by Brian Harmon
He should call Brent. He would get a kick out of this mess with Laura. He would, of course, tell him to go for it. “What are you waiting for?” he’d ask, completely oblivious of all the moral and ethical wrongs about it. “Especially if he’s porking some other bimbo!” “Porking” was one of Brent’s favorite words. It was crude and hateful, but he found it funny, and Wayne supposed it was in some obscene sort of way.
He wouldn’t call Brent. He would probably never call Brent again. Maybe once or twice Brent would call him, but he wouldn’t keep it up for much longer. He would be lost just like the others.
Wayne would miss those old friendships. He would miss the happiness they brought him and he would miss those fun times they had, but no matter how much he missed them, he just wanted them to go away.
If he never heard from Brent, or from anyone again, it would be just fine. They could all go away. Just like Will went away.
Will had made it easy on him. Will was gone in the first two months after graduation. Sam was the last to talk to him, and before he lost touch, he learned that he was working in some garage in another town and was planning to get married. Married to whom, no one knew. He hadn’t even had a girlfriend as far as anyone was aware. It was as though he had just been waiting for a chance to leave.
The fifth seal came into view ahead of him, and as he laid the palm of his hand against the circle, Wayne wondered if there might have been some secret Will had been keeping, some reason that he wanted to escape.
It was something he would never know.
Chapter 6
A short while after leaving the fifth seal behind him, Wayne spotted the first of the two markers. It was a simple stone block, about two and a half feet high, its length and width a few inches smaller. It was, to him, eerily reminiscent of an old tombstone of some kind. It was covered with carvings not unlike those that covered each of the seals he had passed through, yet there was something different about these carvings. When he looked upon the seals, he didn’t really feel anything. There was an impression of great age and mystery, like the hieroglyphics he’d seen in books and on television, but nothing more. These markings, however, were different. There was something terribly ominous about them, and just looking at them planted a nervous lump deep in his belly.
There were fewer roots in this portion of the tunnel than there had been in the last, and as far as he could see there were none at all beyond this first marker. He stopped and stood before the block, examining it, remembering the warning the Sentinel Queen had given him.
He would not be able to look back once he passed this marker. Not until he was past the second one. Wayne felt a shiver run through him. He wondered what would happen if he were to disobey. Would something in the darkness come to life and devour him? Would he be struck instantly dead by some furious power? Perhaps the ground would open up and spill him into a fiery hell below. The beehive in his imagination had hundreds to choose from.
He took a deep breath, steeling himself. He’d gotten past five seals already. He could certainly get past this obstacle.
He swallowed all his anxieties and stepped past the first marker.
When he was nine, his parents took him to a Halloween spook house. He’d been determined that he would not be afraid. He knew that the only things inside were paper, cardboard and rubber and that every monster was a teenager in some dumb mask. He’d boasted to his friends that he would do it, and he’d been hell bent on it. No masks and fake fog were going to scare him. He had it all planned out, even. He knew what to expect. At least, he thought he did.
When he heard other people talking about the spook house, he heard them laugh that it was lame and the only thing scary about it was the old man who ran the place. He envisioned eerie corridors and foggy tunnels and cobwebbed staircases. He pictured not Dunnen, Missouri’s old banquet hall, but Hollywood’s finest haunted mansion. He was ready for the best. He was ready for the “real horrors,” and nothing short of that could possibly frighten him. But he’d had it all wrong. He discovered this when he first walked through that black curtain with his stomach all balled up and his heart beating faster and faster.
The spook house was no house at all, but a very poorly lit maze of narrow corridors. The walls were plywood and particleboard with black paper stapled to it. The monsters weren’t grand beasts with fur and fangs and dripping muzzles, they were just simple costumes, some homemade and poorly so and others the same cheep rubber masks he’d seen at Wal-Mart. But it did not matter how good their costumes were because you only saw flashes of them as they leapt out from hidden crevices and reached through holes in the walls.
He did make it through the spook house that Halloween, and he went several times again as the years passed. He went more than once with Gail, who clung to him as though they’d unearthed hell itself, screaming and giggling and screaming some more. But that first walk was one he would never forget for as long as he lived. It was the simplicity that horrified him, as he realized for the first time in his life that sometimes fear was simply a dark road with nowhere to go but forward or backward, and sometimes you couldn’t even turn back.
Walking down this dark tunnel, with no way of turning back—indeed, with no way of even looking back—Wayne suddenly felt like that nine-year-old boy again, with teeth clenched tightly against a scream that he did not want to release and his hands balled into white-knuckled fists at his sides. He was suddenly in that spook house again, bathed in darkness and surrounded by dark walls that forced him to move only in the direction “they” wanted him to go.
Though he had no way to know for sure, he thought that he was still within sight of the first marker when he heard the footsteps behind him, following him, keeping pace.
He fixed his eyes into the darkness directly ahead of him and told himself that no one was back there. He’d closed the last seal himself. The tunnel was empty. No one was in here with him.
