by Brian Harmon
If this thing was a scale, however, it suggested that the creature it belonged to might be formidable in size. And it would probably be well-armored. The last thing he wanted was to run into one of them…and yet he was still dying to see what one looked like.
They reached the end of the passage and had to choose left or right. Albert no longer took the time to consider the possible wrongs and rights of each decision. He paused only to flex his left hand, which had grown a little stiff from holding the chalk for so long, and then randomly turned left. When that path intersected another, he turned right and soon found another dead end. He returned to the previous intersection and took the left passage instead, then right, then left again.
For nearly half an hour, the labyrinth revealed nothing new. Only empty passages emerged from the darkness.
“This is hopeless,” Brandy groaned. “How the hell are we supposed to find our way out of a maze this big?”
“It’s not hopeless,” Albert assured her. But he understood perfectly how she felt. The massiveness of the labyrinth was almost overwhelming. It weighed him down, sapping his very spirit. “The Keeper said there were lots of ways to get there. We’re bound to find one of them if we just keep walking.”
But he wondered how much more likely they were to find the Caggo than the exit.
They turned left at the next intersection and walked to the end of the next passage. But instead of another intersection, this one led them to a large chamber. A wide walkway ran along the wall to the right and left. Directly ahead of them was the softly rocking surface of a very large pool of water.
“Do we have to get wet again?” Nicole asked. “Because I still haven’t warmed up after last time.”
“I don’t think so,” Albert replied, shining his light around. The walkways leading away from them along the chamber walls offered a dry path that was never an option before. He doubted if they were meant to simply dive blindly into the water. The logical assumption would be to try to walk around it first.
“What is this place?” Brandy asked as she shined her light out over the wavering water.
Albert aimed his light down into it. It looked as bottomless as the last pool they encountered. “Some kind of reservoir system, I guess.”
“Why’s the water moving? You don’t think there’s something in it, do you?”
“Could be,” he admitted. The idea wasn’t particularly appealing. “But maybe it’s a current. This system probably flows through the entire temple. It only makes sense that there’d be something like this. There’s an entire city back there, remember. Plus the hounds and this Caggo thing. You’ve got to keep your guard dogs watered or they’re not going to do their jobs very well.”
“So glad they thought of that,” Nicole retorted. “Wouldn’t want anything bad happening to all the monsters, now would we?”
“We haven’t met any yet,” Albert reminded her. “You never know. You might like them.”
“Excuse me if I won’t get my hopes up for a new pet.”
Albert could see no difference between going left and right, so he chose left for no other reason than to keep his chalk line on the same side. Before he could take more than a few steps, however, he was startled by the sound of splashing water.
All three of them turned, their flashlight beams racing out over the water to see what was there. But by now they could see nothing but the widening ring of ripples spreading out from where the surface had been broken.
“What the hell was that?” Brandy asked.
“The Caggo?” Nicole reasoned.
Albert said nothing. He hadn’t expected to find the Caggo in the water, but again, the Keeper gave him no information about the monster except that it was here and it was dangerous. Could the Caggo be an aquatic creature? Could it be right there, hiding beneath the surface, watching them from the depths? It was suddenly far too easy to imagine a great, kraken-like sea monster lurking down there, snaky tentacles slowly rising toward them, silently reaching to snatch them into the frigid depths to die.
He hated not being able to see anything.
They moved on, their lights constantly in motion, searching the room around them for any sign of an imminent attack.
The chamber was even larger than it first seemed. They followed the walkway along the water’s edge for several more minutes before another splash halted them. This one was much more distant than the last, far out in the water, well beyond the reach of their light.
“I don’t like this,” Nicole groaned.
Albert didn’t like it either. The openness of the room made him feel vulnerable. Suddenly, he craved the protection of the claustrophobic tunnels, where danger could only come from two directions.
They kept moving, pushing ever deeper into the gigantic chamber. Soon, another walkway came into view, this one leading out over the water and into the darkness beyond. As they approached it, a loud splash rose from the same direction. The water’s surface rippled out toward them, sloshing onto the walkway near their feet.
Something had jumped into the water.
Something large.
“Okay, I’m scared…” Nicole breathed.
Albert crept forward, his light fixed on the walkway that stretched out over the water. A moment later, a second splash rose from the walkway, followed quickly by a third.
“Lots of them,” Brandy observed.
Albert nodded. Whatever was in here with them, there was definitely more than one.
“Hounds?” Nicole wondered.
“I don’t think so.” He was reminded of walking around the pond near his grandparents’ farmhouse when he was growing up. This was very much like the way the frogs would leap into the water as he approached. It wasn’t the behavior of bloodthirsty creatures. They seemed to be fleeing from their path.
“Something else?” Brandy asked.
“Nobody said anything about any other things living down here,” Nicole recalled.
“We were only told to stay away from the hounds and the Caggo,” Albert reminded them. “It’s not exactly been a free exchange of information. If there’s something down here that’s not extremely dangerous, they probably wouldn’t have bothered telling us.”
