by Brian Harmon
But Wayne did not reply. He was thinking about what Andrea said. Did Gail really think she did something to make him leave her? It wasn’t her fault. He never meant for her to think that.
“I don’t think you’re a bad person,” Olivia assured him.
“Neither do I,” added Andrea, catching the disapproving look that Olivia gave her.
“Thanks,” Wayne said. But he knew better. They didn’t see the way he made Gail cry that night. They didn’t see how he walked away from all the friends who cared about him. They didn’t even see how he treated Beverly when she caught up with them in the entrance to the sex room. He was so rough with her, so cruel. He was so angry.
“I think,” continued Olivia, determined to make her point, “that if you still feel like such a bad person after all this time, then you can’t possibly be as bad a person as you think. It seems to me like it hurt you just as much as you hurt her.”
Wayne said nothing. He could explain the situation if he wanted. He could tell them exactly what happened that day, explain how he and Claire just sort of…did it…how he never intended it, how it never even crossed his mind until he’d already done it. But he did not want them to understand. Understanding meant compassion and he did not deserve that compassion.
He was not done punishing himself yet.
Andrea cried out as her feet became bogged in the dense mud and she fell forward, submerging her body and half her face in the sludge. “Oh gross!” she cried through chattering teeth. “Oh yuck! Oh gross!”
Olivia turned and offered her hand. “Come on.”
“It’s so gross!” Andrea whined as she regained her feet and tried to fling the mud from her small fingers.
“I know.”
Andrea took several small and awkward steps and took Olivia’s offered hand, squishing the black goo into her palm. “I don’t like it down here,” she groaned, her voice distorted by her shivering.
“You’ll be fine,” Olivia promised, ignoring her dirty hand. It was nothing compared to the grossness she felt between her thighs. “We’ll go together.”
Andrea nodded. But with her very next step, she stumbled again and this time they both went down into the awful mud with identical squeals.
Chapter 27
Brandy looked at her watch and was startled to see that it was already well past six o’clock. “Shit, you guys.” She looked up at Albert, who had noticed her looking at her watch and was now checking his own. She could see that he was as surprised by the time as she was. “I’m supposed to work tonight.”
Albert looked back the way they’d come. How long would it take to find their way back to Briar Hills, he wondered. It was right around sunset that they entered the steam tunnel. That was nearly twelve hours ago. It didn’t seem possible. He tried to remember how those hours had been spent, but couldn’t quite manage it. The gray monotony of the tunnels had absorbed his sense of time, blurring the chain of events in his memory until he could no longer remember which set of walls he’d seen when or for how long.
“You do too, don’t you?”
He nodded. He was scheduled to go in at one o’clock, but at this rate he wasn’t going to make it. Even if he did, he wouldn’t be in any condition to work. His feet were killing him and he hadn’t slept a wink since the previous night, when those bizarre telephone messages kept waking him up. If he attempted to go to work, he was sure it would be the longest shift of his life.
“Will you get fired if you don’t show up?” asked Nicole.
Brandy shrugged. “I don’t know. Paula will probably throw a tantrum.” Paula was the store manager at Old Navy and an insufferable bitch. Albert was surprised that Brandy hadn’t walked out already. She wasn’t the kind of person to put up with someone like that. But she had her reasons for staying, he knew. She genuinely liked most of the other people she worked with. And she was comfortable there. It probably had more to do with not wanting to find a new job and start all over as a trainee again than anything else.
“Oh well,” Albert said. “Let them fire you.”
Brandy didn’t reply. She supposed he was right. So what if they fired her? She could get a job somewhere else. Besides, their loan money paid the rent and they had some savings to live off of for a while, too. And it wasn’t like it was already time to clock in. They could still make it home in plenty of time to call in properly.
If they made it home at all…
She could still hear the awful cry of the Caggo ringing in her head. If that thing had its way, they’d never see the light of day again.
Ahead of them, the tunnel branched off to the right and Albert chose the new passage without a thought. He doubted he needed to worry about losing his job. He had a good work record. He could think up an excuse. Things came up, after all. People had emergencies. People confused their schedules. Half the people he worked with called in all the time for one reason or another, and half of those reasons were usually stupid, in his opinion. He couldn’t see them firing him for missing just one shift.
Brandy turned to Nicole and said, “Did I tell you Emily Walshen quit?”
“No. When?”
“Week before last, I think.”
Emily had gone to school with Brandy and Nicole. She was a likeable girl, but not very outgoing.
“She wasn’t there very long, was she?”
“A few weeks.”
“Because of Paula?”
Brandy nodded. “Paula had her in tears one day, it got so bad. The next day she called in and then she just never came back.”
“She’s such a bitch.”
“I know.”
The tunnel around them was curving again, spiraling to the right. It would either dead end or spiral back out again. They’d only know when they got to the center.
