Текст книги "The box"

Автор книги: Brian Harmon

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 12 страниц)

Chapter 22

Somehow the tunnel leading back to Briar Hills was more frightening than those they were leaving behind. Behind them was the thief who stole their clothes and a vast labyrinth that was home to a pack of ferocious creatures they had no way of even imagining. Yet those tunnels were smooth and clean, of polished stone, like a well-kept palace. In contrast, these walls were of raw earth and rocks, less like a temple than a catacomb. Albert could almost imagine the walls falling away around them and revealing chamber after chamber of human remains, some of them still glistening with rot.

“Do you think that thing could still be following us?” asked Brandy as Albert paused to examine the first fork in the tunnel.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “I don’t think so. I haven’t heard anything out of it since we went in the water. It seems like it would’ve caught up by now. Maybe we lost it in the water. Maybe it can’t swim.”

“Maybe. What do you think it was?”

Albert shook his head. “I can’t even imagine.” As far as he could see in all three directions, the tunnels were empty, so he continued on, leading the way.

“Are there any animals that could make that noise, do you think? Anything known?”

“I don’t know. I sure as hell couldn’t recognize it.”

“It sounded sort of like a rattlesnake, didn’t it? A little bit? Do you think it could be a new species? Something nobody’s ever seen before?”

Albert shook his head. Somebody might have seen them, he thought but didn’t say. He remembered the bones they’d seen as they approached the room with the dying statues and wondered again if they could have been human. Even if they weren’t, even if they were the bones of something native to those dark passages, what he experienced in that tunnel was enough to tell him that they weren’t just a bunch of overly friendly collies. That thing tried to take his leg off. If he’d been just a little slower getting over that wall…

He couldn’t think about that. Not now. Not when there was still so far to go. They reached the place where the newer tunnel was built through this far older one and he paused to peer both ways. He still expected something to jump out at them from the darkness, some dangerous figure unwilling to let them leave these tunnels with what they saw. When nothing stirred in the shadows, he stuffed the backpack into the narrow passage and then climbed in behind it.

When they crawled out of the next tunnel and stood up, Brandy suddenly said, “I feel like we’re not done.”

Albert looked back at her, curious. “What?”

“We’re not done. We didn’t finish.” She was staring down at the floor, her brow furrowed as though she were trying hard to understand her own thoughts. “We were given that box. We were brought together. We were brought down here. But we didn’t finish. We only got so far and we stopped.” She looked up at him. “I feel like it’s very important that we didn’t finish.”

Albert stared at her for a moment. She was right. He could feel it too. There was something in the back of his mind. There was the curiosity, of course, the wondering of what could possibly be beyond that fear room, but that was not all. It was like she just said: It felt very important that they didn’t finish. It felt to him almost as though they’d set out to disarm a bomb but left before cutting the last wire.

They walked on without speaking, their thoughts dwelling on this odd feeling. But as the next passage came into sight, they remembered what awaited them, and Brandy cursed into the silence.

Albert stared down at the stagnant water, understanding exactly how she felt. He, too, had forgotten about the flooded tunnel they waded through on their way in.

“There’s another way right?”

Albert shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

She made a noise that was almost a retch.

“It’s only water. We’ve been through worse tonight.”

“Yeah, I know.”

He was impatient with her the first time they came to this tunnel, but he felt none of that now. He simply didn’t have it in him to be irritated with her. Besides, he understood. The first time might have warranted those feelings, when they were both wearing shoes. This time, however, they were both naked. Wading barefoot into that sludge, rainwater or not, made his skin crawl just to think about.

“We don’t have any choice.”

“I know.”

“You going to be okay?”

She looked up at him, her eyes soft and kind. He was so nice to her. She felt almost ashamed of herself to be complaining about such a small thing, especially after the fear room.

She steeled herself, determined not to let her courage falter again, and squeezed his hand. “Yeah,” she replied. “Let’s get it over with.”

Together, they stepped off into the cold and stagnant water. The Concrete beneath it was slimy and something that was probably a piece of trash brushed past her right foot. It almost made her scream, but she bit her lip and endured it.

“Almost there,” Albert assured her, and when she looked up she saw the green mark she left on the tunnel wall what seemed like an eternity ago.

“Thank god,” she sighed.

“You’re doing great.”

“I’m trying.” She looked at him again and drew courage from his presence.