“So you think they’re harmless?” Brandy asked.
“I didn’t say ‘harmless,’” he returned. “I wouldn’t bet on that. But they might leave us alone if we don’t provoke them.”
Another splash broke the stillness of the room as another unseen creature threw itself into the water.
“Don’t worry about that,” Nicole assured him. “I sure as hell don’t intend to do any provoking down here.”
“It makes sense, when you think about it,” he explained. “There has to be some sort of renewable food source to sustain a population of hounds. There has to be something down here that they regularly feed on. And since there’s no sign of vegetation, these reservoir systems probably sustain an aquatic food source. Whatever we’re hearing could be prey for the hounds.”
“I just assumed the blind people raised them,” said Brandy. “The Sentinel Queen’s children. Or whatever.”
“Or maybe the Keeper,” Nicole added. “Seems like something a keeper would do…”
“Maybe,” agreed Albert. He stepped out onto the bridge and shined his light down on the stone surface. It was wet and slippery. Something that had been in the water was recently here and it was probably one of the things they heard dropping into the water. “Could be that these things have some other kind of purpose. Maybe they keep the water clean.”
He shined his flashlight down into the water. It was as clear as crystal, but extremely deep. He could not nearly see the bottom. It faded to black in every direction, revealing nothing.
“Either way, there could be an entire ecosystem hidden down here.” Somehow, he found this idea exciting. He could almost imagine finding creatures down here that no one had ever seen before.
Preferably of the non-lethal variety.
The path
that ran along the wall continued on past this bridge, but Albert decided to cross the water instead, curious about the width of the pool.
Occasionally, they heard splashing. Usually it came from ahead of them, just beyond the reach of their light, but sometimes they heard the splashing from other areas of the chamber, some of them remarkably far away, making Albert wonder just how big this place could be.
Several minutes later, the three of them reached the other side and found a walkway along the far wall just like the one across from it. Albert turned left and continued exploring the enormous chamber.
Chapter 7
A deep channel, about twelve feet wide, carried water away from the large reservoir chamber. On the right side was a walkway, just wide enough for the three of them to walk side-by-side, but they chose to stay single file next to the wall and out of reach of anything that may decide to lunge out of the water at them.
Walking with the wall on his right side obviously made it impossible to keep the chalk line on his left, as Albert had reliably done until they crossed the bridge to the far side of the water. Therefore, rather than break his left-hand rule, he chose to conserve chalk during this time by simply drawing arrows on the wall to indicate where they were going.
Frequently, their flashlights gravitated toward the mysterious depths of the water where they watched for threatening shadows or mysterious bubbles or ominous dorsal fins or other signs of imminent doom.
Albert again considered the scale he’d found. Perhaps it belonged to some kind of fish. It didn’t seem likely that any fish could crawl out of the water and wander freely about a dry labyrinth, but nothing else down here had ever seemed “likely” either.
But for all he knew, the scale might have absolutely nothing to do with the temple. Perhaps it had merely migrated down here the same way Wendell Gilbert’s pocket watch did.
He hated not having all the information, especially when his and his two closest friends’ lives might be at stake.
After a while, the channel led them into another chamber. Here, the water was distributed into a dozen openings in the walls, each one just large enough for a man to fit through, though Albert had very little doubt that the destination of any of those small tunnels emptied into the wave pool at Hurricane Harbor. If he were to fall into the water and be sucked into one of those tubes, there was no way to know where it might spit him back out, and probably very little chance it would do so in less time than he could do without air.
But then again, being swept away didn’t really seem like much of a danger here. The water did not seem to be moving very fast. In fact, he could barely tell that the water was moving at all in these chambers. And perhaps that was intentional. After all, if the Sentinel Queen was right, and the Temple of the Blind had been here since ancient times, what kept all this water from eroding away the stone? Either the stone was very hard or the water’s current very slow.
The walkway circled the distribution chamber to a passageway on the left side of the room. They left the water behind them and followed this passage for a short while until it intersected a long, wide corridor with a familiar drop-off between its floor and the one in which they stood.
Hounds.
“Smells bad,” Brandy observed.
It did. There was a different odor to this chamber than any before it. It was more like the tunnels back in the Briar Hills sewers, musty and underlain with the subtle reek of decomposition.
Albert realized at once that they were far deeper into hound territory than they had ever been before. It had the potential to get very dangerous down here. But at least they always had the choice of turning back.
So far.
Like last time, the hounds themselves were nowhere to be seen or heard. Were they still sticking close to the pillar where the blind man hung their undergarments? Or had they converged on the areas where they and Wayne had crossed through their territory, hungrily sniffing the floor where their bare feet had passed, memorizing their scents?
Or perhaps it was nap time. There was simply no way to know.
Their passage continued forward on the other side. Other passages could be seen in either direction, but Albert did not press his luck. It was dangerous enough just crossing from one side to the other.
