Secret of the Labyrinth (The Temple of the Blind #5)

by Brian Harmon

  Albert stared down into the darkness that had just swallowed his girlfriend. He could hear the hounds as they swarmed the place where she landed. It was too easy to imagine the grizzly scene the darkness hid. He had tried to scream, but no sound would come. His voice seemed to have left him forever.

  “Come on!” Olivia was tugging at Nicole’s arm, urging her up the tower steps. Above them, Andrea had already circled around the tower once. “We need you!”

  Nicole turned. She wanted to help. She wanted to go down and see if there was anything she could do, but she could do nothing down there. Olivia was right. They needed to get to the top of the tower. They were all going to die if they couldn’t find the way out. Feeling as if she had been drugged, she turned and continued up the steps.

  Albert heard the Caggo’s stubby feet slap hard onto the stone. It had leapt down to the level just above him. He turned toward it, numb with shock, and found himself looking right into the creature’s repulsive face.

  It was now that Albert realized that the Caggo was not a mere beast like the hounds or even the monster in Gilbert House. It was much more than that. The Caggo was a reasoning creature, far more intelligent than a mere predator. It had the chance to grab him and toss him to the hounds just as it had done to poor Brandy, but it didn’t. It didn’t attack him at all. It was bent over, with its fat hands planted on its knees, intentionally positioning itself right in his face, smelling him.

  The creature would kill him. That was definitely on its list of things to do, but not yet. First, it had to see what its prey was feeling. It had to see what sort of anguish it had inflicted. It was actually taking pleasure in his pain.

  Albert stared into the thing’s ugly face for a moment, his anger growing. The thing was actually arrogant, he realized. It actually believed that they had no chance. That was why it never attacked them inside the labyrinth. That was why it let them begin climbing the tower before showing itself, why it was not at all concerned about Andrea, Nicole and Olivia reaching the top. It never believed for a moment that they had any chance of escaping. It intended to take its time and enjoy every second of their agony.

  The very idea enraged him.

  His flashlight was lying at his feet where he dropped it when he realized that Brandy was in trouble. Almost without thinking, he bent and picked it up. Then he smashed the handle of it into the Caggo’s flat nose with all his strength.

  The beast staggered backward, its huge paws plastered to its bleeding face.

  “THERE!” Albert screamed at it. He heaved himself up to the next level and slammed the flashlight down onto its exposed toes, wrenching from it a second howl of pain.

  Now Wayne was on his feet, too. Circling around the monster, he snatched up Brandy’s flashlight from the floor of the next tier. Holding it in both of his fists, he slammed it as hard as he could between the monster’s shoulder blades. When it turned to face this new attacker, Wayne thrust his knee up under the beast’s flabby belly and into the hot flesh of its huge scrotum. “HOW DOES THAT FEEL, FUCKER?”

  As the Caggo took two staggering steps backward, still howling, its great paws dropping from its bloody face to its wounded groin, Albert brought the flashlight down again, this time onto the back of the Caggo’s fat neck.

  The monster shrieked again and threw both its paws out, catching Wayne in his chest and throat, hurling him backward. Again, he fell over the ledge and landed hard on the floor, taking the brunt of the fall on his right shoulder and knocking off his glasses. Brandy’s flashlight left his hand and clattered all the way to the bottom, vanishing forever into the darkness just as his own had done…and just as poor Brandy herself had done.

  The Caggo then turned to Albert, only to take another blow to the face from the flashlight. It staggered back, still howling.

  “BASTARD!” he screamed. A red rage had risen in him. It was like nothing he had ever felt before, like some powerful energy that threatened to burst from his skin like air from an over-inflated balloon. His mind was empty of all other emotions. All he wanted was to cause pain to this thing that had torn apart his life.

  High above them, Nicole was racing up the steps, forcing back the tears in her eyes. Poor Brandy. She wanted so badly to go back down, to find where she landed, to see if she could possibly still be with them, but she could not. She had to keep going, had to reach the top of the tower. It was the only thing to do. It was the only way out.

