Benediction Denied: A Labyrinth of Souls Novel

by Engstrom, Elizabeth

  * * *

  Adam startled awake at the sound of a car door slamming. Outside his prison cell, men argued about something in loud, angry voices.

  He sat up, adrenaline pumping through his system. Though his head still pounded, it no longer threatened to crack open at the slightest motion, and he took a moment to be grateful for that.

  If the men were angry, was it because they found out they would get no money for him? Would they come in and kill him outright?

  He looked around for something he could use as a weapon.

  He had nothing in his pockets. His wallet, cell phone, and pen knife had all been taken away.

  A low table sat across the room in the corner. Perhaps he could break it up and use it as a weapon.

  Carefully, he stood on unsteady, trembling legs and made his way across the room.

  Rumbles of pain surged through his head, but fear cleared his eyesight.

  The table was more like a little step stool, the short legs maybe eight inches long. Not much of a weapon. On top of the table was a deck of cards.

  Very odd.

  He picked up the cards with one hand, and picked up the table with the other. It was very light. He could throw the whole table at someone, but what good would that do? That petty act of aggression would surely only infuriate the thugs who had kidnapped him.

  He set the table down in the middle of the room, then sat on it, facing the door, ready. His senses rose to full alert. He was ready for whatever was about to come through that door, whatever that meant.

  Could he rush the thug and escape?

  No, of course not. There were several others out there, arguing.

  He was definitely feeling better, but would sell his soul for a drink of fresh water. Perhaps if he was compliant, they would treat him well.

  He waited, mindlessly shuffling the deck of cards in his hands. They weren’t any kind of cards he knew about. These had pictures on them.

  Chain links jangled on the other side of the door. A lock opened.

  His heart pounded in anticipation.

  His head pounded in time with his heart.

  The door swung open.

  The silhouette of a large man stood against the twilight.

  “Up!” the man approached him, brandishing what looked like the same baton that had cracked his head earlier.

  Adam stood on shaky legs.

  The huge man approached with purposeful strides.

  Adam stepped back, overturning the table. With another step back, he tripped on the table and went down hard, landing on his back.

  The man raised the baton, baring his teeth in a horrifying grimace that exuded meanness. He took another step forward.

  Adam scrambled away from the menacing figure, but he had no defense.

  He pulled a card from the top of the deck in his hand. Wishing it was metal with a razor edge, he flicked it at the man.

  It wasn’t a razor, but when it hit the man in the chest, bright blue concentric rings of light banged through the small room. The concussion popped Adam’s ears.

  The man looked startled by Adam’s aggression, but Adam had only a moment to notice.

  He was falling.

  His stomach lurched. He struggled not to puke. He flailed, but he was still on his back on the ground. Secure.

  The man in front of him was getting bigger, and bigger yet.

  No. Adam was getting smaller.

  Nausea overwhelmed him, but he choked down the bile that rose in his throat as the elevator plunge stopped. He looked up, not only at the giant of a man in front of him, but the man’s enormous boot and the overturned table that was now taller than he was.

  That boot could crush him.

  In spite of the pain in his head, Adam sprang to his feet and ran toward the closest wall, the corner where the table had originally sat. He found a hole in the dirt floor, under the wall, clearly a hole some rodent had dug, big enough for him to run into.

  He glanced back at the massive rebel, who was bending down with his giant meaty hand, reaching to grab him.

  Adam ducked and ran into the hole. He tripped, rolled, got to his feet, and continued running down what seemed to be a tunnel. His head screamed with pain as the floor of the tunnel shook with every kick the thug gave to the entrance, roaring in frustration.

  Adam ran blindly in the dark, desperate to be away from his captors and certain death by that man, with that baton, and that giant boot, in that cell.

  2

  ADAM RAN UNTIL he could run no more. His lungs ached, his head ready to explode. He stopped, bent over, hands on his knees, and gasped for breath.

  After a few moments, the pounding pain in his head began to abate, his heart rate returned to normal, and he could breathe.

  He listened.

  Silence.

  Nobody had followed him. He had run far enough to get away—they’d have to dig to get to him, and likely he wasn’t worth it.

  Besides … he was … small?

  Could that be right?

  What kind of a hallucination was this?

  He put the deck of cards in the cargo pocket of his pants, then ran his hands over the wall of the tunnel. Dirt. He scratched at it with his fingernails. Dirt. He reached for the top of the tunnel. His fingertips barely grazed it. It, too, was dirt.

  He walked slowly along the tunnel in absolute darkness, hands trailing along the wall. It had been dug long ago. Layered fungus grew in patches. Roots and sticks protruded from the walls and hung down from the ceiling. Some roots were a handful thick.

  It was hot and steamy.

  What the hell?

  Was he in the fabled underworld of the village superstitions?

  Jolmy frequently spoke of the dark magic and its connection to the underworld. Adam listened with half an ear as Jolmy talked about the underworld gods.

  “There is one big one. One big guy,” Jolmy said. “He is the king of the underworld.”

  Adam kept working, cementing PVC pipe joints together.