He knelt over the ledge and shined his light down into the passageway. Immediately, he saw several more broken scales littering this passage floor. This seemed to help confirm his theory that these were related to the hounds, but it also presented a number of new questions. Why hadn’t he found any of these in the first two lowered passages? On the other side of the City of the Blind, there had been only scratches and a few scattered bone fragments.
“I feel like it’s a dumb idea to cross these tunnels,” Nicole said. “Maybe it’s just me.”
“It’s definitely not just you,” Albert agreed. This passage was worse than the little room they crossed last time. It was bigger and probably much more traveled. One of the beasts could wander by at any moment. “It just feels like we’re covering more ground when we do,” he explained. “We don’t spend as much time backtracking.”
“I guess so,” Nicole admitted. He had a point. If they turned back now, they would have to retreat all the way to the reservoir. But then again, for all they knew, the next passage in the reservoir might take them right to the exit.
But so could that passage directly across from them. It did no good to second guess themselves. The best course of action was to simply keep moving and cover as much ground as possible.
“I’m with Nikki,” Brandy announced. “I don’t like taking the risk. Makes me nervous.”
“We may not be able to take the risk later,” Albert explained. “For all we know, once they catch our scent they might be waiting for us at every one of these.”
Brandy and Nicole both shuddered at the idea of a swarm of man-eating monsters snapping and snarling at them at the end of dozens or even hundreds of passageways.
Albert scanned the passage carefully with his flashlight and then took a deep breath. “Here goes.” He dropped onto the lower floor without another word, his eyes and ears wide open for any sign that they were not alone, his flashlight swinging back and forth in the darkness. He stepped across the path as Brandy and Nicole descended behind him and then helped both of them up into the next passage before climbing after them.
Once safely in the upper passage, he again almost wished one of the hounds would appear, just so he could see it.
“Now let’s just hope this doesn’t lead us right back here again,” Albert said. “I definitely don’t want to spend too much time spreading our scent in one area. Unless of course I know for a fact we’re never going back to that spot.”
But for the next hour, they encountered nothing but empty passageways and the occasional dead end.
Chapter 8
The late hour insured that Wayne had no trouble entering the steam tunnel between the Field House and Juggers Hall. The streets and sidewalks were completely deserted. Though the iron cover sounded as if it would alert the entire campus to their trespassing, no one came to investigate. And after he slid it noisily back into place, he had only to follow the faded markings that Albert pointed out to him the first time he came down here.
He still could not believe that he was starting all over again. It was a long trip through these tunnels before he even reached the Temple of the Blind. Once inside, he would then have to find his own way to the City of the Blind, navigating the three emotion rooms along the way. He’d have to swim through that cold water. He’d have to squeeze through the tiny passageway where he nearly became lodged last time. He’d have to make his way once more through that reeking mud. And after what the old man told him, who knew if the Sentinel Queen would even let him pass through her city. For all he knew, she might even try to kill him.
Assuming he made it that far, he would have to pass through the City of the Blind’s north gate and somehow try to catch up with Albert, Brandy and Nicole, thoug
h they had a tremendous head start on him.
He had no idea how he was supposed to catch up to them. How would he even know where to begin? It was preposterous to think that he could locate a mere three people in a labyrinth that size. But he had to try. If nothing else, he needed to warn Albert of the old man’s claims. Either he or the Sentinel Queen was lying to them. Perhaps both of them. He could not begin to say which one they should trust, but he felt confident that he could trust Albert to help sort it out.
He followed the florescent green markings into the next passageway and to the old, iron ladder that waited to carry them deeper into the earth. “Careful,” he warned as he gripped the metal rung and began to climb down.
Olivia and Andrea followed close behind him. He still could not believe that these two lovely young ladies were both willing to wade through sewer tunnels, strip down to their birthday suits and risk life and limb to accompany not just him but each other, two complete strangers, on a frightening—and frankly insane—adventure they knew almost nothing about. The very idea was unfathomable to him. Although he supposed that it was no more insane than his own actions. He had, himself, come here in the company of three strangers, with no idea what was in store for him. And now he was going back again, regardless of the horrors he had seen.
He had asked them many times before arriving at the tunnel entrance if they were certain of their decision, warning them that it was dangerous and reminding them that the trip required them to give up their clothes. Although he could see in their eyes that the thought of disrobing bothered them both greatly, they still refused to back down. They were both strong-willed and stubborn and, truthfully, he had to respect them for that.
And the company they gave him while traveling these dark and moldy tunnels was more than welcome.
Olivia had been mostly quiet since the three of them left the parking lot outside Wayne’s apartment building. He wasn’t surprised. A lot must weigh on her mind. After all she’d been through, it was astounding that she was still going. Now that she was inside the steam tunnels, she had the look of a frightened animal, her eyes twitching from shadow to shadow, her jaw clenched. If not for the determined way she kept meeting his eyes when he glanced back at her, he wouldn’t have believed she was the same person who refused to even consider remaining in the safety of her dorm room.