by Brian Harmon
Albert did not know. There had always been something before, a clue of some sort, either inside the box or from a statue. But now there was nothing. He turned and looked back the way they’d come, thinking of the forty-two sentinel statues that stood against the walls of the last room, wondering if he’d missed something, and for the second time, he became aware of something standing just at the edge of the darkness, something that wasn’t there before, something darker than the shadows that surrounded it.
And then it was gone.
He squeezed his eyes shut and then opened them again. Nothing. But there was something there. He’d been sure of it.
He began to walk toward the place where he saw the figure, his eyes searching the shadows.
“Albert?” Brandy turned and followed him, Nicole close behind her.
Albert walked all the way back to the opening of the previous tunnel and peered into it. Whatever it was had apparently retreated. Assuming that it was ever really there at all.
He stood there for a moment, still shivering, staring into the darkness that had so long been to his back.
“What is it?” Nicole asked as she and Brandy approached him. “Did you see something?”
“I don’t know,” he confessed. “I thought I did…but…” But he couldn’t have. There was nothing there. “Forget it. Come on.”
He began walking back to the intersection, back to the decision they would have to make without any help from the box or the sentinels. But Brandy and Nicole lingered for a moment.
“I don’t like it,” said Nicole. She was staring into the darkness of that previous tunnel, wishing she could see all the way to its end.
Brandy did not like it either. She and Albert had experienced the same thing when they first entered the Temple of the Blind thirteen months ago. Something kept appearing in the shadows at the edge of their vision and then vanishing before they could investigate. They assumed later that it must have been the man with no eyes. And maybe this was him again, perhaps keeping an eye on them for his mother, the Sentinel Queen. But back in the City of the Blind, he hadn’t appeared to be in ideal shape for such stealthy stalking.
Albert took another look at the forty-two sentinels as he passed them, trying to find some kind of clue hidden among them, but there seemed to be nothing to find. There were no messengers among them. They were only sentinels. Nothing more.
He climbed the steps and approached the tunnel…and then he saw it there.
It was standing in the middle of the intersection, right where he had been standing mere moments before. It was a dark figure, almost black, much smaller than the sentinels. Its shape was hard to see. It was hunched forward. It did not move. He would have dismissed it as another statue had it not simply appeared there while his back was turned.
Was this what he had seen in the passage behind him? If so, how had it gotten ahead of them?
Brandy and Nicole had been following him up the steps, several paces behind him. Now they stopped and stared, startled by the thing they saw waiting for them.
Albert took a cautious step forward, trying to get a closer look at it. He had seen a lot of strange things already. The man with no eyes. The monster inside Gilbert House. The Sentinel Queen. But this was unlike any of them. It was small, little more than four feet in height, and skinny, almost skeletal. It was more like a corpse than any living creature he had ever seen.
He took another step and the creature’s head moved just a little, almost a twitch, and he stopped.
“What is it?” Brandy asked, her voice barely a whisper.
Nicole reached out and took her hand.
It slowly turned its head to the side, not on a vertical axis in the manner of a man or a woman, but on a horizontal one, rotating it clockwise as if its spine was connected at the back of its skull instead of at its base, until its chin was almost straight up and the crown of its head was pointed at the floor. As it did so, something on its face shifted grotesquely. After holding this curious pose for a few seconds, it slowly returned its head to its upright position and again there was that strange motion on its face. It did not appear to be violent. Instead, it had a look of great age, as though it might be as old as the stone walls in which it stood. But Albert was nonetheless cautious.
He took a couple more reluctant steps forward and his view of the creature improved. But it only became even more bizarre as he neared it. Its skin was dry and cracked, like old leather left out in the weather. It was loose and sagging, hanging off its body in dangling folds. Like the blind man and the Sentinel Queen, it wore not a stitch of clothing, but its flesh drooped around its waist like a skirt. It had likewise pooled around its small hands, so that it looked like the sleeves of a coat that was much too big.
“Hello?” Albert said hesitantly.
“I’ve been expecting you,” the skinny creature said. Its voice was so coarse that its throat might have been filled with gravel and broken glass, but its words were perfectly clear.
Albert turned and looked at Brandy and Nicole, startled to hear the creature speak.
“Come closer.”
Albert hesitated, not sure if he should trust this creature, but there was little else he could do. He could not simply turn back after all they’d been through and this thing blocked the road forward. While it looked small enough to do them no harm, he underestimated nothing in this place. He braced himself, ready for the worst, and stepped forward.
The creature’s face was horrid. The skin on its forehead and cheeks was excessively loose and hung over several of its features like empty, fleshy sacks. Those parts that could be seen were narrow and pointed. The nose was tiny and sharp. The mouth was a small slit, similar to the mouth of the Sentinel Queen, but it hung slightly open and he could see tiny black teeth just behind its fine, almost nonexistent lips. A wrinkled mass of flesh hung from its chin almost to the middle of its naked chest.
