by Brian Harmon
For several more minutes, he made his way toward the sound. The thin, purple line followed. He was already on his second stick of purple. If this wasn’t the end, they would soon be marking the way with red. And red was the last color in the tube. After that was gone, they were out of luck.
Albert expected the tunnel to begin sloping upward again, taking them not onto the lower level, but right back up to where they were before, forcing them to start again. But luck was with them for the moment. When the tunnel ended, they found themselves looking into the same darkness, but from a lower perspective.
The layout of the lower level was similar to that of the one above. Spaced about forty feet apart were more passages leading back into the mysterious depths of the labyrinth. They were standing on a walkway that appeared to circle around the chamber, just like the one above it, but it was much wider. Albert walked out to the edge of this walkway and stared into the immense darkness. The hounds were concentrated some distance away, perhaps crowding around whatever awaited them at the center. Between here and there were large, square platforms arranged in a vast grid and connected by frightfully narrow beams of stone. These beams stretched between each platform and over the ominously scarred floor six feet below it. It was easy to see that once the hounds caught their scent and began to crowd the spaces beneath them, the consequences of a misstep would become considerably grim.
More and more, he grew certain that this was where they needed to be. Something profoundly significant awaited them out there. It was written in the very design of the room, in the courage required to cross those treacherous stone beams and risk falling to the hounds. But there was also that strange sensation he felt as he gazed out into the darkness. This room called to him, beckoned him, but not in the same way that the meadow called out to him. This was different somehow. It was far less menacing.
Without discussing it, he stepped out onto the first beam. It wasn’t all that difficult a feat. The beam was a good twelve inches wide, plenty of room to plant both his feet and stand steady, but it was more than narrow enough to play with his head. And once the hounds found them, it would no doubt seem even narrower. It was like the difference between walking on a board that was lying on the ground and walking the same board suspended over a twenty-story drop. The fear of falling would work against them, making it harder to keep their balance. But the beam was plenty sturdy enough to hold his weight and it wasn’t a great distance between each platform. As long as they remained cautious and calm, they would be perfectly safe.
Knowing this, however, would not necessarily make it any easier.
Brandy and Nicole followed silently, their flashlights and their eyes mostly fixed on the beam at their feet as they concentrated on keeping their balance, but they frequently glanced around them at the darkened room as well, constantly expecting something to lunge out at them.
Albert wondered what the hounds were so worked up about. Was there something about the labyrinth’s exit that drew their attention? Did they feel some kind of desire to leave this dungeon of a world? He wouldn’t blame them if they did.
But then again, he still had no proof that they were actually at the exit. For all he knew, this could be their mating grounds.
Yet he couldn’t stop feeling that this place was extremely significant.
“What’s even the point of this?” Brandy asked, practically shouting into his ear to be heard. “Why build something like this?”
Albert shrugged. “Maybe just to unnerve us,” he suggested. “One last attempt to make us turn back.”
“You’d think they’d give up on that by now.”
“They are persistent.”
They reached the first platform and crossed it to the next stone beam. As they made their way across to the second platform, a hound emerged from the darkness, charging toward them, snarling and snapping its jaws, its two tails slashing violently back and forth. It passed harmlessly beneath their feet, and yet each of them had frozen at the sight, half-sure that the fragile stone walkway on which they stood would suddenly crumble and drop them screaming to a bloody death. But the hound merely skidded to a halt a few yards away and whipped itself around, sniffing at the air in confusion.
As a second hound appeared from the same direction as the first, Albert stood watching them for a moment. He was still in awe of them. They were such fascinating creatures. Not even in movies had he ever seen anything to rival them. Their features were so different from that of any other animal that they could have been utterly alien. And in a way, he supposed they were.
Satisfied that they were safely above the reach of the hounds, Nicole crept forward and grasped Brandy’s arm. She didn’t like these things at all. They couldn’t possibly be real, could they? At the very least they could not be natural. Had somebody actually bred these things? Where else could creatures like these have come from?
There were four of them now, crowding together and snarling at each other, and a fifth was creeping toward them from the far right, a smaller one. It moved slowly, noticeably cautious of the larger members of its pack, but every bit as lethal if it could only reach its prey.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Nicole said, raising her voice to a yell to be heard over all the noise beneath them.
“I’ll bet no one has,” Albert returned. Then, without raising his voice enough to be heard, he added, “No one alive.” He remembered the bone fragments he’d found in the room with the wounded sentinels the previous year, way back near the very beginning of all this. The Sentinel Queen said that people like Beverly Bridger and Wendell Gilbert had been drawn to the temple for centuries, people sensitive to psychic energies and lured by whatever called out to them from the far side of this labyrinth. Even though they could not possibly have understood what they were being drawn to, they came, and they all died for their trouble. Those bones were all that remained of at least one group of unfortunate adventurers. He shivered to think what they must have suffered when they discovered these monstrosities waiting for them in the temple’s dark tunnels.
