their threshold. She had simply refused to believe it. She was clinging to illusion like a drowning man to a splinter — too afraid to face the truth. The truth meant absolute solitude. Boston had crossed them off the list. The senators she had relied on were now peacefully drinking tea in their parlors, unaware that in the Amazon, in this rotting haze, people were dying. Her loved ones. Her husband. Herself.

“Your esteemed papa is drinking sherry in Boston, my lady,” a hoarse, sarcastic voice came from the mist.

Hale emerged from the gray shroud like a ghost from an opened grave. Cat flinched — in her panic, she had completely forgotten about the doctor. The old man stood a few paces away, leaning back against the slimy logs of the depot. He lazily struck a match against the sole of his holey left boot. The sulfur head hissed, threw out a yellow flame, and was instantly drowned by the humidity. Hale swore under his breath, spat brown tobacco juice into the mud, and shoved the stub into his pocket.

“Senators are far away, Catarina. Too far. The Amazon… this damned puddle has already digested our names. It dissolved them in the swamp rot, mixed them with rotting leaves and orchid roots. No one in New England will notice our absence. We’ve vanished. Become shadows, my lady.”

The doctor produced a silver flask, unscrewed the cap with a screech, and took a long, greedy gulp. The liquid gurgled. Cat saw his thin Adam’s apple jerk convulsively. The doctor swallowed the rum with blind, feverish pleasure. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, stained with carbolic acid, and fixed Cat with his usual sardonic smirk.

“Our cavalry is a rusty boiler in the depot, my dear,” the doctor continued with a viscous, clinging irony. “The only senators capable of getting us out of here are the pistons and valves of the Black Maria. Keep moving, my lady, if you don’t fancy rotting on this platform. I’ve grown accustomed to your company. Losing such refined company in the swamp mire would be an unforgivable luxury.”

He struck another match against his sole. This time, the sulfur head flared. In the yellow, flickering glow, Hale’s face looked to Cat like a skull stretched with skin. His cheekbones were sharp, his eyes sunken, and his yellowish whites glittered with the feverish gleam of chronic hangover and insomnia. The doctor took a drag. Bitter smoke rose toward the rafters, mingling with the mist and creating an acrid, suffocating stench.

“Hale is right,” Rick stepped toward her, his tone hardening definitively. “We can’t wait. The time for illusions is over. Move, Cat. We have to reach the tracks before the switching engine is scrapped.”

But Cat was frozen. She still stood with her shoulder blades pressed against the wet logs, her gaze shifting from Rick, radiating feverish muscular tension, to Hale and his eternal silver flask. The mist settled on her lips; large droplets of condensation crawled down her cheeks, mingling with dirty sweat and sparse tears. She lowered her eyes to her palms. Her fingers, stained with coal dust, broken nails, purple welts from insect bites, and sunburn, seemed alien to her. A haze came over her. She imagined she was still sitting in Boston, in the bright drawing room by the fireplace, sipping tea from Parker’s fine porcelain, watching the clean white snow fall outside.

From above, from the spreading mango tree by the depot wall, came a dull, wet crack. Cat did not have time to look up. A heavy, half-rotten fruit fell from the branch and landed on her shoulder with a squelch. Overripe, blackened inside, it exuded a suffocating smell of fermented sugar and rot. Sticky, greasy pulp immediately smeared across the emerald silk. A dark, stinking patch instantly soaked into the fabric, saturating the threads with sweetish, putrid juice. Cat felt the warm mass crawl down her collarbone, leaving a damp, cold trail. The cloying smell of fermentation filled her nostrils, mixing with smoke, sweat, and kerosene.

She recoiled convulsively, but a hanging, wet liana swung from the canopy and slapped her across the cheek with a wet snap. Raw moisture soaked her face; drops ran down her neck, washing away the dirt. Nature was bluntly answering her illusions. The forest beyond the depot planks was palpably declaring: “Forget Boston. Forget senators and consular ships. There are only these thickets. And I will dissolve you into myself.”

“Come on,” Rick said quietly. His rage had faded, replaced by weary, infinite devotion. “We have to cross the square. Get to the tracks. Without you, I’ll break, Cat.”

She nodded silently. They moved on. Rick cautiously peered around the corner of the depot, his face instantly paling, his eyelids narrowing. Cat pushed through after him, glanced over his shoulder, and the blood froze in her veins.

Before them opened a horrifying spectacle. The square in front of the main warehouse had become an inferno. A huge oak barrel, dragged from the cellar, lay on its side, and from its shattered bottom, a dark, oily liquid gushed. It poured into the red mud, mixing with swamp water, filth, broken glass, and splinters, forming a thick, sinister sludge. Industrial alcohol smelled sharp, chemical. The stench hit their nostrils with such force that Cat was seized by a dry cough, pressing her palm to her lips.

