The Number 8 (16 page)

They were greeted by a smiling lady who showed them into their room. That’s when they realized that she really did mean room, singular. It was a large room with what looked like one huge bunk bed covering one wall. There was the base level which the hosts had already covered with thin mattresses and pillows and the second tier which was only accessible by a ladder. It was unconventional for sure and it stopped the passengers dead. They looked around, trying to take in just how this might work. But it didn’t last for long.

“Shotgun top!” Carl belted out as he climbed one of the ladders to clay claim to his place.

“Same here,” Dick cried from just over Dante’s shoulder.

All Dante could think was,
Why on earth do they want to be on the top?

He slunk forward, barely able to carry his suitcase. He dropped it in one corner. At least that meant he would only have to deal with one stranger sleeping right next to him with no barrier. He dropped to his knees and then twisted onto his back. He felt like staying in the position the rest of the day, but he knew he couldn’t forgive himself if he did. He only enjoyed a few moments of this peace before someone threw their stuff down next to his. He didn’t look up, he assumed it was Asmir. He was wrong.

“Mind if I sleep here?” It was Annie.

“Sure. I don’t think we will be sleeping much…” Instantly he bit his lip. He knew how that must have sounded, so he tried to rectify his mistake.

“I mean, because there’s so many people in one room, not…the other thing.”

She blushed a little and smiled politely.

“I knew what you meant.”

Smooth, Dante, smooth
, he thought.

But at least he knew one thing. She didn’t have to place herself there. She had every single position to choose from and she chose the one space next to him. He may have put his foot in his mouth just then, but at least the silent treatment was getting to her.

He made no real effort to speak to her for the next few minutes while they unpacked what they needed. Not just because of his plan, but because he was feeling worse and worse by the second and talking would not help. But he made sure to keep an eye on her and he was sure that a couple of times she was about to say something to him, but thought better of it. This made him smile to himself, but not for long because even smiling hurt. He did know one thing: his plan was working.

Chapter 30

“Right, anyone that is going white water rafting follow Michael down to the water,” Mel said gesturing to an athletic-looking guy in his early thirties. He looked severe and not in the mood for messing about. He was fully kitted out and had a slight waddle as he made his way down to the water’s edge.

Asmir and most of the bus followed him. Only four people hung back. Mel, Dante, Camilla and Ben. Mel and Ben because they weren’t really allowed to take part in any of the activities, Dante because his hangover barely allowed him to move, and Camilla because she didn’t want to, as she put it “break me bleedin’ hip.”

Dante was upset that he couldn’t go but the weather had taken a turn and he might not regret dropping out a couple of hours from now. He didn’t know what Mel and Ben were planning but he knew Camilla was going horseback riding. He wasn’t even slightly interested in that so he had planned to hang around the lodge, maybe swim or walk if he was feeling better. But with the weather closing in he considered staying in and chatting with the locals by the bar.

He quickly realized that it was early afternoon and no one was around yet. So, he wandered off to the edge of the river. For a millisecond he considered taking a swim. Then he touched the water. It wasn’t warm enough for him to even consider taking the plunge in this state. Walking it was.

He ambled along the bank of the river until he saw a way through the dense shrubs to his right. There was a small blue rope that had been attached from the bottom to the top of the little path because it was quite steep. In his state he probably couldn’t have managed to scale the path without it. Huffing and puffing he climbed the path. At the top there were two directions. To the left and away from the lodge it wound up the valley and probably to the top of the mountain. To the right, back towards the lodge. He chose to challenge himself a little and headed to the left.

The path followed a stream for a little while before veering sharply right. There was an incline, small but noticeable. Instead of just ploughing through it he decided to focus on the other things. The enjoyable things. Like the sounds of the birds, the rush of the river, the sweet scent of freshly mown grass and the sound that he cherished most.: silence. It hadn’t been silent in days, probably since they had been drifting along watching the glowworms in the caves. Silence was the most unappreciated commodity. Total silence was rarer than any collectible and more precious than any diamond. It was nature’s language and he loved bearing witness to it.

So he sat on the ground at the top of the path just staring and listening. Staring and listening to the world go by. He sat completely still for almost an hour. It was almost like meditation except he really did not want to close his eyes. The area was a paradise. Everything was so green. So vibrant. From where he sat Dante could see for miles. He saw how the river wound down into rapids and then split into several smaller streams. He saw people on the other mountain. Small dots of different colors moving along the ridge line. Birds of prey circling above, soaring high and then tumbling down towards their target. Occasional breaks in the cloud where one ray of sunshine would break through like a golden beam fixated on one spot, illuminating it for all to see.

Dante took this all in, with every breath feeling a little bit better. That was until he felt the first raindrop. It hit him right on the ridge of the nose making him blink and flinch at the same time. Then more. It was only light, but he began the long walk back to the lodge anyway. The others would be getting back from white water rafting soon and more importantly, he was starving. He hadn’t really had an appetite all day because of his hangover but it had returned, with a vengeance.

The route back was slippery now and he had to stare at his feet all the way back to make sure he didn’t fall over. He got back to the fork in the road but this time he chose the route back towards the lodge.

He hadn’t counted on it being so overgrown. It was clear that very few people had frequented this path in recent weeks. He had to duck and dodge all manner of branches, thistles and poisonous plants. He was just in the process of moving out of the way of a particularly spiky bush when he heard voices in the distance. He couldn’t tell where they were coming from because they were muffled and the wind had joined forces with the rain to form a deafening cacophony of noise. If he had to pick a direction it would be about one mile in the direction he was heading. Dante stopped moving, listening intently to the conversation, but not a single word was audible above the rain. He couldn’t even hear how many people were there. If he had to guess, two, maybe three and they weren’t discussing the weather. It was a heated discussion. Dante guessed it was a couple of the group that had got back early. He wanted to catch up with them and ask them how everything went. He picked up his pace and shielded his eyes from the now torrential rain. Each step made a squelching sound that added to his inability to hear the conversation. He wanted to stop and listen instead of running up on them like a crazy person, but his body was telling him to get inside quickly.

