Jurassic Park: A Novel Read Free

away, murmuring and crossing himself. “It is not normal, this smell,” he said. “It is the
hupia.
”
    Bobbie was about to order him back to work when the injured youth opened his eyes and sat straight up on the table. Manuel shrieked in terror. The injured boy moaned and twisted his head, looking left and right with wide staring eyes, and then he explosively vomited blood. He went immediately into convulsions, his body vibrating, and Bobbie grabbed for him but he shuddered off the table onto the concrete floor. He vomited again. There was blood everywhere. Ed opened the door, saying, “What the hell’s happening?” and when he saw the blood he turned away, his hand to his mouth. Bobbie was grabbing for a stick to put in the boy’s clenched jaws, but even as she did it she knew it was hopeless, and with a final spastic jerk he relaxed and lay still.
    She bent to perform mouth-to-mouth, but Manuel grabbed her shoulder fiercely, pulling her back. “No,” he said. “The
hupia
will cross over.”
    “Manuel, for God’s sake—”
    “
No.
” He stared at her fiercely. “No. You do not understand these things.”
    Bobbie looked at the body on the ground and realized that it didn’t matter; there was no possibility of resuscitating him. Manuel called for the men, who came back into the room and took the body away. Ed appeared, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, muttering, “I’m sure you did all you could,” and then she watched as the men took the body away, back to the helicopter, and it lifted thunderously up into the sky.
    “It is better,” Manuel said.
    Bobbie was thinking about the boy’s hands. They had been covered with cuts and bruises, in the characteristic pattern of defense wounds. She was quite sure he had not died in a construction accident; he had been attacked, and he had held up his hands against his attacker. “Where is this island they’ve come from?” she asked.
    “In the ocean. Perhaps a hundred, hundred and twenty miles offshore.”
    “Pretty far for a resort,” she said.
    Manuel watched the helicopter. “I hope they never come back.”
    Well, she thought, at least she had pictures. But when she turned back to the table, she saw that her camera was gone.
    The rain finally stopped later that night. Alone in the bedroom behind the clinic, Bobbie thumbed through her tattered paperback Spanish dictionary. The boy had said “raptor,” and, despite Manuel’s protests, she suspected it was a Spanish word. Sure enough, she found it in her dictionary. It meant “ravisher” or “abductor.”
    That gave her pause. The sense of the word was suspiciously close to the meaning of
hupia.
Of course she did not believe in the superstition. And no ghost had cut those hands. What had the boy been trying to tell her?
    From the next room, she heard groans. One of the village women was in the first stage of labor, and Elena Morales, the local midwife, was attending her. Bobbie went into the clinic room and gestured to Elena to step outside for a moment.
    “Elena …”
    “
Sí
, doctor?”
    “Do you know what is a raptor?”
    Elena was gray-haired and sixty, a strong woman with a practical, no-nonsense air. In the night, beneath the stars, she frowned and said, “Raptor?”
    “Yes. You know this word?”
    “
Sí.
” Elena nodded. “It means … a person who comes in the night and takes away a child.”
    “A kidnapper?”
    “Yes.”
    “A
hupia?
”
    Her whole manner changed. “Do not say this word, doctor.”
    “Why not?”
    “Do not speak of
hupia
now,” Elena said firmly, nodding herhead toward the groans of the laboring woman. “It is not wise to say this word now.”
    “But does a raptor bite and cut his victims?”
    “Bite and cut?” Elena said, puzzled. “No, doctor. Nothing like this. A raptor is a man who takes a new baby.” She seemed irritated by the conversation, impatient to end it. Elena started back toward the clinic. “I will call to you when she is