The Box (The Temple of the Blind #1)

  Chapter 20

  Brandy shined the flashlight into the hole she’d marked in the room atop the staircase. It was clear as far as she could see. She turned and held the flashlight out to Albert. “I went first last time,” she said.

  “Sounds fair.” He removed the backpack and shoved it in ahead of him. He then took the flashlight from Brandy’s hand and squeezed into the opening. “Stay close, okay?”

  “Don’t worry about that.”

  The two of them crawled on their bellies along the narrowest stretch of the passage and then rose to their hands and knees when it was high enough. Albert remembered the view he’d enjoyed of Brandy when they first came through this tunnel and found himself embarrassed to think that he was now showing his to her in the same fashion. He supposed it was fitting. Tit for tat, after all.

  “Albert?” Brandy’s voice was soft behind him, like the voice of a little girl.

  “Yes?”

  For a moment she didn’t speak, then, as though forcing the words to come, she said the unthinkable: “What if…whoever brought us down here… What if he doesn’t want us to leave?”

  Albert did not stop. He crawled forward, his kneecaps striking the hard stone beneath him over and over again. He hadn’t even considered such a thing. He tried to think of something, tried to come up with some answer, but he couldn’t. Finally he said, “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think he can hurt us?”

  Probably, was the answer that came to mind. After all, that person—assuming it was a person at all—must have had some reason for wanting them down here. There was a very good chance that their mystery host would not want them going back to Briar Hills and telling everybody what was down here.

  “I don’t know,” he answered after a moment, unable to lie. “But after all this I’m not going down without a fight.”

  Brandy fell silent and Albert found himself wondering what she was thinking.

  Finally, the ceiling rose high enough for them to stand and soon they were walking again. Ahead of them lay the bridge and the maze. Beyond that was the empty room that bothered Albert so much on their way in. And just past that lay the spike pit and then the hate room.

  Albert didn’t want to think about the hate room. Theoretically, they should be able to pass back through it as easily as they did the first time. However, the same strategy did not work in the fear room. What if Brandy’s eyes were adjusting to the surroundings or something? What if it affected her through her poor vision? Would they be safe?

  They stepped out of the shrinking passage and onto the bridge. Immediately, they both took a longing look at their hanging undergarments. Neither of them had forgotten that they failed to retrieve any of their clothes. Even if they did make it back to the service tunnel entrance, they were still stark naked.

  Albert pulled his eyes away and continued on. Hopefully, whoever stole their clothes left the rest of them somewhere on the other side of the sex room. He didn’t want to think about having to streak across campus. He lived in a dorm, for God’s sake. Perhaps at this hour everyone would be asleep, but that didn’t change the fact that his keys were still in his jeans pocket. He’d have to wake someone up to let him into the building.

  He pushed these thoughts from his head as he hurried across the bridge. There was no need to upset himself just yet. Right now they were still far from civilization. He needed to save his concerns for more important things, like those things below them in the maze.

  He stopped suddenly and listened.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He didn’t want to say what was wrong. He hoped he was mistaken. He hurried to the side of the bridge and shined his flashlight down onto the maze.

  He could still hear something moving around beneath them, making that strange ticking noise. Farther out, near their clothes, he could hear another one making that strange buzzing-clattering noise that he still couldn’t identify.

  “What’s wrong?” Brandy asked again. The alarm in her voice was clear.

  “Nothing,” replied Albert. “Just my imagination.” But it wasn’t his imagination. Yes, there were creatures down there, but not as many as there were before. Not nearly as many. And if they weren’t down there, then where were they?

  “Albert?”

  “Come on.” He took her by the wrist and led her on to the next passageway.

  “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Nothing.” He didn’t want to alarm her. Perhaps it was nothing. Perhaps some of them simply grew bored of the socks and the briefs and the bra and the panties and curled up to sleep in some crevice somewhere. Perhaps they wandered off to some deeper, more interesting part of the maze. But the very thought of some of those things being out there somewhere made him nervous. Right now, he wanted only to be back above ground, safely away from all these horrors.

  The empty room was just as empty as the first time they passed through it. There was nothing there, but Albert still felt that gnawing sensation that he was missing something, perhaps something very important.

