The Green Hollow

In the late 1800s, a small group of explorers set out to chart an unmarked Amazon tributary. They expected nothing more than dense jungle and the usual hardships of river travel. But as they pressed deeper, the world grew quieter. Birds vanished; the air turned unexpectedly cold. Then they found tracks—prints far larger than any animal they knew. By the time they realized what kind of valley they were entering, something was already watching them.

I first heard of the valley from a trader in Bame, a man with a ruined ear and a habit of glancing over his shoulder. He spoke of a place upriver where the ground rose like a wall and the air stayed cool even at noon—the Green Hollow. He described tracks: three long toes, a heel like a boat prow, and a claw mark dragged through the mud. I was 27 then, hired as a clerk and rifleman for Captain Alvaro Da, a Portuguese officer tasked with charting tributaries and locating stands of rubber. Our party was modest: eight men, two canoes, dried food for a month, trade goods, and the captain’s precious bundle of maps.

Our guide was Iua, a quiet man from the lower Shingu, who agreed to join us for a musket, a salt block, and the promise we’d respect the boundaries his elders called forbidden. Captain Alvaro was proud, stern, and meticulous. Alongside him traveled Brother Tomas, a Dominican missionary with a calm, steady voice. There were two rubber men, Ruie and Matias, loud and lean, a cartographer named Lo with ink-stained hands and a persistent cough, Bento the cook and boatman who claimed he could smell storms before they formed, and myself—Jao Ferrer, keeper of the daybook.

We departed at first light, paddling through thick forest and humid air. The river was dropping, sandbars appeared, and the banks were soft. We paddled in shifts, rested in the shade at midday, and at night, we pulled the canoes onto a beach, hung hammocks, and built small fires. The captain pushed for speed but understood that exhausted men travel nowhere.

For a week, the journey was uneventful: mosquitoes thick enough to make breathing hard, ants that found every crumb, a black cayman drifting near our camp. We traded with two villages. In one, the elder whispered to Iua about the hollow. Later, Iua told me, “Old path, bad place, not for walking.” When pressed, he only said, “River there quiet, forest there quiet, then loud.”

On the ninth day, we turned into a narrow tributary marked on the captain’s map. The water moved slow, trees leaned overhead, and the river became a tunnel of shade. Birds were few, insect sounds faded, and Bento said the air felt wrong. We made good time in the cool, but the river split into dead ends and side channels. Iua guided us by signs I couldn’t see—a bend, foam, a lightning-struck tree. His shoulders stayed tense.

That afternoon, Lo pointed out tracks on the muddy bank. Each print was longer than my forearm, deep, with three wide toes. No claw marks like a jaguar, no drag like a man. The stride was impossibly long. Ruie joked about men on stilts, but no one laughed. Brother Tomas examined the tracks. “Not a tapir,” he said. “Not a man.” Iua said, “We do not hunt it.” Captain Alvaro was pleased. “There are beasts here no scholar has named. That is why we came.”

We camped early on raised ground, but the place felt exposed. No frogs called after sundown. The river was silent. The air pressed in. After dinner, Matias prayed for safe passage. Ruy mocked him, but his voice lacked spirit. Lo didn’t draw. Bento kept checking the river. The captain wrote by lantern light.

Near midnight, I woke to a low sound across the river—a dull, waterlogged bellow, then a rush through brush. Then silence. In the morning, we found a tree on the edge of camp pushed half over, roots torn, bark scored with long, uneven lines. Storm, the captain said. But the sky was bright and clear.

We pressed on. The tributary narrowed; water became shallow enough to show stones. The forest changed: undergrowth thinned, the ground rose, and unfamiliar trees stood in planted ranks. The air cooled. Iua touched his necklace and scanned the forest. By midday, the river widened into a still pool, the far bank a wall of green. The water smelled metallic and old.

“We are near the valley,” the captain said. Iua stayed in the canoe. “Not valley,” he said. “Mouth.” “Mouth of what?” the captain asked. “Big one,” Iua replied. We unloaded in silence.

We climbed the bank, following disturbed leaf litter and heavy tracks. The slope rose gently, roots crossing our path. We walked single file, carrying rifles, food, rope, instruments, and canvas. Bento stayed with the canoes. The captain chose his team: himself, me, Lo, Ruie, Matias, Brother Tomas, and finally Iua, who agreed with a clenched jaw. “We walk fast,” he said. “We do not sleep inside.”

As we climbed, the smell of rot faded, replaced by a dry, stony scent. The forest grew quieter. Our boots made soft sounds. We reached a shelf where the ground leveled and dipped into a broad hollow. Sunlight filtered through, but the air was dull, as if the sky was farther away than it should be. Waist-high ferns covered the ground. In the center stood a dark, round pool.

I stopped without meaning to. Ruy bumped into me. The echo of his voice came back thin and crooked. “There,” the captain said quietly. “This is worth the march.” Lo caught his arm. “Look at the ground,” he said. “It’s all tracks.”

Once I saw them, I couldn’t stop seeing them. The ferns were trampled, prints everywhere—deep, overlapping, circling the hollow, disappearing into the trees. “Many,” murmured Lo, sweat running down his face. “Not one,” Matias spat. “So they come to drink.” He gripped his musket tight.

Brother Tomas knelt by an impression, tracing the edge. “No one will believe this in Lisbon,” he said. “They’ll say it’s a trick.” “They’ll believe my maps,” Lo said. “If I live to draw it.” The captain turned to me. “Write exactly what you see,” he said. “No more, no less.”

