Secret of the Labyrinth (The Temple of the Blind #5)

by Brian Harmon

  But one thing was terribly different: Wayne was much less lucky than Albert.

  As he swung up over the ledge, his right foot first, something very large slammed into his left leg and sent a jolt of excruciating pain straight to his brain. He screamed as much in surprise as in agony and would have let go of the ledge completely if Olivia and Andrea had not been there to grab him and pull him up.

  “Oh God!” Andrea cried.

  His leg was bloody and chewed, the flesh torn and ragged, as though the thing had actually had time to gnaw on him.

  Below them, the hound beat frantically against the wall, trying to find the prey that had somehow eluded it.

  “We’ve got to get out of here!” Andrea screamed over the violent noise.

  “My leg!” Wayne cried.

  “We’ve got to go!”

  But Wayne shook his head. “We’re safe up here. They can’t jump. Tell me how bad it is.”

  Olivia did not want to take her eyes off the ledge behind them. The hound was right there, just beneath her sight, still making that horrible noise. She could not trust that the thing was actually trapped there.

  But if Wayne said they were safe, then they must be safe. He was her hero. He wouldn’t let anything happen to her. Reluctantly, she bent over his leg and examined him.

  It wasn’t as bad as she thought. Not really. The thing had nearly taken the skin off more than half of his shin and left several deep gashes in the side of his calf, but his leg was neither broken nor severed. The wound looked bad, but it was mostly gnarled and twisted flesh. He was bleeding more than she liked, and must have been in a hell of a lot of pain, but overall he was in better shape than she would have expected. “I think you’re going to be okay,” she told him.

  “Hurts like hell.”

  “I know. It looks painful. But it’s not too bad. I think you’re going to have a nasty scar.”

  Wayne uttered a prayer of thanks under his breath. He had actually feared that his leg had been torn off. The pain was excruciating. Being bitten by that zombie thing did not even compare.

  “Come on,” Olivia said. “Let’s get you away from here.”

  “Not yet.” Wayne sat up and looked around. “My flashlight…”

  It had slid a good fifteen feet into the passage when he tossed it. Andrea stood up and retrieved it for him.

  As soon as it was in his hand, he turned and began crawling toward the ledge where the hound was still making its horrible noise.

  “What are you doing?” Andrea shouted.

  “Fucking freak!” Wayne screamed at the creature. “Bastard!” To Andrea he said, “I want to see it. I want to know what got me.”

  “Wayne, no!” The terror in Olivia’s voice was unmistakable. That thing was dangerous. They needed to get away from it, not stay and look at it.

  “Wayne, please!” Andrea begged.

  Wayne leaned over the edge and shined his light down onto the hound. Immediately, his rage melted away. “Jesus Christ…”

  Olivia and Andrea crept up beside him, their curiosity overwhelming their fear.

  The sound that the creature made was not really a shuffling or a rattling. It was a clashing, like the sound of blades beating and grinding together. When the man with no eyes first warned them to beware of the hounds, Wayne had immediately pictured some demonic version of a dog, a canine terror like Cerberus, the three-headed guardian of the entrance to Hades, or the sleek, mechanical killers who were the firemen’s pets in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. But this creature was not canine at all. In fact, it was like nothing he’d ever seen. It was like nothing he’d ever even imagined.

  It was low to the ground, standing less than three feet in height, but its breadth was enormous, filling more than half the width of the passage. It was a deep, reddish-brown color with curious patterns of darker and lighter shades. It had two short tails that were frantically whipping around, slashing at the air in a ferocious rage. And looking down at the shape of the beast, Wayne thought that they were extensions of two separate spines that ran along its wide, flattened back and converged at the base of its skull. It had no neck that he could distinguish. It had powerful, but very short legs, perhaps part of the reason why it could not jump, and no eyes or ears that he could see. It did have jaws, however, and they were currently snapping viciously at the stone wall that stood between it and its prey. Its snout was not long and sleek like most canine’s, but wide and short, with small but wicked-looking teeth. It had no hair on its body that he could see and its skin was covered in rigid scales that resembled square razor blades standing on end. Each of these blades were in motion, gnashing back and forth against one another like jigsaw blades, causing the creature’s flesh to ripple rhythmically and creating the loud, metallic clashing sound that had been the only proof of their existence until now.

