Road Beneath the Wood (The Temple of the Blind #4)

by Brian Harmon

  Wayne almost jumped at the sound of his name. It was not a whisper this time, but a shriek, like that of a woman. It came from behind him and he nearly turned to see who was there, forgetting where he was and what he was doing.

  He stared ahead into the darkness, ignoring everything to save his life. A few seconds later, something caressed him. It was an almost tender touch, but the hand that did it was as cold as a corpse. It touched his buttock and slid down to the middle of his thigh, then curved upward and around, toward his groin. For a second, he thought it was going to grab him down there, but it mercifully withdrew.

  “Forget her,” came another voice, like the hoarse croak of a dying man. “Dead.”

  Had Wayne not been focusing so fiercely on going forward, he might have stopped at these words as well. If Olivia was dead, and even the Sentinel Queen did not know for sure how long she’d be safe, then everything he was going through now was for nothing.

  But I was never doing it because she was alive, he told himself. I’m doing it because she might not be dead. In this he found a truth that made him feel better about himself. That was precisely why he was doing this. He was risking his life to try and save Olivia. Maybe a part of him was doing it to try and save his soul, to make up for the pain he’d caused in his past, and if that were the only reason, he would be damned anyway. But it was not the only reason. He was going to find her because he made a promise to her and he was through breaking promises. He’d suffer through hell itself for her if it meant he would not have to feel that he let down another person, even a stranger.

  “Dead,” the voices insisted, and perhaps they were right. How could she be alive, anyway? How could she be anything but torn apart or swallowed whole in that terrible place into which she’d been carried? But what did it matter? What if she was dead? Would it make any difference? He had to try, damn it.

  Behind him, he heard a familiar sound that made every hair on his body stand stiff. It was a low, vibrating hum, a rattling, shuffling, clattering sound, with a quality like leaves crackling underfoot or an agitated rattlesnake, but multiplied tremendously. It was neither leaves nor serpents, he knew. It was a hound, just like those in the maze. It started far away, but quickly grew closer.

  The hounds are fast, but they cannot jump. These were the words of the man with no eyes, the man the Sentinel Queen called her son. He said this to them after they’d all removed their clothes inside the Temple of the Blind and relinquished their undergarments. They were words that had made him shiver the first time he heard them, and they were no different now.

  Ahead, out of the darkness, the second marker appeared. The small, stone block was like a beacon to a lost ship, so welcome in the light of apparent doom, but it was too far away. Behind him, the hound was closing fast, the strange noise it made grew louder and louder, a metallic sort of gnashing sound, he realized.

  He wanted to run for the second marker, to bolt for it. Surely he could make it before he was caught, but he could not allow himself to do that. The Sentinel Queen had told him not to run, not to look back. He had to trust her. He had to believe.

  He told himself that there was no way the hound could really be behind him. He’d closed each seal as he passed through it, just as he’d been told. There was nothing back there but an empty tunnel and a solid stone door.

  Unless someone opened the seals behind me, his hateful mind offered. Unless someone let it in.

  The thought was a rapid poison, filling him with terror. If the hound was real, if it was really rushing straight for him, then he was in serious trouble. It was going to strike him from behind while he strolled on, utterly unable to defend himself. But if he turned to face it, and the Sentinel Queen was right, he would also be doomed.

  The noise grew to a roar as the thing raced toward him. His wide eyes stared straight ahead at the second marker. He was moving so slowly. It wasn’t so far away. He could be there in an instant if he could only run, but he had to control himself. He squeezed his fists. He clenched his teeth. He took one step after another. So slowly.

  The hound grew louder. What was that awful noise? Why was it so loud? What were those things? He trembled with fright. He could barely breathe. Everything passed before him in slow-motion. The cruelty of the situation was maddening.

  Don’t run, he told himself.

  The hound was right behind him.

  Don’t run.

  He could even hear its feet striking the floor as it raced toward him.

  Don’t run.

  He wasn’t going to make it. He couldn’t possibly reach the marker. It was still so far away.

  Oh god!

  He closed his eyes and braced himself as the hound closed the final yards between them. He heard it snarl as it opened its jaws, a sound that was immeasurably worse than any sound from any horror movie he had ever watched.

  And then it was upon him.

  He felt it bite into him, not like a dog, not with teeth sinking into flesh, but with an explosive sort of agony that seemed to spread like fire across the entire lower half of his body. The pain was as real as the pounding of his frantic heart…

  But it lasted only an instant, barely longer than the space between his frantic heartbeats. The hound and whatever gruesome injuries it had inflicted were gone like a nightmare in the morning light. He was not dead. He was not crippled. He had not even slowed. He opened his eyes and saw the marker still ahead of him.

  Not running the last few steps was one of the hardest things Wayne Oakley had ever done. As he approached it, he could feel a massive presence behind him. Again, a hot, damp breath fell upon his back and shoulders. Whatever it was, it was growing angry with him. It was right on top of him. Something oozed down his naked back, hot and wet. It was drooling on him.

