by Brian Harmon
The passage abruptly tilted downward ahead of them, descending deeper into the darkness at a steep angle. “Careful,” warned Albert as he began to descend the hill. It would be easy to slip on such a steep surface, especially considering the smoothness of the stone on which they walked.
“Wouldn’t it have been easier to build steps?” Wayne wondered.
Albert gazed down at the floor, studying it with his flashlight. As usual, his mind immediately produced the worst possible explanation for such an irregularity: a ramp like this would allow access to an upper level for a creature unable to jump, just as a wheelchair ramp allowed access for people unable to climb steps. It was all too easy to imagine a hound charging up this hill toward them, making that horrible sound as it came. He reminded himself again that there were no scratch marks, but he knew that he had no actual proof that the hounds and the scratch marks were in any way connected. It was purely speculation. There could easily be another explanation for the scarred floors.
“I am so going to fall,” said Brandy. “You just watch.”
But she didn’t fall. None of them did. Albert estimated their descent at about three stories before the passage finally leveled out and opened up.
The walls and ceiling sloped away, opening gradually into a large, high-ceilinged chamber. At the center of the room was an open space from which three more identical passages shrank away, creating a four-cornered star shape.
Albert stepped into the very center of the room and stopped. This didn’t make any sense. Looking around him, there were four different passages. Discounting the one from which they had just entered, that left three entirely different choices, two of which were almost certainly wrong. But how were they supposed to know which way to go? The clues in the box had all been used up.
About twenty feet in front of him stood a single sentinel statue. Its back was turned to him and it was frozen in mid step as it walked away into the dark unknown beyond. Identical statues were on his left and right, each motionlessly walking away from him in their respective directions.
“Which way do we go?” asked Wayne.
“I have no idea. I’m out of clues.”
“You’ve got nothing?”
Albert shook his head. He was staring at the sentinel in front of him. “The solution must be on one of the statues.” Without waiting for a reply, he walked toward the one that was facing straight ahead. Aside from the fact that it was a sentinel, complete with featureless face and grossly elongated limbs, there was nothing unusual about it. It was in mid-stride, but relaxed, as though on a leisurely stroll. It had all its parts, and all its parts were as they should have been. Its hands were at its sides, frozen in mid-swing, its fingers splayed as naturally as fingers that long could possibly look. Its penis was limp (thankfully) and its muscles relaxed. Nothing about it indicated anything more than that it was walking.
He turned and shined his flashlight in the direction the sentinel was facing. He could not quite see to the tunnel that led away from the room.
Wayne, meanwhile, had approached the sentinel on the left and was examining the statue with his flashlight. “What am I looking for, exactly?”
“No idea,” replied Albert.
Nicole and Brandy stood in the middle of the room, watching the two of them. The openness of the room made them nervous. The darkness seemed to push in at them from each of the four directions, threatening to swallow them.
Albert walked on past the statue. Soon, a second figure appeared, another sentinel, in exactly the same mid-stride pose as the others. “There’s another statue up here,” he reported.
Wayne turned and investigated the left passage. “Here too.”
Nicole sat down on the cool floor and began to rub her aching feet. “You guys let me know if you figure it out.”
Brandy followed her lead and sat down. Her feet were killing her. The stone floor had begun to punish her with every step.
Albert walked up to the farther sentinel and examined it. It was standing just a few feet from the next passage, seemingly on its way out of the room. He continued past the statue and into the tunnel ahead. It stretched forward a few yards and then opened up into a wide chamber that stretched well beyond the reach of his flashlight.
There was something there.
“Be careful,” Brandy called.
“Don’t worry.” But with each step he grew more anxious. Wasn’t this the part of the movie where the monster snatched up the idiot who strayed too far from the group?
The object that had drawn his attention was several yards inside the next chamber. For a moment he couldn’t place it, but then he realized that it was another sentinel. This one, however, was different than the others. It was much shorter, for one thing. At first he thought that the statue was kneeling, like the faith statue that stood before the flooded tunnel where they’d been forced to disrobe, but as he approached, he realized that this was not the case.