  Wayne stared down at this creature, amazed that such a deadly beast could even exist. It was like something from a horror movie, essentially a chainsaw with jaws on legs. If this thing had caught him before he reached the wall, he would have been shredded as easily as if he were cast into a giant blender.

  No wonder it had done so much damage to his leg in such a short amount of time.

  “What is it?” Andrea asked, her hands pressed to her ears.

  Wayne did not know. “A hound,” he said. “Something that doesn’t exist above ground.”

  “Why won’t it stop making that noise?” Olivia asked. She had to scream to be heard over it.

  “We should go,” Wayne said. “Before more show up.”

  “You’re leg,” Olivia said. He was not gushing blood, but still he was bleeding pretty badly. If he kept this up, he wasn’t going to have any left by the time they found the others.

  “We’ll wrap it when we get farther ahead,” he promised. “Now help me. Please.”

  Olivia and Andrea helped him to his feet and he limped away between them, leaving the enraged hound to batter pointlessly at the walls of its stone prison.

  They were well on their way now. Ahead of them lay the lake of mud they would have to cross. Beyond that lay the entrance to the City of the Blind.

  Wayne wanted to catch up to Albert and Brandy and Nicole, wanted to already be by their side, but he also needed to stop in the city. He needed to speak with the Sentinel Queen. Perhaps there was nothing more to be said, but he felt that he needed to face her. Perhaps she had intended him to go to his death, but she had also helped him. If she had really wanted him to die, then why had she warned him of the dangers of that terrible tunnel? It would have been much easier for her to say nothing and let him perish.

  But that was too much to consider right now. For the time being, the only thing he could think clearly about was the screaming pain in his leg.

  Chapter 25

  “I can still taste it,” Brandy groaned.

  “Could have been worse,” Nicole reminded her.

  “I know.”

  “Some kind of cephalopod,” Albert reasoned.

  “Some kind of what?” asked Nicole.

  “Octopus. Squid. That sort of thing. I didn’t see much of it, but it looked like a mass of tentacles.”

  “Looked more like a spider or something to me,” Brandy said. “It was hairy.”

  “It was,” agreed Albert. “But it wasn’t rigid like a spider’s legs. It was…fleshy.”

  Brandy threw her hands up and half-gagged, shaking away the image.

  “That stuff it squirted was probably a specialized ink. But instead of blinding predators and covering their escape, it’s engineered to put a bad taste in their mouths.”

  “Well, maybe it’ll work out for the best,” suggested Nicole. “Maybe the hounds won’t want to eat you now that you taste like nasty-hairy-squid juice.”

  “Great,” groaned Brandy. “I’m so lucky.”

  “So you think all these monsters down here are bred intentionally?” Nicole asked, glancing back at Albert.

  “I don’t know about that,” A
lbert replied. “I mean, I suppose they’ve had all the time in the world for a science project or two, but I’m guessing these things might’ve already been around when they built the place. It seems like it was designed right from the start with the hounds already in mind.”

  “So then where’d they come from?”

  “Wherever all this leads us, I guess. Wherever those fourteen pregnant women supposedly came from.”

  “Another world?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe just another time. Who knows?”

  They reached the end of the passage and found themselves in the chasm once again.

  “We’re here again?” Brandy asked.

  “I wonder how far we’ve gone now,” said Nicole.

  Brandy stared down into the darkness below them. It was unsettling, the way she could see neither the ceiling nor the floor. It was as though the labyrinth went on and on into eternity. “I don’t know,” she replied. “I just want to be out of here. I’m sick of this game.”

  “Me too,” agreed Nicole.