Workers — hundreds of men in dirty canvas shirts, their faces twisted with thirst and desperation — crowded around the cistern. They scooped up the rotgut with tin cups, bowls, and their bare hands. The men drank greedily, making hoarse, guttural sounds, spilling the liquid on their clothes, on the ground, on each other’s faces. Their eyes were glassy, vacant. The crazed mass saw only the coveted ladle, noticing nothing around them. The crush was so dense that bodies pressed into each other, ribs cracked under the pressure, and faces twisted in the spasm of pain and wild pleasure. Someone fell into a pool of spilled surrogate and choked on a wheeze, drowning in the mud, but no one turned. The faceless mob was too consumed by its own madness.

“We have to get through,” Rick whispered, and steel rang in his tone. “Keep to the wall, pressed flat. If we don’t draw attention — they won’t see us. They’re blind. Their whole life now is this alcohol.”

He pulled her after him. They crept along the edge of the square, literally pressing themselves into the wet logs of the depot. Cat felt the slimy wood with her palms; damp mold clung to her fingers, leaving a cold residue. She forced herself to look only ahead, but her gaze kept returning to the chaos on the ground. Two workers were fiercely wrestling over a tin dipper. They rolled in the red clay, covered in sharp splinters. Their faces were smeared with blood and slime. One had an arm hanging at an unnatural angle, but he still wheezed, blindly rolled forward, and bared his teeth, trying to reach the barrel. The other, stronger, piled on top, squeezed the wounded man’s throat, and tore the prize away. He had already raised the edge to his lips, but at that moment someone behind him brought an empty bottle down on his skull. The man fell face-first, choking on his own blood.

Under Cat’s feet, glass crunched continuously. Shards of apothecary vials, crushed in the stampede, pierced the thick boot soles, making a dry crack under her weight. Sharp edges cut through the coarse leather. Cat felt the swamp water seep through the soles, burning her feet. Every step echoed with a dull pain, pulling her back to reality, reminding her she was still alive.

Beside her, pressing his shoulder against the depot wall, Hale moved. His face was a stone mask, but Cat could see his long fingers trembling as they gripped the flask, and his pupils scanning the square with predatory intensity. The doctor was in that peculiar, terrifyingly sober intoxication — the kind found only in those accustomed to balancing on the edge of an abyss.

“You know, my lady,” he whispered, leaning to her ear, “this rotgut dissolves the varnish on crates in seconds. Eats metal. And the poor devils gulp it down like spring water. Their stomachs will burn out faster than a locomotive boiler. They don’t care. No one wants to think. Everyone needs to go blind. To bury the thought of Blackwood’s bankruptcy. To forget they’ll never get out. To forget their time is up.”

Cat said nothing. The mist clung to her face; the sticky mango pulp oozed over her shoulder; the chemical stench of alcohol choked her lungs, mingling with sour human sweat. Hale wasn’t lying. There were no living people left in this square. The dead just kept moving their legs.

Suddenly, she stumbled.

Her left boot caught firmly on a rotten sleeper hidden in the mire. Cat swayed; the heavy shoe slid on the clay, and she fell to her knee, hitting something sharp with a dull thud. A cry escaped her. Rick caught her by the elbow, preventing her from falling flat.

“Cat!” fear rang in his hoarse voice. “What is it?! Come on!”

She looked down. The wet, swamp-soaked emerald silk had wound around the massive heel in a dead loop. The fabric had stuck fast in the mud, caught on the sharp edges of broken glass, holding her in place like a steel trap. Cat yanked her leg, but the heavy hem did not give.

“Damn!” she spat through her teeth. “It’s this dress… It’s holding me! Like a trap!”

She jerked again. The silk cord tightened further, and a shard of a broken bottle neck cut deeply into her ankle. Swamp water burned the wound. Dark blood poured onto the fabric, mingling with the emerald threads, turning a brown, putrid color. Cat would remember that filthy color for the rest of her life.

“Cut it,” Rick breathed out with the same dull fury. “Cut it, Cat. It’s dragging you down!”

She did not hesitate. Her hand slid into the deep pocket of her skirt; her fingers found the kitchen knife — the one she had used to cut bread at breakfast and had shoved into her pocket for no particular reason. The blade was sharp; cold steel instantly burned her fingertips.

She gripped the handle and, without a second thought, with a furious, dry tear, slashed at the hem. The blade entered the wet silk with a characteristic dense screech. Threads tore; the fabric parted obediently under the steel’s force. Cat cut quickly, fiercely, leaving ragged strips.

She shortened the dress to her knees, abandoning the luxurious Boston silk to the red mire. The fabric hit the ground with a dull, wet slap. Her legs were instantly freed; cool air touched her skin; the suffocating weight of the hem was gone. Cat stood, breathing heavily. The emerald silk lay in the mud, in pools of industrial alcohol and broken glass, as dead as her past life.

She looked down at the knife. The steel had darkened from clay and her own blood. Warm moisture trickled down her ankle, mixing with cold mud into a sticky, corrosive mass.

“This dress cost more than a year’s payroll for the workers,” her voice quivered, but the fear had vanished, replaced by pure rage. “Three hundred and twenty dollars. Boston silk. Handmade. Now it weighs less than red clay. I’m cutting away my past just to take the next step.”

She threw the kitchen knife at her feet and looked at Rick. In her pupils kindled the same fire as his — blind will to survive. She was ready to leave everything behind.