It sniffed the air, just as the blind man had done before instructing them to disrobe. The dangling flesh of its face jiggled grotesquely as it did so. “Mmm,” it said, as though it had discovered something deeply intriguing about their scent.
Albert stood there, watching the strange little creature.
“Interesting.” The thing began to rotate its head again, still sniffing at the air. “You’re not alone.” It was not a question.
Nicole and Brandy stepped up behind Albert and studied the creature. Each of them gripped one of Albert’s arms as though they feared they might suddenly fly away. He could feel their breasts pressed against his skin, but his attention was entirely focused on the creature that stood before him.
The thing had turned its head almost upside down again and Albert saw what it was that had shifted before. The flesh of its face fell away, drooping from its cheeks and forehead to reveal dull, black eyes that studied them intently.
Now it changed direction and was slowly turning its chin back toward the floor.
“Who are you,” Albert asked.
“I am the Keeper,” it said.
“The keeper of what?” Albert pushed.
For a moment it did not seem that the creature would reply, but then it said, “Of lots of things.”
Albert looked at Brandy, then back at the creature. “I saw you behind us a minute ago, didn’t I?”
“Yes.”
“How did you get around us?”
“I didn’t.”
Albert didn’t understand. He opened his mouth to ask, but before he could do so the creature said, “You would not understand if I told you. It is beyond your ability to comprehend.”
He had no doubt that it was. Almost everything down here was.
“So you’ve been following us down these past few tunnels?”
“I’ve been following you the whole time.”
“The whole time?”
“Since the very beginning.”
The very beginning? He wondered what the beginning was. Did it begin with the trip to Gilbert House? With his findi
ng of the box? Or had it begun long before that, a series of events leading up to this day of which he had always been ignorant.
The Keeper did not elaborate. It lifted both its hands and held them out to its sides, pointing down both passageways. “The labyrinth begins here,” it said. “It does not matter which way you go. There are many ways to get there.”
“To get where?” Nicole asked. “What are we looking for?”
“You will know it when you get there.”
“Do you know the way?” Albert asked.
“I know all the ways.”
“Can you tell us how to find it?”
“No.”
Albert would have been lying if he said he was surprised. Somehow he had not expected this strange little creature, this “Keeper,” to help them any more than it had to.
“You must find it on your own. It is the way it has to be.”
“Like the way we had to be naked?” Albert challenged.
“Yes.”
“I see.” Although he didn’t.
“The path will be very dangerous.”
Brandy squeezed Albert’s arm.
“Since you have made it this far, I feel that you deserve something. Therefore, I will warn you of the guardian of this labyrinth. The beast is known as the Caggo. You must avoid him at all cost. He was put there long ago and is bound to these walls like the darkness. He will kill any who cross his path. It is his only joy.”
Albert stood there for a moment, trying to grasp the idea of some sort of killer creature stalking the corridors. How the hell were they supposed to avoid something like that inside a giant maze?
“Go now,” the Keeper said.
But still Albert did not move. “What about the hounds?” he asked. “I’ve heard them in other areas of the labyrinth.”
“The hounds exist within their own labyrinth,” the Keeper replied. “The two are separate, but they intersect frequently. You do not need me to tell you how dangerous those places are.”
“No,” Albert agreed. “I guess I don’t.”
“It is not an impossible journey. You need nothing more from me. Go now. I’ll answer no more questions.”
Albert hesitated. He had no reason to doubt this Keeper when he said he’d answer no more questions, but he felt he deserved considerably more than this. These…people, for lack of a better word…were expecting a lot out of them for no more than they were willing to give them. He was quickly becoming disenchanted with the whole “mysterious intention” thing. He just wanted a straight answer to all his questions. That was the whole reason he was here.
“You need nothing more,” the Keeper said again, as if it had read the thoughts right from his mind.
Reluctantly, Albert began to walk. Brandy and Nicole followed closely, their eyes fixed on the eerie little creature. Albert wanted badly to ask more questions, wanted to learn all that it knew, but as with the Sentinel Queen, he somehow knew it would be pointless.
As Nicole passed by the Keeper, it put one bony hand out and softly grasped her arm. The feel of its hot, loose flesh sliding across its bones almost made her scream.
“You,” said the Keeper. “You are different. For you, I’ll offer one more piece of advice. Stay away from the meadow. If you see it at the end of a tunnel, turn around and go the other way. There is nothing for you there but pain and death.”
Nicole pulled away from the little creature, afraid of it and its words. She did not know what it meant about being different. She was no different than her friends.
After they passed, the creature began to walk away from them, its movements slow and cautious, like those of a feeble old man. As they watched, it paused. “And one more thing,” it said, not looking back at them. “If you find the secret of the labyrinth, do not linger. By finding the way out, you will unleash a terrible curse upon these walls, one that you cannot possibly survive. Its only weakness is that, like the Caggo, it will be bound to the walls of the labyrinth.”
The Keeper hobbled away, down the steps and into the darkness, vanishing from their sight.
“A curse?” Nicole asked, her voice anxious.
