The Box (The Temple of the Blind #1)

  Chapter 10

  As he awoke, Albert was first aware of the darkness. It baffled him, confused him the same way that the cold feel of the hard floor under him and the chilly air on his damp skin confused him. For a moment he could not remember where he was, but his memories swam back to him as surely as did consciousness. He remembered Brandy and the room with the stone orgy and the thing they’d done together as though the very sight of those statues was enough to fling them into furious, sexual wanting. He remembered the sex and the confusion. He remembered something else, too, something he’d seen while in the throes of an orgasm that wouldn’t satisfy him: a shadowy shape moving among the statues. Suddenly it dawned on him that it was dark and terror burst from every fiber of his being.

  He scrambled to his feet and then stood there, naked and shivering, listening to the darkness, trying to hear the breathing of an invisible intruder. But there was not a sound but his and Brandy’s breathing and the thudding of his own heart. The silence was as eerie as the darkness, but it was also comforting. They were at least alone. He thought about waking Brandy, but he knew that if he could find the flashlights first, then she might be less afraid when she awoke. He turned, trying to find his bearings, and a piece of stone struck him in the corner of his eye, sending a flash of pain through his already throbbing head.

  He cursed and stumbled away, only to be jabbed in the back by something else. Solid stone statues surrounded him. Although they looked as soft as real flesh, they were definitely not. He stopped and stood for a moment, wondering what to do, and as he blinked away tears of pain from his stinging eye he became aware that he could see, although only barely. There was a dim glow from beyond the next door.

  He made his way toward the light, feeling around the statues with his arms held up in front of his face, waiting for another rogue limb to jab him, perhaps putting out an eye way down here in the darkness. As he crept through the crowded stone orgy, he found that he could see the outline of the doorway. The light was slightly brighter in the next room.

  Rectangular, about ten feet across by fifteen feet wide, this next room was empty. The intruder wasn’t here. Neither were there any statues, pornographic or otherwise. He could make out two corridors. One was on the far right side of the opposite wall, leading forward. The other led left from the far corner. The light was coming from this direction.

  Quickly, and without looking back, he moved toward the lighted corridor and peered down it. About twelve feet into the passage another corridor branched off to the right. About four feet beyond that was a sharp right turn. There, at that right turn, the light was brighter still.

  He began to walk toward the light, desperate to get his flashlight back, but as he approached the first passage, his bare foot struck something and he froze. Around him, the tunnel was filled with the soft sound of light metal skidding across smooth stone. For a moment he stood there, unable to move, certain that something dark and malicious must have heard the noise and would soon come rushing toward him. But no such horror could be seen.

  After a moment, he let go his held breath and began forward again. He bent and picked up the object he’d kicked, puzzled. How did Brandy’s glasses get way out here?

  Same way the flashlight left the room.

  He glanced back over his shoulder at the room he was leaving behind. He hoped Brandy would be safe until he returned. He didn’t realize the light was so far away. Perhaps he shouldn’t have left her alone, but it was too late now. He might as well get the flashlight first.

  He crept on, his bare body shivering with fearful anticipation. He wished he could see better than he could, but with each step his vision improved. He peered up the first corridor as he passed, but could see only darkness. His flesh tingled with fear. He could too easily imagine someone standing in that darkness, watching him, calculating his movements, waiting for his guard to drop.

  He made the turn at the end of the corridor and gazed ahead. The tunnel went on out of sight into the darkness. About twenty feet ahead, the tunnel branched to the left. The light was strong there, but there was something ominous about the darkness beyond that turn.

  What the hell was he thinking coming down here? He’d actually been willing to come here alone! What would have happened then? What would have become of him? He hurried on, trembling with anxiousness, bracing himself against whatever horror was certain to come charging out of that darkness beyond the light.

  But nothing came after him. He turned left, into the light, and there was his flashlight. It was lying motionless on the ground. Beside it, another passage went right. Beyond it, about fifteen feet away, the corridor broke into a tee and went both left and right.

  He rushed to the flashlight and snatched it off the ground. He half expected a trap, but he could no longer stand not having it in his hand.

  He gazed up the tunnel to the right. There were no more passages to be seen in that direction for as far as the light would reach.

