The Box (The Temple of the Blind #1)

  Chapter 17

  “God, I need a cigarette,” gasped Brandy. She paused and gazed up at the dizzying spiral of steps above them. It felt like they’d descended at least twenty stories. The steps were both steep and narrow, demanding careful treading to prevent a deadly fall into the abyss below, and her legs and back ached from the effort.

  Albert went a few steps farther and then stopped and sat down. He looked up above him at the distance they’d covered, huffing exhaustedly. He wished there was some way of knowing just how deep they were. It felt like they just kept going down.

  “It’s unbelievable,” gasped Brandy. “How much deeper can we possibly go?”

  Albert shook his head. He had no idea.

  She sat down on the steps to catch her breath. “We can’t just go down forever, can we?”

  “You wouldn’t think.” Albert gazed down into the darkness. There was no telling what might lie at the bottom of this hole, but he was certain of one thing: there were still two clues left in the box. He was sure they would have to use both of them before they reached the end of this labyrinth.

  He turned and looked at Brandy, who was leaning back on the steps with her arms at her sides and her knees together, staring up into the darkness from which they’d come. She was slick with perspiration and her breasts were rising and falling with her labored breath. He watched her for a moment, taking in her beauty, and then turned his gaze back to the emptiness below.

  “Thank you,” he said after a moment.

  Brandy sat up and looked down at him. “Why?”

  “For not leaving me back there after the sex room. I would’ve let you.”

  Brandy looked down at the flashlight. She remembered him telling her that she could take it and go, that she could just leave him down here in the darkness. She’d actually been tempted to do just that. Now she felt ashamed of that urge. “I couldn’t have done that,” she said at last, and realized that it was the truth. “I couldn’t have gotten out on my own. I would’ve been too scared.” She looked at him again, but he was not looking back at her. “Besides, I couldn’t just leave you there. What if you never came back? You couldn’t have found your way out of here in the dark and I never could’ve lived with myself for just leaving you to die.”

  Albert stared into the darkness. “But I could’ve been the bad guy.”

  “I don’t think you are. If you were, I think I would’ve found out before now.”

  “You could’ve called the police. They would’ve come to get me.”

  “True. But what if they came down here and found you dead?”

  Albert could think of no response for that.

  “Then I’d live with the guilt for sure and they’d probably put me away for abandoning you like that.”

  “I’m sure they would’ve understood.”

  “Can we please not talk about this? It’s upsetting me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” She smiled a little. Perhaps he was the bad guy, but if so, he was hiding it very well. It didn’t really matter anyway. By the time they’d reached the sex room, she was already at his mercy and would be until they were back above ground.

  And so far he’d been a perfect gentleman. Except for that whole sex room thing, of course. But she hadn’t exactly played hard-to-get back there.

  No, he didn’t fit the part of a killer. In fact, he was the only thing making her feel remotely safe down here. Although she would admit that his ability to solve the puzzles in this place was extremely creepy at times.

  “Ready to go on?” Albert asked, standing up.

  “Yeah.”

  The two of them had barely completed another lap around the hole when the ground finally came into view.

  A short passage led into the next room and as Albert peered inside, he saw that it was cavernous, perhaps the size of the maze they spied from the bridge, its ceiling far too high to see with what light they carried.

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah.” Albert gazed around at the room as he passed through it. He expected to find something down here. He expected to see a statue materialize out of the gloom, another bridge, more water, some sort of obstacle to overcome, but the room was empty. Again Albert felt that strange sense of wrongness. This room shouldn’t have been here. It served no visible purpose, yet here it was. He looked around, paranoid, feeling as though something was watching them, waiting for them to drop their guard, perhaps.

  But there was nothing.

  Before them appeared a huge wall of stone and a small corridor leading through it. There was nothing more to the room. It was just a vast, empty space. Albert supposed that it could have been intended for some purpose other than traps and obstacles. It could have been a banquet hall of some sort, for example. But he didn’t think so. Nothing else in this labyrinth seemed to serve any purpose other than to impede their way forward.