“I don’t doubt it,” Albert said.
“Which tunnel do we take?” Brandy was staring down one of the passages, her thoughts lingering on the idea of a bloodthirsty beast roaming these scary tunnels.
Albert shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.” He took off the backpack and removed a piece of yellow sidewalk chalk from the plastic tube inside. They would mark the tunnels as they walked, leaving a trail to follow that would at least lead them back if they got utterly lost. There were twenty thick pieces of colorful chalk in the tube, four of each color, which had looked like a lot when he saw it sitting on the shelf in the store. But now, as he shined his flashlight into each of the two tunnels, trying to decide which way to begin, it seemed laughably inadequate to the task. Suddenly he wished that he’d bought as many tubes as he could cram into the backpack. But it was too late now.
Entirely at random, he chose the path on the right.
Chapter 4
Albert had a bad feeling about this place. Being inside the labyrinth was even worse than being inside Gilbert House. The wrongness of these walls was like the lingering stench of a corpse. Though he had never really believed in evil, in that persistent notion that “bad” could be a force of nature all by itself, he could almost believe that this was an evil place. It virtually stank of wickedness, like the eerie scene of some grizzly murder. He could tell by the way Brandy clung to his arm as they walked that she could feel it too.
Somewhere among these countless stone walls was a meadow through which they must not walk and something called the Caggo whose only joy was in slaughtering trespassers, yet these were not the things that made this place feel wicked. It felt wicked because it was a wicked place, built of blood and suffering for the exile of a world. Albert did not know how he knew this, but somehow he did. He could almost hear the weeping of the first souls to ever walk this path, the weeping of women, naked, cold and pregnant and carrying a terrible burden upon their shoulders.
Albert tried to force these thoughts away. That could be nothing more than his overactive imagination. He had no way of knowing any of these things. All he knew was what he’d been told by the Sentinel Queen. She told him that fourteen women entered the city of the blind through the north gate and that they were pregnant. He had no way of knowing that they were naked. He could not possibly know that they carried a burden or that they wept as they traveled. These were merely things in his imagination, assumptions he was making in his uneasy mind. Yet these things still felt real to him, as though he had reached into the very fabric of time, into unwritten history itself, and seen them with his own eyes.
About fifty yards from the labyrinth’s entrance, they encountered a second intersection. Three choices faced them. In the tunnel that went left, they could see another choice they would have to make: a passage that branched off to the left again, essentially back the way they came. Back was not the way they wanted to go, but in a maze, backward was sometimes forward. Alternately, the passage to their right was curved to the left, promising to ultimately carry them forward, but sometimes mazes spiraled into nothing. Finally, the tunnel straight ahead led forward unimpeded, with no intersections or curves for as far as they could see in the limited reach of their three flashlights.
“Which way do we go?” Nicole asked.
Albert did not know. This was only the second in a long line of decisions they would have to make. They would have to choose paths entirely at random and their chances of choosing the correct path every time were virtually nonexistent. The Keeper revealed that there were many solutions to the maze, but even if there were hundreds of paths that would lead them to the end, there were probably thousands, maybe tens of thousands of paths that would not. They were likely to spend hours, if not the rest of their lives, wandering these corridors, walking in circles.
“It’s definitely a good idea to
mark the path,” Nicole observed, glancing back the way they came. It was comforting to see the yellow line leading the way back.
Brandy nodded. “I hope we don’t run out of chalk. I left my lipstick in my purse.” The previous year, with nothing as convenient as sidewalk chalk at their disposal, she had marked one of the passages with an X in pink lipstick to identify the way home. The chalk was far more practical.
Nicole looked at her, curious. “Why did you bring your purse last time?”
“I always take my purse with me,” Brandy replied, a little too defensively. They’d had this conversation before. She knew what Nicole wanted to hear. She wanted to hear her say that she’d brought her purse because she wanted to stay pretty for Albert, with whom she was already a little smitten. Admittedly, she had been a little interested in Albert before they entered that service tunnel all those months ago. She’d be lying if she said that her attraction to him had nothing to do with her decision to join him on that strange adventure, but that was not the reason she took her purse with her. She took her purse because she felt secure carrying it. Her money and identification were in there. So were her keys. So was her cell phone. So was a small can of pepper spray. Albert knew it was in there now, that she carried it for self-defense. He approved strongly of her carrying it. But she had a feeling that he still didn’t realize that she’d kept it within easy reach during their first trip through the Temple of the Blind. She did not really know him back then, after all.
Albert ignored the girls. He did not care about Brandy’s purse or why she took it into the tunnels with them thirteen months ago. What he cared about was the labyrinth. He looked at their three choices. Four, if he took into account the intersection he could see down the left passage. He considered his odds of picking the shortest path to the exit and found it overwhelming. He had less than one in four chances of getting it right, since he had only a one in two chance of picking the correct tunnel at the labyrinth’s entrance. Even knowing there was more than one path to the exit didn’t improve those odds by much.