Souls of Fire

by Vanessa Black

  Suddenly the image of Adam’s body flashed before his mind’s eye, and he immediately grasped the dangerous situation they found themselves in.

  Not knowing how they were going to get out of this mess in time without being noticed, and not having any kind of plan to save her and himself, his first thought was to take the book. It had seemed important to Adam that they should find it, after all.

  The loud and violent sounding voices of several men were floating up the stairway, and they would find them any second.

  Aaron lunged toward the huge volume and yanked it right off of its stand on the table. The instant the book no longer touched the stand the secret door connecting the small circular sanctuary with the study flew closed and hid them from view, plunging them into darkness, except for the soft light emanating from the book.

  Breathing hard from the momentum of his sudden lunge for the book and the shock of seeing their only route of escape blocked off in a matter of seconds, enclosing them in a small room no one knew existed, Aaron tried hard to catch his breath without making a noise and giving them away to the men on the other side of the wall.

  Persephone stood rooted to the spot, obviously terrified, and didn’t move a muscle.

  The men’s loud voices were clearly discernible in the small room and made Aaron’s hair stand on end.

  “Leave the corpse alone, Darren,” one of them said.

  Aaron had to pull himself together and keep reminding himself of what would befall Persephone if he did something stupid and attacked the bastard that had murdered Adam, and just referred to him as ‘the corpse’.

  It took everything he had to keep from smashing through the wall ― not that he would have succeeded ― his blood was boiling in hatred at that moment; he wanted nothing more than revenge.

  Apparently having recognized his distress, Persephone reached out to him from the surrounding darkness and softly squeezed his shoulder, trying to give him support. Aaron concentrated on the feeling of warmth her touch offered and took deep calming breaths.

  Eventually it worked, and he was able to relax a bit. Suddenly remembering he actually had a small flashlight on him, he quickly took it out of his coat pocket and switched it on, being careful not to aim it at the hidden door in front of them so that it couldn’t shine through the small cracks and give them away.

  “Have you found it?” the same commanding voice that had spoken earlier asked. He was evidently the head of the group.

  “No, sir!” a chorus of collective men’s voices rang out as one, portraying total obedience.

  “Resistance is futile,” Aaron muttered under his breath in spite of the dire circumstances.

  Persephone shot him an I-can’t-believe-you’re-quoting-Star-Trek-at-a-time-like-this-look, but couldn’t quite hide a small twitch of the lips.

  “Men,” said the voice beyond the wall, “you will search every last corner of this house.” “Find me that Grimoire!”

  “How will we know it,” asked one of the men.

  “It is said to emanate power only the gifted can feel. Let this guide your path. Now move!”

  Aaron gazed at Persephone who displayed a worried look to match his own.

  “They will find this room. It’s only a matter of time,” Aaron whispered in Persephone’s ear. There was no opportunity to talk about what they had just overheard. The only thing to do was to find a way to escape their imminent death.

  Aaron motioned to Persephone to help him search the room for any alternate escape route. He was about to put the heavy book back down on its stand when Persephone suddenly rushed to his side and prevented him from setting it down just in time.

  Shaking her head to emphasize the catastrophic consequence of that action, she said in a very low voice,

  “When you took the book the door closed. What if it opens when you set it back down? We’d be dead in under five seconds.”

  She gave him a significant look.

  “I hadn’t thought about that,” Aaron admitted. “Good thinking,” he added in Persephone’s direction.

  “Thanks, just trying to stay alive,” Persephone said under her breath.

  “Good plan,” Aaron countered.

  He set the book down carefully to one side of the room and started to search for something, anything out of the ordinary. The only problem was: there was absolutely nothing in the circular room aside from the book and the table it had rested on.

  If the house hadn’t been crawling with some kind of creepy minions searching for ― well, whatever a Grimoire was ― then they could have just sat it out and left as soon as the house was empty. That, however, was no longer an option since they would find the room sooner or later. Aaron hoped it was later, much later.

  Since there was nothing but the book and the table, Aaron and Persephone returned to the table at the center of the room.

  “Do you suppose there might be another … thingy?” Persephone asked.

  “Well, that would depend on your definition of a ‘thingy’,” Aaron answered, amused by the way she had voiced the question.

  “You know,” Persephone appeared to be struggling to find the right word, “another … mechanism … for opening a door or some other passageway.”

  “I think you probably watched way too many Indiana Jones movies,” Aaron teased her.

  “Just kidding,” he revised. “Actually, I’m hoping there is. Otherwise we’re screwed.”

  The last words were supposed to lighten the mood a bit as he had intended to sound like he was joking. But their situation was anything but a joking matter, and his last comment lingered disturbingly in the following silence.

  Aaron and Persephone busied themselves with inspecting the table, staying clear of the stand on which the book had been placed, in case it triggered the opening mechanism of the door to the study once more. Upon bending down to look at the underside of the table, Aaron detected a tiny button on the surface of its large rounded base.

  “Look,” he whispered excitedly to Persephone who looked pleased and skeptical at the same time.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Do you really want to push a button you know absolutely nothing about?” she asked him.