  They ducked into the short passage in the far wall and into the next room. Here, they stopped and stood. Albert’s musings about the empty room behind them vanished from his thoughts at once. They stood side-by-side, staring forward, neither of them surprised, but both of them nearly sick at the reality of the sight before them.

  “Fuck.”

  “Fuck,” Albert agreed.

  The room was twenty feet high and twenty feet wide. Too far to see the other end. Three pairs of sentinels were visible, lined up against the walls on either side. The first were standing straight, their feet together, hands at their sides, grotesquely long penises limp and pointed at the floor. Like their brothers in the last two rooms like this, each pair was slightly different than the one before.

  What more could this hellish place give them? It already drove them to lust and tried to make them hate. But Albert already knew what was coming. He knew because he was surprised it wasn’t the first.

  Brandy took his hand and the two of them started forward, watching as the sentinels slowly mimed out their message. They raised their hands, not to threaten, as they did the last time, but to defend. They bent their knees and sank into a crouch as their long, thin arms crossed before their empty faces. Soon they were sitting, their knees sprawled out, their faces uplifted in an expressionless shriek. There was no aggression in them now. The final pair of sentinels sat with their backs arched and their necks stretched out as they threw their heads back in what could only have been a howl of such ferocious terror that even without faces, they appeared to have completely plunged into madness.

  The face that appeared in the far wall made their stomachs boil with acid, their hearts pound like machines and their skin tingle with gooseflesh despite the sweat clinging to their weary bodies. It was the face of a woman, but different from the first one. This woman was heavier, her face rounder, her features pudgier. She was fairer than the lusting woman and had a mole under her right eye. Her mouth was open in a frozen and silent scream so fierce that, had she been real, her vocal cords could not possibly have gone undamaged. Her eyes bulged with terror, her lips peeled back. It was the face of sudden madness, of fright so terrible it could kill.

  “Albert, I don’t know if I can.”

  “Of course you can.”

  “No. I’m scared.”

  “So am I.”

  “Please, Albert.”

  He turned and squeezed her hand. “This has got to be the last one. The only emotion as powerful as lust, hate and fear is love and I doubt if Cupid’s got a pad down here.” It was a lie though. He was sure that any mind sick enough to create these three rooms was also capable of forcing other emotions into dangerous levels. Sorrow, and even joy, could become too much to bear under the right circumstances.

  She stared at him, pleading with her eyes, and it broke his heart.

  “You did wonderful in the hate room. You didn’t feel any hate at all.”

  “But I didn’t feel any hate before
I went in. I’m already scared.”

  “But you won’t be any more scared if you don’t let yourself be. I’ll be right beside you, holding onto you the whole time. I promise.”

  She stared at him, suddenly trembling with fright. “I don’t know.”

  “I do. You’re a brave girl. I’ve seen it.”

  “I’m scared.”

  “I know.”

  “What if I can’t go on? What if we get in there and I can’t go any farther?”

  “Then we’ll turn around.”

  She stared up at him, her eyes pleading. “Promise?”

  “Promise. I wouldn’t make you go on. You know that.” He gazed into her eyes, pleading with her. “I just want you to try.”

  Brandy did know that. Even in the short time they’d spent together in this strange labyrinth of stone, she somehow knew that he would take care of her. Something deep inside her heart knew with certainty that he was not deceiving her.

  She took a deep breath, gathered strength from his touch and his honest eyes and then removed her glasses. She stepped up to the woman’s face and stared at her, terrified of what lay waiting in her throat.

  Albert stepped behind her and put his hands on her bare hips. “I’m right behind you.”

  “You said earlier, before we went into the hate room…why have another room like this when, if you got through one, you probably knew the secret?”

  “Yes I did.”

  “Well?”

  “I’m right here. I’m not going to let anything hurt you. Be as careful as you can. Watch where you step; watch what you touch. I’ll be right here the whole time.”

  She took another deep breath and stepped into the woman’s mouth.