“Come on,” her tone hardened definitively, turning to steel. “Faster to the train.”

Rick looked at her with astonishment, through the grime, pride showing through. He gripped her hand firmly. They ran on. Hale followed silently, his trembling pianist’s fingers clutching his flask. Cat felt his gaze on her skin — heavy, sticky, like the swamp mist. The doctor had been reborn too. Quieter, more serious; the caustic, sardonic mask had slipped from his face entirely. Primordial fear had emerged. Exhaustion. The feverish gleam of a man who had realized the end was near.

They flew past the raging square. The workers did not notice them. The crazed mob was too absorbed in its alcoholic trance. Cat glimpsed dirty, wet faces and glassy eyes fixed on the coveted ladle of rotgut. The men lapped up the surrogate, fought, and collapsed face-down. She understood clearly: these men would never see Boston. Never return to their families. Their fate was to remain in this mire, in this green grave.

They burst through the depot gates. Beyond the open doors, in the depths of the misty half-darkness, Cat made out the outline of the locomotive. The Black Maria stood on the tracks — rusty, filthy, coated with a layer of soot and gray fungus. But the metal held. The machine was waiting for them.

“We’ll get this train running,” Rick turned, his tone ringing with familiar, hard steel. “We’ll break through the blockages. We’ll burn memories for fuel, throw Boston trunks into the firebox if we have to. We’ll get out of here, Cat.”

She nodded silently. She stared at the rusty, greasy hulk that had become their only ticket to survival.

CHAPTER 4

GRAVEYARD OF MACHINES

From the confidential report of track inspector G. Walters to the board of the Trans-Amazonia Limited syndicate, Boston, March 14, 1904:

'...Calculations of track bed strength at the third station’s dead end completely rule out ground subsidence. The thirty-ton Class “E” switching locomotive (series “Maria-04”) is equipped with reinforced steel wheel sets capable of holding the train on the sand embankment under any weather conditions. The local workers’ theories about the selva’s “shifting swamps” are scientifically unfounded and stem from superstition…”

Ink note scrawled diagonally across the page:

“Depots abandoned. Personnel evacuation complete. Locomotive left on the tracks.””

The rain struck the tin roof of the depot with a dry, deafening crack, like a machine-gun burst.

Catarina flinched, stepping back under the awning. One step — and her heel sank into the red mire with a squelch. Above, directly behind a giant fern frond, a frightened marmoset shrieked piercingly — chee-chee-chee! — and a branch swayed noisily, shedding a cascade of muddy water. The air instantly smelled of ozone and scorched copper. A bitter, metallic taste remained on her tongue.

Somewhere in the darkness by the tracks, iron clanged deafeningly — Rick had hurled a heavy wrench straight into a puddle. From the darkness came his hoarse, broken cough, mingled with the screech of a straining steel cable.

“Cat!” Her husband’s cry barely pierced the roar of water. “Get over here! The embankment is washing away!”

Catarina lunged forward, wrenching her stuck boot from the mud as she went. The wet, faded silk of her dress wrapped around her legs, hindering movement. A lightning flash flooded the dead end with a cadaverous light for a second, revealing the huge black silhouette of the Black Maria. The thirty-ton locomotive was already noticeably listing to the left; its wheels sank into the sodden earth with a terrible, living groan.

“A shovel!” Rick emerged from the wall of water. His soot-gray face was washed with streams of muddy water; his right fist clenched convulsively, emitting a dry bony crack. “What are you standing there for? We need to throw gravel under the wheels, or she’ll fall on her side!”

From the depths of the dark car came Doctor Hale’s lazy, drawling chuckle and the distinct, monotonous tap of his fingers on the empty silver flask. Tap-tap-tap. A funeral march.

"...to the ocean? With your Boston diploma?”

“Rick…” Cat tore at her collar, drawing the air in convulsively through her nostrils. “It doesn’t smell like water, Rick. It smells like death. Wet earth and rot. As if everything that has died in this selva for a thousand years is now rising to the surface. To take us. Listen to me! The air… it’s become dead!”

Rick did not look up. His right hand mechanically clenched the rusty wrench until his knuckles turned white. Black grease squeezed out from under his nails.

“I know,” he cut off. His hoarse voice cracked into a whistling whisper. “Quiet, Cat. Hand me the bolts. Faster.”

He knelt in the red mire before the Black Maria’s flywheel. Raindrops pounded the back of his head, mingled with the coal dust on his face, and ran in muddy streams down the collar of his soaked shirt. The veins in his neck bulged, turning into taut strings. In Rick’s eyes was that same forlornness of reason that comes over a scientist when ordinary Amazonian mud has refuted his precise strength-of-materials calculations.

“If I don’t tighten the cable, the boiler will sink into the bog,” he spat out along with rainwater, furiously turning a greasy nut. His fingers slipped on the rusty iron, scraping the skin off his knuckles. “The locals said the river rises three feet an hour in a downpour. The water tears out century-old trees by the roots. Washes away embankments. Sweeps people away. The Portuguese drowned in this mire by the dozen, Cat! Hand me the wrench, damn it!”