Road Beneath the Wood (The Temple of the Blind #4)

by Brian Harmon

  Olivia nodded, understanding. She wiped the tears from her eyes and began to climb toward the solarium without a word.

  Wayne remembered seeing Olivia’s flashlight as Albert was leading him out of the solarium. He’d considered pulling free and going back for it, but he’d felt a strong aversion to turning it off. He remembered feeling as if turning off that light would be the same as turning off Olivia. It was a rather unusual feeling, now that he was considering it. He’d truly believed that she was gone forever. What did it matter whether he left the light or not?

  He wondered now if the old man or the Sentinel Queen had planted that thought in his head. Had somebody intentionally ensured that the light remained on in that room to provide them a way home now?

  A mere twenty yards away, the monster was still tearing through the lifeless denizens of the Wood. Wayne could no longer see it, but he could hear it. There was a sound coming from it, like nothing he’d ever heard before. It was not a scream, exactly. It was something like a low, pitiful moan, or a desperately lost sigh. It was the screams of the dead suffering fates even worse than their endless deaths. Wayne listened to it for a moment as Olivia struggled up the arched trunk of the tree, easily as fascinated as he was terrified. He thought he could almost see it, an enormous black shadow faintly visible as it moved against the rest of the blackness. He wondered what it was, how it worked. It seemed to defy all the laws of physics. It simply devoured and then became that which it devoured, as impossible as something from a comic book. It was as unnatural as black magic.

  He snapped his attention back to where it belonged and began to climb after Olivia. The night tree was cold and slick beneath them, making the climb treacherous, but the deep grooves in the bark allowed a relatively sturdy grip.

  Olivia’s hand slipped and she tipped perilously to the side.

  “Careful!” Wayne cried, startled.

  “I’m trying!”

  “I know. Just don’t think about it.”

  Below them, the courtyard was almost deserted. The beast that was feeding upon the creatures had turned away to pursue the ones that were fleeing into the forest. Wayne looked toward the building. He could see almost nothing. The shadows were deep and only the vague shape of the structure could be discerned, but he remembered looking down from the third floor in the moments after Olivia had first been snatched into this black hell. With his and Albert’s flashlights, he had seen that the first floor lounge reached father into the courtyard than did the floors above it. It was completely glassed in, like a greenhouse, and in a moment they were going to be climbing directly over the ceiling of that room.

  Broken glass lay scattered across the ground where the creatures of the Wood had bashed through it, twinkling subtly in the gloom, but the panes of glass that made up the ceiling were still intact. He could see the dim reflection of the illuminated windows above it.

  He had no doubt that many of the corpse-creatures had taken refuge there. If they weren’t careful, they would fall right through that glass and into their hungry arms.

  Looking at that glass room, which he knew would have looked very nice if the building had ever been completed and used as the university originally intended, he remembered how Wendell Gilbert—or whoever was responsible for the masonry work on the first floor—bricked up the door between the first floor lounge and the hallway. It would have been obvious that these things were eventually going to break through the glass. Sealing the door to the lounge was the only way to keep them out.

  Olivia screamed and snatched back her hand, almost losing her balance.

  “What is it?”

  “It touched me!”

  “What?”

  “The tree touched me! Look!”

  Wayne peered past her and saw that several small branches were twisting and coiling like injured snakes.

  “What do I do?”

  “You just have to go on. Try not to touch any more than you have to, but this is the only way. There’re worse things below us.”

  Olivia hesitated, but only for a moment. Wayne was right. It would not be long before something came back for them, and whatever it was would be much worse than groping tree limbs. She reached past the coiling branches, grabbed one that was not moving, and then pulled herself up. The smaller limbs touched her, licking her arms, actually clinging to her a little. As she climbed, they snatched greedily at her skin, nipping her bare belly and legs. They even stung a little as they sucked at her flesh.

  As she climbed past it, the prickling, gripping limbs reminded her somehow of leeches, and the thought sent chills of revulsion through her.