They wasted no time getting out of the water when they finally reached the next tunnel. The sliminess they each felt on the submerged floor of that tunnel seemed to have climbed up their legs and backs all the way to their brains.

“That was awful,” hissed Brandy.

Albert agreed. They both took a moment to wipe their feet on the dry concrete, trying to rid themselves of that sliminess.

From there, they followed the green marks back the way they came.

For a long time, neither of them spoke. Brandy found herself staring at Albert and remembering the fear room.

She never said anything to him as he was carrying her away from that terrible place and she did not intend to say anything, at least not yet. But she knew what he did for her. She knew what he risked to save her. She saw it in his face. She saw the look in his eyes, the blank, distant expression, the twitchy sort of panic that washed over them. She saw the way his lips quivered, the way his skin was flushed of color.

She lost control in there, just as they’d both lost control in the sex room. She lost control and she lost her ability to lead them. It was because of this, because she became so frightened, because she could not go on with her poor eyes, that he was forced to use his instead. He opened his eyes to find the door so that he could carry her to safety.

She stopped suspecting him of any evil at that moment, while staring up into his terrified face as he carried her in his arms like some fairy tale hero, holding her, protecting her, even though he could hardly find the courage to protect himself.

Albert caught her looking at him and asked what was on her mind.

“Nothing,” she replied. Somehow, it just didn’t seem right to try and explain it to him. Not now, anyway.

He studied her expression for a moment, trying to read her, but soon gave up. He turned his attention back to the tunnel walls. His biggest concern was that they might have forgotten to mark a passage somewhere. After all they’d been through, he didn’t want to wind up getting lost now, but luck was currently with them. Soon they found the rusty ladder that would take them back up into the service tunnels below the campus.

Neither of them ever imagined that they would be so happy to see streetlights from the dark side of a sewer grate, but there it was, as wonderful and as welcome as a lighthouse beacon to a fogged-in vessel.

They were almost out now. At the end of this tunnel lay the last. From there, one final ladder waited to take them up into the world above.

After turning the final corner and taking a few hurried steps, they both stopped and stared. There, lying in a neat pile at the foot of the ladder, were their clothes.

They should have been thrilled to have them back. After all, without them they would be streaking back to their homes, risking humiliation, indecent exposure charges or both, but shadowing the excitement over having them back was the paranoia and uneasiness of knowing that they were beaten here.

“Albert…”

“I know.” He searched the tunnel in both directions, but nothing stirred.

Brandy knelt over the clothes and examined them. Their shirts, pants and shoes were all there. Only the items they’d seen from the bridge were missing, and that certainly did not surprise her.

“Here,” she said, handing Albert his jeans and shirt. “It feels like your wallet and keys are still inside.”

“That’s good.” He watched with some sadness as Brandy quickly pulled on her shirt and pants and then began to slip on her shoes. Such wasted beauty.

He put his own clothes on, not really liking the feel of being without his underwear. Also, their shoes were still damp from wading that flooded tunnel the first time, but he dared not complain. The ladder to the street was within reach, they were no longer naked and they were alive. Now they had only to go home.

Albert stepped up onto the ladder, listened for a moment for voices or footsteps, and then slid the cover noisily open, letting in the welcoming lamplight from above.

“Albert!”

He jumped down, alarmed, and spun toward Brandy, but when he saw her wide eyes fixed over his shoulder, he knew he’d looked the wrong way first. He turned around, his heart pounding, and found himself face to face with a man with no eyes.

He stood at least six and a half feet tall, with a thin, nearly lipless mouth, sharp nose and two shallow, fleshy craters where his eyes should have been. He had no hair anywhere on his body, and was as naked as he and Brandy had been a moment before.

Albert backed away, careful to keep himself between this grotesque stranger and Brandy.

The man stepped toward them, sniffing at the air like an animal until he was mere inches from Albert’s face. He then paused, seeming almost to stare at him, blind yet somehow seeing.

He took Albert’s hand and placed something in it.

“Another day.” He spoke these words slowly, enunciating each syllable as if speaking were something he rarely did, his voice hoarse and raw. Then he walked past them and disappeared into the tunnel, apparently heading back to the labyrinth from which they’d just come.