He burst through a large bush at the end of the path and realized that he was virtually back at the lodge. He hadn’t seen anybody on his hobble down the path and now the voices were gone. He made a point of pivoting a full 360 degrees trying to spot whoever it was. But there was no one in sight. It wasn’t important. He could catch up with whoever it was inside anyway.

He darted to the open doors of the bar. He was drenched and as he entered a group of people on the nearest table to the door turned to look at him. They didn’t say anything or really do anything at all, just stared unapologetically. Then, as if they had got bored in that short period of time, they resumed their conversation.

Dante continued stomping through the bar. The bar staff shot him looks of displeasure as he caked their perfectly clean floor in mud. All he could do was apologetically mouth “I’m so sorry” in their direction. In the far corner of the room were the stairs that he had to ascend to get back to the room. Each stair was a battle trying not to slip in his sodden trainers and break his nose, but he managed it. Breathing hard he entered the huge room expecting to see a large number of the passengers sprawled on their beds or heading to the showers. But there was no one other than Camilla. She was lying on her bed reading a book. When she spotted him she lowered her book an inch or so to reveal some professor-like spectacles. She raised her book again before realizing what she had just seen and doing a double take.

“What the ’ell ’appened to you?” she asked, lowering her glasses in one fluid motion.

“It rained.” Simple but accurate summation of events.

“And you thought it’d be better to walk through that bar and up them stairs than them ones over there?” Her thick Devonian accent was even more evident than it had been the previous day.

Dante had no idea what she was on about, but he followed her pointed finger with his eyes. To his right was another door. It was partially open and he could see that it led directly to the lodge’s back garden. He could have walked a couple more meters past the bar door and would have avoided trampling through the bar creating havoc. Now the bar staff’s contempt made complete sense.

“Oh…” he said, unable to come up with anything better.

“Yeah.
Oh
, is right.”

He walked very slowly back to his corner, trying not to let his skin touch the edge of his soaking clothes. Luckily, he had left his towel and shower bag on top of his opened suitcase. He reached for the towel, grunting as his back made contact with the freezing material of his shirt. He took off his shoes quickly and threw them in a plastic bag. He would deal with them later. He didn’t bother to dry himself properly, instead he grabbed his towel and headed straight for the shower.

When Dante reappeared in the room, people were beginning to return. He hadn’t anticipated this and had only exited the shower in a towel. Nothing covered his top half. It didn’t bother him too much that his physique was exposed, it was more that there was no privacy in a room that housed every single person on the bus. In fact, he was proud of his physique. He wasn’t hugely muscular but he was athletically built and very toned. When he was younger he had taken Kung Fu and he’d never really lost the core strength he had built up over the years he had practiced it.

As he strode into the room he held his wash bag in one hand and his damp clothes in the other. It was a strange sight but obviously not too unappealing as a few of the girls were checking him out. He was flattered by this, especially because one of them was Annie.

“What happened to you?” she asked, eyeing his wet clothes.

“Small incident that involved a long, muddy walk and a lot of rain.”

“So that was you that trudged in all that dirt in the bar?” she asked, turning her head away to fight a smile.

“Yes, so you went through the bar too?” he said excitedly, before turning to Camilla and saying, “She went through the bar too.”

Camilla didn’t even give him the satisfaction of a response.

“No, actually I didn’t. I just heard a few of the bar staff complaining about it. They used some pretty choice language too. I won’t repeat it, too delicate for your ears.”

“Ah man. I completely forgot we could come in through the side. Mel’s gonna have my head for this.”

“Yeah, well, you should’ve come with us.”

“Of course, how did it go?” Dante asked, trying to put on a shirt. He was feeling a little self-conscious.

“It was epic, Dante. You remember that instructor?”

“The one that looked like he had just left the military yesterday?”

“Yeah, him. It was all just an act for Mel. He was so much fun. He taught us the basics and let us do what we wanted. We fell in, we jumped in, we did it all.”

“So how was the actual rafting though?” Dante asked after not hearing any real mention of being
in
the boat.

“Yeah, it was
soooo
good. Asmir was in our raft and you should have heard him. He was screaming like a soprano the whole time just like on that swing we did.”

“It’s weird, right?”

“Very. But the best part was the rapids towards the end. We had to be careful not to fall in there. The instructor told us that if we fell out and got pinned to a rock, chances are, we wouldn’t make it.”

“That’s comforting.”

“It wasn’t too bad though because it rains here a lot this time of year and when the river is high you are less likely to be pinned to a rock. But also, the river is more powerful so either way, it’s dangerous.”

“Wish I had gone now. I probably would’ve been OK.”

“At least there’s pictures. You can see us in action.”

“True.” Then Dante remembered the muffled conversation. “Hey, who was walking by the river like twenty minutes ago? I heard someone over there. It sounded pretty heated.”

“Twenty minutes ago? Whereabouts?”

“Just on the path that runs parallel to the river, about 200 meters that way,” he said pointing the direction to her.

“It couldn’t be anyone from white water rafting.”

“Why?”

“Because we only got back by bus five minutes ago.”

Chapter 31

“What did you hear?” Annie asked, breaking his thought pattern.

“I’m not really sure. An argument maybe. Or just excited chatter. It really could’ve been anything. It could've been a mothers’ meeting for all I know.”

“How many people were there?”

“Once again, I have no idea. Two, three, maybe four, I really couldn’t tell you.”

“So, to sum up; you heard an unknown number of people talking about, well, anything at all and this concerns you?”