Benediction Denied: A Labyrinth of Souls Novel

by Engstrom, Elizabeth

Then this had to be a dream.

  He reached up and ran his hands around the metal gate. How could there be a functional metal gate, complete with locking mechanism, in a rat tunnel?

  He stood up, running his hands along the wall until he found what seemed to be a corner, and urinated loudly. When finished, he walked to the opposite corner and sat down. He scrubbed his fuzzy teeth with his shirttail, and wished for a cool drink of water to quench what was a growing thirst. Food was going to be an issue, but water was going to be an issue first. His tongue was already sticky. And he was hot. Sweating. Losing even more water through perspiration.

  The slow surge of panic began to build. His heart raced, perspiration beaded out on his forehead, a metallic taste formed on the back of his tongue.

  He had to find something to drink.

  Panic would not help. To calm himself, Adam closed his eyes and thought of the village, somewhere above him, where, before the Justice Corps came in, the women walked over a mile every day, fetching enough river water to sustain their families. He could last a little longer without water. He would have to find it, of course, but he wasn’t desperate yet.

  Yet.

  He consciously willed himself to calm down. He would find water. He would get out of this. Or he would wake up. Sometimes the best thing is just to wake up, and this could be one of those times.

  The lump on the side of his head had gotten smaller. The pounding headache had been replaced by a dull, constant pain that he was certain could be vanquished by a long drink of cool water.

  Heart again calmed, blood pressure back to normal, he pulled the deck of cards from his pocket and shuffled through them. He couldn’t see anything in the dark, but they clearly held some kind of magical powers.

  He passed a finger over each one individually, as if he could divine what its powers were by feel. The first one had shrunk him to the size of a rodent. The second one had created a doorway he could escape through.

  Was that true? Had the card created the doorway? The gate?

  Did the cards know what he needed at the moment and provide it, or had he been extremely lucky? What if the card he threw at the mongoose had shrunk him further? He might have been stepped on and squashed.

  Adam ran his hands across his face. He couldn’t sit here much longer. He had to do something. He wished he knew how long he had been unconscious in captivity. He wished he knew how long he’d been sleeping. He wished he knew how far had he been driven to his prison cell from the road to the village.

  His beard seemed to be about three days old.

  Three days!

  If he could somehow orient himself, he would know which tunnel to take in order to get back to the village.

  He barked a bitter laugh that deadened in the earthen room. There was no way for him to orient himself. It didn’t seem to make much sense to get underneath the village if he couldn’t get up to the village and the sunshine and all his friends, but at least it was a goal.

  He had to go somewhere.

  Actually, it might be better to go back to the prison cell. At his current diminutive stature, he could probably get out of the cell unnoticed by the guards, or thugs, or rebels, or whatever they were.

  He visualized sneaking back out of the rat hole into the cell. When someone opened the door, he would slip past them out into the hot, steamy jungle, and somehow get into one of the vehicles. Then maybe he could throw a magic card and return to normal size.

  As ludicrous as that sounded, it actually seemed to be the best plan. Maybe he could even get his Jeep back.

  It might be a stupid plan, but at least it was a plan.

  He stood and ran his hands over the bars of the gate.

  No latch.

  He pulled and pushed, trying to rattle the gate, or dislodge it from its earthen anchor, but it was as solid as if it had been forged out of bedrock. It appeared as if going back to his prison cell was not an option.

  Maybe he could throw a card and get it unlocked. Even if the cards were precious, they could be used, and each one produced a burst of light by which he could see and get his bearings.

  He pulled a card at random from the pack, then put the pack back into his pocket.

  Flipping the corner with his finger, he prayed to not only his God, but to the god of the cards.

  “I need water,” he whispered. “I need to get home. I need food. I need direction.”

  Emotion surged behind his eyes, clogged his throat. He paused for a moment. Then, voice cracking, “I need help.”

  He stood up and prepared to flick the card at the wall.