  All these corridors… This was some kind of maze. And the flashlight seemed to be leading him toward this passage.

  A part of him wanted badly to see where that passage led, despite the fear he felt, but he could do no such thing. He needed to get back to Brandy.

  He made his way back to the previous passage, gave the tunnel to the left a brief glimpse with the flashlight and then continued back the way he’d come. He did not like this at all. The whole idea of not being alone gave him chills all the way to his soul. The fact that this presence managed to steal his flashlight intensified that chill until his whole body trembled with anxious anticipation.

  “Albert?”

  He heard her voice as he rounded the turn in the corridor. She’d awakened before he could return after all.

  “Albert? Where are you?” There was panic in her voice, and he could hardly blame her. He should not have left her back there.

  “I’m here, Brandy.” He broke into a sprint and hurried back to the room where he’d left her.

  Brandy froze in the flashlight beam like a deer in headlights. She was on all fours, crawling around on the cold floor, searching for her clothes and her glasses and of course for him. She was still stark naked, her golden hair dangling around her startled face, her blue eyes wide and frightened, tears streaming down her cheeks. Beside her was the flashlight she’d been carrying. The lens was broken and it offered no light. Albert vaguely remembered the sound of it hitting the ground when she threw herself at him.

  Not a stitch of their clothing could be seen.

  “Albert?”

  He was staring at her there amid the statues, her naked breasts accented by gravity, her nipples erect from the chill, her bare buttocks up in the air, her whole body covered in gooseflesh, and again he was stricken with that bizarre and fierce arousal, that animal lust.

  He closed his eyes, squeezing them hard against the strange urges he felt, and in just a moment he felt himself calming. What the hell was wrong with him?

  “Albert, is that you?”

  Again he opened his eyes. Brandy was getting to her feet now, modestly covering her breasts but not that other part. That part of her was fair and golden, a small tuft of lovely blonde, a place forbidden to his eyes, but unlocked in a moment of strange lust. Suddenly he was aroused again, as stiff as the last pair of sentinels in the previous room.

  He turned and bolted from the doorway, turning away from Brandy and the room entirely.

  “Albert!” She began to cry again, utterly terrified, and Albert felt sick to have left her in the dark like that. “Albert! Don’t leave me!”

  “It’s okay. I’m right here.”

  “Come back!”

  “Come to me!”

  “Albert, please!”

  “I can’t!” He growled with frustration. He wanted to go to her, but he couldn’t, and he didn’t even know why. “What the fuck!”

&nbsp
; “Where are you?” She was getting closer now.

  “I’m right outside the door.” He shined the light at the door, not looking at it. “You can see the light, right?”

  “Yeah. Sort of. But I can’t see anything else. My glasses.”

  Albert looked down at her glasses. He was still holding them in his hand. “I’ve got your glasses. Come to me, okay Brandy?”

  “Okay.” She sounded pitiful. “I’m coming.”

  He could hear her footsteps. She was just inside the door, but moving slowly, likely feeling her way around the statues that had bruised him up a good deal on his way out.

  At last she stepped through the doorway. Her arms were still crossed over her breasts, as though unaware that her bottom half was showing as well. She spotted Albert and flung herself into his arms. “What the fuck is going on?”

  “I don’t know.” He held her that way for a long time, letting her weep against his bare shoulder, trying not to think that she was naked or about what they’d done together. He kept his ears open and watched both the doorway behind and the tunnels ahead, keeping an eye out for whoever or whatever had moved their stuff.

  “Why did we do that?” Her words were nearly inaudible, muffled against his shoulder and by her own sobs.

  “I don’t know. It was that room. Something about it.”

  Brandy pulled away from his embrace and covered herself again, this time covering all of her, useless as it was. “Where are my clothes?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see them.” He gave her back her glasses and she revealed her body long enough to slip them onto her face, both hands trembling so badly that he was afraid she might poke herself in the eye with one of the earpieces.

  “Fucking hell!” She leaned back against the hard stone wall. “I couldn’t control myself in there.” She growled with a self-hatred that nearly broke Albert’s heart.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Good,” she spat. “You’re sorry. Wonderful. Like that changes anything.”

  “I guess it doesn’t.” Albert turned and walked to the tunnel he had not taken before.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Just looking.”