  He didn’t approve of that talk, didn’t believe in magic or underworld dark gods, and didn’t particularly want Jolmy and his family to be telling these tales to his girls.

  “He like white meat,” Jolmy said, and then laughed. “He would eat you for a snack.” He cut another length of pipe, checked the plans laid out on a sheet of plywood on sawhorses, and measured it again, just to be sure.

  “Superstition,” Adam countered.

  “He has helpers. A queen and servants. Plenty servants to do his dirty work. They torment. Torment is what they do.” Jolmy stopped sawing and turned to look at Adam. “They rule the sun and the moon.”

  “Now you know that’s not true.”

  “Not this sun and moon. The underground has its own sun and moon. And stars. And justice! Yes, oh yes, they have their own systems of justice. They would have such fun with you.”

  Adam gave his best disapproving look.

  Jolmy put his head back and laughed so hard he had to wipe his eyes. Then he went back to sawing pipe. “Yes, oh yes,” he said. “They would have such fun with you. You best stay above the ground.”

  “I intend to.”

  Jolmy laughed again.

  In retrospect, that laugh seemed to be a knowing laugh, as if there was no way Adam was going to be able to stay above ground if the king of the underworld wanted him for a snack.

  And here he was, underground.

  Not only that, but he was the size of a rat, able to run along a tunnel certainly dug by some type of African rodent.

  He tried to remember what Jolmy had told him about the underworld and its dark magic.

  He had been strong on emotion, but short on details. He make you cry like a little baby. He make you beg to give up your mother in your place. He decide whether you live or die. He decide what torments you must have. Oh yes, you better stay out of his kingdom. While Jolmy liked working with Adam, enjoyed Adam’s company, he also seemed delighted to imagine a thin, lily-white hydrologis
t at the mercy of his big, powerful, underworld forces.

  But when pressed for details, Jolmy didn’t have any personal experience. He didn’t know anyone who had encountered these demons, but there were stories. He had heard and oft repeated stories of men who fell into holes, cracks in the earth, crevasses, or went into caves exploring, and came back with terrible stories of how they were teased and tormented and barely escaped with their lives.

  And of course there were the stories of men who merely disappeared, never to be seen again.

  Dark magic.

  Adam chalked it all up to superstitious nonsense, and the fact that Congo had been ruled by dark “kings” for centuries. Surely there were myriad stories made up by the powerless about the powerful.

  And yet. Dark Magic.

  How else could Adam have shrunk to such a small size? Is that what has just happened?

  He sat down, leaned back against the wall of the tunnel. His jungle-appropriate light cotton clothes stuck to him with perspiration.

  Surely this was a dream. It had all the dreamlike qualities—but isn’t that what the men he worked with said about their underworld? If you get caught in the kingdom of the underworld, if you are lucky, you can dream yourself back to safety. If you cannot do that, you will be lost forever.

  Adam dug his heels into the soil. It had been packed down hard, likely from the feet of hundreds, or thousands of creatures using it as a highway.

  He saw no creatures. He smelled nothing but the dank earth, yet he saw flickers of movement out of the corners of his eyes. Those had to be dream hallucinations because the darkness was absolute.

  To prove it, he brought one hand up in front of his face. Nothing. He could see absolutely nothing.

  And he could hear nothing but the blood pounding in his head.

  But there it was again. A blue flicker of movement to the left, almost like the spark of static electricity.

  Adam used his shirttail to wipe the perspiration from his face. He checked the wound on his head to make certain it had not opened, and then got back to his feet.

  If this was a dream, he would have to find a safe place to dream himself home.

  If this wasn’t a dream, he would have to be very careful, because something had dug this tunnel, and plenty of somethings used it on a regular basis.

  There it was again, to the right, that slight indication of movement.

  If he walked to the right, toward that movement, he would walk right back into his prison.

  He began to walk to the left, trying not to look behind him, just walking as quickly as he could, carefully picking up his feet so as to not stumble on the irregular ground.

  The soil of the tunnel had a sound-muffling quality, yet after a moment he recognized a presence behind him, and within a few moments, he could hear it. Worse, he could smell it.

  Skunky.

  It was catching up to him on soft feet, padding along quickly toward him.

  He heard it breathe.

  His head began to ache again.

  He began to run, holding his hands out in front of him, but the thing behind him, perhaps sensing that prey was ahead, began to close in.

  Adam’s feet pounded the ground, his breath rasped in his dry throat and he heard himself making little sounds in spite of trying to be as invisible as possible. It didn’t matter. He smelled like human blood and sweat. If he was being pursued by a predator, he was done for.

  Were there even skunks in Africa? There were weasels, he knew. At his size, they would be the size of lions. Nothing to mess with.

  It was catching up to him, and he could run no faster.

  He stopped and turned, armed with … nothing.

  No, not nothing.

  He stood his ground and reached into his pocket. He couldn’t see the card in the dark, but when the creature came upon him, felt its hot breath, smelled its skunk stench, the brush of gigantic whiskers across his face, he flung the card at it as hard as he could.

