Fellow travelers at the small-town bar told Seth about the local lore surrounding Amenazas Falls. “Local tribes used the Falls as a rite of passage. Boys who walked under the falls and made it out the other side became men,” said one young woman, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
“Not to mention the virgin sacrifices there,” said another man. “Right out of a movie, dawg!” He guffawed and chugged his beer.
“Occasionally, someone falls from the platform,” added the woman’s boyfriend. His hand rested next to his beer stein, half empty.
“Why? Is it dangerous?” asked Seth.
The woman dismissed the stories, “Eh, people probably just get drunk and fall off.”
The boyfriend shrugged his shoulders. “Hard to imagine. The platform is plenty stable. The railing is chest-high and sturdy as a brick wall. The entire trail is a boardwalk with handrails through a narrow canyon. Can’t possibly get lost.”
The girlfriend leaned towards Seth and whispered, “Some people show up to hike, then won’t take a single step on the boardwalk. They say it feels strange. Locals say it’s cursed.” She sat back. “But we hiked it. The view is worth it.”
Seth yearned to see this waterfall. Plus, he had his social media followers to think about. Even the Airbnb hostess had recommended it, but her demeanor darkened as she passed on a cryptic message. “Not for singulars,” she said in broken English.
Seth arrived early at the trailhead alone. The path followed an ascending wooden walkway punctuated by stairs in steep sections. The wooden planks remained perpetually waterlogged due to the adjacent active brook tumbling down steep rocks. Rising on both sides of the boardwalk were tall cliffs trapping the walkway in a narrow canyon for the half-mile duration. Seth could not imagine getting lost.
He reached the final viewing platform, which was suspended twenty feet below the cliff’s edge. The waterfall cascaded down from the precipice above. It created a curtain of free-falling water on the side of the platform and eventually crashed two hundred feet below on broken gray rocks, and rushed into a plunge pool. His outstretched hand felt the fast, wet air. Seth peered over the railing at the wet boulders and powerful flow below. Multiple rainbows danced through the prisms from the mist. The sound roared in his ears. He was the lone visitor this morning.
Seth opened his camera app. He had studied other travel influencers’ uninspired posted pictures. Seth considered himself truly creative, and his pictures would attract thousands of followers and, maybe, a sponsor. He began capturing various pictures: the platform, the mist and rocks below, the jungle valley, and lush hills in the distance. He backtracked twenty feet down the canyon and snapped shots of the wooden walk and its accompanying stream. He returned to the platform, determined to take the one picture that would go viral.
On the platform, a young woman gazed at the waterfall. Long dark hair hung down her back. She dressed as a fellow hiker, wearing a shirt rolled up at the sleeves, beige cargo pants, and sturdy boots.
No one had passed Seth on the trail. He peered over the handrails at the hard rocks. He gazed upwards, but there were no signs of rappelling gear. Puzzled, he looked back at the newcomer, who now stared at him with dark eyes. She appeared to be a fellow young wanderer, and Seth felt an instant kinship with her. Before Seth considered the improbability of the situation further, he determined that a separate camera person could open up possibilities.
Seth approached the young woman, who stared at him with a curiosity that made him uncomfortable. He cleared his throat and shouted over the roar of the falls. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
She smiled slightly.
“This will sound weird, but will you take my picture? I want to post a pic for my followers!” he shouted.
The woman silently nodded her head.
“Thanks!” He thrust his phone at her. She grasped his outstretched phone, and Seth felt cool, dry air pass over his hand. He noticed that her hair remained dry. Seth, on the other hand, was drenched in the drizzle that hung in the air.
“I’m Seth, by the way.” She didn’t offer her name, only grinned further, and Seth concluded that she didn’t speak English. He mimed an old-fashioned camera click motion in an attempt to communicate.
Her eyes wrinkled, and she chuckled. She nodded, and he interpreted that as a good sign of understanding. But when Seth stepped back to pose, she kept the phone at her waist. He retrieved his phone from her, and he again felt a prickly, otherworldly breeze. He showed her how to hold the screen up to her face and push a button to snap a picture. She nodded. She held the phone up to her face and watched him.
Seth walked to the railing next to the waterfall and gave a thumbs-up. She hit the screen with her finger. He struck a bodybuilder’s pose before he realized his rain jacket hid his biceps, and her finger hit the screen. He modeled three more poses, each leaving him unsatisfied and unconvinced that it would break him into the world of travel influencing.
Seth pushed himself up to sit on the railing. The woman’s smile widened, and she nodded enthusiastically. She touched the screen. He raised his arms in a V, and she touched the screen. Then he had an extraordinary idea.
Seth placed his feet on top of the railing and tentatively stretched his legs to standing, holding his arms out for balance. He looked up at his new companion, who nodded vigorously. He stood, hiking boots balancing on the handrail. He could see the picture in his mind. A wall of white water behind him, a misty rainbow, and his arms lifted in a V-shape. Victorious. He struck the power pose, and the woman held the phone. Her finger paused for a minute, and her mouth moved.
“Farewell.” He heard a female whisper in his ear, in sync with the women’s lips. His eyebrows furrowed in confusion, and he quizzically locked eyes with her, expecting an explanation, but she vanished. The phone remained suspended in the air unnaturally too long. Dry, cold, tingling air smashed into the center of his chest, and he lost his balance. He toppled backwards down to the shiny, broken rocks below, who greeted his body with the expected deadly damage.
Later that day, the recovery team retrieved a man’s body from the base of Amenazas Falls. The crew knew from a history of identical deaths that the operation would last three hours and eighteen minutes. They worked efficiently, each silently wondering who the lady of the waterfall had lured to jump this time.
The crew leader picked up the victim’s phone and turned it on. The last picture taken remained on the screen. A young man looked back at his photographer, his body suspended in the moment between tumbling backwards and plunging to the earth, the face frozen in alarm. No one knew who leaked the photo. It was viewed over 2 million times in the next forty-eight hours.