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

by Brian Harmon

  Olivia gave his arm a hard yank and he turned and focused his attention back on where they were going. She was right. This was their chance, perhaps the only chance they had. Something distracted it, just like before when it almost had them in the Wood. He didn’t know how he knew this, but he knew it just the same. They reached the steps and rushed down toward the basement, determined to put this hellish world behind them once and for all.

  Their feet struck the basement floor and they ran straight through the open door, rushing through the final hallways, ever closer to the tunnel that would lead them back to the cellar door and the safety of the night beyond.

  Above them, the chaotic racket went on and on, shaking the very walls around them. Dust floated down from the ceiling. And from somewhere behind them, an eerie wind drifted past them. It was the furious, sighing roar of the thing that should have devoured them, a noise that chilled them both deeply.

  A dim light greeted them as they turned down the final passage and approached the cellar doors. It was the pale glow of a clear, night sky. Even with only half the moon hanging in the sky, the world to which Wayne and Olivia were born was much brighter than the one they were leaving behind. As they rushed out and met the fresh, chilly wind, Wayne thought that he had never smelled sweeter air in his entire life.

  He grabbed the heavy, metal door and, with a desperate groan, he lifted it and slammed it closed. It would not likely stop the towering pile of living body parts that had been chasing them, but it couldn’t hurt.

  Besides that, it made him feel better.

  For a moment they stood there, panting, staring at the closed door, listening. They could no longer hear the creature. Had it really lost them?

  Olivia turned to him suddenly. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him hard on his lips, taking him by surprise. She had to stand on her toes to do it.

  “You did it!” she nearly screamed when she pulled away. She was almost laughing, perhaps on the edge of hysteria.

  “Yeah!” He was out of breath. His whole body ached from the exertion of their escape and now his head was buzzing from her kiss. He felt overwhelmed. He gazed down at her. Her chest and back were covered in blood from a wound on her shoulder, her white bra now heavily stained with crimson, but she seemed unaware of it. Her eyes were brilliant and alive as she felt the lingering rush of her adrenaline.

  “I’ve never been so scared in my entire life!” she laughed.

  “Me either!” Wayne lowered his eyes and stared down at the heavy door, wishing he had a cement truck full of concrete to pour into it. Gilbert House was an evil place connected to an evil world. The Sentinel Queen had told them that it could not be destroyed, but he wondered if it could be sealed. Even if it could, he doubted he would ever be able to sleep peacefully knowing this place existed.

  “I still can’t believe you came for me!”

  Wayne looked down at her, into her dark and brilliant eyes. “I told you I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”

  Olivia smiled up at him.

  “Excuse me…”

  They both froze, startled. Not ten feet away, sitting cross-legged on the grass, was a girl in blonde pigtails. Her nose and eyebrow were pierced and she wore blue jeans and a black tee shirt. Her ears glittered with jewelry.

  “Hi.” The girl smiled sweetly, and then said, “This is going to sound really weird, but I’m supposed to come with you guys.”

  Chapter 18

  Wayne and Olivia were waiting in the shadow of her father’s shed when Andrea slipped quietly out of the house and hurried toward them. She was carrying a small backpack in one hand and a sweatshirt jacket in the other. “I’ve got some first aid supplies so you guys can clean up,” she said. “You look awful. I can’t imagine what happened to you down there.” She held the jacket out to Olivia, who stood with her arms crossed over her chest, covering herself and her stained bra. “And you can borrow this.” With an expression of extreme apology she added, “It might be kind of tight.”

  “It’s great. Thank you.” When she took the shirt, she saw that there was something else in Andrea’s hand and immediately her stomach began to growl.

  Andrea handed her two Snickers bars. “These should hold you for a little while,” she said. “I don’t have much money, just eleven dollars, but I’ll drive through and get you something else with it.”

  Olivia shook her head. She was already opening the first candy bar. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve got some money. But thank you so much!” She took a large bite and relished it. “Oh God…” she moaned. She’d never been so hungry in her life. The candy bars and soda Brandy gave her earlier had not been adequate to satisfy her aching hunger at the time, much less to last her through the adrenaline-filled hours that followed. These wouldn’t satisfy her long either, for that matter, but they would certainly hold her over until she could order a real meal at the nearest fast food restaurant.

  “Is anything still open?” asked Wayne. “What time is it?”

  Andrea glanced at her watch. “Almost two. I was waiting for a really long time. I was starting to think you wouldn’t make it.”

  Me too, thought Wayne.

  “The McDonald’s drive through is open twenty-four hours. Is that all right?”

  Olivia looked at her as though she could fall in love with her. It was the only answer she needed.

  Andrea smiled at her and then looked at Wayne. Her eyes dropped to his feet. “You’re barefoot,” she told him, as though he didn’t know.

  “Yeah. I think I need to get off of them for a minute.”

  “I got my keys. Get in my car and I’ll drive us.”

  They crossed the driveway and slid into the tidy back seat of Andrea’s Neon. The soft upholstery felt like a luxury fit for royalty to Olivia, whose bottom had been cushioned by nothing softer than hard earth and cold porcelain since Wednesday evening.