  Albert stood with his back to her now. He was afraid he was going to cry and he did not want that. If it happened he certainly did not want her to see it. He could think of much worse things that could happen to them than a freak humping. Being mauled by whatever took their clothes was not last on that list. Nevertheless, he felt a deep shame at having lured her into such a thing, and an even deeper hurt at the thought that she may never forgive him for it.

  There was no movement ahead of them in either of the tunnels. Everything was as he’d left it. Of course, whatever was in here with them probably possessed enough sense to stay well away from the light. In many of the passages they’d traveled, their flashlights did not nearly reach the other end. Anything could have stood right out in the open and watched their every move, completely unobserved.

  “Where’s our clothes?”

  Albert wanted to lie, but there was no way around it. “I don’t know. They’re gone.”

  “How the fuck are they gone?”

  “Somebody was in there with us while we were…whatever it was we were doing.”

  “We were fucking!” she spat. “God damn it! What was that place?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Brandy made a noise that was half whimper and half groan and cursed.

  Without turning back to her, Albert said, “I saw something when we were…” he started to avoid it, but saw no point in it, “…fucking. I couldn’t do anything. I was out of control.”

  “Yeah, no kidding.”

  Albert bit his lip and closed his eyes. After a moment, he went on. “When I woke up it was dark, I followed the light through that tunnel over there. I found your glasses just a little ways up and the flashlight was farther ahead.”

  “I didn’t see anybody.”

  Albert turned and looked at her. She was sitting on the floor with her back to the wall now, hugging her knees in front of her and shivering. She was terrified and ashamed, he could see that in her face, but there was something else there as well, something much colder. “What?”

  “I didn’t see anybody. I woke up and you were gone.”

  He wanted to argue that logic, but he honestly could not. “I don’t—”

  “Why did you want me to come down here with you?” she asked, cutting him off.

  Albert stared at her. He knew she didn’t fully trust him, but now that he was under the gun, he could hardly believe it. “Because this is half yours,” He replied cautiously. “It’s your key.”

  But her cold eyes never left his.

  “Do you think I could come up with something like that?” he asked suddenly, lifting a finger toward the doorway of the sex room. “I’m a fucking Computer Science major! Last I checked that didn’t include fucking with people’s heads!”

  Brandy flinched with each word that he spoke. “I didn’t say you made it,” she said, her voice shakier than before.

  Albert’s anger was sudden and furious, but it melted away as he saw the fear in her eyes. In a calmer voice he said, “You think I led you here on purpose.”

  She said nothing. She only stared at him with those same cold eyes she’d fixed on him in the second floor lounge of Lumey, except this time those eyes were wet with tears.

  He backed up against the wall and closed his eyes. “I didn’t know anything about this. If I had, I wouldn’t have come like this. I’d… I don’t know. I’d have found another way.”

  Brandy stared at him. None of this made any sense to her, but she did know that he was right. There was no way he could have made something like that. That didn’t mean, however, that he hadn’t discovered it before.

  Albert sighed. “What do you want me to do?”

  “What?”

  “Tell me what you want me to do. I can’t make you trust me. You have no reason to. I fucked up, probably ruined your life. I might as well have raped you. So it’s your game now. What do you want me to do?”

  Brandy stared at him and said nothing.

  He held the flashlight out to her. “You want the flashlight? You can be in charge. You can just go if you want, leave me here.”

  “Leave you here?”

  “Yeah. Go ahead. Good luck getting back through that room, though. And as for these tunnels, from what I’ve seen they’re a maze.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I don’t know.” He sat down against the wall opposite her and stared down at the floor. “I didn’t do anything. I just did what the box told me. I solved the puzzle, that’s all. I didn’t know anything like this was going to happen or I wouldn’t have. You were right. I should’ve just thrown the damn thing away.”

  Brandy lowered her eyes to the floor as well and remained silent.

  Albert felt the silence drag on for nearly a minute before speaking again. “I am sorry. I couldn’t control myself in there either, you know.”

  For a moment he did not think that she would reply, but then she did. “I know.”

  “Good.”

  “What do we do now?” she asked so softly he almost didn’t hear her.

  “I guess we push on.”