  Directly below them, only a few corpses could still be seen in the gloom, their pale bodies glowing faintly against the blackness all around them. Wayne looked down at them as he climbed, struggling to see them. He thought that these were mostly the broken ones that could only drag themselves across the ground, but it was difficult to know for sure. All he could see was faint, indiscernible shapes.

  But he supposed it wouldn’t matter either way if he fell out of this tree and broke his legs. They wouldn’t need to be able to walk to swarm his helpless, injured body and tear him limb from limb.

  Somewhere behind them, a tree fell flat under the monster’s foot. Wayne turned and looked in that direction, trying to see where the creature was, but it was too dark.

  The tree jerked suddenly, as if something large had rammed it, and when he looked down, Wayne found a grotesque face staring up at him.

  The creature was clinging to the side of the tree below him, its dead face glaring up at him, though it had no eyes. Others were gathering as well, swarming the base of the tree.

  “Hurry!” Wayne yelled.

  Olivia grabbed another branch and felt the smaller limbs grasp her skin, wrapping around her, sucking at her, pricking her. Grimacing, she scrambled upward, toward the broken windows of the third floor and tore her hand free. The climb should have been easier, especially once she got up into the limbs, but her shoulder hurt where she’d been bitten and she was weak from her lack of food and sleep.

  Wayne scrambled after her, desperate to keep out of reach of the thing that was climbing after him. He looked back down and saw that it had almost managed to claw its way to the first of the lower limbs. Soon it would be able to move faster, and he doubted if it would be slowed at all by the fear of falling and breaking its neck.

  Olivia slipped and again nearly lost her balance. Her scream seemed deafening in the eerie quietness of the world around them. She looked down and saw the glass below her. If she fell, she would plunge through it, probably cutting herself to ribbons, and then, while she lay bleeding to death, probably with a broken back, the corpses would come. They would eat her. She would die screaming in agony.

  “Come on,” Wayne urged. “You can do it. You’re almost there.” He could feel the branches grabbing at his bare feet and ankles, could feel them pricking at his hands. One even grasped his thigh startlingly close to his genitals, reminding him that his cloak had been pulled open during the struggle in the courtyard.

  Luckily, it seemed that only the smallest branches were reacting to their presence. If the larger ones had been the same, they might have been capable of encircling their whole bodies and squeezing them to death. But he had barely thought about this when he realized that the larger limbs had begun to sway, as though agitated by their rude ascent up their trunk.

  It was waking up, he realized. Right now it was still moving slowly, sluggishly rising from its long hibernation, but it was quickly becoming more aware. Soon it would be wide awake and it would not take kindly to their presence.

  Olivia looked back at Wayne to make sure he was still behind her. Immediately, she saw the thing that was climbing after them. It was frightfully agile, in spite of its decayed body, and was making its way quickly through the branches. It would soon catch up to Wayne if they did not hurry. Behind it, others had begun to climb after them as well. These were moving far slower, posing no t
hreat to them as long as they continued moving, but if she should fall, she had no doubt that they would be on her in an instant.

  She turned and looked forward again, trying to calm herself. The top of the tree was beginning to bow beneath their weight. The very tops of the branches were settling onto the floor just within the broken window. She was almost there. With her heart still racing, she ripped her hand free of the prickling limbs and began to inch forward.

  Another resounding crash echoed from somewhere close behind them.

  “It’s coming!” Wayne warned.

  Olivia bit back another scream. She could feel herself sliding into panic. Inch by inch, she crept forward, forcing herself to remain calm, not letting herself look back at the approaching monstrosity.

  Just a little farther…

  She had to take her time. She couldn’t afford to fall. But time was quickly running out.

  She could hear nothing but her own rapid breathing, but she knew the thing was moving toward them. It would be upon them in seconds. And when it reached them, it would all be over. She would finally die.