  Blue concentric shockwaves illuminated a giant black and white mongoose, with surprise on its triangular face. The creature squeaked and backed off, its eyes shiny, its nose twitching. Its teeth seemed to be as big as the fence posts Adam had installed up in the village. It would have no trouble eating him. The villagers battled mongoose daily for the lives of the chickens.

  He turned again to run, and in the fading light of the shockwave, he saw what looked like a hard edge up ahead.

  With the sniffing creature again closing in on him, he got to the edge, gripped it and desperately tried to identify it, tried to find a way to use it to either hide from or repel the mongoose.

  Metal. Metal bars. A gate!

  Whiskers raked across his back as he finally found a latch, clicked it, and the gate opened. He slipped through and slammed it behind him.

  The mongoose stopped and sniffed, pawed at the metal gate, like a cage door. It dug a little bit at the soft ground underneath the door, sniffed, snorted, pawed some more.

  Adam reached through the bars and punched the weasel on the nose.

  It squeaked, backed off, then dug a little more, before giving up and continuing on its way down the tunnel.

  Adam fell to his knees, weak with fear and pain and exhaustion.

  He prayed to God to either wake him from his horrible nightmare, or to provide a way out.

  After a few moments, he realized that before he could rest, before he could let his guard down, lest another mongoose—or worse—came by, he needed to investigate the room, or the cell, or whatever it was that he was in.

  It seemed to be just another tunnel.

  Regardless, he seemed to be alone, and the gate was closed securely behind him.

  Wait a minute. A gate? What the hell was a metal gate doing in a rat tunnel?

  He didn’t care. He was safe for the moment.

  He sat down, mopped his face, caught his breath, then pulled the deck of cards from his pocket and began to shuffle them.

  These things were the stuff of dreams. Magic. Magic cards. He threw one at danger and the shockwaves of magic got him out of trouble. At least it got him out of imminent danger. He was still in trouble.

  He had thirty-one cards left.

  But how did they work? Did different cards provide different results? Was this dark magic?

  He knew from reading books to his girls, particularly to Mouse, who was in love with fantasy novels, that there was always a price to pay for using magic.

  So not only did he not understand the rules of this magic as it was to be used, but he didn’t know the cost he was going to pay every time he threw a card at a problem.

  Was it evil? Was he using evil?

  He put the cards back into his pants pocket, keeping them safe, keeping them close.

  And then he prayed. He got on his knees, hoping that God would see that as a sincere gesture. He folded his hands as he taught his daughters to do. He closed his eyes and whispered, “Please, God. I’ve not been the best human being you ever created. I’m not the best husband, the best father, or even the best hydrologist, but I try.”

  Even as he whispered this out loud, he hoped that God was hearing his words and not looking into his heart.

  “I ask you, God of mercies, please help me get out of this very strange situation that cannot be of you, cannot be your will. To be the size of a rat and relegated to a dark tunnel is surely not your will for my life. If you see me through this—or see that I wake up from this horrible nightmare, I promise to serve you as never before. I promise to be the best husband, and father, and altruistic human being. Please, Father, I beg of you.”

  His words sounded hollow and trite.

  Oh.

  “In Jesus’ name I pray.”

  That should seal the deal.

  He sat back and took a deep breath. With God’s help, he would get out of here, get back to the village to tell a real tale to Jolmy about the real underworld. And how his real God, his Christian God, had saved him.

  Then he wo
uld go home to his family and hug his girls. He would be a better husband and father. He had faltered on both those counts, as was evidenced by the truth of what happened when he dropped his girls at the airport. Mouse grabbed her backpack and immediately ran into the little one-room terminal without even saying goodbye to him. Sonja chased her to keep her out of trouble. Lisa gave him a perfunctory kiss on the cheek, and Chrissie took her bag from him, no kiss, not even a goodbye. She just turned and followed the girls into the terminal.

  He deserved the cold shoulder from all of them.

  But then who was perfect? Who was a perfect father? He’d seen Jolmy get overly angry with his wife and one or another of his children.

  There were no perfect parents.

  In time, his wife and children would remember fondly the time they spent their summer in Congo.

  A moan escaped his lips as he remembered how they sought his attention during their three months in the village, but he was too busy with either work or playing cards with his village friends who let the women do the women’s work. He had been way too eager to buy into that.

  He was a wretch, but he didn’t have to be. And he would get out of here and make amends to his girls.

  “Amazing grace …” he whispered.

  Adam tipped over onto his side, drew his knees up close to his chest, and whispered the rest of the lyrics, hoping that he would dream himself home again to Jolmy and the village.

  3

  A FULL BLADDER awoke Adam. Panicked in his blindness, he thrashed around, disoriented, not knowing where he was or how he got there.

  Then he remembered. A giant mongoose had chased him through a gate in a tunnel, after he had escaped a kidnapping attempt by shrinking and running into a rat hole.

  What?

  Had he gone insane?

  He didn’t feel insane. And yet …

  The dirt floor was real. The dirt walls were real. The metal on the mysterious gate was real. The cards in his pocket were real. At least they all seemed real. But dreams also feel real.

  How would he know if this was a dream or not?

  Occam’s Razor. The simplest answer was likely the right answer.