These footsteps were only sounds. They were without substance and therefore could not harm him. And yet, he felt a terrible chill racing through him. He could not make himself ignore them. And he realized that they were getting closer.
His eyes drifted to the right, scouring the darkness beside him, and saw something dark standing there, watching him.
It took all his willpower not to turn and face it. Inside his own head, he was screaming at himself, reminding himself that he would die if he didn’t follow the Sentinel Queen’s rules. He would die horribly and painfully.
He didn’t know how he knew this, but he was certain that the consequences of making a mistake down here would be not only deadly but unimaginably horrible. Death was the very least of what he had to fear.
A hard shudder shook his entire body, threatening to freeze him in his tracks.
All he knew about this place was what he had been told by the Sentinel Queen. He still had no idea whether he could trust her, but he could not afford to take any chances. He would have to choose to trust her completely or not trust her at all. And if she wanted him dead, he was sure she’d had plenty of opportunities to see to it already.
Somehow he walked only forward. He fixed his eyes ahead of him again, not daring to peek to his sides. If another startling shape appeared in the shadows, he couldn’t be certain he would be able to stop himself from turning to face it.
This was insane. He’d already conquered the fear room. Hadn’t he suffered enough psychological torment? Why should he have to endure something like this again?
The footsteps were right behind him now. He could feel something there, following at his very heels. A shadow crept into his peripheral vision to his left, like fingers reaching out from behind him, about to snatch at his face. A hot, damp breath fell across his shoulders.
His heart was pounding like a jackhammer in his chest, his blood pumping so hard he actually felt it throbbing in his throat. His knees felt weak, wobbly, as though all his bones were quickly turning to jelly. He wanted to turn and look, but he could not. He wanted t
o run from the footsteps, but he could not. The world doubled in front of him for a moment and he realized that he could not breathe. He realized that he was on the verge of passing out, of stumbling forward and collapsing onto the cold floor. The Sentinel Queen had told him not to stop, and he had little doubt that if he did fall, the feet behind him would walk right up to his still body and he would wake up to agonies he’d never imagined.
He closed his eyes and tried to relax, but he could not. He was on the verge of actually bolting, of trying to outrun whatever was following him, not caring what the Sentinel Queen said. How could he possibly be so close to panicking? Hadn’t he already conquered the fear room? Surely these phantom sounds and shadows were not as bad as those horrible statues.
But these were different horrors, he realized. The fear in this tunnel was coming from inside him, not from some disturbing statue. These fears began where the fear room terrors eventually reached after they burrowed deep into one’s mind.
Perhaps, he realized, the tunnel between these markers was even using the fear he felt in that horrible room to power these illusions. It was, after all, the same, soul-sucking feeling of dread that had nearly paralyzed him before.
A thought occurred to him as he considered this. Maybe he hadn’t actually conquered the fear room. Maybe he was still inside it. Maybe this was all a part of that room’s awful power of illusion, the same thing that made Albert believe that something had reached out of the darkness and torn him from his mortal shell.
That was certainly a hopeless idea, and one that would in no way help him survive. He had to find something to occupy his mind, something strong enough to force away these terrifying sensations.
He thought about Olivia and found some strength, but not nearly enough.
He kept his eyes closed and tried to think, tried to keep his head.
“What’s wrong with you?”
Wayne nearly jumped. For a moment he did not understand. It was Gail’s words, coming back to him from his past.
“You’ve been so strange lately.”
It was Gail’s words, but it was his voice. He was speaking them almost absently. In his haste to find something to take his mind off his fear he’d dived into that cauldron of pain again, so deeply this time that he actually spoke the words Gail used that night.
“I guess I haven’t been feeling good,” he responded, answering the question he just asked with the answer he gave her back then.
They were sitting in his truck in her driveway after a date. For three days now, he’d been distant, lost in his own thoughts, pondering the inevitable. He told her that he wasn’t feeling good and that was the truth. He did not feel good at all, but that was not really the answer to the question she’d asked.
“I’m really worried about you,” she said. She was wearing khaki shorts and a halter-top, looking gorgeous as usual, but he’d hardly noticed. She’d even made a few advances toward him and he was uninterested.
“Don’t be,” he told her. And he meant this. She really shouldn’t be worried about him.
“I am. I can’t help it. I love you, Wayne.”
This was the part where he was supposed to say, “I love you too, Gail.” But he did not say that. This was what everything finally came down to. This was where he got off.
When silence followed for a moment, Gail reached out and touched his knee. He looked up at her and saw the fear in her eyes. She had at last picked up the vibe he was giving off, had at last looked up the track to see the derailment coming.
“Wayne?” There was an anxious tinge to her voice, as though she were already on the verge of tears.
“Yeah.”
“I love you,” she said again.
Wayne nodded. “I know.” He felt as though he’d betrayed everything that was important in his life. He did not look at Gail because he knew that he would see the tears in her eyes and that would rip him apart.