After watching him leave, Albert looked at what the blind man placed in his hand. It was an old leather pouch, about twice as big as the one in which Brandy found the key to the box. It was heavy. He handed the flashlight to Brandy and dumped the contents into his open hand.

“Wow,” said Brandy.

In Albert’s palm were twenty-three very old gold coins of various origins. Some of them were American, some Spanish, some French, some British, some impossible to identify, minted by hand in ages lost. He picked up one of these older ones and studied it. One side was blank. On the other was a symbol he didn’t recognize, two lines twisted curiously together. It could have meant anything. He had no concept of the value of old coins, but they were all valuable, if only for the gold from which they were minted. Yet the blind man gave them to him without hesitation.

Albert put the coins back in their pouch. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

Brandy climbed the ladder first and Albert took the time to give a wondering gaze back they way they’d come.

Chapter 23

Albert walked Brandy to her car. Some clouds were moving in, and the eastern horizon was beginning to glow with the first traces of dawn. They said little as they walked across campus. Both of them were thinking about the eyeless man and the gold coins.

“Do you think that guy was the one who gave you the box?” Brandy asked as they crossed into the lot where her car was parked.

“I don’t know. Maybe. Seems logical.”

Brandy fished her keys out of her wet purse and unlocked her car door. She slid into the seat and reached over the visor for the pack of cigarettes she kept there. “Thank god,” she sighed and punched in the cigarette lighter on the dash. “I need one of these so bad.” She opened the pack, took one out and put it in her mouth. She then leaned back while the lighter warmed up.

Albert couldn’t see anything through her heavy sweatshirt, but he knew she was not wearing a bra or panties and though he’d had intercourse with her and spent the past several hours looking at her naked, this knowledge still turned him on.

“That was an incredible adventure,” she said. The lighter popped out and she paused to light her cigarette.

“Yeah. It was.” And it was even more incredible because she had gone with him. Being with her was the best part of it all. He almost wished that the adventure could go on forever, just so he could continue to be with her.

She looked at him through the smoke, her eyes sharp and sexy behind her glasses. “Think we should keep this to ourselves?”

“Definitely.”

“Maybe we’ll go back sometime,” she said. She took the pouch from Albert’s hand and opened it, looking at the miniscule treasure within. It was by no means a gangster’s hideout, but it was pretty cool. “Maybe learn a little more about that place.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” But he did not think they would. “I’ll do some research on those coins. See if I can find out what they’re worth.”

She handed him the pouch and then leaned back and stared up at the sky while she smoked. Albert did not like cigarettes, considered them poison, but there was something about the way she smoked that was very sexy. Or perhaps it was only the sex room, the lingering after-effects that made everything she did sexy. Or maybe he was just naturally infatuated with her. It was difficult to tell for sure.

“So,” Albert began, feeling nervous. “Think maybe we could go out sometime? See what things are like on this side of the dirt?”

Brandy released a soft, smoky laugh. “Right now, Albert, I don’t want to think about life. I just want to go home, take a hot shower and go to bed.”

“Oh.” Albert dropped his eyes.

Brandy watched his expression darken. “I’ll see you in lab tomorrow. Or…today I guess.” Their class was at ten, so she had time to grab a few hours of sleep before getting back to reality. But there was no way she was going to make it to her early class.

“Yeah. I’ll be there.” He forced himself to look at her, forced himself to smile.

She stepped out of the car and kissed him, her arms around his neck, cigarette glowing in the fading shadows of the breaking dawn. Her tongue slipped between his lips and a spark shot through him from his mouth to the very core of his brain. A moment later, when she pulled away, she said, “Ask me again then, okay?”

“Okay.” He was stunned, unable to even smile. He thought his heart might explode in his very chest, and he knew by her smile that she could see that in his eyes.

“Goodnight, Albert. Sweet dreams. I’ll see you in class.”

“Goodnight.”

Brandy returned to her car and drove away. Albert watched until she was gone and then walked home, his head spinning, his heart swelling. It had been one hell of a night.

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Read on for the entire first chapter of

The Temple of the Blind: Book Two

Gilbert House

Chapter 1

When she saw that eleven o'clock had come and gone, Andrea finally gave up on Rachel’s call. Bitterly, she turned off her cell phone and plugged in the recharger.

It didn't really surprise her that she was hearing less and less from her best friend lately. After all, Rachel had a boyfriend now and a part time job at the movie theater. New acquaintances were requiring more and more of the time that used to be reserved for old and that was perfectly natural.