  Andrea reached over the seat and handed Wayne the backpack in which she’d stashed the first aid supplies and then sat down behind the steering wheel. “You guys really don’t look so good. Are you sure you don’t want me to take you to the emergency room?”

  Wayne looked at Olivia, who immediately shook her head. “I’m fine,” she insisted. She had been very adamant about not going to the hospital. She didn’t like doctors. And she didn’t want to explain how she got the wounds they would be looking at.

  Wayne nodded. “Okay. I’m just worried about you.”

  “I’m all right,” she assured him.

  “Okay, but at least let me take care of you. Show me your back.”

  Olivia turned her back to him. She had finished the first Snickers bar and was tearing into the second. Her back was dirty and covered in light scrapes and welts. There were a number of small scratches and several bruises. One long scratch, the one she’d gotten when that monster snatched at her in the stairwell, ran from her shoulder, past the strap of her bra and almost to the waistband of her shorts, but it was very shallow. It had barely beaded with blood. He gently cleaned each cut, just to be sure, but it was the bite that concerned Wayne the most.

  “This might scar,” he told her as he probed the area gently with his fingers. “But I think you’ll be all right.” The thing that bit her had apparently been missing most of its teeth. That was lucky for her. It reduced the damage. The two crescent-shaped gashes were broken, her skin punctured in only four places. She had bled quite a bit down her nearly naked back, but it had stopped now.

  Andrea pulled out of the driveway, hoping the sound of her car’s engine wouldn’t wake her parents. She did not think that her father would approve of her late-night adventure, even if she knew how to explain it to him.

  “So tell me about this voice,” Wayne said as he gently dabbed away the blood around Olivia’s wound.

  After she surprised them in the woods and introduced herself as Andrea Prophett, she told them that a strange voice had come to her and told her to wait for them. When they returned, she was supposed to go w
ith them. She had not gone into any detail, realizing that they were both tired and hurt, and he had been too concerned about Olivia’s injuries to stop and listen, but now he wanted to know more about this mysterious voice.

  “The other night, someone crept up to my window in the middle of the night and taped an envelope to the screen,” she began.

  “Albert’s letter,” Wayne realized. “He told me about that. So that was you.”

  Andrea nodded. She told him her story, how she had been afraid to retrieve it at first, not knowing what it was or where it came from, and how its contents had presented her only more questions when she finally worked up the courage to open it. She told him how she delivered it to Albert in hopes of learning what it meant, and how she’d been disappointed when he gave her no answers. She told him how she sneaked into the woods and hid among the trees to watch them. She even told him about the strange encounter with Albert, how he spotted her in her hiding spot and walked right up to where she sat, only to act as if he couldn’t see her.

  “He didn’t say anything about you,” Wayne said, wondering. Why would Albert ignore her? That seemed like such a strange thing for someone to do.

  “He couldn’t possibly have missed me,” Andrea added. “He looked right at me.”

  “That’s really strange,” Olivia said.

  “It is,” Wayne agreed. He remembered the Sentinel Queen saying that psychic minds could be manipulated and wondered if she had hid Andrea from his sight for some reason.

  Or maybe it was the old man. Maybe he was behind this.

  But why?

  “I don’t know what happened,” Andrea said. “I can’t explain it.” She went on, telling them about the woman she’d seen and how she’d watched their startling confrontation.

  Wayne remembered his first encounter with Beverly Bridger and he felt ashamed of himself. He could imagine vividly what she must have seen, how he threw himself at her, lifting her over his shoulder, intending to carry her into Gilbert House, hoping to frighten her enough to make her pay for what she’d done to Olivia and her companions. When she nearly wriggled from his grasp, he spun her around and hurled her into the brush, spraining her wrist, maybe breaking it for all he knew. He wanted to defend himself, explain what happened, but he kept his mouth shut. He wasn’t sure he deserved excuses. Especially not after what happened to her.

  He still couldn’t believe that she was dead.

  “Was she the one who sent us in there?” Olivia asked. “Me and Andy and his friends?”

  Wayne replied that she was.

  “After she got up and followed you guys, I tried to follow her. But by the time I got to the bottom of the hill, you were all gone. So I turned around to go home. But on my way back, I saw something standing by that cellar door. I don’t know what it was. It scared the crap out of me.”

  Wayne suddenly sat up straight. “Oh fuck.”

  Olivia turned and looked at him, startled. “What?”

  “The basement door,” he said. “Albert closed it when we came out the first time…but it was open when we came through it just now.”

  She stared at him, her eyes wide and afraid.

  “It got out.” Wayne felt like an idiot. He should’ve stayed and bricked up the door. He should have kept it sealed in.

  But if he’d done that, then he and Olivia wouldn’t have been able to get out. They would’ve been trapped in there.

  “It’s gone,” Andrea said. “I don’t know where, but the voice told me it was gone and that it wouldn’t come back.”

  But where did it go? Wayne wondered.

  Andrea turned onto Fletching Street, which was the main road through Briar Hills. It would take them straight to the Wal-Mart Supercenter and the McDonald’s that shared its parking lot.