  “What do you think it is?” Aaron countered, “an ejection seat or a missile?”

  “Okay, fine,” Persephone snapped, “just lay low on the sarcasm already!”

  Aaron couldn’t help smiling at that reply.

  “Promise,” he said, still smiling.

  “Okay, here goes,” he whispered, his voice excited at the prospect of something extraordinary happening.

  As he pushed the button, there was a resounding click that nearly made his heart stand still. He hadn’t expected it to be quite as loud.

  “What was that?” a voice on the other side of the wall asked suddenly, causing both Aaron and Persephone to stop in their tracks and hold their breaths.

  “I didn’t hear anything,” the other voice responded.

  “Hmm,” the first said, “I guess it was nothing.”

  Aaron could hear the breaths both he and Persephone had been holding escape. The relief they felt was almost palpable.

  Aaron looked down at the base of the table and saw that it had opened up slightly on one side. He carefully tugged at the base and was finally able to lift and tilt the entire base of the table to one side, thus revealing a large round opening in the stone floor, big enough around for a person to enter.

  Inside the hole, at the top of what appeared to be the beginning of a long tunnel leading downward into the ground, Aaron could detect a makeshift wooden ladder leading down into the dark.

  “Okay …,” Aaron said, giving Persephone a confident look as he aimed the flashlight at the hole “… we can do this. I’ll go first. That way I can tell you where to place your foot and if there are any sections where you need to tread carefully.”

  Aaron silently walked to the spot where he had set the book down and quickly retrieved it. Hesitating for a moment, he then open
ed several buttons on his shirt and awkwardly stashed the heavy volume inside it against his chest, closing the few buttons that would still close due to the bulging volume.

  Thanks to the habit of stuffing the bottom of his shirt in his jeans, he now had something similar to a bag to carry the book in.

  “Ready?” he whispered.

  Waiting for Persephone to nod her agreement, he got ready to make his way down into the damp depth of the dark tunnel. Persephone gave him a last reassuring look and a nod and prepared to follow him.

  As she carefully lowered herself down into the hole, Aaron reminded her to reposition the table over the opening so that the men couldn’t detect the secret passageway.

  Chapter 8 * Refuge

  I had trouble descending the wooden ladder in the nearly pitch dark passageway. Not only did I generally lack courage when it came to ladders and heights, the intense dark was putting me on edge. I felt I could have handled anything in the light of day. But this … inky blackness … was sucking out the last bit of energy I still possessed.

  Aaron might have had a flashlight, but he was using it to illuminate the ladder beneath him and beneath my feet, which left me as good as no light at face level, where I would have needed it most.

  On top of my difficulties descending, I couldn’t shake the disturbing, mind-numbing feeling of being watched. Even though I couldn’t see anything, I was so utterly convinced of being observed that in my mind’s eye I could make out innumerable sets of white glowing eyes watching my every step, and sharp gleaming teeth just waiting for me to make a wrong move.

  I was sure I was delusional by the time I heard the voices. There were voices calling to me, whispering in my ear, nearly making me fall from the ladder in shock and complete horror. Or were they whispering in my ear? Maybe they were in my head, I wondered.

  Through my distress, I couldn’t make out what they were saying. The only thing I was sure of was that they were urging me to give in. What it was I was supposed to give in to, I didn’t know, nor did I care to find out. I wouldn’t listen to stray voices in my head, no matter how long I was stuck in this dank dark hellhole, I decided.

  Shut up and leave me alone! I raged at the voices in my head, wondering if the first step to utter madness was talking to myself. If that were the case, though, I was already there and had been for quite some time!

  All of a sudden the voices subsided. As if I had actually managed to scare them off, I felt them give up. She’s not ready, I could hear myself think, even though it wasn’t my thought ― and that it wasn’t mine, I was certain of.

  It might have been my imagination, but I suddenly believed the tunnel looked a bit lighter. The darkest, most inky and impenetrable blackness had vanished along with the voices in my head.

  So, my crazed mind thought wildly: darkness had a voice!

  The thought had come out of nowhere. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was true. I could feel it in my gut.

  At that revelation ― though I hadn’t yet fully discarded the possibility of actually going insane ― my whole body started shivering in the light of the creepiness of my deduction.

  When we finally reached the bottom of what had seemed to be an endless succession of ladder rungs, I was so worn out, both physically and mentally, that I just plunked down onto the soft earthen ground, wanting nothing more than to sleep for at least two days.

  “You can’t rest here on the cold floor,” I heard a voice beside me say, only realizing seconds later that it was Aaron’s voice ― I was so out of it.

  “Come on,” he said, pulling me to my feet and helping me stand, because my knees were so weak and shaky I couldn’t manage on my own.

  “Light,” was all I could say, my voice sounding like a coarse croak.

  “Need … light,” I continued in a panicked voice, my whole body cramping into a ball in fear and agitation.