  He was trembling badly, his heart pounding, his legs weak. He stared straight ahead, even when the two shadows reached around on either side of him, huge, deformed claws, daring him to stop or run or turn around, to do something to acknowledge it and release it from whatever bindings kept it from tearing his head from his shoulders.

  One step after another.

  He could see it through his peripheral vision, a dark shadow at the corners of his eyes and just above his head. Something awful touched his hair. A vile coldness caressed the naked flesh of his back.

  Just walk, he told himself. Walk. Walk. Walk.

  At long last, Wayne stepped past the second marker and the shadows vanished at once. He staggered forward and spun around, expecting to see some horrible beast standing right over him, ready to devour him. But he stood alone.

  In the darkness at the very limit of his flashlight’s beam, he saw something withdrawing, something big and hulking, with a long, screaming face, but even that could have been his imagination. He was alone. The tunnel was as empty as it was when he began this journey, as empty as it had always been.

  He turned and walked on toward the sixth seal, still trembling, his heart still pounding, hoping like hell that he was past the worst of it.

  Chapter 8

  The sixth seal lay just a short distance beyond the second marker, and beyond the seal was nothing more than another empty tunnel.

  How long had he been down here? He thought that it must be morning by now, but he was sure it was still early. It had felt like hours just walking from one marker to the next, but for all he knew it might have only been a few minutes.

  As the tunnel regained its harmless, yet eerie stillness, Wayne found himself lost again in thought. This awful tunnel had churned up a serpent’s nest in his memory, and like it or not, he was going to relive every agonizing moment of that last summer of his innocence.

  On one level, he could blame Sam and Mark for what happened that day, but then again he could have blamed Brent or Harvey or even Gail. But he might as well have blamed the Easter Bunny because the fault was all his own.

  It was supposed to be a great day, the kind of day you looked forward to for weeks, had a blast when the day fina
lly came, and then remembered fondly for years to come. But it didn’t work out that way.

  The plan was to get up bright and early and go fishing, just him and Sam and Mark, spending the day at the lake. But the night before they were planning to set out for Gulfer Lake, Mark received a much better invitation from his brother to go and see some car show up in St. Louis. Sam went with him, but Wayne was left with an entire day and no plans.

  It was a silly thing, really, but at the time he had found it massively disappointing. Between school and Gail and all the other things in his life, he hadn’t been fishing in several years. He’d been looking forward to it a great deal.

  Mark and Sam were good people. They did not often cancel plans with their friends, and Wayne could hardly blame them for postponing the fishing trip. The car show sounded like fun. Besides, how were they to know it would be the last chance they ever had to spend any time with him? How could they possibly have known what would happen?

  Wayne felt sick deep down in his gut as he remembered it all. The day he’d spent two weeks looking forward to, driving Gail crazy talking about, ended before it even began. What was supposed to be a relaxing day of shooting the breeze and catching fish became the worst day of his entire life.

  That evening, about the time he should have been packing up and heading home, he sat at a table at the local Pizza Hut with his head hung low. Gail sat beside him and Harvey and Claire sat across the table from them. He did not look at any of them, could not look at any of them.

  The regret of that day, the shame of it, was like a lead weight in his gut, weighing down both his body and his spirit. When they asked him what was wrong, he told them he was not feeling well, and even their best attempts to cheer him up fell flat. He had already begun to build the wall that would separate himself from everyone he loved. It was a wall that he intended to keep up for the rest of his life.

  That night, in the privacy of his own room, he sat and cried like he’d never cried before. The hurt he felt was so intense, so great, that he could barely tolerate it. He didn’t want to carry on. He didn’t want to live anymore.

  It was the only time in his life that he ever seriously contemplated suicide. The pain felt so overwhelming. Never before had he been so utterly miserable.

  It was just a few days after this that he broke up with Gail and began cutting all his ties to the life he previously loved.

  Sometimes, when he looked back on these memories, times like now, he wondered if it had been selfish of him not to kill himself. Would it have been kinder to throw himself into death’s arms rather than simply turn his back on them the way he did? He’d let Gail believe that he stopped loving her. He’d probably let Harvey believe that he stopped valuing their friendship. Would it have been kinder for him to simply die? Would it have been less hurtful for them to think he had passed away, rather than to have passed them by? Perhaps if he’d simply climbed into his truck and driven as fast as he could go into the largest tree he could find, or veer into the path of an oncoming truck, no one would have even known it wasn’t an accident. They could have continued to believe, for the rest of their lives, that he would have always been there for them.

  Up ahead, the seventh seal appeared. He’d been so lost in these hurtful memories that he forgot where he was. He was halfway there, halfway through this terrible journey, yet he hardly cared. He passed through this seal as he’d passed through the previous six, not knowing what may lie ahead…and not sure he even cared.

  Chapter 9

  Wayne did not know how far he’d walked beyond the seventh seal when he realized that the road was curving. It was a subtle turn, hardly noticeable in what little distance the flashlight afforded him to see, but it was definitely veering to the left. Given that he had no idea where this tunnel might end, this detail was of little significance, but it was these hard facts, mundane though they may be, that allowed him a moment’s distraction against the imaginary things all around him that may or may not be capable of killing him.

