The Box (The Temple of the Blind #1) Page 13

  Chapter 13

  Albert expected to see another statue waiting where this tunnel ended, but there was none. Instead, the tunnel made an abrupt, six-foot drop. It was almost identical to those in the first room, from which a stone finger helped him to choose. But this time there was only one choice. As he peered into the darkness below, he wondered what the purpose to such a drop might be. It seemed inconvenient, possibly even problematic, yet pointless. He remembered the two in the first room and again wondered what would have awaited them in the other tunnel.

  “What’s wrong?” Brandy had seen the concern upon his face, had recognized it for the same expression he’d worn several times before, including when he saw the still surface of the water and realized that their pursuer was still behind them.

  “Nothing. Just wondering.”

  “If there’s one thing I’ve noticed about you it’s that you don’t ‘just wonder.’”

  Albert looked at her, impressed, but trapped. “I don’t know. Just something odd about this drop-off.”

  She peered down into it. Now she was concerned, too.

  “I’ll go first. You stay back a little, okay?”

  “Is it safe?”

  “I don’t know. Probably. I’m a little on edge.” He bent down, planted his hand on the floor for support and dropped into the lower passage.

  “Here.” Brandy knelt and held the flashlight out for him to take.

  “You sure?”

  She nodded.

  He took the flashlight and turned back to the tunnel ahead. It was only about five feet tall, forcing him to duck down and walk with his back hunched. He took several steps forward and then stopped as his light fell on something that was lying on the floor, next to the wall.

  Behind him, Brandy dropped down to follow him. “Wait up,” he warned.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Albert probed the tunnel with the flashlight, washing the walls, ceiling and floor with light, as far as it would reach, looking for something unusual, some crack or hole or crevice that might indicate some sort of trap.

  Brandy looked past him to the thing on the floor. “What is it?” she asked again.

  When he could find no signs of danger, he turned the light back to the small object on the floor. It was dingy white, about two inches in length. A second, smaller shard of the same material was lying next to it.

  “Bone.”

  Brandy was silent for a moment, considering, as did he, the meaning of such a find. “Is it human?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The pieces were too big to belong to a rat, but they were only fragments. It could have been human or it could have been from a dog or a cat or a dinosaur for all he knew. In a dry tunnel like this, he didn’t know how long bone fragments could last before turning to dust. And if the two of them could make it this far, any number of creatures could have done the same over the years.

  Albert started forward again, sweeping the floor with his light. He felt like a soldier who has just realized that he is standing in a minefield.

  “Be careful,” Brandy begged him. She followed slowly, keeping some distance, but not too much. To stay behind was to be swallowed in darkness and left alone.

  The tunnel was approximately forty feet in length. Along the way, Albert spied several more small bone fragments, all of them swept up against the wall like the dust that gathers around the baseboards where a vacuum cleaner doesn’t quite reach. The two of them made their way to the end, stepping gingerly, holding their breath, hoping like hell that their next step did not bring death swooping out of the darkness. But death did not come. Death in this place was not so obvious.

  They found themselves in a round room, standing at the mouth of one of five tunnels that led in five different directions. There were more bones here, all of them shattered fragments impossible to identify, and all of them shoved up against a surface somewhere.

  Another statue stood in the center of this room, this one of five faceless sentinels. All of them were bloody and dying, with gory, ragged holes torn into their chests, backs and stomachs. One had bloody stumps for hands and one was clamoring for safety on a shredded foot. They were each reaching desperately toward one of the five tunnels.

  All of these sentinels they’d encountered seemed to hold some sort of message, each one vague, but this one was obvious to Albert, and he did not need the crushed and shattered bones that littered this room to illustrate it.

  “What is this place?” Brandy was gazing around at the bones and the statues, her heart pounding. She was still cold, still shivering, but she no longer noticed. There was a hot fear rising from somewhere deep inside her, and it was far more commanding than the cold.

  Albert stared at the statue. “That last statue,” he said, explaining as much to himself as to her. “It represented faith, sacrifice, that sort of thing. We had no choice but to go on. Something was behind us, but imagine if there hadn’t been. To get this far we would’ve had to have faith in where we were going, in the box and all the things in it. It makes sense, really. Someone else would have turned back, tried to find another way, probably would have gotten killed somewhere along the way. We had to keep going to get this far.”

  Brandy nodded. She understood. “And this thing?”

  Albert looked at the statue, not liking it for more than one reason. “Decisions. Deadly decisions.”

  “Oh good.”

