Chapter 12
“I’m sorry about your stuff.”
Brandy shook her head. “Not your fault.” She had dumped most of the contents of her purse onto the stone floor and was picking through them. Her cigarettes and lighter were both ruined, as was a small collection of gum, cough drops and breath mints. Much of her makeup was also among the casualties. But the worst was her cell phone, which was still on, was still glowing, but would probably be ruined long before it could dry. She shook some of the water off it and then turned it off. There was nothing she could do now.
“Do you have insurance on it?”
Brandy nodded. Thankfully she’d decided to pay the extra couple of dollars a month for the protection plan just for such an emergency, but it was still a pain. She gathered her belongings back into her purse, salvageable and ruined alike, and began to rub her hands over her arms and shoulders. The chill was lessening, but it would not go away completely. The shivers remained, like unending aftershocks in the wake of a great earthquake. She was beginning to think she might never be warm again.
Albert closed and locked the box and put it back into his backpack. Its contents had remained dry throughout their frigid swim. “We should probably keep moving.” They had been sitting there for almost fifteen minutes now, warming up as well as they could and listening for telltale splashes that would announce the approach of their mysterious pursuer. “It’ll help us to stay warm if nothing else.”
He stood up and shouldered his backpack. He hissed at the icy feel of its wet fabric against his naked back. Brandy stared up at him, her lovely eyes swimming over his naked body. She looked him up and down, actually looking at him for the first time since he lost his clothes, and she did not care that he saw her looking at him. Her eyes ultimately fell upon his privates. He was of a modest, but not unpleasing size, not big enough to have hurt her in the sex room, thankfully, but certainly large enough. She saw that he was circumcised, and that he had shriveled in the cold. She wondered what it would look like if he were hot instead of cold, and what it would look like fully erect. In the insane lust of the sex room, she had not actually seen him. In fact, she barely remembered any details at all. It was nothing more than a blur of insane and insatiable desire.
Albert felt uncomfortable. He watched her as she stared at him, her expression nearly empty, as though she were staring at some boring piece of art rather than at his personal anatomy. He wanted to turn away, to start walking up the slope and toward the unknown that lay ahead, just to get away from those eyes, but he could not. He was easily as fascinated by her looking at him as he was embarrassed by it. He wondered what she was thinking. With all that had happened down here, he couldn’t imagine what she must be feeling. He could barely comprehend all the things he was feeling.
The truth of the matter was that she was hardly thinking anything at all. Her head still hurt. Her shivering had only worsened the throbbing pain that she awoke with in the sex room. More than anything she wanted to go home, to forget this hateful place and move on with her life. But at the center of all this was Albert, and she still did not know what to think of him. Somewhere deep down, she believed—or maybe just wanted to believe—that he was as much a victim of that horrible room as she was, but she still didn’t know him.
At last she shifted her eyes to his, her face still empty of any perceptible emotion, and nodded. She was ready. She stood up and slid the strap of her purse over her head and arm, still shivering.
They stood for a moment, looking at each other with their teeth chattering and their skin covered with gooseflesh. Albert wanted to speak, but all of the words that came to him were inadequate. He turned instead and looked into the tunnel ahead of them. Their destination waited up there somewhere, undiscovered, unknown. He was afraid of what was ahead. He was afraid of what was behind. He was afraid to stay where they were. Yet he was intrigued. He was fascinated by what frightened him, as all people are to some small extent. All the answers lay there in that mysterious darkness, all the answers to all his questions. Surely, they must be there. He was afraid, he was unsure, he was cold, but he needed to move on. The box. The statues. This whole unearthly labyrinth. He wanted to know. But then again, who said there was a choice? There was no turning back now. There was no way out but in.
Brandy took his hand and squeezed it. Another unspoken moment passed between them, and then they began to walk, leaving the cold pool of water and the mysteries before it behind. They moved slowly, their muscles stiff from the cold, shivering and anxious, toward dangers much worse than hypothermia.