We skirted the edge of the hollow, following tracks that led between stone outcrops. The ground showed a steady line of disturbed earth and snapped branches at chest height. “It has a lair,” Ruie whispered. “Everything that eats has a lair.”

Brother Tomas asked Iua, “What do your people call this place?” “Old mothers say there’s a path where the ground remembers the time before. Sometimes it opens, sometimes it closes. When it opens, big ones walk. When it closes, big ones sleep and dream.” “Are they animals or spirits?” “If they are spirits, they leave heavy feet.”

The path led downward. The air cooled further, beads of water forming on moss. I felt a tightness in my chest—a childhood fear of being lost. We found a carcass near a ridge, half-hidden under fronds. It had been a capybara, now half its torso missing, ribs crushed inward, spine bent. Flies rose in a dull cloud. “Jaw too wide,” Brother Tomas murmured. “No cat does that.” Lo noted its placement and drag marks. “Do not touch it,” he said.

The captain insisted we go further. “We need more than dead animals and holes in the ground.” Iua warned, “Big ones do not care about paper.” The captain weighed his pride, then pressed on. “We keep to the trees. We remain quiet. If there is danger, we turn at once.”

As we neared the next rise, the light dimmed, the air cooled to the point that our breath showed in faint white puffs—impossible for the region and season. No one spoke of it, but we all saw it. We reached the top of the rise. A deep, cracking sound echoed ahead. Leaves shook. We froze.

“Stay low,” the captain whispered. “No sudden moves. We see first. We do not fire unless there is no other choice.” We moved into denser cover, advancing toward the source of the noise. Beyond the last line of trunks, the land fell into another depression. In the clearing, ferns were flattened in wide loops. At the far side, half in shadow, something moved.

It stepped forward. I had seen drawings in books of creatures that no longer lived—dinosaurs. This thing was like those pictures made real: two powerful legs, broad feet with three toes, thick brown-green skin, a long balancing tail, a torso higher than a man, a head with a snout full of conical teeth, and small, forward-set eyes. It exhaled, vapor drifting in the chilled air. It sniffed the ground, exposed a half-eaten carcass, and ate.

Its gaze swept the clearing, slow and deliberate. Then it looked toward our line of trees. I felt its attention like a rope around my chest, but it didn’t focus on us. It listened. A distant thud echoed—Bento shifting a canoe below. The creature turned toward the river, grunted, tail stiffening.

Then a second sound—a branch cracked to our left. Something else moved in the trees near us. Iua stiffened, his hand near his knife. The creature in the clearing swung its head toward the new noise, made a low sound, muscles bunching. “More,” Matias mouthed. I realized there could be more than one. The tracks, the paths, the scale—all pointed to it.

Leaves shook twenty paces away. Something large moved parallel to us, advancing. The creature in the clearing growled, defensive, posture tight. The brush parted—a bulk of dark skin glimpsed, then vanished. The captain whispered, “Back, quiet, slow.” We retreated inch by inch. Each movement felt like a shout. Ruy’s boot slipped, but the creatures didn’t notice. We withdrew until the shapes were faint through the trunks, then stumbled down the path.

When we reached the riverbank, the air warmed, normal forest sounds returned. Bento waited at the canoes. He saw our faces and said, “We leave now.” “Yes,” the captain replied, his voice wavering. We loaded fast, hands shaking. Only when the river carried us away did anyone speak.

“What did you see?” Bento asked. “There are beasts in that valley,” the captain said. “Two, at least. Large enough to topple trees. They walk on two legs. They kill anything they find. They guard something there. We cannot return.” Iua spoke next: “We leave this river. Not tomorrow. Now.” The captain nodded.

As the current took us around a bend, I looked back. The forest looked ordinary, but I felt the creatures behind the trees, walking paths older than our maps. I told myself not to think about how many might live in that valley, if two enormous shapes could cross paths without surprise. But I did think of it.

We paddled hard until the river widened and the sun dipped low. The captain ordered we continue even after dusk. No one slept easily that night, or for many nights after. The fear clung to us. Whenever I glanced upstream, I expected to see trees bending or water rising.

Later, at a village, the elders saw our faces and said, “You crossed the wrong place. Not all who cross return.” “Old things wake when the door opens. They walk until the door closes again.” “What door?” “The one between this time and another. The forest has many layers. When a thin place tears, those who once lived here walk again until it heals.”

We agreed not to reveal the hollow’s location. “We are preventing a disaster,” the captain said. “If others go there with more men, more weapons, more ambition, they may not return. Or worse, they may bring something back.” That chilled me.

Back in Bame, the world felt solid, unchanged. But none of us were the same. I tried to anchor myself in the ordinary world, but the memory of the hollow lingered. In the weeks that followed, the expedition dissolved. Rui and Matias took a job upriver. Bento stayed as a boatman. Lo was hospitalized for fever. The captain filed a trimmed report—unusual tracks, unstable valley, signs of predatory wildlife beyond expected size. Nothing more.

Sometimes, I woke from dreams of flattened ferns and deep grunts. The fear softened into memory. Months passed. New expeditions formed. Merchants told stories of strange things upriver, but none mentioned cold air or upright beasts.

Then one evening, as I locked the warehouse, a cool breeze swept down from upriver, colder than it should have been. Gooseflesh rose. The city moved on, unaware. I stood still, listening. The breeze faded, warmth returned. But for a moment, the air had felt wrong. I remembered the hollow, the elders’ words: “Old things wake when the door opens.” And I wondered if the door ever fully closed.