  Wait a minute.

  Maybe he ought to be very specific about what he needed. Maybe the cards did whatever they were going to do regardless of his wishes or prayers, or needs, but then again, maybe they bent to his will.

  “I need water,” he said, and flicked the card at the wall.

  The familiar concussion boomed, punching him in the chest, popping his ears, and bands of blue light radiated out.

  Adam looked around quickly, trying to see everything he could in that brief, blinding flash.

  He saw something reflect, something winked from way down the tunnel he was in. There was something down there, perhaps something metal.

  He gave the gate bars another shake.

  Solid.

  Abandoning the idea of getting back out through the gate and escaping through the prison cell, instead he walked toward where he thought he saw the glinting object. The tunnel led downhill, deeper into the underground. He walked carefully, keeping the vision of the glinting item and its location firmly in his mind’s eye. He wanted to walk directly to the reflecting object and see what it was. He hoped it was a digging tool of some sort, no matter how preposterous that thought seemed to be.

  Could he tunnel through the ceiling, straight up into the sunshine?

  Why not?

  The ground was strewn with detritus that he kicked as he walked. He had to be careful not to trip as he approached the place where he was certain he saw something metallic.

  When he stepped on it, he knew. It crinkled beneath his foot. He got down on all fours and examined it. Straight line on one side, serrated on the other side.

  He smelled it.

  Juicy Fruit.

  A foil gum wrapper. Almost big enough to serve him as a kind of space blanket. It was something. Something useful. But there were other things here, too.

  He folded the wrapper as best he could and tucked it into his waistband. Then, crawling on all fours, he examined the pile of junk.

  He climbed over piles of sticks and found round things that seemed to be made of cardboard. A bottle cap, shredded pieces of plastic, and rope.

  He pulled on the rope. It was buried in the pile of trash, wound around things, but the more he pulled on it, the more pleased he was to see that there was real length to it. It was probably just a piece of string, but to him, it was rope. He coiled the rope and put it over his head and one arm so it lay diagonally across his chest.

  There were many big, soft log-shaped things, and it took him a moment to realize they were likely rat droppings. Fresh rat droppings.

  Were dried rat droppings flammable? In Africa, animal dung was commonly used as fuel. Could he make a fire with rat droppings, and maybe some of the pieces of paper he had found?

  What would he do with a fire?

  He could make a torch. He could cook food, if he had any.

  Were there roots coming through the sides or roof of this place that he could cook and eat? How would he find them? How would he cook them?

  He needed light. He could only do so much in absolute darkness.

  Adam sat down and wrapped the foil around his shoulders. That was comforting in a weird, Juicy Fruit way. He patted his shirt pocket, a habit he had never lost since he quit smoking when his first daughter was born, over fifteen years ago. Still, when he relaxed, or found himself stressed out, he touched that breast pocket where he had always kept his cigarettes.

/>   There was something in it.

  He opened the button and put a finger inside.

  Then he remembered. It was a photograph of Chrissie and the girls. He took their photo when they first arrived. He’d had that first photo printed, and carried it in his shirt pocket.

  The Swan Girls. The card was approximately the same size as the magic cards.

  Strange, how cards were now saving his life in this bizarre twist of the supernatural, and he had been carrying one with his own personal goddesses on it all this time. It was now his Goddess Card.

  He ran his thumb over it, then touched it to his cheek, hoped his goddesses had arrived home in Minnesota safely. He kissed the photograph, and put it back in his breast pocket, buttoning it securely inside. If he should die down here, some day some hydrologist laying water line might dig up his tiny little bones and find a tiny little picture in his tiny little shirt pocket.

  He pulled the remaining cards from his other pocket and went through them one by one. They were thicker than normal playing cards. He knew the feel of the usual playing cards by touch, as he and the other men of the village played cards almost every night before Chrissie and the girls came. That was how he bonded with the local men on his water crew. They played cards in the gloaming after dinner, smoked, drank, and laughed.