But the point was that Rachel promised. She said she would call. She said they could talk. But broken promises were becoming the rule rather than the exception lately when it came to Rachel Penning.

It was just a stupid phone call. It shouldn't have even mattered to her. What did she care if Rachel didn't want to chat with her anymore?

But Andrea was feeling unusually lonely lately. None of her friends seemed to have any time for her these days. Boyfriends and jobs and new interests were apparently crowding her right out of their lives. No one could find the time to visit or talk or even send her a quick text most days. And it hurt the most with Rachel, because Rachel had always been the best of her friends, the one she trusted most.

She wondered if it was the loneliness brought on by her friends' disinterest that made her feel so emotional lately, or if she was only hurt so much by their disinterest because she'd felt so extraordinarily emotional. It was difficult to tell. Either way, she was sad. And it was because she’d been feeling so sad that she’d pleaded with Rachel to call her after work.

She logged into her e-mail account, hoping that maybe someone wrote to her, but the only messages were three forwards from Wendy Gavon.

Andrea regretted ever giving Wendy her e-mail address. She never actually wrote anybody. All the girl ever did was forward chain letters and stupid jokes. Sometimes she sent twenty or thirty at a single sitting and just lately things that she’d already forwarded had begun to recycle themselves, suggesting that either Wendy wasn’t actually reading the messages with which she was clogging other people’s inboxes anymore, or that she had the memory of a box of crayons.

She deleted all three messages without reading them.

She should have just gone to bed. It was Wednesday night and tomorrow was another school day, but she didn’t feel like sleeping just yet. In fact, she was afraid that if she crawled into bed right now, she would only start to cry.

She wasn’t sure why she felt so down. Surely she couldn't be this upset over some stupid missed phone call. She was ordinarily a very cheerful person. Perhaps it was simply the common hormones of a teenage girl, her body in perpetual motion, still trying to bridge that seemingly impossible gap between child and woman, physically, chemically and emotionally. This unusual depression in a usually perky and optimistic personality was perhaps nothing more than the emotional equivalent to the pimples against which she and a cabinet full of facial cleansers had been waging war for the past six years.

She browsed the web for another twenty minutes, finding nothing that interested her in the least. She simply wasn’t in the mood for anything she could find on the internet. Finally, she shut down the computer and stood up. She crossed the room and threw herself onto her bed, still feeling as if she might soon cry.

She lay there on her back for a long time, staring up at the ceiling in the harsh glow of the overhead fixture, not really thinking anything, but merely pitying herself.

Andrea Prophett was a petite girl, just a few weeks past her eighteenth birthday, with a skinny, girlish body and a fair, heart-shaped face. Her hair, naturally a darker shade of blonde, but currently dyed a light golden color, was cut just short of shoulder-length and spilled onto her pillow as she lay, revealing every detail of her pretty face to her empty bedroom. Her skin was smooth and fair, free of blemishes because she worked hard to keep it that way. On most days, her blue eyes shined perkily and her smile was bright and warm. Tonight, however, her eyes shimmered despondently and her pink lips were curled into a pouting frown.

Unlike the other features of her face, which were all round and soft, her nose was straight, triangular, her father's nose. The left side was pierced, a small gold ring encircling her nostril. Her right eyebrow was also pierced, and she wore an array of jewelry in both of her ears, seven in one and eight in the other. She also wore a ring in her navel, which would have been made visible by her lifted shirt if there was anyone else in her room to look upon her.

She had a fondness for jewelry and almost always wore lots of rings, bracelets and necklaces. She owned a jewelry box filled with pretty things with which she regularly redecorated herself. Rarely did she wear the same trinkets two days in a row. Typically, the only items that remained the same from day to day were her favorite watch, her class ring and a gold ring with a large topaz that once belonged to her late grandmother. Hardly any of it was actually worth anything. It wasn't the physical value that she cared for. As her father always joked, she quite simply liked shiny things.

And she wanted more. She fully intended to get her tongue pierced someday. And maybe her lip as well. Her other eyebrow was also an option. She also wanted to get a tattoo as soon as she could talk someone into going with her. She hadn’t decided yet where she wanted it, but she knew for a fact that she wanted one. Perhaps she would eventually have several, but for now she didn’t have the courage to go alone.