  “As soon as I saw that thing, I sort of collapsed,” she explained. “It was really weird. I don’t know how to describe it. It was like I was paralyzed. I just dropped to the ground and laid there. I was scared out of my mind at first, but then the voice came and told me not to be afraid. It said the thing was going away and that it wouldn’t hurt me.”

  “That’s so weird,” Olivia said as she stared out at the passing streetlights.

  “We let it out,” said Wayne, distracted. “Who knows where it is now.”

  “What was it?” asked Andrea. All she had seen in the brief moment before she collapsed to the forest floor was a pale, fleshy shape looming over the cellar door.

  “I don’t know,” Wayne replied. “Sort of…” a word came to his mind and he realized that it was as fitting a word as he was likely to find. “A troll…maybe? It was this huge, squatty thing. It attacked us while we were inside the first time.”

  “It killed some people the other night,” Olivia said grimly. “It’s a monster.”

  Andrea felt a great lump of dread rise in her belly. It had killed someone? She had actually seen it. What if it had spotted her? How close had she come to dying?

  “It can’t possibly get far,” Olivia said. She was staring up at Wayne with her soft, brown eyes. “The police will probably shoot it or something. It’s out in the open now.”

  Wayne nodded. He was sure she was right. But how many people might it kill before that happened? No one even knew it existed. How many bodies would there be before anyone realized how dangerous it really was.

  He forced away those thoughts and gave her an unconvincing smile. “Turn around. I’m almost done.”

  She smiled back at him and then did as he wished.

  “The voice told me that I needed to wait by the cellar door,” Andrea continued, not wanting to think about a killer troll on the loose in Briar Hills. “It told me that you’d be coming back through it and that I was supposed to go with you.”

  “It knew I was coming?” Wayne wondered.

  “It said there would be two of you.”

  Olivia turned and looked at him again. “It knew we were going to make it?”

  “Before we even set out?” Wayne marveled at the idea. Was it the old man? Had he arranged all this? She told them that she thought the voice sounded like that of a man, although she never saw the speaker.

  “Maybe it was all fate,” Olivia suggested. It was an incredibly romantic thought. She gazed up at Wayne, her eyes shimmering a little.

  “Come on,” he urged her. “Let me finish.”

  She turned away and let him continue patching up her shoulder. But a moment later, Wayne straightened up again and looked at Andrea. “Wait. You sat there waiting for us the whole time we were gone?”

  Andrea shrugged. “I was about to give up on you, actually. It was getting so late.”

  “Wow,” Olivia exclaimed. “Weren’t you scared out there?”

  “A little. But it was kind of nice too. It’s a peaceful night.”

  “You’re braver than me.”

  “I don’t know,” Wayne said. “You were awful brave yourself these past couple days.”

  She smiled bashfully.

  “Did it say anything else?” Wayne asked Andrea.

  “Only that I could trust you.”

  Wayne smiled a little. He wasn’t sure how to reply.

  “He didn’t let me down,” Olivia assured her, and Wayne actually blushed a little.

  “I try to keep my promises,” was all he could think to say.

  “Oh,” Andrea said. “And it said one more thing, too. Something I didn’t understand.”

  “What’s that?” Wayne asked. But when she repeated it, he didn’t understand it either. “I don’t get it,” he said.

  “Me either,” said Andrea.

  “Wayne,” Olivia said hesitantly as he pulled the strap of her bra back into place. “Am I…going to be okay?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That thing bit me,” she explained, almost embarrassed to be speaking what was on her mind. “Am I going to…turn into one of them or something?”

  Wayne tore another piece of tape from the roll. He’d wondered the sa
me thing more than once since he felt those teeth sink into his own arm. He really didn’t think they could be turned into one of those things just by being bitten by one—that was nothing but horror movie nonsense—but he also didn’t know what kinds of diseases those things might carry. “I don’t know,” he confessed.

  “I’m scared.”

  “Me too.”

  “What happened to you guys back there?” Andrea asked. She didn’t know what they were talking about. They were making it sound like they were mauled by a werewolf or something.

  “I’ll tell you everything as soon as I’m done back here,” Wayne promised. He saw no reason to hold anything back from her. It was obvious that she was a part of all this too. “Turn around,” he said to Olivia.

  Olivia turned around and let him check the scratches on her belly. She felt a little self conscious as he touched her. She was not as skinny as she would have liked to have been, and even after her two-day crash diet, she felt pudgy sitting there in only her shorts and bra. She felt a surprisingly strong desire to impress him. He was her hero, after all.

  There were several claw marks on her chest and belly, but they had only bled a little. “I don’t see anything else that looks bad,” he said, but he cleaned each scratch and applied a few bandages just the same.

  A few minutes later, Andrea pulled into the McDonald’s drive through. There was no line and the voice from the speaker box was demanding her order before she’d even fully stopped. Olivia reached into the right front pocket of her shorts and pulled out a small, purple wallet from which she took two twenty dollar bills. She then reached forward and handed them to Andrea.

  “What do you want?”