  Homesickness nicked him. He missed those guys.

  Did they miss him? Were they looking for him? Worse, had they notified Chrissie that he’d gone missing?

  Nothing he could do about that now. “Accept the things I cannot change,” he whispered.

  Back to the cards. These cards were bigger in size, and the card stock weightier than the ones he played with in the evenings.

  He wished he could see them.

  He turned them over one by one. “I need light,” he said out loud. One by one, he flipped them over onto his thigh, not knowing what else to do. “I need light,” he said and flipped a card. “I need light.”

  Then one of the cards had a different attitude. Heavier. Like it had potential.

  He stacked the rest of the cards and buttoned them into his shirt pocket with the photo of his girls.

  “I need light,” he said, bracing himself against the shockwave he hoped would come, and flipped the card at the wall opposite him.

  The shockwaves emanated as usual, the pulse knocking him back against the wall, and illuminating, for a moment, the enormous pile of junk in the rat’s nest.

  Then the flash of light was gone, but on the ground directly in front of him, a little blue flame burned all on its own.

  Adam blinked his eyes, not certain if he was actually seeing it, or if he was still blinded by the flash.

  The little flame illuminated a circle around it. Dirt. Dirt floor.

  He put his hands toward it.

  No warmth.

  He held out the end of his rope and teased it into the flame, but it did not burn.

  This was a magic flame. He didn’t know what properties it had, nor how long it would last, so he had to make good use of it while he could.

  Gently, he reached over and picked it up between two fingers, then set it on the palm of his hand. It burned a bright blue. Held up, it illuminated a far greater area than it had on the ground.

  Light! He had light.

  Carefully, Adam got to his feet. He held the flame up high.

  The rat’s nest stretched for what seemed like miles down into the darkness. Surely there would be some great treasures to be found in there, but he didn’t want to linger, nor did he want to climb over the huge pile of crap that likely led to a dead end.

  Not to mention: this rat would be back.

  Adam doubted there was anything in the rat’s nest to eat or drink, and short of getting the hell out of there, those were his immediate needs.

  He refolded the foil blanket, tucked it into the waistband of his pants, and then walked back to the gate.

  The gate was still there. Shiny brass bars still firmly closed.

  He rattled it anyway, or tried to rattle it, but it held firm. Firm like a weird, latchless magic gate in a rat hole would be.

  There had to be another way.

  Holding the flame high, he saw that there was a smaller tunnel that led away from the gate, away from the rat’s nest. It led away from the prison, and it might even lead closer to the village.

  Adam took a deep breath, wiped sweat from his face, held his blue flame up high and walked with what he hoped was confidence-building purpose.

  The tunnel turned immediately to the right, and began a decidedly downward slant.

  Adam tried to quiet his pounding heart and descended further into the dark underworld, illuminated only by the small circle of blue light.

  4

  ADAM WALKED UNTIL he was out of breath. Desperate to get somewhere, anywhere, before the comforting blue light extinguished, he walked as quickly as possible over the uneven terrain. Continually tripped up by roots, rocks, and the occasional shard of old pottery and long-buried bits of glass and plastic, he kept marching relentlessly forward, ever farther down the tunnel.

  Down was not the direction he was interested in going, but there was no other way, unless he turned around, walked back uphill, and then slogged through the rat’s nest.

  Don’t second guess yourself. You made a commitment. Now just go with it.

  Perspiration dripped off his nose and chin, and the headache was back, pounding with every footfall.

  He picked up one triangular-shaped shard of glass that had a point and an edge to it, and put it in his pocket.

  Smaller tributary tunnels branched off, but they were small and low, and Adam wasn’t certain they led anywhere that would benefit him.

  Thick roots were of particular annoyance, but he got used to climbing over them. He could set the flame down and use both hands if necessary.