In the end, Albert supposed he didn’t care about making it to his job. It wasn’t worth minimum wage to miss out on something like this. So far, what had lain beyond the fear room was more spectacular than he had ever imagined and he was not willing to give up on this adventure just to keep a job that already took up time he could be using to study or spending with his lover.
Except for the Caggo.
That shriek had been terrifying.
It hadn’t made another sound since they left the chasm, but that didn’t mean it was gone. He was sure that it was only a matter of time before it found them. And he still had no idea what they were going to do when it did.
“Does Molly still work there?” asked Nicole as she shined her light behind them again, unable to shake the thought that something horrible might come rushing out of the darkness back there at any moment.
“Yeah. But not for long, I don’t think. Seems like Paula’s trying to make her quit.”
“Why?”
Brandy shrugged. “She’s a malicious bitch.”
Nicole shook her head. That wasn’t right. Molly was a nice girl. She’d known her for years. She hated people like Paula. She couldn’t express how thankful she was not to have to work for someone like that.
She did not have a job to worry about. She was still living with her parents and they were perfectly content with paying her credit card bill (within reason, of course) as long as she continued attending college. And since both of them were well-respected instructors at the same university she attended (and held very high expectations for her), she’d chosen to avoid the added stress of trying to hold down a job while going to school.
At the center of the spiral, they found four passages. Theirs turned out to be the innermost. Albert chose the farthest of the other three and exited the spiral along the outer passage. After several widening circles, the path straightened out and then converged with two other tunnels. They turned left and soon found themselves climbing another hill.
“God, I wish we were out of here,” Brandy groaned. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”
“I’m really starting to hate this place,” Nicole agreed, glancing back again.
Albert said nothing. He was beginning to feel trapped down here. How long would it take to get back to the entrance from here? And if they tried, would they find their path blocked by the Caggo? If it had caught their scent, it might very well be tracking them through these many passageways, following the very chalk lines that were meant to lead them safely home.
How long did they have before it caught up to them?
Chapter 28
The City of the Blind towered over them. Enormous columns of stone rose into the unyielding darkness like skyscrapers in a silent, black metropolis, the countless windows dark and empty. Alternately, inverted towers plunged into the black void beneath the floor, rows upon rows of unlit windows circling the walls of each abyss. To Olivia and Andrea, the enormity of this chamber was a marvel unmatched by any before it. Small and infinitely insignificant, they both became acutely aware of the cold darkness that pressed in on them from every angle. It was ominous. The weight of their journey suddenly grew burdensome upon their shoulders and they both began to wonder what the hell they were doing here.
But Wayne refused to feel small here. He led them between the towers of stone and around the wide, round pits, limping with every step he took. His feet were filthy and raw from the many miles he’d walked without shoes and he could feel the gritty mud that had invaded his bandages, grinding like glass into the bloody wounds the hound had carved into his leg, burning and stinging his flesh.
He’d finally made it back. After all that he’d been through, he was once again walking the streets of the Sentinel Queen’s city. It felt like days since he was last here, since that freakish woman placed her disturbingly long hand upon his bare shoulder and pulled him away from Albert and Brandy and Nicole, since she locked him inside that nightmarish tunnel and set him loose into the darkest night he’d ever known. But it had only been mere hours.
The words of the old man came back to him as he walked. They rang in his head, dominating his thoughts. He had some questions for the so-called Sentinel Queen and he intended to ask them.
Olivia and Andrea followed close behind him. Both of them were caked with mud. All but the upper half of Olivia’s face was black, even her mouth having been submerged in the nasty sludge while crossing it. But Andrea was even worse. After stumbling forward several times, the only part of her body not black was a small spot high up on one of her blonde pigtails. But they were not bitter from the experience. To their credit, the two of them had giggled at the sight of each other when they finally reached the far side.
Wayne had been taken by surprise. He’d thought that chamber would be the last straw, the final insult, that they would hate the Temple of the Blind and finally despise him for allowing them to suffer all these indignities.
But they laughed.
There simply wasn’t any reason not to. There was nothing to be said. The stuff in that room was vile. It was foul. It smelled of death and decay. It was as cold as ice against their skin and as awful as the caress of a corpse. But it was the only way forward and there was no way backward but into the jaws of a ravenous hound. Besides, they’d already made up their minds to stay with Wayne, no matter what the temple threw at them. And when Olivia turned and saw Andrea’s big, blue eyes staring back at her from that disgusting black mask, all she could do was giggle like a little girl. And all Andrea found that she could do was giggle back.
Ahead of them, the fountain in which Wayne first met the Sentinel Queen emerged from the gloom.
“Is that where we’re going?” Andrea asked. It was the only structure they had seen besides the windowed towers and their inside-out counterparts.
“That’s right.”
“I feel like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz,” she said, and to this Wayne actually chuckled.
“It does sort of have that feel, doesn’t it?”
The Sentinel Queen wasn’t in the fountain. Wayne stared into the empty pool for a moment and then gazed up into the darkness that surrounded them. First, the man with no eyes had failed to appear and take their underwear into the labyrinth. And now the Sentinel Queen was missing. Were they avoiding him? Did this mean the old man was right about them?