  Up and up she climbed, with Olivia right behind her, trying hard not to notice how high they were. There was no rail, and a terrifying drop onto bone-shattering stone lay mere inches from her feet. A single misstep and she would plunge to her death. Sickened by the thought, she lifted her face upward instead and wondered how far ahead of them Andrea was.

  She didn’t wonder for long. She turned the corner and spotted her. She was standing in a doorway at the top of the steps, shouting for them to hurry.

  They were almost there.

  Albert swung the flashlight again. It had seemed that he was winning, that he might even kill this horrible creature, but this time the Caggo ducked the flashlight and grabbed him. Just as it had done with Brandy, it lifted him up over its head and then hurled him off the tower and out into the darkness.

  For a moment, he was suspended in the air, his body slowly turning in a constant summersault. He had time to realize what was happening, more than enough time to panic, but no time to prevent the tragedy he knew was fast approaching. He struck one of the stone beams on his right side, the corner of the stone burying into the meat of his right arm just below the shoulder. The pain was sudden and excruciating, like a bolt of lightning along his nervous system. He heard the hollow crack as the bone snapped. Then he struck the floor and landed squarely atop the box inside his backpack.

  The entire world became a sea of blinding pain.

  High above, the doorway through which Andrea had vanished led to another set of steps leading farther up within the tower. Nicole and Olivia hurried up them, both of them panting, their legs burning.

  Andrea was waiting for them inside a small room at the top of the stairs, staring at a large, stone box in the middle of the floor.

  “What do you make of it?” Andrea asked.

  Nicole shook her head, still trying to catch her breath. The sides of the box were smooth stone. The top was a sort of funnel, dipping down into it. From the center of this funnel rose a large, stone spike, just like the ones that had killed Beverly Bridger. “I don’t know,” she replied. She was hardly able to think. She could not get the image of her best friend falling into that darkness out of her head. “What does it mean?”

  “It looks like some kind of sacrificial altar,” Olivia observed between labored breaths. “Like something you’re supposed to spear a sheep on…to catch its blood or something.”

  Nicole shivered. “Let’s not go with that idea,” she said. “We don’t have any sheep.” But she could not take her eyes off the stone spike. It reminded her too much of what happened to Beverly.

  Albert tried to sit up, but his arm screamed at him. Broken, he thought, remembering that sick snapping noise he’d heard when he hit the platform, and a wave of vertigo washed over him. He had to get up. He was down with the hounds. If he didn’t get up he would be shredded like leftovers in a garbage disposal.

  No, he thought. Not yet.

  He wasn’t sure why it was so important for him to get up. What did it matter, now that Brandy was gone?

  But he couldn’t surrender just yet. Perhaps later, but not yet. Summoning all his strength and will, he rolled onto his left side and then somehow rose to his feet, clutching at his arm. His whole body was trembling now. The edge of the beam had not merely broken his arm but split the flesh, hacking him open like the blade of a dull axe. Blood was running down his arm and dripping from his fingertips.

  His flashlight had left his hand at some point during his fall and must have come to rest atop the ledge behind him, because he found that he could see a l
ittle. He was standing with his back against the tower’s base, blinking back tears of pain, with no sign of the hounds, though he could still hear them somewhere close by.

  Now what? He couldn’t climb back onto the tower in this condition.

  Then the Caggo was there. It landed on the platform in front of him and crouched there. He could just see it in the dim light. Though eyeless, it seemed to be glaring at him. A low growl rolled from its throat. It was angry now. It was going to make him pay for causing it such pain.

  Albert had no prayer now. With his arm broken, he was as good as dead to this monster. He backed away from it, sliding along the wall of the tower. Nearby, the noises of the hounds were growing louder. They were coming his way and wasting no time. Perhaps they had smelled the blood.

  “Come on then,” he growled at the beast.

  As if answering his challenge, the Caggo jumped down into the pit with him and stalked closer. There was blood trickling from its nose and Albert had that much satisfaction at least. Perhaps it would get infected and the bastard would die down here. Not that it would do him any good now, but it was something to wish on this vile creature, and about as much as he had the power to do in his condition.

