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?”
Albert shook his head. “I don’t know.” He looked around the room, searching for something different, some stone out of place or unusual holes or slots, but that did not seem right either. The traps Indiana Jones faced in the Temple of Doom were extravagant, consisting of stone mechanics dating thousands of years in the past. He honestly did not expect to have arrows fly out at him or the walls to begin moving, but what else could a seemingly empty room contain? He steeled himself and stepped forward.
“Albert, no!”
“It’s okay. Just wait there.” He was scared. He was damn scared. With every step he expected to be impaled or crushed or worse. It was the same fear he’d felt before removing the bags from the praying statue’s hands. Back then he’d felt silly afterwards, wondering how he could expect such deadly consequences, but that was before he discovered what lay beyond the hate room. This place was getting more dangerous by the minute. But Brandy was the one who almost paid the price for pushing forward, and he would be damned if he was going to let her take any more chances.
No spikes impaled him. The ceiling did not come down on top of him. No fireball set him ablaze. The room was just a room and nothing more. Beyond it, the next passage was identical to the one that led back to the pit.
He paused in the middle of the room, gazing down the next corridor, wishing he’d taken the light from Brandy so that he could see how far the next tunnel went. It was now that he felt something, a paranoid sense that they were not alone in this small room. He lifted his gaze upward, into the darkness above him.
Brandy saw him look up and quickly shined the light up to the high ceiling.
There was nothing there. Not a thing.
Yet Albert would have sworn…
Nothing.
He turned and walked quickly back to where Brandy stood. Still waiting for the end to fall upon him from some unseen crevice, he took her hand and the two of them crossed the room and entered the next tunnel.
Albert looked back as they left the chamber behind. It wasn’t right. There was something terribly wrong about that room. He could feel it. Yet they passed through it without harm.
Perhaps he was only being paranoid.
As they approached the end of the corridor, they heard the same shuffling, clicking, crackling noise that frightened them in the earlier passage. The sound was more distant than before, but grew louder as they walked. It was enough to tear their thoughts from both the deadly spikes and the mysteriously empty room.
“Albert…”
“I know.” Albert squinted into the darkness ahead. Whatever that noise was, they were walking straight toward it.
When they reached the end of the tunnel and stepped out into the next chamber, neither of them were able to quite believe what greeted them. Stretched out before them was what appeared to be an enormous stone bridge, nearly thirty feet wide, vanishing into the darkness ahead. On each side ran a low wall, beyond which was nothing but darkness. And it was impossible to tell just how high up the ceiling was. The flashlight simply didn’t reach.
Without speaking, they turned and walked over to the edge of the bridge and peered over with the flashlight. Stretched out below them, as far as the light would reach, was an enormous stone maze.
“Wow,” exclaimed Albert. He could only see the tops of the walls, but that was enough to reveal that the passages were narrow. It was impossible to see a path through it from up here, much less from within those high walls.
It was from this maze that the strange noises came.
“I never would have imagined that something this big could be down here.” He looked up at the darkness above them. “How far underground are we?”
Brandy was staring down at the maze. She did not really care how far down they were. What she was concerned with was that noise. “What’s down there?” Her voice was barely a whisper.
“I don’t know, but I hope it can’t climb. Come on.”
The two of them began to cross the bridge, but something far to their right caught Albert’s eye and he stopped.
“What is it?” Brandy stopped and followed his gaze. When she shined the flashlight at it, her stomach began to churn again. “Albert, those are our clothes!”
It wasn’t all their clothes, but it was their undergarments. An enormous pillar, at least as big around as a city water tower, stood just within the reach of the flashlight. Three white socks were hung on the side facing them. Above these, hanging side-by-side, were Albert’s white briefs and Brandy’s flowered white panties. Higher up hung Brandy’s bra. The last sock must have fallen into the shadows with the things that were making the noise.
“How do we get to them?” Brandy caught herself trying to cover her nakedness again. Apparently, just the sight of some of her clothing was enough to remind her that she was stark naked and her male companion could see her most private parts.
Albert shook his head. “I don’t think we do.”
There were things moving down there, unseen in the shadows. Albert could hear them prowling the narrow passageways in the dark. It was impossible to say how many there were.
“Why would somebody put them there?”
“Maybe to give those things our scent.”
Brandy glanced at him and then looked back at their unreachable undergarments. “I don’t like the sound of that.”
“Neither do I.” He also didn’t like how the clothes were hung as they would
be wearing them if they were down there. It looked to him as though someone had tried to simulate their presence.
Scent doubles, he thought, and shivered.
He took Brandy’s hand and led her across the bridge, trying not to look at the maze below. But he could not forget those undergarments. Why only those items? Why not use all their clothes?
Three passages awaited them, framed by four sentinels. All four were identical, feet together, hands at their sides. They were neither in motion nor amorous, but they were also not helping them.
“So which one do we take?” Brandy asked.
“I’m not sure.” He removed his backpack, knowing well where the answer would be if there was one.
The finger and the button had been used, and he doubted if they would come into play again, but he kept them just in case. This left only the knife blade, the watch and the feather. He removed these three items and examined each of them. But nothing about them gave him any clues.
He walked to the nearest passage and peered inside, looking for anything out of place. Brandy followed him, lending him light. “You figured all the others out. You can get this one.”
“I hope so.” He moved on to the second passage and then the third. Nothing.
Brandy turned her light to the statues, searching them for any slight difference. So far, they seemed to each have all their parts. None of them were missing a finger.
Albert shook his head. “So far they’ve been pretty easy clues. Whoever gave us that box wanted us to get this far, and I don’t see why we should stop here.” He gazed out at the darkness that loomed over the maze beyond the side of the bridge. Somewhere, one of the things began making its strange shuffling and clicking sound. There was also a sound like stone striking stone, over and over again, very rapidly.
He turned away from the maze and began examining the statue on the far left.
“Hey.” Brandy was standing on her toes beside the statue on the far right, shining her light up at the statue’s neck. “Look at this.”
Albert hurried to her side and stretched up on his own toes to see what she was looking at.
“See it? Something’s scratched into its neck.”
“Yeah, I do.” He grasped the statue’s arm and craned his neck to see. It looked as if someone had taken a sharp tool and etched something into the stone there, almost like a tattoo. “It looks like…”
Brandy lifted the light up as high as she could and focused it on the mark.
“It looks like a bird,” he decided at last. It was a crude image, but once he wrapped his head around it there was no denying. He could make out what was supposed to be wings and a beak.
“Bird,” Brandy repeated. “Bird feather!”
Albert nodded. “I think so. Good eyes. You rock.”
“Naturally.” She gave him a cool wink and he again felt a spark of arousal. Was that the sex room lingering in him? Or was it just him? At that moment, he could not say. She was proud of herself for finding one of the clues and for that moment she seemed more confident, more in control. And it looked damn good on her. And it wasn’t as if he hadn’t been crushing on her even before they entered the sex room. Maybe it was just his natural attraction to her. Or maybe the sex room simply amplified that.
“Must be the tunnel on the right then,” he surmised, suppressing his feelings. Walking around naked didn’t leave any room to be turned on, not when you were a man in flesh and blood. He almost envied the statues for that advantage.
“I guess so,” Brandy agreed.
Below them there was a violent outburst, a rapid clattering arose, as if a great many things were clashing together over and over again at high speeds. It sounded eerily like hundreds of blades beating together, as though there were an intense battle raging far below them without a sound but for the swords clanging upon one another.
“We should go,” Albert urged.
Brandy glanced one last time toward the sprawling maze and then followed him into the tunnel, leaving the noises for the darkness.