“Albert,” Brandy called. “Come back. You’re making me nervous.”
“Just a minute.” Albert examined this new chamber. The floor of the tunnel in which he was standing extended out into the new room only about six feet and then began to slope downward at a gentle angle. Just a few inches farther, the path ended. The rest of the floor was different. The smooth, gray stone gave way to a black and textured surface. A few yards beyond where the path vanished, the sentinel statue stood submerged to its waist in this new floor.
He walked to where the stone path ended and knelt, studying this darker surface. Reaching out, he touched it gently with his fingertips, lightly probing it, ready to snap his fingers back should something unexpected happen. The surface gave to his fingers, revealing a fine crust covering a thick black substance. He pulled his hand back and examined it. It was cold and wet, but also gritty, like mud. Curious, he lifted it to his nose and smelled it. It had an awful, rotten odor, like something dead.
He stood up and shined his flashlight at the wading sentinel. If the statue was complete and not truncated somewhere below its waist, then it would indicate the depth of this sludge to be approximately chest deep where it stood.
“Albert?” Brandy was beginning to sound impatient. He could hardly blame her. If she had wandered into a dark passage alone and lingered he’d be impatient too.
“Coming.” He backed away from the mud, still staring at it. Could this be the way they were supposed to go? He stared past the statue, into the darkness beyond. He dared not imagine what kinds of horrors might wait in this chamber if it was not the correct path.
He turned and hurried back to where Brandy and Nicole still sat, pausing only to wipe the mud from his fingers onto the smooth stone wall of the tunnel.
“Find anything?” asked Brandy.
“Maybe.”
Before he could describe what he’d found, Wayne reported his find from the other passage. “Hey guys, this room’s flooded.”
“Oh great,” spat Nicole.
Albert turned, interested. “With mud?”
“What? No. Water.”
“Just water?”
Brandy and Nicole gazed up at Albert, curious.
“Yeah. Just like we swam through after we took our clothes off.”
Albert stared down the empty tunnel at Wayne’s light, thinking.
“What’s up?” Wayne asked.
“This one over here’s filled with some kind of black mud.”
“What?” Wayne started walking toward him now.
“Mud?” asked Nicole.
Albert nodded. “Mud. Looks like it’s pretty deep.” He turned and shined his light toward the third passage. There was mud in one room, water in the second, so what was in the third? “I’ll be right back.”
He walked down the third passage, pausing briefly to examine both of the statues along the way. These were identical to those he’d just seen, as was the layout of the tunnel and the room beyond, but it was immediately obvious that what filled this room was neither water nor mud. This was something else ent
irely.
“What do you see?” Wayne asked from behind him.
“I’m not sure.” Albert knelt at the edge of the path and examined the fluid. It was not black like the mud, but a sickly sort of yellowish brown. It was translucent, allowing him to see just a few inches beneath its surface.
“What is it?” Wayne asked.
Albert didn’t know. He reached down and cautiously dipped his fingers into it, half expecting to be burned by the mysterious fluid, but it was as cold as the mud. When he pulled his hand back, the brownish fluid oozed off his hand like cold motor oil.
“Looks like snot or something,” Wayne observed.
“Let’s hope not.” Albert lifted his finger carefully to his nose and smelled it as he had done the mud. There was no stench of rot, only a subtle odor of something dank and perhaps moldy, like an old, wet cellar.
“Any idea what it is?”
“None whatsoever.” He stood up and looked around. The room itself was identical to the last. The same half-submerged sentinel stood a short distance beyond the reach of the path, still trudging toward its mysterious destination. The only difference was what they would have to wade through. “Come on.”
The two of them turned and walked back to where the girls were sitting.
“So what did you find?” asked Nicole.
“We’re not sure,” Albert replied. “Some kind of oily stuff. I have no idea what it is.”