  I felt confused by the voices I had heard … voices in my head … not mine … I needed to make … sense of things again, I needed just one look around … in the light of day … darkness had confused me … darkness had tried to seduce me … that was crazy … darkness wasn’t a … darkness wasn’t palpable … it wasn’t a thing … it was … it was … I couldn’t think anymore…

  Suddenly the walls around us lit up, illuminating the darkness before me. I took a startled look around.

  “How …,” I started to ask Aaron who stood opposite me with a worried expression.

  “I used the flashlight … and found these torches all along the walls,” Aaron answered, his voice hesitant, as if waiting for something.

  “Err … there were matches lying beside them … I guess Adam must have used this passageway more often than …” He hesitated.

  “You honestly didn’t see me walking around and lighting all the torches?” he asked me, giving me an intense look as if searching for some kind of explanation for my apparent ‘blackout’.

  “I …,” I started and cleared my throat before continuing,

  “Sorry, I was … preoccupied there for a moment,” I finished lamely.

  “Preoccupied,” Aaron stated dryly.

  “Right,” he finished, obviously dropping the subject out of the profound belief of not getting any more information out of me, no matter how hard he tried ― a wise decision, I had to admit, since I would do a damn and tell him about the voices I’d heard in my head.

  Looking around, I only now grew fully aware of the magnitude of my surroundings. We were standing in an enormous underground cave.

  The naturally circular-shaped stone walls had been outfitted with brackets that held wooden torches and matches to light them. There were so many of them that the cave was now flooded with light.

  The dancing flames threw hideous shadows across the walls that made me think of demons and voices … and darkness. But now that the darkness had almost completely vanished, I was beginning to calm down again. I felt more secure of myself and my sanity, and now wondered how I could have become so confused that I had doubted myself in the first place.

  “Wow,” I said, taking in even more of the setting.

  There was even a large, probably king size mattress laid out against one of the walls. It was covered with lots of different furs, and a large cozy-looking blanket lay neatly folded at the foot of the mattress. There was an old oil lamp with a glass covering on the floor next to the mattress and a large canister of what looked like water next to the lamp.

  “How did he get the mattress down here?” I wondered aloud.

  “He probably had it rolled up in plastic wrap and threw it down the shaft we came down,” Aaron guessed.

  “That’s a long drop,” I said, shivering slightly remembering the descent through the dark narrow shaft. “I’m amazed he didn’t damage the ladder.”

  “Lucky for us, or we would have had to jump,” Aaron said, only half-joking about the part about jumping, by the sound of it.

  “So, what do we do now?” I asked Aaron, my shoulders raised in an inquisitive manner. I wanted to hear anything, any solution he could come up with, but one: that we stay there for the night. The sight of the bed covered in furs had my insides in a tight knot.

  There was no way I was going to be comfortable letting him sleep on the cold stone floor. But the idea of sleeping in the same bed, so close to him, made me break out in a cold sweat.

  I was terrified ― and I longed for it.

  “We need to get out of here as fast as we can,” Aaron answered, seemingly just as anxious as I was to get out of a situation involving a cozy little nest with just one mattress.

  I was equally relieved and disappointed, but generally glad I didn’t have to go through any more emotional struggles that night.

  “Okay,” I said, “how do we get out?”

  “Good point,” Aaron admitted, turning in several directions, looking for a way out of the cave that didn’t involve climbing the wooden ladder back up to a room possibly filled with assassins by now. Ther
e was no visible passage leading out of the circular cave.

  “Do you think there might be another hidden doorway somewhere?” I asked.

  “Hmm … there very likely could be one,” Aaron suggested. “I can’t imagine Adam would go through all of this trouble to set something like this up and not have an escape route leading from this cave. I don’t think he would have liked the idea of becoming a sitting duck in this dank place.”

  “I agree,” I answered, “that doesn’t seem likely.”

  “We should split up and look around very carefully,” Aaron suggested, already heading off in one direction, his hand placed on the stone wall while walking alongside it.

  I took off in the opposite direction along the same side of the wall, walking slowly, my eyes glued to the stone, the palm of my hand being scraped slightly by the rough edges along the way.

  After a couple of minutes my eyes already started to show signs of strain from covering a long stretch of almost identical looking stone.

  There were only slight variations in the way the wall was curved. Other than that, I couldn’t detect anything out of the ordinary. Not one section of the wall looked like it didn’t belong. Of course, I thought, that was the whole point behind hidden doorways, wasn’t it. You weren’t supposed to spot them.

  When Aaron and I finally met face to face at a stretch of the wall, having completed the circle, neither of us had found anything.

  “Okay … so what now?” I asked, fearing the worst.

  “We rest here and … think about other options,” Aaron answered, obviously having no clue whatsoever about what to do.

  And there it was, the worst, I thought. Rest … where? There was only the mattress, nothing else.

  “What other options?” I asked instead.

  “Well,” Aaron started hesitantly, “we could just wait a while and then climb back up the ladder and listen for voices. I mean, it’s possible they’ll have cleared out in a couple of hours. If we’re careful enough, we could leave the way we came.”