‘One morning,’ Snow writes, ‘Yara went to stand in the mouth of the skull, at the point of the jaw, and there she stayed for several hours, saying nothing, motionless as in a fugue. Over a span of fifteen minutes the adherents gathered beneath her. They were perplexed at first, calling out to her and conferring among themselves, but then they grew as silent and still as their queen . . . as their god. They remained standing in a loose assembly for nearly four hours, rapt as though compelled by unheard voices. The air grew warmer – substantially warmer, it seemed to me – as if this act of devotion, of pathological immersion, were somehow increasing the spin of their constituent atoms and generating heat . . . though it’s probable my anxiety led me to misapprehend a slight elevation of air temperature. Throughout the episode I was close to panic. The gloomy space under the canopy, the rundown camp, the zombie-like connection between the adherents and their queen: it was an eerie spectacle that evoked images of Jonestown. That I had been excluded from the group, cast in the role of onlooker or tourist, someone unworthy of participating in the experience, amplified my sense of alienation. I didn’t belong here, I told myself. I was a leaf blown by chance to their door and not party to this insanity. If I were I would be as mindless and mute as they, as the creatures of the jungle (they, too, had gone silent), receiving instruction from a woman who channeled the wishes and whims of a gigantic reptilian skull.
‘When Yara turned away from the assembly, the jungle erupted into a clamor of croaks and screams, and the adherents shambled off, resuming their normal activities. Yara claimed to have no memory of what had transpired, yet she was not in the least disconcerted to learn of it, and this as much as anything convinced me that the disaster I feared was days if not hours away. I begged her to put some distance between herself and the skull, but when I told her the scene in the clearing had reminded me of Jonestown, she flew off the handle and accused me of subverting her work and otherwise distracting her.
‘That night I lay in bed wondering what to do, feeling wrecked, staring at yet not focused upon Yara’s naked back, pinpricks of actinic brilliance popping and fading before my eyes like miniature flashbulbs. And then I observed that the skin bordering her implant was inflamed, a distinct redness suffusing the colors of the surrounding tattoo. The implant itself appeared less regular in shape, its convexity more extreme, and I thought perhaps her body was rejecting it. I gently pressed my forefinger against the skin at the edge of the implant and her hips began to roll and jerk, a slow, grinding torsion, as if she were having sex with an invisible lover. I snatched my hand away, startled by her reaction, and the movements subsided. Lately she had encouraged me to touch the implant while we made love, but I had been too intent on my own pleasure to notice whether there had been a marked increase in hers . . . though it seemed then, in the unreliable archives of memory, that she displayed a measure of reaction. “Yara!” I said, and repeated her name, but she was out like a light. I pushed down on the implant with the heel of my hand – her hips thrashed as if she were on the verge of an orgasm. Once again I tried to wake her, shouting at and even shaking her, all to no avail. Horrified by her comatose state, by her erotic reflex, I was too rattled to think, yet a portion of my brain must have been functioning, a batch of neurons excited by dread must have sparked and transmitted a warning, for as the sky grayed I concluded that I needed to save myself.’
