by Brian Harmon
He reached up and hung it again on the statue’s hand, wrapping it around the wrist to keep it secure, just as he’d found it.
“You’re not taking it with us?”
“No. I think we should leave it here. Maybe it’ll help us find our way back out if we need it. Come on.”
This next passage was easily twice as long as the one that brought them to the round room. And they had walked a little more than half the distance of the tunnel when a noise stopped them cold.
It was soft, distant, sort of like a wheel slowly rolling over dry leaves, a kind of crackling sound. It came from ahead of them and grew steadily louder, becoming more of a buzzing sound.
Brandy pressed her naked body against Albert. Neither of them spoke. This was the first noise they’d heard all night, with the exception of Albert’s paint can trap, and the sudden manifestation of this unidentifiable noise was, if possible, even more frightening than the noise itself.
They watched, their eyes boring into the darkness, hunched over in the short tunnel, holding their breath and wishing their hearts would not beat so loudly, waiting for the source of the noise to appear. But as it grew closer, they realized that the noise came not from straight ahead, but from the right, on the other side of the wall. It grew until it was nearly beside them, a shuffling, clicking sort of noise that Albert could not place at all, and then it began to grow fainter, as though whatever it was had turned a corner and was now moving away from them. When it died away completely, the two of them let out the breaths they’d been holding and looked at each other.
“What was that?” Brandy did not dare to raise her voice above a whisper.
Albert shook his head. “I don’t think I want to know.”
“Where did it go?”
“Another tunnel somewhere. There must be miles of them.”
“What if it’s in the same tunnel as us? Only farther up?”
“Let’s not think about that.” He took her hand and led her forward, more quickly this time. He could not get the wounded statues off his mind, those deep gouges cut into solid stone. What could have made scratches like that?
A wall appeared out of the darkness ahead of them, six feet high, to the floor of another tunnel. It was identical to the place that had awaited them at the end of the flooded tunnel, but leading up instead of down.
Albert grasped the ledge and lifted himself up into the upper tunnel. It wasn’t easy. He had to get a jump on it. For someone who didn’t have the strength to lift their own body, this could prove a difficult, if not impossible, obstacle. He doubted if someone overweight or elderly would be able to manage it. But then again, perhaps they wouldn’t have gotten this far to begin with.
Once he had his legs beneath him, he turned and took Brandy’s hands, helping her up.
This tunnel was also too short to stand fully erect, so they again stood slightly hunched as they gazed into the darkness ahead. Albert looked down at the floor and noticed that there were no scratches in the stone up here. As he started forward again, he wondered why.
Chapter 14
The next room was unnervingly familiar. It was about twenty feet wide and high, far too long to see across. Like in the last room of this size, statues stood against the wall on either side, faceless sentinels posing out a dire warning.
“Oh fuck no!” blurted Brandy.
Albert stared at the statues. He could see three pairs of them, and already he knew they were different from the others. They changed, like the ones prior to the sex room, but not in the same way. These did not grow more aroused. Their penises remained limp, but their hands changed, slowly lifting from their sides, their freakish fingers curling into fists.
They moved forward, watching with mounting horror as each new pair of sentinels appeared from the gloom, acting out their warning for what lay ahead. One by one, frame by frame, each sentinel curled his hands into fists and lifted them, their long biceps swelling, straining beneath flesh of stone. The veins in their wrists and forearms popped, practically pumping with the silent pulse of a pounding stone heart. They tilted back their heads in utter rage, a silent, faceless scream, a noiseless shriek, with the cords straining on their necks and their bodies seeming to ripple with uncontrollable anger. Then they stepped away from the wall. They actually ran at their opposites, motionless frames from a horribly realistic movie, the final pair frozen in mid-stride, hell bent with murderous rage, three more steps each from killing each other.
The face that waited on the far wall did not startle them, but only because they expected it. The expression that waited there, however, scared the hell out of them. This was a different face from that in the last chamber. This was the face of a man with blazing eyes, wild hair and a lush beard. Like the face that framed the door to the sex room, it was perfect in every detail, from the hair to the eyelashes to the spittle on his lips. He looked as though he could lash out and swallow them both.
“Fuck.”
Albert found Brandy’s choice of words perfectly appropriate.
“Well, my dear Rudman,” said Albert, doing a fairly lame Sherlock Holmes impression. “What do you surmise might happen if we enter this fellow’s oral cavity?”
“I’d say we’ll probably try and kill each other.”
“Not good.”
“No. How do we get through there?”
Albert thought for a moment, remembering the sex room and the things it made them do. They could not enter this room. If they did they’d kill each other. He couldn’t imagine how, but they would, whether they meant to or not. It’s what the statues told them, and so far they had not lied. “The sex room was filled with statues. It was like a big, three-dimensional porno. It got us all turned on and we couldn’t control ourselves.”
“That doesn’t sound right.”
“I know.”