  He paused before entering the next passage and shined the flashlight up at the high ceiling. Nothing. At least nothing he could see.

  “Albert, you’re scaring me.”

  He turned and looked at her. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “What is it? Tell me.”

  He looked up at the ceiling again, still paranoid. “I think I’m just a little spooked by the fear room,” he explained at last, and realized that it was probably the truth. “I’m nervous.”

  She stared at him with those soft blue eyes, piercing him with a gaze that was almost paralyzing.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  “I’m trusting you.”

  Struck from his thoughts, he stared back at her. “You can,” he said after a moment. “I promise.”

  “Okay.” After another moment, she turned and shifted her gaze into the next room. Those ominous spikes seemed to be waiting for her. “How do we get past this?”

  Albert turned and looked ahead. She meant, of course, the hate room. “The same way we got through it the first time,” he replied. He handed her back the flashlight.

  “Do you think we can?”

  “We should be able to.”

  She looked uncertain. “I don’t think I can.”

  “Of course you can. That last room was fear. You were already afraid. That’s probably why it got to you.” He did not know if this was true or not, but it made a certain sort of sense, and he needed her to think positively. “This is different. This is hate. You aren’t capable of hating.”

  “Yes I am.”

  “Are you capable of hating me?”

  She stared at him, her lips trembling with words that would not come. Of course she was not capable of hating him. Not after all they’d been through together. Not after he carried her out of the fear room.

  “You can do it.”

  “But what if I can’t? What if something happens?”

  “What else can we do?”

  Brandy nodded. He was right, of course. There was no other way back. If they couldn’t go this way they couldn’t. It was as simple as that. All they could do was try. “Okay,” she said at last.

  She eased out onto the ledge, still keeping her back to the wall as though it were only inches wide. The thought of what would have happened to her if Albert hadn’t stopped her from stepping out of the hate room still haunted her thoughts and she felt as though just being near these spikes was tempting death.

  When she reached the doorway to the hate room, she stopped and removed her glasses. Once they were tucked safely into her purse, she took Albert’s hand and led him inside. The same gray shapes greeted her and for a moment she felt as though she were back in the fear room, surrounded by terrors that pretended to be memories.

  Immediately, she became certain that she was going
to get turned around and walk right back into that horrible pit. She could almost feel those deadly spikes sliding through her tender body. But as she ventured deeper into the shadows, she discovered that Albert was right. This room was not nearly as frightening as the fear room. The shapes she saw were not familiar. They did not seem to mean anything.

  She found this curious. Why should the sex room and the fear room have such profound effects on them while the hate room seemed to have no effect at all? If the fear room was capable of getting past her poor vision, why wasn’t this one? Perhaps Albert was right. Perhaps she was simply incapable of hating.

  She sure hadn’t been incapable of fucking Albert, though.

  She weaved through the statues, using these thoughts as a distraction. “How are you doing?” she asked.

  “I’m okay,” replied Albert. “You?”

  “I’m fine. I don’t get it.”

  “I don’t either. I guess fear is just more natural than hate.”

  “And lust,” she reminded him.

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  The doorway materialized out of the gloom and Brandy felt an overwhelming sense of relief. She’d made it through. She stepped into the doorway and stopped. She could see the shape of the man’s mouth, the rows of teeth above and below, and she could feel the coarse texture of the tongue beneath her bare feet, but she dared not make any assumptions. For all she knew there could be two openings like this in the room. She did not want to find another pit of spikes.

  With her glasses on, she was able to verify that she’d been correct. The angry sentinels stood waiting for them, the nearest pair about to collide just in front of her. “We’re out,” she reported. “Watch your step.”

  “Great job.”

  “Thank you. You were right.”

  “I’m glad. Come on.”

  They hurried on, past the many statues to the next passage. Albert felt an odd sort of disorientation as he watched the statues run backward to their posts against the walls and relax once more into their stiff sentinel positions. It was like watching a roughly drawn cartoon.

  They made their way down the passageway to the drop-off they climbed on their way in. Albert paused atop it and gazed down. He’d forgotten about it. What was the purpose of such a design, he wondered. And more than that, what caused those strange scratches in the stone. He’d seen nothing like it anywhere else in this place.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Albert shook his head. “Just wondering about this.”