  Albert stepped closer to the statue. The message was bad, but that was not all. He looked down at the bones at his feet, then bent and looked closer. Deep groves were carved into them, as though they’d been slashed repeatedly with a knife. As he looked closer he realized that many of them were not just broken, but cut. He stood up and looked at the statue again. It looked more real than the others, more physical somehow, and he quickly realized why. With the exception of the broken-fingered one in the first room, all the other statues were perfect, carved immaculately from stone, without a single flaw. These sentinels were scarred, and not merely by the will of the artist. Two of them were missing fingers not by design. One foot was broken off and was lying against the wall, looking morbid even in stone. They were scratched and chipped all over, as though someone had been hacking at them with a hatchet. He looked at the floor and found that it, too, was covered with faint scratches.

  “So which way do we go?”

  Albert lifted his eyes to the statue again. That was easy. He lifted his hand and pointed at a piece of gray cloth that hung from a sentinel’s outstretched hand.

  “What is that? A coat?”

  Albert didn’t know. It was heavy cotton, badly torn and stained. He unwound it from the statue’s hand and held it before him.

  “Looks kind of like part of an old Civil War jacket, doesn’t it?” Brandy observed.

  “Not sure,” Albert replied. “Could be. Whatever it is, it’s pointing the way.”

  Brandy leaned in to take a closer look. “How can you be sure?”

  “The buttons.”

  And then she understood. The buttons on the fabric were simple brass with no markings, exactly like the one they’d found in the box. A closer look revealed that it was, in fact, missing one.

  Albert didn’t need to open the box and retrieve the button. He was certain this was their clue. He studied the garment for a moment longer, considering it. It didn’t have any distinguishing designs, but only a small amount of it remained. Could it actually be a piece of a Civil War uniform? It seemed unlikely, but then again, after what he experienced in the sex room, “unlikely” had apparently taken the night off. Perhaps a unit was sent down here all those years ago to sweep the tunnels for enemy troops or supplies.

  But more than likely, even if this was a part of a Civil War uniform, which was by no means a proven fact, it could have been worn down here by anyone in the many years after the war. Perhaps it was an old
hand-me-down that kept someone warm in the winter months. Hundreds of scenarios could have brought this particular piece of fabric down here.

  He reached up and hung it again on the statue’s hand, wrapping it around the wrist to keep it secure, just as he’d found it.

  “You’re not taking it with us?”

  “No. I think we should leave it here. Maybe it’ll help us find our way back out if we need it. Come on.”

  This next passage was easily twice as long as the one that brought them to the round room. And they had walked a little more than half the distance of the tunnel when a noise stopped them cold.

  It was soft, distant, sort of like a wheel slowly rolling over dry leaves, a kind of crackling sound. It came from ahead of them and grew steadily louder, becoming more of a buzzing sound.

  Brandy pressed her naked body against Albert. Neither of them spoke. This was the first noise they’d heard all night, with the exception of Albert’s paint can trap, and the sudden manifestation of this unidentifiable noise was, if possible, even more frightening than the noise itself.

  They watched, their eyes boring into the darkness, hunched over in the short tunnel, holding their breath and wishing their hearts would not beat so loudly, waiting for the source of the noise to appear. But as it grew closer, they realized that the noise came not from straight ahead, but from the right, on the other side of the wall. It grew until it was nearly beside them, a shuffling, clicking sort of noise that Albert could not place at all, and then it began to grow fainter, as though whatever it was had turned a corner and was now moving away from them. When it died away completely, the two of them let out the breaths they’d been holding and looked at each other.

  “What was that?” Brandy did not dare to raise her voice above a whisper.

  Albert shook his head. “I don’t think I want to know.”

  “Where did it go?”

  “Another tunnel somewhere. There must be miles of them.”

  “What if it’s in the same tunnel as us? Only farther up?”

  “Let’s not think about that.” He took her hand and led her forward, more quickly this time. He could not get the wounded statues off his mind, those deep gouges cut into solid stone. What could have made scratches like that?

  A wall appeared out of the darkness ahead of them, six feet high, to the floor of another tunnel. It was identical to the place that had awaited them at the end of the flooded tunnel, but leading up instead of down.

  Albert grasped the ledge and lifted himself up into the upper tunnel. It wasn’t easy. He had to get a jump on it. For someone who didn’t have the strength to lift their own body, this could prove a difficult, if not impossible, obstacle. He doubted if someone overweight or elderly would be able to manage it. But then again, perhaps they wouldn’t have gotten this far to begin with.

  Once he had his legs beneath him, he turned and took Brandy’s hands, helping her up.

  This tunnel was also too short to stand fully erect, so they again stood slightly hunched as they gazed into the darkness ahead. Albert looked down at the floor and noticed that there were no scratches in the stone up here. As he started forward again, he wondered why.