If she wasn’t here, then how would he ever find her? She could be in any one of those thousands of windows, and on any of the countless levels that might exist above or below them. Or she might not even be within the city walls. For all he knew, she might have left the temple entirely by now. If she did not want to be found by him, then she simply would not be found.
“What now?” Andrea asked.
Wayne lifted his head and startled them by screaming into the darkness, “Where are you?”
Nothing but his own voice returned to him, bouncing off the distant walls of the city.
“Come out and talk to me!”
But again there was no answer but his own echoing voice.
“Maybe she doesn’t want to talk to you,” Andrea suggested. “You said she tried to kill you.”
Wayne nodded. It made sense. She was apparently very psychic. She would have known he was coming. She would have had plenty of time to hide from him. But that seemed wrong somehow. The Sentinel Queen hadn’t seemed like a coward. She had seemed like someone who would stand up for her actions, perhaps even to the death.
“Damn it!”
“Wait.” Olivia was moving away from them now, toward one of the stone towers they had passed on their way to the fountain.
“What is it?” Wayne asked.
“I don’t know. I think I…heard something…” She turned her head to the side, listening. “Or something.” It was very faint. And it didn’t seem to touch her ears, exactly, as if it wasn’t a sound at all. Yet she was certain it wasn’t her imagination. “I’m not sure.”
Wayne recalled the empty room beyond Wendell Gilbert’s mummified corpse, where she claimed to hear a sound like rattling chains. If she was psychic—and he was almost certain she was—then perhaps she had not heard something so much as sensed it. And the last time they were here, it was Albert and Brandy who had first “heard” the Sentinel Queen’s strangely alluring song.
Olivia felt drawn toward the tower. She began to walk, her eyes fixed on one of the window-like openings at the bottom. There was something in there, she realized, a pale figure, just visible in the darkness.
Wayne and Andrea followed her closely, illuminating the way for her. Immediately, a faint voice touched their ears and quickly began to grow clearer. Within seconds, their heads were filled with lovely singing.
But this was not exactly the same singing Wayne heard the first time he came here. This song was different. It was quieter. And it was much softer, much sadder.
The Sentinel Queen was there, kneeling with her back to them just inside the square opening. I see you made it back, she said, her voice soft and lovely inside their heads. Before her lay the blind man, as still as the air around him. I’ve been waiting for you.
Olivia and Andrea stared at these two, afraid of them, yet fascinated. Wayne had described them both, and although they thought that they had believed him, they realized now that they really had not. How could they have? They could see the woman’s impossibly long fingers as she caressed the blind man’s head, and the shallow impressions where the man’s eyes should have been. And the voice inside their heads was almost overwhelmingly surreal.
You’re in a lot of pain, the Sentinel Queen said. It was not a question.
“Yeah,” Wayne said. His voice was cold, controlled. “I am.”
Her face had been lowered, as though she were staring at the blind man, although he knew that was impossible, for she had no eyes. Now, she lifted her face and “stared” at the wall across from her. You’re very strong. Despite your injuries, you succeeded in your task.
“Did I?”
Again she lowered her head. She seemed to sigh, though she made no sound.
Rising onto her knees, she crawled backward and out of the little room. It was an awkward sort of motion, but she managed it with
surprising grace. Wayne, Olivia and Andrea stepped back to give her room and she stood up, revealing her full height as she turned to face them.
Olivia and Andrea gasped a little at the sight of her and Wayne felt a strange sensation rush through him. He remembered the way she had seduced him in the first chamber of that nightmare tunnel and was infuriated to realize that he felt the beginnings of an unwanted erection.
Despite what you were told, Wayne, I did not send you into that tunnel to die.
“Then why did you send me in there without any way to survive the Wood?”
Because I didn’t need to. Why would I be concerned with your well-being in the Wood when someone else has reason to keep you safe?
“You mean the old man.” The old man had told him as much. He said that the Sentinel Queen might have anticipated his involvement.
Older than you know, Wayne. You would be wise to remain cautious of him.
“Who is he?”
For a moment it seemed that she wouldn’t respond, but then she did, and her words struck him like a punch in the gut: He is the devil.
“The devil?” asked Andrea, surprised.
The Sentinel Queen turned her eyeless face to her and she felt a strange sort of arousal rising through her virgin body, one that made her very uncomfortable. Was that another result of what she saw in the sex room, she wondered. Yes. The Devil. Throughout your people’s history he has been perceived many times as the very demon of which so many religions warn. A personification of pure evil. The ultimate deceiver. She turned back to Wayne and added, The father of lies.
“That sounds a little hard to swallow,” said Wayne.
As hard to swallow as zombies and hounds?
Wayne had no response to this.
The old man lied to you, Wayne. He arranged all the things that happened at Gilbert House. You were merely his contingency plan, in case I interfered, which I of course did.