  Albert stared up at the four bridges that crossed above them and wondered if one of them had his yellow line scrawled across one side. It never crossed his mind that just a few minutes ago, three others might have crossed this same chasm somewhere else in the temple, their lights illuminating a tiny portion of the endless darkness.

  He kept walking. He didn’t like it here. He didn’t like how small it made him feel.

  It was as they stepped into the opening on the other side of the chasm that they first heard the paralyzing shriek of the Caggo. It echoed down from somewhere high above, too distant to pinpoint, but far too close for comfort, seeming to rattle the very walls around them.

  “Oh my god!”

  “What the fuck was that?” Brandy asked, though she already knew the answer.

  “The Caggo,” Albert replied. There was not a doubt in his mind that this was true. The sound had filled him with unspeakable dread. There was something unsettling about the scream, something almost evil.

  He turned and peered out into the chasm again. It was out there somewhere, probably on one of the other bridges. Had it caught their scent? Or perhaps it heard them talking or saw their light. Just because the man with no eyes told them the hounds were deaf and blind didn’t mean the Caggo was. Would it be hunting them now? Was it tracking their scent? How long might they have before it caught up to them?

  “What do we do?” Brandy asked.

  “We just keep going,” Albert replied.

  More terrified than ever, the three of them continued onward, desperately hoping that the exit was waiting for them somewhere nearby.

  Chapter 26

  “You’ve got to be joking,” Andrea exclaimed as she looked out over the vile, black sea of mud.

  “I wish I was,” Wayne replied. “I really do.” He stared into the sludge-filled chamber, mentally cringing at the task before him. He had not yet forgotten the stench from his first visit here. This time, he was considerably more tired and he had no idea how this stuff would affect his injuries. What if it burned like iodine when introduced to a fresh cut?

  But if that were so, he likely would have noticed it on his first trip. He’d collected a number of cuts and scrapes in his first visit to the fear room and none of those had caused him any trouble. But his recent run-in with the hound had left his lower leg half-skinned. He’d had to recycle the bandages he’d been wearing to cushion his raw feet in order to sufficiently stop the bleeding. It still hurt like hell, and he had no doubt that dragging his leg through this stuff was going to be excruciating.

  But there was no sense in putting it off. They sure as hell couldn’t turn back, not with that hound prowling the area behind them. He stepped out into the mud, his bare foot sinking beneath the cold, grimy surface.

  “This place is twisted,” Andrea said, as if she’d just decided this. She could not believe that anyone would willingly wade into something so foul.

  Olivia stepped out after Wayne, but hesitated as she felt the cold mud ooze between her toes. “Oh god!” she squealed. “It’s so gross!”

  Wayne did not stop. “Sorry. I did warn you about this.”

  “You did,” Olivia admitted. “Oh!” She threw her hands up and fanned the air around her face. “It reeks!”

  Wayne hissed as he pressed the tender flesh of his shin against the thick mud. Even with the gauze padding the wound, it was like using his freshly torn skin to push a heavy weight across the floor.

  Andrea had hesitated as long as she could. Slowly, her companions were making their way out into the vile darkness, leaving her alone on the shore of this disgusting lake of horrors. Bracing herself for the worst, she bit her lip and rushed forward before she could lose her courage. Immediately, the cold, grimy muck squished between her naked toes and an awful stench rose around her.

  “Ew-ew-ew-ew-ew!”

  Olivia clasped one hand over her nose and mouth. The other she held out to her side, trying to maintain her balance as the deepening mud threatened to trip her and spill her into it.

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this!” whined Andrea.

  Relentlessly, the cold, foul-smelling mire rose around their naked bodies, climbing their exposed flesh, oozing between their thighs and churning up the nauseating stench of soggy decay. The effort it took to stay upright quickly overwhelmed Olivia and Andrea’s desire to complain and so they fell silent and restricted their expressions of disgust and discomfort to their pretty faces.

  For Wayne, the nauseating stench and the awful feel of the slimy and grimy mud between his toes and thighs was the least of his discomfort. The journey was agony. He could feel the gritty sludge oozing up under the gauze and into his wounds. It burned and it grated in the raw, bloody flesh as he dragged his leg through it step after step. He could almost feel the germs taking root, threatening to infect him, rotting away the meat and poisoning his blood.