  It took a moment for Albert to register what happened next. Perhaps it was the irony that was too much for his mind to handle, or perhaps the sheer stupidity of the beast, the way its arrogance and rage became its fatal undoing.

  Its right leg vanished into a violent spray of blood. It howled, an awful, agonizing sound, and a hound appeared from the crimson starburst, gnashing its jaws and its razor-lined hide. Snarling, it skidded to a stop and then twisted around for another pass. A second hound appeared from the side, plowing through the monster’s other leg while it still teetered from the loss of its first.

  With a massive shriek, the Caggo fell onto the hounds as two more arrived, shredding the helpless creature in a spray of crimson gore. Hot blood splattered across Albert’s legs and belly, even onto his face.

  Albert turned away from the bloodbath that was taking place in front of him and tried to climb up onto the ledge even as he continued to feel hot, thick droplets of the Caggo’s blood fall upon his shoulders like nightmarish rain. He had a brief moment of opportunity while the hounds were distracted by their prey, a mere second or two to climb out of their reach before they caught his scent and came for him as well…but it was no good. With his good arm broken, he could hardly lift his feet off the ground.

  Behind him, the gnashing of the hounds grew closer and he turned to see two of them converging on him. He closed his eyes against the sight and braced himself for cold, bloody death.

  But this was not Albert’s time to die.

  Suddenly, his backpack was seized and he was dragged up and out of reach of the nasty creatures a bare heartbeat before they slammed against the stone base of the tower below him.

  “I don’t get it,” Nicole said. She was growing frantic. With no way of knowing that the Caggo was dead, she was still trying to find the meaning of this odd box. She could no longer hear Albert or Wayne. Only another of those horrible screams from the Caggo. Please, God, she thought, don’t let it kill them. Please.

  The box did not open and the spike did not move. The funnel was too narrow for any of them to reach into. There was nothing else up here that could possibly mean anything. The room was otherwise completely empty. In fact, it was barely a room at all. It was more like the frame of a room. A large, window-like opening took up most of each wall, staring out at the same utter darkness that had enveloped them since they first descended beneath the city so many hours before. There was no ceiling and nowhere to go but back the way they came. The solution could be nothing else but this strangely ominous stone box.

  “‘Atop the tower, the secret is blood,’” Andrea said, repeating the words the voice had spoken to her in the forest.

  Nicole stared at the spike, considering what Olivia had said about it looking like a sacrificial altar.

  Albert lay upon the cold stone for a moment, looking up at Wayne, unable to believe that he was still alive.

  “Jesus Christ,” Wayne said, staring at the carnage that was taking place nearby. His voice was too low to be heard over the racket of the hounds, but Albert read the words on his lips.

  Albert nodded and then tried to sit up. He was extremely lucky to be alive. Had Wayne taken just one more second getting to him, the hounds would have turned him to pulp.

  “Careful!” Wayne shouted. “My God… That has to hurt like hell.”

  “It does.” He looked up at Wayne, his eyes pitiful, “Brandy…”

  Wayne shook his head. “I don’t know. She’s over there.” He shined the remaining flashlight out over the swarming hounds. Brandy was lying on one of the stone platforms, one leg dangling over the edge, just inches above their reach.

  Albert scrambled to his feet, ignoring the intense pain from his arm, and ran across the stone beam to her side.

  She had not fallen to the hounds. Thank God for that. But she was so still, so motionless. She’d fallen a long way. He knelt beside her and lifted her head into his good arm. “Brandy?” His eyes were already filling with tears. “Brandy? Baby?”

  She did not respond. Her glasses had not fallen off, but were askew. With his broken arm, he reached out, wincing terribly at the pain, and shakily straightened them for her.

  He lifted her higher, cradling her. He did not want to check for a pulse. He did not want to feel the emptiness in her veins. He did not want to feel her poor body without life in it. “Brandy?” he said again. His voice was failing him, so he pressed his lips to her ear. “Wake up, Baby. We have to go.”