Brandy had begun to wish that she had never seen these things in the first place. They were terrifying, considerably worse than anything she had ever imagined. She hated to think what would happen if all these things ever found a way out of the labyrinth and back to Briar Hills. The carnage would be unthinkable.
Albert lifted his light and probed the darkness ahead of them. They were still not close enough to see what stood at the center of the chamber, but he was certain there was something. He could almost imagine that he saw a shadow in the blackness, a giant mass of some sort.
Nudged by Brandy, he forced his attention forward again and continued across the beam and over the hounds to the next platform and then on to the next beam. Together, the three of them made their way deeper into the chamber, marveling at the sheer scale of it. And just when it seemed that the room could not possibly be so big, that they must have made some kind of mistake, something materialized from the gloom.
At first, Albert thought it was the far wall, that he had crossed all the way to the other side without finding anything, but it was not the far wall. It was some kind of enormous structure.
The hounds were extremely agitated now. More and more rushed out of the darkness, snarling and brandishing their razor-sharp scales at each other. Albert lost count, but there were at least a dozen of them darting around the platforms and squabbling among themselves. And they were growing increasingly violent.
As he watched, two of the largest ones turned on each other and launched into a vicious brawl that carried them both back out into the darkness beyond his sight.
There were so many of them. What were they all doing here? Why were they drawn to this chamber of all places? It did not smell foul in here, neither of animal waste nor of the rotting carcasses of their prey. There was also no apparent water source.
A shape on the floor caught his attention and he held his flashlight on it for a few seconds before realizing that i
t was a dead hound, freshly killed and still bleeding. Several others were swarming over the carcass, tearing it apart, devouring it.
It was disturbingly easy to imagine one of their bodies in the unfortunate beast’s place.
With a shudder, Albert tore his eyes from the ghastly scene below and shined his light up at the structure before them. The hounds were concentrated there. More deadly scuffles broke out beneath them. A spray of blood spurted upward as two of the creatures collided and the sight of the crimson spray, caught for a moment in his flashlight’s beam, was chillingly surreal.
Several more carcasses littered the floor beneath the beams now. Each one was being slowly picked apart, cannibalized by their scavenging pack mates.
This was not typical behavior for these beasts. If it was, they would have killed themselves out long ago. And the lack of any smell of decay told him that the only carcasses in here were still very fresh. Something had them seriously worked up. Given that they didn’t seem to notice the three intruders making their way toward the middle of the room until they were almost on top of them, he doubted it was them.
Something had arrived here before them, Albert realized, something that almost certainly crossed these same platforms on its way to the same mysterious structure. He stared up at it. Anything could be up there, unseen, watching them.
He stepped onto the final platform and scanned the area in front of him with his light. One last stone beam waited to be crossed, beyond which was not a square platform, like the one on which he was standing, but a single, large segment of floor that stretched beyond his sight in both directions. Six feet beyond the end of the stone beam was a vertical rise, six feet tall, the same as the distance between them and the floor of the hounds’ territory. Above that was another six-foot run leading to another six-foot rise and so on into the darkness, like giant steps.
Though he could not see the whole structure, it resembled an enormous pyramid standing in the middle of the room. It appeared that they would have to climb up each level to reach the top.
And while they were climbing, what manner of monster might descend on them?
He was increasingly certain that this was where they were supposed to be, but he was also increasingly certain that they were not alone down here.
“Hey!” Nicole cried suddenly. “What’s that?”
Albert’s light slashed the darkness all around him, expecting to see a terrifying form lunging from the shadows. “Where?”
“Up there!”
He turned and saw that she was looking back toward the outer corner of the room. There, in the darkness, one of the upper passageways was glowing.
“The Caggo?” asked Brandy.
Nicole stared up at the illuminated passageway. It was growing brighter. “With a light?”
“No,” Albert replied. He turned and hurried back across the beams, away from the suspicious structure and toward that light. He could feel the skin prickling at the back of his neck. Nicole was correct. It wasn’t the Caggo. It wasn’t the Keeper or the Sentinel Queen or her blind son. It was somebody with a flashlight. And although it seemed impossible, only one living person even knew that they were down here.
Chapter 45
Wayne stepped into the enormous chamber and stared down at the three lights that were shining in the vast sea of darkness below. Albert, Brandy and Nicole. For a moment he couldn’t believe that he’d actually caught up. It had been so long a journey.
“We found them!” Olivia exclaimed.
He realized suddenly that he was never completely sure that he’d actually be able to catch up. Hours behind them, he was never quite able to fully quash the thought that they might already be gone from the labyrinth and beyond his reach somehow.
They were moving across the bottom of the chamber, toward the perimeter of the room. He could see the square platforms and the narrow beams they crossed in the glow of their flashlights and wondered what this place was.
“Albert?” he called as they reached the walkway that circled the room and began running toward him.
“Wayne?” It was difficult to hear over the roar of those damned hounds, but it was definitely Albert’s voice.
“Oh my God!” Nicole’s voice now, bright, thrilled. “You came back!”