“I’m not going to lie, I’ve seen pornography before. It really doesn’t have that effect on me.”
He stole a glance at her, wondering. He could not imagine her sitting down to watch porn. Although the idea of her doing so was strangely arousing. Or perhaps that was just the sex room. “Maybe there was something else,” he offered. “Pheromones, maybe, or something subliminal.”
“Maybe all of those things to work.”
“But it stopped when the lights went out,” he wondered.
“Maybe it takes all those things.”
“Yeah. Or maybe it’s all visual.” He looked at her, wondering. “Either way… When you take off your glasses, how well can you see?”
“Hardly at all. I have really bad eyes.”
Albert nodded. “Nearsighted?”
“Yes.”
“How far?”
“I don’t know. I can see stuff, it’s just all fuzzy.”
“How far away are things clear? Three or four feet?”
“More like one.”
“When I shined the light back in on you in the sex room, did you feel anything?”
“No. But I was scared.”
“Me too, but I could have come in and done it all again as soon as I looked in there.”
Brandy stared at him, shocked. She was unnerved by the fact that he felt that yearning while she was blind and scared. Could he have forced himself on her? Could he have attacked her right there and had his way with her? That would have been worse than the first time. That would have been rape, nothing more, nothing less.
Would someone else have done it?
“So if you take off your glasses and I close my eyes, do you think you could navigate us through this room without getting crazy?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Seems logical. I guess.”
Albert looked at the man’s face, considering. “That might just work.” But there was something else. “The big question is, why have another one of these rooms? If we got through the other one, we’re bound to know how to get through this one.”
“Do you think there’s something else in there?”
“Something else, somet
hing different, I don’t know. I just think whoever built this place would be smarter than that.”
Brandy took off her glasses and slipped them into her purse. The world around her was reduced to blurry shapes and colors. And with the exception of Albert, all of those colors were gray. “Well, I guess we have no other choice.”
“Right.” He took her hand and squeezed it, a sort of mental fastening of the seatbelt. “I’ll keep my eyes closed. I’ll be relying on you. Try not to look at anything, even if you can’t see it very well.”
“Okay.”
Albert handed her the flashlight. “Be careful. Don’t hurt yourself. Go slow and easy.”
Brandy squeezed his hand in return, fastening her own mental seatbelt, and they began to walk. They stepped over the man’s lips and teeth, onto his tongue and ducked into the next room. Immediately the world in front of her was a jumbled maze of gray shadows and forms. Her heart was pounding. “Still have your eyes closed?”
“Yeah, but it’s tempting.”
“Don’t you dare!”
“Don’t worry. I just mean, think about it. In our society, sex is such a big deal. Nudity is taboo. Pornography is considered filthy. We teach our kids modesty and tell them not to look at the naked women on HBO. But what if you visited a society of people who don’t blush at the sight of naked bodies, who aren’t ashamed of being naked or seeing someone else naked? If people just walked around naked all the time, just sat and watched people having sex all the time, had sex whenever they wanted with whomever they wanted, there would be no fascination with it. People wouldn’t care. Just like seeing people kiss is no big deal to us. In a society where kissing was taboo there would be all sorts of fascination with it. So I can sort of understand that last room. I think that everybody is turned on by pornography to some small degree, even if they don’t want to admit it. Even if they’re more horrified and disgusted by it, they’re probably still just a little turned on by it, even if that only disgusts and horrifies them more. If you were bombarded with that, life-sized, three-dimensional and in your face, and probably combined with other stuff, maybe something subconscious, something subliminal, maybe, I can almost see how that would drive us into a fit of lust and make us lose control. But this room, I don’t understand. What could possibly drive us to hate? Especially if it’s merely by sight?”
“I’d say it’s probably best not to know.” She was using the flashlight to feel her way around one of the statues. Their progress was slow, but they were getting there, and so far she felt not a shred of hate, not for Albert or otherwise.
“Yeah, you’re right. The effects might be somewhat permanent.”
“What do you mean?”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“Think about what we did back there. Just think about it a little. Are you at all turned on by that?”
Brandy blushed heavily in the darkness. She could feel the heat in her neck and face. Even so cold that she could not stop shivering, the feeling was awful. “No,” she said quickly. “It was scary.”
The tone of her voice told Albert he was treading on bad soil. “Oh. Okay. I could be wrong.”
The two of them made their way around another large statue. They were weaving around the room, probably taking the longest possible way through it. Shadows flowed in and out of the darkness, statues in odd poses, of various heights and widths. Occasionally, a hand or a foot would materialize out of the gloom and then disappear again, and once, a face emerged, the cruel, laughing visage of a man that nearly made her scream. The very sight of that face made something stir deep in her belly, something that was not quite hatred, but something close. Resentment, perhaps, or indignity.
She pushed forward, trying to forget the disturbing face, and continued on through the strange gallery of hateful stone. It seemed to her that there were more statues in this room than there were in the sex room.