  Wayne stood on the other side of the beam. He could not stand to watch. It was heartbreaking. He turned his eyes down, studying the flashlight. It was Albert’s, the one he dropped when the Caggo grabbed him. It was the only one the three of them had been carrying that survived.

  “Please,” Albert begged. “Please…”

  Nicole closed her eyes. She thought about Albert. Albert was the clever one, the mystery solver. He would know what to do. And he would have the courage to do whatever it was. But Albert wasn’t here. Now it was her turn. She’d have to think like him. In the darkness behind her eyelids she could still see her best friend falling into that darkness, could still hear the hounds swarming below them. Albert always had faith. He always had courage. So could she.

  “Fuck it,” she said. She opened her eyes and brought her hand down hard on the stone spike.

  Olivia and Andrea gasped.

  She stood there, wincing at the pain, hardly believing she had been able to do such a thing. A small piece of the spike was protruding from the top of her hand. She’d speared herself completely through.

  “What are you doing?” Andrea screamed, her voice shrill.

  “The only think I can think of,” Nicole replied through clenched teeth.

  As her blood ran down the spike and into the stone box, Albert lowered his head and wept. This was the woman he was supposed to spend his life with. He’d decided that long ago, within days after they made their first trip into the temple. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. This wasn’t supposed to be where the Temple of the Blind led them. Why had he come here? Why had he insisted on this damned adventure? He should have been the one to take that fall, not Brandy.

  It was his fault.

  He would not make the trip without her. Wayne and the girls could go on without him. That was all there was to it. He was useless to them without Brandy. He was useless even to himself without her.

  Chapter 50

  Brandy reached up and touched Albert’s arm. In an instant, all his fears were shoved aside and gleaming hope muscled its way up from the dark depths of his screaming heart. She was looking up at him. Those brilliant, blue eyes that he loved so dearly were not dim, like the eyes of the dying, but as bright as they had ever been in life. They were tired, sleepy, but alive. Slowly, she shook her head. “Don’t do tha
t,” she said to him, her voice inaudible over the roar of the hounds.

  “Oh, God,” he gasped. “I thought…” But he could not bear to say what he had thought.

  Brandy closed her eyes. “Hurts.”

  He didn’t need to hear her. He read her lips. “Where?”

  “My head.”

  “Anywhere else?”

  She shook her head again. She didn’t know. Everywhere. She hurt all over. Her body was one solid mass of pain.

  Wayne glanced back up at Albert and thought that he must be imagining things. Brandy’s body was no longer limp, no longer still. She had her hand on his shoulder. Her lips were moving. She was speaking to him.

  “You’re okay,” Albert sighed, pressing his mouth to her ear so that she would hear him. “You can’t ever leave me. I love you too much.”

  She smiled at him. “I have a headache,” she said. Then her eyes widened suddenly as she remembered how she’d come to be where she was. She tried to lift her head, but the pain stopped her. Her head was pounding. “The Caggo…!”

  “Dead,” Albert assured her.

  She relaxed again, relieved.

  Albert looked over at Wayne, caught his smile and returned it. He couldn’t believe it. She was still with him. She was still alive. She was still his.

  It was a miracle.

  High above them, atop the tower, Nicole’s blood disappeared into the stone box.

  The three of them stood silently around the altar, waiting.

  “Nothing happened,” said Olivia.

  “Okay. So what do we do now?” Nicole asked through gritted teeth. Her hand trembled upon the spike as the pain began to spread.

  Andrea shook her head. “I don’t know, but I’m not doing that.”

  She was sure this had something to do with blood. It was a sharp spike mounted over a funnel-shaped basin. What else could it be? It wasn’t like they were expected to juice a lemon up here. And Andrea’s mysterious voice said the secret was blood. It all fit together.

  Inside the stone box, her blood trickled down the spike and into the rounded bottom of the basin below it. From there, it ran to a small hole, from which it fell in thick droplets through a huge, black emptiness. Like crimson rain, it plunged through the hollow core of the tower, down and down into a great black depth, where it at last crashed into the still surface of the liquid far below.