Brandy wrinkled her nose. “‘Oily stuff?’”
“Kind of reminds me of clean motor oil,” Albert described.
“Lovely,” Nicole sighed. “Tell me that’s not the way we have to go.”
“I really don’t know yet.” Albert walked over to the sentinel that faced the water and began to study it. “We’re out of clues so one of these guys has to tell us the way.”
“Didn’t look to me like they were talking,” said Wayne. He sat down near the girls and sighed, relieved to be off his feet.
Albert’s feet ached too, but he couldn’t stop. He went from one statue to the next, beginning with those on the left, then moving to the passage that led to the mud and finally back to the third passage, but none of them gave anything away. They were perfectly identical.
“I don’t get it,” he said at last as he returned to where the others were sitting. He stood staring into the darkness, thinking.
“Maybe it doesn’t matter which way we go,” Wayne suggested.
“I doubt it. We’re supposed to stay on the path.”
“So how do we know which one to take?” Wayne pressed.
Albert didn’t know.
“Did we take a wrong turn?” asked Brandy.
“We couldn’t have,” replied Albert. “We followed all the clues, just like the blind man said.”
“Maybe we made a mistake,” suggested Wayne, and Albert suddenly felt very nervous. He remembered again the way Wendell Gilbert’s body had been moved. He also remembered the missing pieces of the dagger. Was it possible that someone had rearranged the clues?
But how? Who else could be down here?
No. That couldn’t be right. The blind man had told them to trust the box. Surely he would have been aware of someone tampering with the clues. He seemed, after all, to know exactly where and when to find them in this enormous labyrinth. What other choice was there?
Wayne swung his flashlight from one passage to the next. “All the statues are walking off in different directions,” he saw. “Maybe it means we’re supposed to split up.”
“No,” Brandy said, her eyes suddenly wide. “Uh-uh. I’m not going anywhere alone.”
“Me either,” agreed Nicole.
Albert considered the idea for a moment. It was a sound guess, and it was obvious that the three visible sentinels were going their own separate ways, but splitting up just didn’t seem right. “I don’t think so. For starters, there are only three passages and four of us.”
“What makes you think anybody knew how many of us would come down here?” Wayne asked. “I don’t think I buy that whoever built this place could see into the future.”
“True,” Albert agreed. Although it wasn’t an idea he would entirely dismiss, not after all that he’d seen. “But then what would be the point of splitting up? What if there was only one of us?”
Wayne shrugged. He never claimed to have all the answers.
“And we couldn’t just leave somebody behind down here.”
Nicole gave a visible shudder as she tried to imagine sitting there on the cold floor, watching three flashlights disappearing in three different directions, leaving her all alone.
“Well that’s all I’ve got,” Wayne said. “What’s your idea then?”
Albert looked back at him without speaking. He didn’t have an idea. He was fresh out. The statues weren’t talking and his box had finally failed him. He literally had no clue what they were supposed to do now. For all he knew, perhaps Wayne was right. Perhaps they were simply supposed to go their separate ways. But he really didn’t think so. The dying sentinels in the decision room had also each been reaching toward a different passage, but only one of those had been the correct path.
Nicole shifted her weight and leaned back, stretching her legs out in front of her and gazing up at him. “You’ll figure it out,” she assured him. “You’ve done it every other time.”
But Albert wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to keep coming up with the answers. Until now he’d begun to feel like a magician, finding another fascinating trick every time he reached up his sleeve or into his hat, but in the end he simply didn’t know all the magic tricks, and he was afraid he might finally be running out of illusions.
He turned and stared into the darkness that led to the mud. No matter which way they went, they were going to have to enter something unpleasant. The water would be the ideal path. Water would only make them wet and cold, and perhaps there was something in it that masked their scents, explaining the blind man’s insistence that they relinquish their clothing. The mud and the oil were different. They certainly would not be getting out clean, and who knew what was really in those chambers. The stench of the mud might attract the hounds. Or perhaps something lived in it, something even more terrifying than the hounds. And who knew what that oil was.