  Thirst was a growing problem. His tongue had grown thick and furred, and the longer he walked, the more he stumbled. The thought of water consumed him.

  He slowed down and held the light up, looking at the wall of the tunnel for a root that would provide some moisture and perhaps even some nutrition.

  This was a well-traveled tunnel—traveled by many somethings over a long period of time, and anything that looked promising had been gnawed off at the wall, the ends dried to nothing. If he was going to find anything to eat, he would have to dig it out.

  He began digging at a promising looking root with the bit of glass he had picked up—as if he knew what a promising root looked like. It certainly didn’t look like any carrot or potato he had ever eaten.

  He wished he had paid more attention when Chrissie started the kitchen garden. He had provided the muscle for building the raised beds and hauling compost. He certainly enjoyed eating the bounty, but he did none of the actual gardening, and therefore had learned nothing.

  He couldn’t identify a nutritious plant from a weed if his life depended upon it.

  And here he was, his life depending on it.

  Lots of weeds were nutritious, he knew, but were the roots? Dandelion greens were edible, but their roots were poisonous. Rhubarb stalks were edible, but their leaves were poisonous.

  Those were two facts he knew because he was a father. Beyond that, how would he know what was poisonous?

  If he got sick and died, that’s how.

  The side wall of the tunnel had grown hard-packed over time, and the root he was digging seemed less and less likely, so he gave up on it. The effort only took time, made him hotter and thirstier.

  He put the piece of glass back into his pocket and carried on, walking, stumbling, holding the blue flame ahead of him to provide companionship and reassurance as much as anything else.

  The toe of his shoe caught on a rock embedded in the pathway, and he went down hard. His glasses flew from his face, the cards spilled out of his unbuttoned pocket, the flame, with its limited blue aura, landed far down the tunnel, leaving him in the dark.

  He scrambled around, searching
desperately for his glasses. He found them. They were bent, but not broken. He assembled the cards into a deck, but wasn’t certain that he had them all. The deck was quite a bit smaller, but unwilling to crawl around in the dark looking for more, he just put what he had back in his pocket and buttoned it, this time, for safekeeping.

  It would be easy to just use one for water, wouldn’t it? Wish for water and fling a card, and maybe water would appear.

  But which card?

  Adam got to his feet, dusted himself off, found a hole in the knee of his pants and hoped he wasn’t bleeding.

  He walked down to the blue light and sat on the hard ground to catch his breath.

  He examined his knee, found a scrape, but no blood to speak of. He set the flame on his other knee and pulled the cards again from his pocket.

  This was not like any deck of cards he had ever seen before. Each card was different. Each one was beautifully illustrated in black and white, but gave no indication as to what magic it held, or represented, or would produce. He shuffled through them again and again, looking for one that might mean water, or escape, or food. But what he found was the stuff of Jormy’s superstitions: Kings, Queens, Knights, Pages.

  Would throwing a King card bring forth Jormy’s King of the underworld? Would a Queen take pity on him?

  Not likely.

  He kept looking through the cards. The Moon, The Devil, Death.

  He put those last two back in his pocket. He didn’t know what they did, but he didn’t want to find out. King of Cups, King of Swords, The Hanged Man, The Tower, Holy Water—

  Wait. Holy Water. Perhaps that would be the one. And Cups. Queen of Cups and Holy Water. Would one of those get him a cup of water?

  It seemed too simplistic, it seemed too silly, but what else could he do?

  He held the two cards in his hand, fingering the corners. He’d been incredibly lucky so far.

  But really, now, did he want a cup of water, or did he want to get the hell out of here?

  He set those cards aside and went back to the deck. Which card was most likely to get him back to the surface? Back to the village? Back home?

  The Sun. There was a card with a sun on it and what looked like a field of sunflowers. That was what he needed. He needed the sun, he needed flowers. He needed to be above ground. He put the Queen of Cups and the Holy Water cards back into his pocket and held up the Sun card.