“Yes.”
Albert almost opened his eyes, but was able to stop himself. “What?”
“Yes it turns me on. Really bad. But it scares me.”
Albert squeezed her hand reassuringly. “Me too.”
“Will we always feel like that?”
“Maybe. But if we’re lucky it’ll stop scaring us.”
“It’ll fade, too, right?”
“I’m sure it will. But whatever’s in this room. That’s a feeling we should never feel. Not even once. Sex can be a good thing, but hate never is.”
“Do you write poems?”
“No. Why?”
“You should. You’re very poetic.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“It’s a very good thing. It’s romantic.”
“Even in a hate room?”
“Yes.”
Brandy felt past some stone limbs to a square opening. “I think this is the door.”
“Good.”
She started to go forward, but Albert pulled her back.
“Wait.”
“What?”
“Don’t move. Keep your back to me, don’t look back, but put your glasses on and look ahead. If you see any statues, close your eyes right away and take your glasses back off.”
“Why?”
“Something just feels wrong about this.”
Brandy took her glasses from her purse and slid them on, then gazed through the opening and into the next room. There were no more statues. The hate room was behind them. But what she saw made her blood run cold. “Oh god!”
She stepped back, shoving her body against him, and he opened his eyes. Had he looked left or right he would have been face to face with the statues of the hate room, but he only looked forward. He could not take his eyes off what lay before them.
Just beyond the door, the floor dropped about ten feet into an open pit. Wicked spikes rose up from the bottom. It was a trap. Had he not stopped Brandy from going forward when he did, she would have stepped over the ledge and at the very best been speared through in a dozen places. He could not imagine her going in there and not puncturing something vital. Even if she survived the fall, it would only have been to suffer slowly until death caught up with her.
“Albert…”
“I know. It’s okay.”
This room of spikes was only about eight feet across, round, with a narrow ledge circling the left side, allowing access around to the next door, which was shorter than the one entering the room, no more than four feet tall.
“How did you know?”
“Like I said before, why have another room like this when, if you got past the first one, you probably knew the secret?”
“You just saved my life.”
“I nearly got you killed.”
She turned around and wrapped her arms around him, squeezing him so hard it hurt, and then kissed him firmly on the cheek. “Don’t you dare say that!”
Albert held her, his heart pounding. Any other place, any other time, the feel of Brandy’s naked body pressed against his would have made everything else in the world seem like a distant and unreachable future. He could feel her breasts against him, the subtle poke of her erect nipples, even the soft tuft of her hair against his thigh, but he noticed none of these things. He hardly even registered the kiss. All that would occupy his mind was the stone skewers rising up from the floor of that pit.
“Oh god!” cried Brandy. The words came out in a great wet sob.
“It’s all right,” he assured her, but he could not stop staring at the spikes.
Chapter 15
“Let’s keep moving.”
Brandy had been holding onto him for several minutes now, and she held him for a moment longer before moving. But she did begin moving, and Albert was impressed by her courage. She was scared as hell down here and had every right to be, but despite all that had happened, she just kept pushing on.
“Remember, don’t look back.”
She turned away and opened her eyes again. The sight of the spikes made her feel sick. The sex room
was a terrible thing, an emotionally threatening trap, but this was just plain deadly. She could not help but imagine them piercing her skin, glancing off her bones, gouging her eyes, tearing her throat. The very thought made her nearly vomit with horror. How would she have gone in? Forward? Sprawled across them, the bloody tips protruding from her back in a dozen places, through her hands and thighs and head? Or would her bones have stopped her from going clear to the floor, leaving her hanging like a towel thrown over a rack to dry? Or would she have gone straight down, the spikes ramming through the arches of her bare feet, entering the meat of her calf or thighs and sliding mercilessly up the bones? Would it have killed her instantly, spearing her brain or her heart? Or would she have hung there, twitching and gagging while blood gushed from her mouth, the pain unbearable but unending? The scenarios would not end.
Had she taken just one more step…
Albert measured up the path around the spikes. The ledge was narrow, but it wouldn’t be a problem. It was designed to trip up someone stepping out of there in the dark. For someone who knew what they were doing, it was simply a matter of walking around it.
Brandy stepped out of the hate room, her thoughts still lingering on the death she’d narrowly avoided. With her back to the wall, taking no more chances than necessary with the deadly pit, she began to move around the narrow ledge, circling the left side of the room to the doorway on the other side, which was actually a short tunnel, about three feet long.
The next room was about twice as large as the pit room with an identical doorway on the other side and a tall ceiling. It was completely empty. Brandy looked at Albert and noticed the expression on his face, that same concerned look that said something was not right. Looking at the room, she understood why. Before now the only places without something in it, be it statues or a pit of spikes or a pool of water, were the corridors that led from one room to the next. So why leave this room empty?
“Another trap?”