  Shakily, she rose to a crouch, her body trembling, her eyes fixed firmly on the slippery limbs beneath her. She could feel it shaking as Wayne and the zombie-creature struggled up the trunk after her. She slid her foot a few inches forward and heard a loud crack from somewhere just behind her. The sound wrenched another scream from her and she gripped the branches with all her strength, terrified.

  The tree wasn’t going to support her weight. It was going to snap beneath her if she went any farther. She was going to have to jump the last few feet.

  Her eyes twitched toward the darkness below her. If she missed, she would have only a second to scream before she struck the ground.

  And then the dead would be upon her.

  The monster made a sound that might have been a roar, but sounded more like a sigh, as though the wind had begun to blow in this empty land.

  “Go now!”

  Olivia glanced over her shoulder. It was closing fast, moving like a tidal wave through the darkness.

  Beneath her, the limbs of the night tree were crawling up her ankles, threatening to trip her in these final, crucial seconds.

  “Go!”

  She held her breath and jumped, tearing free of the grabbing limbs. For a second, she was certain that she would not make it, that she would fall, surviving this far only to become more prey for that giant beast.

  But she made the jump easily. In the next instant, she was standing right where she’d been when she was snatched into that horrible forest, staring right through the same dusty glass, into the same hallway where she watched Wayne and Albert struggle for their lives in the enormous hands of a grotesque monster.

  For a few frantic heartbeats she stood there, distracted by the strange sameness of this room. Then she turned and looked back the way she’d come.

  Wayne eased himself to where she had been crouched only seconds before and prepared to jump.

  Behind him, the creature that had been climbing after them hurled itself forward, actually leaping from one limb to the next, bounding after him in fluid, almost cat-like motions. Olivia screamed for him to watch out even as she saw the great heaving bulk of the other thing descend from the darkness at their backs.

  Wayne jumped, and Olivia watched the events as though they passed before her in slow motion. The creature reached out for him with hands that were never human. Broken, ragged claws slashed the air at his heels as his bare feet left the slippery bark. In the same instant, a flurry of dead body parts sailed down through the air. Faces and hands and feet and legs and ribcages smashed against the creature and then both the creature and the night tree were gone in a great explosion of shattering wood and glass.

  And then there was only the great, shifting beast blossoming from the darkness, filling the entire window behind Wayne as he leapt through the air, his arms flailing, the mysterious cloak flowing out around him.

  He wasn’t close enough. He was going to fall. He was going to plunge to his death in the mangled glass and branches three stories below, doomed to be swallowed by this relentless beast.

  She was sure that she was about to watch him die.

  But he was close enough. He landed squarely on the floor, his bare feet slapping onto the shards of glass scattered upon the tile. For a moment, he teetered backward, threatening to tumble right back into that terrible forest, and Olivia’s already frantic heart skipped a beat. But before she could even make herself react, he regained his balance, swept the flashlight off the floor and took her by her wrist.

  As a giant hand of dead flesh and bone plowed through the broken windows after them, shattering what remained of the glass, Wayne and Olivia fled the ruined solarium and raced for their lives into the shadowy hallway.

  Chapter 17

  A monster was lurking here when they were last inside Gilbert House, but neither of them even considered that they might encounter it again. It wouldn’t matter if they did. As terrible as that beast was, something considerably worse was behind them.

  After rushing from the solarium, Wayne and Olivia turned left toward the stairs. Behind them, the glass doors shattered as the monstrosity of corpses burst into the hallway and gave chase.

  Behind the dusty glass that separated them from the solarium, they could see it as it filled the room. It poured itself through the shattered outer window, like the waters of a flash flood. Mangled corpses spilled across the floor and slammed against the walls.

  Olivia screamed as a silently howling corpse was flung against the window next to her, its deformed hands clawing at the glass.

  Wayne dared a look back and wished instantly that he hadn’t. It filled the hallway behind them, sloshing fluidly as it slammed against the brick wall opposite the solarium and then twisted and rolled toward them. The windows were shattering around it, allowing more and more of the vile heap of mutilated flesh to pour into the hallway.