And what were the chances of anyone going to get a tattoo with her when she couldn’t even get her best friend to call her on the phone?

When at last she turned and looked at the clock, she expected to find that midnight had come and gone and one o’clock was quickly approaching, but it was not yet even twelve.

With a mournful sigh, she sat up, crossed her legs beneath her and began to remove her bracelets. She took off most of her jewelry almost religiously each night to avoid breaking or losing them in her sleep.

She placed each of her bracelets in a neat pile on the nightstand and was reaching for her watchband when she was startled so fiercely by a noise at the window that a short, shrill scream escaped her throat before she could stifle it behind her hands.

For a long moment she sat there, cross-legged on her bed, her hands pressed to her mouth, her heart pounding in her chest, staring wide-eyed at the window.

From her angle, she could not see what it was, but something was there, pressed against the screen. It was making an odd noise, very soft, subtle, but very distinct. It was a sort of crinkling noise. It was a sound that kept her anchored to the bed in fear long after she should have recovered from her start.

Elsewhere, there was only silence. Her scream obviously hadn’t awakened her mother, and her father, a fireman here in Briar Hills, would not be home from work until late tomorrow morning. The only sound to be heard over the strange crinkling was the distant chirping of crickets.

She wished she could turn off the light. Sitting there in the seventy-five watt glow, she was in full view of whatever stared back at her from the dark cover of the night. But the switch to the overhead fixture was located across the room by the door.

Gradually, as the seconds ticked by and nothing more than the redundant crinkling was heard, her courage began to return. As silently as she could, she slipped off the bed and crept toward the window.

In the first moments of her fear, she was certain that this thing at the window was some sort of monster, human or otherwise, attracted by the light of her window and now staring at her with brutal hunger, but it soon became obvious that the thing at the window was neither man nor beast. The crinkling sound she heard was not the gnashing of alien teeth but of plastic rustling in the breeze. Someone had wrapped a large manila envelope in a clear plastic bag, crept across her empty backyard, and fixed it to her window with a single strip of duct tape.

She peered around the package, scanning the empty yard behind it. Her parents’ comfortable, three-bedroom home was located at the very end of Straight Creek Road near the northernmost city limits. A small patch of forest lay just to the north of the university campus and it was in these woods that her house was nestled. It was the darkness of this forest that made her anxious to see what might be there, but there was nothing to be seen that wasn’t there when the sun went down. The backyard was exactly as it was supposed to be, filled with ordinary moonlight and shadow from an ordinary early October evening. There was nothing out there except the manila envelope wrapped in plastic and taped to the window screen.

Convinced that no ghastly beings were lurking beyond, she turned her attention to the envelope itself. There was a name and address scribbled across the front in black marker, but neither was familiar to her. Perhaps whoever left it did so by mistake. The university campus was within walking distance, after all, and it wouldn’t be the first time that a drunken student found his or her way this far from the dormitories.

On the other hand, there was something eerie about the purposefulness with which this envelope was left for her. Whoever it was who had crept up to her window surely could have looked in and seen her sitting on the bed, surely could not have mistaken her for the person to whom this envelope was addressed. For one thing the envelope was addressed to a man. Secondly, would someone so drunk or confused have been so stealthy about delivering a package?

She quickly closed the window and then the blinds, removing the envelope from her view and wishing she could remove it from her thoughts. A part of her wanted to know what was inside that envelope, but a bigger part of her was afraid of what she might find. Perhaps it was drugs, mistakenly delivered to the wrong house. In that case, let the true owner realize the mistake and come and get it himself. She didn’t want to get in the middle of something like that.

Or perhaps something worse waited inside. There was no limit to the awful things her imagination could produce if she allowed it. Countless horror movie scenarios played through her mind as she backed away from the closed window with a shiver.

She turned off the overhead light and finished removing her jewelry by the glow of her bedside lamp. She then crawled under the covers without changing into her usual sleepwear, switched off the lamp and tried to go to sleep.

But for a long time, she lay awake, thinking about the envelope, about what might be inside. Who had been creeping around in her backyard, peering through her open window, watching her, unseen in the darkness? She wondered why someone would choose to deliver a package in such a way. Why would someone just slap it to the screen of her bedroom window without a word and then run away?

And of course she wondered about the name that was written on the envelope.

Who was Albert Cross?

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