“Are you guys all right?” Wayne shouted down at them.
“We’re fine,” Albert replied, but his flashlight darted toward the middle of the chamber for a moment, as if he expected something to be there. “You?”
Wayne looked down at his bandaged leg and arms. Where would he even begin? “I’m a little worse for the wear, but I’m okay.”
“Who’s with you?” asked Brandy as she stopped and squinted up at his light. “Did you find Olivia?”
“I did. She’s right here.”
“I’m fine,” Olivia called down. “Thanks to Wayne.”
“Thank God! We thought we lost you!”
Wayne was relieved to find them all safe. But he still hadn’t caught up with them. Not yet. He turned and searched the ledge on which he was standing. There were no steps within view. “How do we get down there?”
“Follow the purple line,” Albert instructed. “Should be to your left. We’ll meet you in the middle.”
He turned and shined his light toward the wall to his left. There were not one, but two purple lines. On the other side of the passage was only one and he realized that they must have circled the room once before exiting. It was little things like that, he realized, that were the only reason he was ever able to catch up.
“Hurry,” Albert said, and there was something in his voice that Wayne didn’t like. Something was wrong.
“Come on,” he said, turning away from the chamber.
The three of them hurried into the next passage, chasing the chalk line for the last time.
Below them, Albert, Brandy and Nicole hurried back into the dark corridors of the labyrinth to meet them.
Chapter 46
“I thought I’d never catch you guys,” Wayne said as the two groups approached each other in the narrow passage.
“We didn’t even know you were trying,” Albert replied.
“We would’ve walked slower if we’d known,” offered Nicole.
As they drew close enough to see more of each other than the blinding glare of their flashlights, Wayne realized that Brandy and Nicole were covering themselves, as though the sight of other people in the labyrinth had suddenly rekindled their modesty. The last time he saw them, they stood before him unflinchingly, as if standing naked in front of him was something they’d done every day of their lives, as natural as breathing. When he looked back at Olivia and Andrea he saw that they were doing the same and nearly laughed. He supposed he couldn’t blame them. If he hadn’t been through so much hell tonight, he might have done the same thing. But his nudity was the last thing he cared about right now.
“Glasses,” Albert observed. “That must’ve made the emotion rooms easier.”
“A little,” Wayne admitted. “But I’m not quite as blind as your girlfriend.”
“Well we can’t all achieve perfection,” quipped Brandy as she pressed her exposed body against Albert’s back and took her first good look at Wayne from over his shoulder. “My god…” she sighed. “What happened to you?”
“I told you I was a little worse for the wear.”
“‘Worse for the wear’? You look like you escaped from an intensive care unit.” She was staring at the bandages on his arms and leg. Both were stained black with dirt and blood. After a moment, her eyes turned to Olivia and she saw the bandages that were beginning to come loose from her shoulder and arm. “And you too?”
“We had a little trouble getting out of the Wood,” Wayne explained.
“I’m glad you’re in one piece,” Nicole said. Then she added, “You are still in one piece, aren’t you? You’re not, like, holding your arm on with duct tape or anything, are you?”
Wayne chuckled. “No, I’m definitely still in o
ne piece.” Then he thought of the bite mark on his arm and the butchered flesh of his leg and added, “Well, actually, I might be missing a few little pieces here and there. But I’m pretty sure I’ve still got everything I need.”
“What the fuck happened to you?” blurted Brandy.
“Long story,” Wayne replied. He looked from Albert to Brandy to Nicole. “You guys don’t look like you’ve taken a scratch.”
“Well our feet are a little raw,” Albert replied, “but otherwise we’re fine.”
“I sympathize.”
Finally shrugging off her freshly renewed modesty, Nicole stepped around Albert and Brandy and hugged Wayne fiercely. “I’m just glad we found you,” she told him. “We were worried.” She turned her eyes to Olivia next. “And I really thought we’d lost you.”
Olivia smiled shyly. “I’m a trooper.”
“I’ll say,” Nicole laughed. “Seriously, what happened to you guys?”
“Which part?” Wayne asked. “The three-story corpse monster, the horde of zombies or the hound that almost took my leg off?”
“Jesus Christ!” Albert exclaimed.
“Corpse monster?” Brandy asked.
“Zombies?” stammered Nicole.
Olivia nodded. “He’s so not joking.”
“Okay, that’s not fair!” Albert exclaimed. “You got to fight zombies? We’ve just been walking in circles all night.”
Wayne shook his head and laughed.
It was now that Albert turned his light on the other girl, the one who had been standing behind Wayne as if hiding from them. For a moment he just stared at her, surprised. “Andrea?”
Andrea smiled shyly and lifted her hand in a small, shy wave that didn’t reveal her covered breasts.
“You’re the one who gave me the envelope.”
She nodded and bit her lip.
“She was waiting for us when we got out of Gilbert House,” Wayne explained. “Said a mysterious voice told her to wait for us and that she had to come along.”