  She looked up at him with fear in her eyes.

  “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to go back in that room.”

  Brandy lowered her eyes again and slowly nodded. She couldn’t argue that. Besides, their clothes were missing. If he was telling the truth, he found her glasses and the flashlight up ahead. Maybe there’d be a trail to lead them to the rest of their things. Hopefully it wouldn’t lead them to anything bad.

  “There is someone in here with us,” Albert said after a moment. “I swear to you it’s not me. I didn’t come here to hurt you and I won’
t let anything else hurt you. I think I’ve done enough damage already by talking you into coming with me in the first place.”

  “You didn’t talk me into it,” she said. “I came because I wanted to. It’s like Grandma’s basement. I never could resist the adventure.”

  “I’m really sorry.”

  “I know.” She looked up at him with eyes that were now more hurt than hateful. “I want to believe you so bad. I need to believe you. If I can’t, then that means I’m all alone down here.”

  Albert nodded. “You’re not.”

  “But all I know is that you brought me the box, you figured it out, you solved all the puzzles and brought me here and… And when I woke up just now, you were gone and so were our clothes.”

  “Yeah, I guess that does look pretty bad for me.”

  “I thought for a minute that you’d just left me there.”

  “I’d never.”

  “But I thought you did. I couldn’t think straight. My head hurt. Everything hurt.” She glanced to the side as she said this, embarrassed, and Albert knew what she meant by that. His genitals hurt after the furious sex they’d shared. Her womanly parts probably hadn’t fared much better. “I didn’t think about the reasons,” she went on. “I just knew that something strange happened and I was naked and alone.”

  “I meant to be back before you woke up.”

  Brandy said nothing.

  “You can have the flashlight. I meant that. Yours broke when you dropped it. If it makes you feel better, keep it.” He placed it on the floor and slid it over to where she sat. She grabbed it and clutched it against her. “If nothing else I guess you can club me with it if you feel like you have to.”

  Brandy gave him a humorless smile. “Maybe I will.”

  “Good.”

  “I’m scared.”

  “Me too. But remember, just because we’re not alone doesn’t mean we’re in danger. Whoever it was had the opportunity to kill us both in there, but didn’t.”

  “Maybe he’s playing with us.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’m not a virgin.”

  Albert looked up at her suddenly, shocked at this sudden confession. She was staring at the flashlight. He could still see the wet trails her tears had left upon her cheeks.

  “I mean I wasn’t before, you know.” She looked at him now, her blue eyes shimmering. “Please don’t think you took that from me. I gave that away when I was fifteen. I regret it, but I can live with it. Just like I can live with what we did in there just now.”

  For a moment Albert could only stare at her. She didn’t hate him. That was what she was telling him. She did not hate him and, at least for the moment, she did not blame him. Whatever happened in there was no different than rape, but at least it hadn’t robbed her of her first time. It was one small shred of comfort that she was allowed.

  “I’m not a virgin,” she said again, as much to herself as to him.

  Albert looked down at his hands, not wanting to look into her eyes. “I was.”

  Brandy forgot the chill she felt. All of the tension that filled her body rolled off of her in an instant. She forgot about trying to hide herself. She stared at him as he sat there, his muscular legs bent only slightly, his belly softly folded by his posture, his shoulders slack. He looked very pale in the shadows. She suddenly felt very selfish. “I’m sorry.”

  But he shook his head. “Don’t be. Strange or not—intentional or not—it was kind of nice. I mean, weird. But you know. Nice. I guess I’m glad it was someone like you. I honestly can’t think of a nicer person to... You know… Randomly fuck.” He could feel himself blushing now.

  She forced a smile through her fear and anger. “You’re nice.” He was too nice. Suddenly she felt like such a bitch.

  “I think the flashlight might have been pointing the way we’re supposed to go up ahead,” Albert said after a moment. “I think our clothes might have gone that way.”

  “And if not?”

  “Then we’re screwed. Whoever it was took my backpack and the box.”

  A sudden realization struck Brandy like a slap to the face. “Shit! And my purse!”

  “Yeah. And my wallet.” He stood up and turned to the passage on the left. “How about I lead and you follow with the light?”

  Brandy stood up and wiped her face with the back of her hand. “Okay.”