“But…?”
Wayne had to fight back his own tears. “I’m sorry,” he told her.
“Are you…?”
Wayne nodded. He couldn’t say the words. He couldn’t say that he did not want to be her boyfriend anymore. He kept his eyes firmly fixed on the steering wheel, not wanting to see what he could not help but hear.
She tried to say something else, but all that would come out were shuddering sobs.
Wayne said nothing.
“Please…”
That was the worst part. She began to beg him and his heart broke far too much to ever heal again.
“I thought…I…”
Wayne shook his head, slowly, deliberately. He was still fighting the teardrops in his eyes.
She scooted closer to him, trying to wrap her arms around him. “I love you,” she sobbed. “Please don’t…I don’t…I can’t…I…”
Wayne shook his head again. “Please go,” he said. “I’m sorry, but please just go.”
She pleaded with him a little more, begging him to not do this, and when he shook his head again, she opened the door and ran into the house, sobbing so fiercely she was almost screaming.
He would have given anything to tell her he loved her, too, not because it would have spared her those tears, but because it was true. He loved her with all his heart. He wanted to marry her. He wanted to have a family with her. He wanted to grow old with her.
Eventually, he let the tears fall. They blurred his vision as he drove home, and he wished that they would blind him entirely and send him crashing to peaceful death. Now, three years later, he let the tears fall again.
Why did she have to beg him that way? Why couldn’t she have just gotten pissed off at him? Why did she have to make it so hard?
Something was behind him, breathing onto his neck and back, and although he feared it, he did not run. Ahead of him, something was dancing in the darkness just beyond the reach of his flashlight, something small and agile, something he could never quite see.
Perhaps he should have just turned around and looked whatever was behind him in the eye. Perhaps he should have just stopped and faced it and let it do what it wanted to do. It could not possibly hurt him more than he deserved to be hurt and it would most certainly put an end to his misery.
But he did not turn around. He did not stop. He did not run. He continued to walk the cursed tunnel the Sentinel Queen sent him down. He did so not because he was courageous. He did so not because he was afraid. He did so because in this terrible dread he found a suffering that soothed his guilt and eased the pain. For the first time, Wayne realized just how emotionally lost he’d become since losing Gail.
He embraced the pain and walked on.
Chapter 7
Before everything went to hell, back when life was good and friends seemed forever, Wayne and Harvey and Gail and Claire were spending a lot of time double dating. They went to the lake and to the movies and to the high school football games and pretty much anywhere else that came to their minds as long as they had the money.
He’d never met another group of people he felt so close to, so happy to be around, at least not until he met Albert, Brandy and Nicole. The four of them could talk about anything at all, and often did.
He remembered sitting in a restaurant once, not very long before he broke up with Gail. The girls had both left to use the restroom and Harvey leaned toward Wayne and said, “If you weren’t my best friend, and if you weren’t so wrapped around Gail’s finger, I’d be jealous of you.”
“Why?” Wayne asked.
“Claire thinks the world of you and Gail. She talks about you all the time. And I swear I’ve caught her checking you out before.”
Wayne laughed. “I doubt that. You’re just a jealous boyfriend.” He picked up his glass of soda, grinning. “At this rate you’ll have her locked up in your garage before the summer’s out.”
Harvey laughed. “I probably will. She’s the greatest. What about you, though? Does Gail ever look at anybody and make you jealous?”
Wayne thought about it fo
r a minute. “I’ve never noticed anything. Shut up before you make me paranoid.”
“Hey, you’ve got to be paranoid these days. There’s all sorts of creeps out there. Hell, even I checked out Gail when you first introduced me to her!”
“Hey now!”
“See. You’re jealous.”
“No, I just don’t want your sick eyes dragging down the property value.”
Harvey laughed. “I’m serious though. Gail is beautiful. I’d never sleep around with her, of course, but I’ll admit she’s a doll.”
“Well, thank you. Claire is very beautiful, too, I think.”
“Thanks. I probably won’t tell her that though.”
“Fine by me.”
“She’ll probably start hitting me up for a threesome.”
Wayne screamed comically and clawed at his eyes. “Must purge image!”
The two of them laughed, both of them happy, both of them young and free. Wayne supposed that Harvey was probably still happy and free. He had a lot to be happy about.
The footsteps had vanished and with them the hot breath that had beat upon his shoulders. Likewise, the odd little thing that had been dancing in the darkness just ahead had also vanished. There were no sounds and no disturbances in the air, but somehow he could feel that he still was not alone. A dark presence seemed to hover over him and he felt that if he were to look up, he would see something clinging to the ceiling, staring down at him, just waiting for him to meet its hungry eyes.
The second marker was still not within sight and he was beginning to realize that the Sentinel Queen never told him how far apart the two markers were. For all he knew, this horrible stretch of tunnel could go on for twenty miles.
“Wayne!”