  He wondered again how Albert and the girls were doing. The Sentinel Queen had said that their road would be long and dangerous. He wondered if it was as hard on them as this tunnel was on him.

  Since passing the second marker, there had been very little happening in the shadows around him, but somehow this was more nerve-wracking than being between the markers. He kept expecting something to fly out at him, to lunge out of the shadows and strike him down. And perhaps that was exactly what would happen if he forgot to ignore even the subtlest of imagined things.

  His feet were killing him, his heels raw, his arches aching. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d walked so much, especially with bare feet. Furthermore, this ground was not as smooth at the floors in the Temple of the Blind and the coarseness of the surface was making the pain worse. His calves and thighs and stomach were also aching. He’d been walking almost continuously since he left his apartment that afternoon.

  How much longer could he keep going like this?

  He had to forget the pain and the weariness, so he let himself sink again into those hateful memories.

  Gail was working the day he was supposed to go fishing with Sam and Mark. She was a waitress at a family restaurant on Main Street and she wouldn’t be off work until five o’clock at the earliest. Likewise, Harvey had just begun his new job with the construction company from where he would probably someday retire. He would not be off until four at the soonest.

  He stopped by the restaurant, anyway, just to let Gail know that he had the day free after all.

  “But you were looking forward to it so much!” she exclaimed when he told her that Mark and Sam had cancelled.

  “I know, but what can you do?”

  “I’m sorry, Sweetie.”

  “It’s okay.” Wayne was standing by the sign that asked him to please wait to be seated. “I was just wondering if you had any plans after you got off work.”

  Gail shook her head. “Not really. I was just going to go home and maybe read a little. I thought you’d call me when you got back.”

  Wayne smiled. Of course he would have called her when he got home. He always did. He couldn’t stand to be apart from her for too long. “You want to go out and get a pizza or something?”

  “Sure. Sounds like fun. Why don’t you invite Harvey and Claire?”

  “Harvey’s at work.”

  “Claire’s not. If he’s got plans it’s with her.”

  Wayne nodded. “I’m sure you’re right.”

  “Go see if she’s home. If so, find out if they’ve got any plans and if they want to join us. If not, we’ll go without them.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “Good. I’ve got to get back to work. See you tonight?”

  “Of course.”

  She kissed him on the cheek and went back to check on her tables. For a minute, Wayne lingered to watch her, but at last he turned and left.

  He drove out to Claire’s house, as Gail had suggested. He’d been there several times, although always before, Gail had been with him. It seemed a little odd pulling into the driveway without her.

  Claire was home and, as it turned out, she and Harvey had no definitive plans that evening and as long as Harvey was willing, she would love to go for a pizza with him and Gail.

  “That’s good. I’m pretty bummed out about the whole fishing thing.”

  “I’ll bet. You were so excited about it.”

  Wayne couldn’t help but smile. Gail had said almost exactly the same thing to him just a short while ago. He said to Claire exactly what he’d said to Gail: “What can you do?”

  “Yeah. I guess. Have you had lunch yet?”

  “No, actually.” He had been too disappointed to think about food.

  “I was just about to make myself something. You want to join me?”

  Wayne almost said no, that he should go, but what else did he have to do?

  “My parents are both at work and Carrie’s at her friend’s house.” Carrie
was her little sister. Wayne had only seen her twice, but both times he was amazed by how much she looked like Claire. The two of them could have been twins but for the four years between them. “I’d like the company.”

  Wayne shrugged. Why not? Everyone else was busy. He followed her into the kitchen and sat down.

  “Do you like grilled cheese?”

  “Love it.”

  She smiled at him as she opened the refrigerator. “So do I.”

  “When do you think he’ll get home?” He was talking, of course, about Harvey.

  “Hard to tell. He’s usually home by four-thirty, but the last couple of days it’s been after five.”

  “Gail doesn’t get off until five anyway.”

  Claire retrieved the butter and the cheese from the refrigerator and then gathered up some bread and a butter knife. “Harvey would like to go out tonight, I’m sure. We haven’t done anything for a few days. And he gets paid today, too.”

  “Cool. Dinner’s on him.”

  Claire laughed. “It might be, knowing him.”

  Harvey was the type who was generous with his money when he had it. Unfortunately, that also meant that he didn’t have it very often.

  Wayne and Claire ate lunch together that day and talked about a number of things, mostly revolving around Harvey and Gail. At some point during the meal, Wayne realized that this was the first time he’d ever talked to Claire alone. There had always been either Harvey or Gail with them before, and usually both.

  After lunch, they moved their conversation to the living room couch. Neither of them was in a hurry. They were both waiting for five o’clock to roll around, and that was still four hours away.

  “You know,” she said. “In high school, I used to sit at the table next to yours in lunch. I saw you and Harvey and the others a lot. And you want to know the funniest part?”

  “What’s that?”

  “I had the biggest crush back then.”

  Wayne smiled. “That is funny,” Wayne agreed. “Maybe you already knew he was the one for you.”