“And you think it would be dangerous to just pick one,” Wayne said.
“Very dangerous,” Albert confirmed. He thought about the oily substance. What in the world was that stuff, exactly? Was it flammable? Was it corrosive? It hadn’t burned his fingers but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t if exposed to it long enough. It looked almost like bile. He felt a hard shiver as he suddenly thought about the carnivorous pitcher plant, which attracted insects into hooded jugs and trapped them in a pool of digestive enzymes. What if they waded out into that stuff, too far out to return, and their flesh began to melt away? It would be a horrible way to die.
“Then what do we do?” asked Brandy.
Albert sat down on the floor in front of Nicole and tried to think. There were no more clues. The statues gave nothing away. It didn’t make sense, really. Why would the blind man give them all the clues to get this far and then leave them stranded here? There was simply no logic in that.
Nicole sat up straight and began rubbing her feet again. Albert understood how she felt. His feet were also aching. He looked over at Brandy. She was sitting with her eyes closed, resting while she had the chance. The next tunnel could lead them back into hound-infested territory and she might not have this chance again. It was good for them all to rest.
Albert closed his eyes for a moment, too, relaxing. Rather than focusing on the horrors of the wrong path, he tried to focus on the fact that one of these passages had to be the correct one. That meant that one of them was safe. As much as he hated the thought of getting cold and wet again, the water was the most appealing choice. But it also seemed the least likely, simply because it was the most appealing. Although that wasn’t the kind of logic he was willing to bet his life on.
Of the other two, he thought the oil would be the better choice. If he knew the path was safe, he could simply grit his teeth and ignore the funky feel of it against his naked flesh. It would be gross, but it would not be quite as bad as the rotten-smelling muck that waited in the middle passage.
He shrugged out of his backpack and removed the box from within. As he opened it and peered in at the contents, something stirred in the back of his mind.
Wayne watched him as he opened the box. This was only the second time he’d seen it. The first was when he stuffed Beverly’s envelope inside it to keep it from getting wet while they swam the flooded tunnel.
Albert removed the tightly-folded envelope with Beverly’s file in it and then stared for a moment at the things inside the box. He reached in and stirred through them, as though rearranging them might make the hidden meaning of this puzzle clearer. Two pieces of a stone finger, broken from the warning statue in the very first room. An old button from a heavy blue fabric, draped over the outstretched arm of a dying sentinel. The feather and the bird scratched into the sentinel’s neck. Wendell Gilbert’s pocket watch, gruesome but vividly clear. Finally, the broken blade. It should have been the last clue. The only other things in the box were the small, leather pouches which contained the key to the box and the gold coins. There should have been no more decisions left to make. What could he be missing?
He reached in and picked up the sentinel’s fingertip, the piece of the statue that he had found in the first passage the year before. That had been such an easy clue, once he’d figured out what he was looking for. Why couldn’t this be as easy?
He picked up the other piece of the finger, the one that had been given to him in the box, and pieced them back together.
“Mind if I look at that?” Wayne asked.
Albert dropped both pieces of the finger back into the box and slid it over to him. Maybe a fresh mind would be able to bend around whatever it was he was missing. He picked up Beverly’s folded envelope and brushed away the grime it had collected from the dirty clues inside the box.
He looked back at Nicole, who was staring down at her feet as she rubbed them. She was tired. He could tell. She sat with her knees slightly bent, her bare feet resting on their heels, slightly apart. He could see the dark hair between her thighs, the soft fold across her navel as she sat slouched, and the round curves of her firm breasts. He turned and looked at Brandy again, his girlfriend, the love of his life. She had opened her eyes again, but now she was staring up at the ceiling. Her knees were together. He could not see that pretty place between her legs, but he could see her pert breasts and he again felt jealous that the sight was not his alone.