  He could not believe the amount of hell he’d been through tonight. It never seemed to end. If he survived all of this without contracting gangrene in any one of his bloodied limbs, he’d consider himself blessed.

  “Maybe you should stop and rest,” Olivia suggested, glimpsing the hard, white knuckles of his fist as he struggled against the pain.

  But Wayne shook his head. They hadn’t even reached the deepest part yet. They still had far to go and the journey was only going to get harder. “I’ll be fine. I just have to keep moving.”

  “These people are really important to you, aren’t they,” she said, her voice beginning to waver. She was shivering against the numbing cold that came with the awful, reeking touch of the mud against her skin. “Even though you just met them today?”

  Wayne was silent for a moment as he pushed himself through the torturous sludge. Then he said, “It’s complicated.”

  “Complicated how?”

  “They’re good people. I’m… Well, I’m not.”

  “Yes you are,” Olivia argued through chattering teeth. “You’re a wonderful person. How can you even say that after all you’ve done? You rescued me. Twice.”

  “I stumbled across you,” he corrected her. “I just happened to run into that bathroom where you were hiding, scared to death and cursing my dumb luck.”

  “So? You still rescued me. You came all the way into that forest to find me.”

  Wayne didn’t know what to say. He promised her he wouldn’t let anything happen to her. Then he lost her. He thought she was dead and it was all his fault. He should have kept his promise. When the Sentinel Queen told him she was still alive, he had no choice. He couldn’t leave her there to die. No part of that made him any kind of hero. If he’d done it right the first time, he wouldn’t have had to go out there to rescue her. And they wouldn’t have nearly been eaten by those zombie things.

  “It doesn’t make me a good person,” he said at last. “Believe me. I’m not.”

  “Why?” Olivia pressed. It was good to talk. Talking took her mind off that disgusting
stench and all the horrible things her imagination kept suggesting might be its source. “What have you done that’s so bad?”

  For a moment, Wayne was silent and she didn’t think he was going to answer her, but then he did. For the first time in his life he said the words aloud: “I cheated on my girlfriend. For starters.”

  “Oh.” Olivia was lost for words for a moment, caught off guard by this sudden and brutally honest confession.

  “Yeah.”

  “That is pretty bad,” Andrea agreed, speaking through her hands as she covered her jittering mouth and nose from the nauseating mud.

  “Yeah.”

  “But it’s not the worst thing in the world,” said Olivia.

  “It’s right up there, I think,” replied Wayne. “I never forgave myself for it.”

  “How long ago did it happen?” asked Andrea.

  “Few years ago. Between high school and college.”

  “Did she leave you?”

  Wayne didn’t care for all these questions. They were almost as uncomfortable as the mud that grated his torn flesh. “I left. Didn’t seem fair to stay.”

  “Did you tell her?”

  “No. I didn’t want her to know. She deserved better.”

  Andrea was quiet for a moment as she considered this, then she said through chattering teeth, “That seems kind of selfish.”

  Wayne stopped and looked back at her. “What?”

  “You just left her to think she did something wrong.”

  For a moment, Wayne just stared at her, considering. “Huh,” he said at last and then turned and pushed his way forward again, gritting his teeth against the pain. “I never thought of it that way.” He’d only wanted to protect her from the truth. Leaving the way he did…it was kinder than letting her think she wasn’t good enough for him to be faithful to her. Wasn’t it?

  “It still doesn’t make you a bad person,” Olivia insisted, and she found that she believed it. Although she had always felt that cheating was the worst kind of betrayal, she found it difficult to condemn Wayne for it. She wondered if it was because he had saved her, because he was her hero, that he could do no wrong, or if it was the remorseful way that he spoke of it, the way he said that he never forgave himself for it, that made her believe that he meant it. Perhaps it was a great many things, but she found it impossible to despise him the way she’d instantly despised other men who cheated.