  He saw it reaching for them and forced himself to turn away. But he had already seen the long, snaky arm that was slithering toward them, rapidly closing the distance between them. He raced down the steps as he swallowed the scream that was boiling up from deep inside.

  They reached the landing and turned with the steps, descending toward the second floor as an avalanche of corpses exploded into the stairwell above them. Brittle carcasses were dashed to dust against the brick wall behind them and the railing vibrated with the violence of it.

  Olivia screamed again. She couldn’t seem to stop screaming. That inner voice that had kept her sane for so long when she was alone in the darkness was now gone and all she could think was that they couldn’t possibly make it. It was too far and the monster was too close and too fast. It was going to catch them and they were going to die.

  She saw what that thing was. She saw the mutilated corpses through the solarium window. They would end no differently. Their deaths would be violent and horrible.

  What sort of agony would that be, to be swallowed into a creature like that, bathed in rot and decay and then ripped limb from limb while gagging on mummified fingers and toes and chunks of leathery, rotten flesh?

  “Come on!” Wayne screamed. He turned the corner again at the second floor landing and continued downward even as a black sea began to cascade down and around the steps, reaching for them with fingers of gruesome, endless death.

  A long, serpent-like tendril snaked down and snatched at Olivia with dismembered claws, slashing a shallow gash down her bare back. She screamed as though it had torn out her heart.

  As Wayne turned once more and rushed straight for the first floor landing, he realized that he was uttering a prayer, asking God to please let them escape, to let them get out of this alive. He did not know if God cared about him or not, but he hoped for Olivia’s sake that He at least cared about her.

  And perhaps He did care about her, and even about him, because even in his panic to escape, Wayne remembered that only one set of stairs in this
insane house of hell led to the basement. Had he gone down one more flight, they would have found themselves up against a concrete wall with nowhere to go while a wave of agonizing death crashed down upon them.

  They turned right and ran as fast as they could go toward the next set of stairs. Wayne was vaguely aware that his cloak was still open and that it was flowing out behind him, his naked body catching the cool air as he ran, but this mattered little to him. The only thing that mattered was the stairs…and they seemed so impossibly far away.

  Wayne risked another look back as the great black flood of tangled carcasses burst from the stairwell behind them and swirled into the empty corridor like a ghastly storm cloud. It coiled about itself and rolled, changing course before snaking after them. In the next instant it was charging down the hallway, stretching toward them, reaching for them.

  They were halfway to the stairwell, but they still had the last flight of stairs and then the entire length of the basement between them and the cellar door. And then what? It suddenly occurred to him that if this thing kept chasing them, it would undoubtedly follow them right through the cellar door and into Briar Hills. Then where would they hide? Where would anyone hide? Something like this could kill every living thing on the face of the planet if it so chose.

  But he couldn’t think of that. They had to get out. Whatever happened afterwards would have to wait until afterwards.

  He stared back at it, terrified, as it drew closer and closer. As he watched, a great, swirling maw opened in the center of the mass. Groping hands and claws and talons reached out from it like nightmarish teeth and a gut-wrenching groan began to rise from somewhere deep inside the unthinkable monster.

  He started to turn back, to focus his attention on where he was going. But before he could, he saw something unusual.

  A strange ripple ran through the creature, a sort of shudder that made it look for an instant as though it were about to fly apart. The great, swirling cavity at its center suddenly collapsed on itself, and then it was veering sideways, slamming into the wall, spiraling like a curl of ocean waves. It climbed right up the wall and crashed into the ceiling, decimating a light fixture and sending glass, plaster and bone raining down on the tile floor. And even then it did not stop. It pushed on, plowing straight into the ceiling as though trying to burrow its way up through the floor above, bones shattering against concrete and steel, littering the floor behind them with countless broken body parts.