  “I really hate it when you wonder about things.”

  “Me too.” He dropped down off the ledge and then turned and helped Brandy down. There was no sense thinking too hard about it. This was their only way out.

  They hurried through the tunnel to the round room and from there Brandy headed straight for the tunnel from which they’d originally come. She had taken several steps down it when she realized suddenly that she was alone.

  Albert had stopped and was standing on the other side of the statue. He was gazing into the darkness of one of the other passages.

  “Albert?”

  “Shh…” He was standing with one ear cocked, listening. “You hear that?”

  Brandy listened, her heart pounding with fright. At first she heard nothing but her own rapid pulse, then it touched her ears, a small tapping sound, like somebody walking in high heels, except it was too close together to be clicking heels. It was almost a scuttering.

  Albert stepped closer to the corridor, trying to see the source of the noise, but the darkness was too thick.

  “Albert, come back.” As she said this, she stepped closer to him and shined her light toward the passage into which he was trying to see. With this light, something appeared.

  It was just ahead of him, lying on the floor. He stepped cautiously toward it and picked it up as a thousand alarms began to go off in his brain, a few at first, slowly, but picking up speed until his whole world was one huge air raid siren.

  It was a small piece of torn and tattered white cotton. It was a piece of a sock.

  The image that went through Albert’s mind was of their underwear and socks strung up in the maze below the stone bridge. One of Brandy’s socks had been missing from the assortment, probably fallen to the floor where those noisy creatures were. But if this was Brandy’s sock…

  Somewhere up ahead, something in the darkness let out a huff of air and the rattling, shuffling, clattering sound they’d heard from that dark maze began to pour from the tunnel, this time louder and closer than ever.

  “Run!” He turned and fled after Brandy—who needed no encouragement from him—around the statue and through the passage that would lead them home. Behind him, the noisy creature barreled after them.

  Brandy reached the wall and grabbed onto the ledge, desperately trying to scramble up it and into the higher tunnel. Albert caught up with her and, grabbing her by the ankles, shoved her upwards and over the ledge. In the same motion, he grabbed the ledge and swung himself upward with strength and agility he did not know was left in him. Just below him, something large and violent slammed into the wall, narrowly missing his bare foot as he lifted himself out of its path.

  A savage sound rose up to them, heard even over that terrible clattering noise, like something simultaneously beating itself against the wall and clawing at the stone.

  Albert and Brandy ran, not waiting for it to climb up and continue its pursuit.

  They fled down the tunnel to the waiting pool and plunged into the water. The cold was just as intense as the first time. It sucked the breath from their lungs, but they dared not linger. They swam as hard as they could, propelling themselves through the frigid water. The sound of their splashing echoed through the tunnels around them and the waves crashed against the walls in the narrow confines of the passage.

  They crossed the pool much more quickly than they did the first time, but still they moved too slowly. They kept looking back over their shoulders, terrified that something dark and deadly was right behind them, snapping at their kicking feet.

  Not until they reached the other side did they pause. Gasping, they collapsed onto the floor, and with water dripping from their shivering bodies, they stared back across the pool, searching for any sign of their mysterious pursuer.

  “What the fuck was that?” Brandy hissed, her teeth chattering violently. She held the flashlight as steadily as she could, but still the light danced across the tunnel walls as her hands trembled with adrenaline and the quaking of her shivers. Her eyes were wide with terror, her lips quivering in the cold.

  Behind them, there was no sign of the creature. The water tossed and rocked in the wake of their furious swimming. At its edge, the paint can clanked against the stone floor as it rose and fell in the waves.

  “I don’t know,” Albert replied. He was out of breath but not yet ready to quit running. “We should keep going,” he said, snatching the paint can from the water. “We don’t know if it can swim.”

  He stuffed the can into his backpack and the two of them continued up the tunnel. He didn’t know if it would do them any good or not, but it certainly wasn’t going to be of any use floating in that pool. Halfway up the incline, the lid to the can was still resting undisturbed on the floor, but he chose not to take the time to pick it up.

  They hurried past the praying statue and retraced their way back through the maze to the back door of the sex room.