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

  As he stepped into the next section of tunnel, a whisper touched his ears, a sound too soft to be discerned, like a gentle breeze cast by a moving form in a dark room. He hesitated, but for only a moment, remembering to ignore what he heard and felt. He closed the seal tightly behind him and began pushing through the darkness that loomed ahead of him once more.

  He wondered how the others were doing. The Sentinel Queen had sent them to what she simply referred to as the city’s north gate. She gave them no directions or warnings as she had granted him. Albert Cross was clever, certainly more capable than him to protect Brandy and Nicole. She had even revealed to them that Albert and Brandy were both psychic. That was sure to come in handy somewhere along the way.

  Wayne wished he could have gone along to help. After all, Albert had risked his life for him tonight, but Olivia needed him more than they did and he could always catch up. Right?

  It was odd, but he felt a certain closeness to all three of them. It was a closeness that naturally came from going through something as significant as Gilbert House and the journey through the Temple of the Blind together. But it was more than that. It was the kind of closeness that you could only feel with special people, people who are good and kind, people whose presence is enormous, yet not overpowering. At that moment, he felt that he would give anything to be one of them, to be as close to each of them as they were to each other, yet there was a distance between them that he had not yet bridged, a distance perhaps too great to ever be bridged.

  He’d felt closeness like that before. He remembered Harvey Hodson. Harvey was once his closest and dearest friend. He was a short guy with blonde hair that always seemed to be in need of a cut and intense eyes that were dark blue, like the depths of the sea. He had a fantastic sense of humor and was the most generous person Wayne had ever known, but even at a mere five feet and four inches tall, he had the courage of an entire army. Wayne would never forget that day their freshman year when Harvey faced off against Paul Tombler in the locker room. Everyone there that day would like to have said they saw them duke it out, with fists flying and eyes blackened and noses bloodied, but that didn’t happen. Tombler stood there taunting and laughing while Harvey stood as still as stone, just staring at him, waiting for that first punch. Tombler probably would have flattened him. He was at least fourteen inches taller, and more than wide enough to completely eclipse Harvey, but in the end, Tombler just walked away, saying that he didn’t have time for “these sissy games.” Tombler and those loyal to him would say that Harvey was too much of a wimp to even throw a punch, but everyone there saw the doubt and the fear in Tombler’s eyes when he met Harvey’s icy stare.

  Harvey was afraid of nothing, but he was no fighter. When he could, he’d turn the other cheek and walk away. He was the good boy, with good grades and an honest life. He was a romantic, in fact, who spent most of his high school months searching for the right girl. Wayne hadn’t really been looking for love when he found Gail, and that’s probably why he fell in love late in their freshman year while Harvey didn’t settle until he found Claire in the middle of their senior year.

  Claire was a real catch. She was a beautiful little redhead, just as tiny as she was pretty—which was, of course, practically a requirement for dating diminutive Harvey. She had hazel eyes and a light dusting of freckles across her face and arms. She was witty and smart and kind, all the things that Harvey wanted in a woman. Wayne had only to meet her once to know exactly why he had fallen head over heels in love with her.

  Harvey never went to college. He went to work for the same construction company as his father and by the time Wayne started his second year at Briar Hills, he and Claire were married. Last he heard, they were even expecting a baby.

  Wayne’s contact with Harvey and Claire became less frequent after he broke up with Gail. When he went off to Briar Hills the next fall, he found even more reasons to keep from returning their calls and visiting. He hadn’t talked to Harvey or Claire at all in over a year, in fact. He never even went to their wedding, though he’d been asked to stand up.

  Remembering some of the times he’d shared with Harvey, Wayne felt sick regret. He missed those times, missed the way things were, missed the laughs and the happiness. But there was no turning back now. He’d set that bridge ablaze over three years ago and while some of it might still be standing, he doubted he could ever get back across. Even if he could, he knew he would never try.

  Wayne paused, his train of thought derailing. Ahead of him, protruding from a crack in the ceiling of the tunnel, was a dead, black root. It looked like ordinary dead wood, more petrified than rotted, but clearly dead. There was no life to be seen in it, certainly nothing dangerous about it, yet he’d been told not to touch these roots and that was all the encouragement he needed to keep his distance.

  A part of him wanted to touch it, of course, just to see why he was not supposed to touch it. But he would not do that. It was far too easy to imagine that dead thing suddenly twisting around his hand and pulling him through the crack and into the dirt above, or splitting open and spewing an army of flesh-eating bugs to swarm over his naked body. Perhaps it was poisonous and he would end up cold and paralyzed on the floor of this dark tunnel while some strange toxin spread through his veins. He shivered at the possibilities that nasty little beehive in his head kept offering.

  He gazed at the crack through which the root protruded and wondered how deep the roots of the Wood ran. How close was the forest floor above him? Was it just above his head? Or were there mountains of dirt and rock above him? He didn’t like the idea that these roots could break through the stone. What if a portion of the tunnel had caved in somewhere up ahead?

  He forced this thought from his mind. If such a cave-in had occurred, there was nothing he could do about it. It would do no good to think such horrors presently.

  He moved on, careful to steer clear of the root, keeping as far as possible from it, as though it could lash out and grab him. And for all he knew it could have been capable of doing exactly that. When it was safely behind him, he let his thoughts drift again.

  His mother still asked about Harvey now and then, about why he never came around any more and why Wayne didn’t just call him up and see how he’s doing. When she asked such things, he’d just make up some excuse and change the subject. Harvey was married now, after all. He had a baby to take care of, unless something had happened that he hadn’t heard about. He didn’t have time for old ghosts like Wayne. She wouldn’t understand the situation. Hell, he wasn’t sure he understood the situation himself.

  His mother often asked about all his old friends in this way, but especially Harvey. Harvey was her favorite. Harvey was a nice boy. Harvey was kind and polite. Not like Sam and Mark, who always seemed to be finding some kind of trouble to get into. She did not ask about Gail, however. That was a subject she stayed well clear of, as if her mother’s intuition told her to leave that can of worms tightly closed. And Wayne was extremely grateful.

  He still loved Gail, and probably always would, but it was no longer his privilege to be loved by her. He no longer deserved that blessing.

  Wayne cleared his mind of these issues. He did not want to think about such things as old friends, good times and unbroken hearts. Those things were all dead to him. Those were places to which he could never return. He focused his attention back to the tunnel, away from the pain and back to the fear. It was true that pain was the cure and the vaccine for fear, but like all cures, too much was likely to be as bad as the disease. In this case, the disease was also the cure for the cure and he was suddenly in need of some of that.

  But fear was a far quicker poison than pain. Fear went straight to the soul, as swift as a bullet through the heart. In the darkness ahead of him, just beyond the range of his sight, there seemed always to be something lurking. Things occasionally slithered and scurried from the light, as though he were holding back an army of snakes and rats and bugs with only the fragile shine of his flashlight, y
et when he finally reached the next seal, he found the tunnel empty, the snakes and rats and bugs apparently melted into the dirt and rock and shadows.

  He did not want to open the fourth seal, did not want to let free the next barrage of imaginary terrors, but he also did not want to stay where he was, wondering, as though his brain existed only to torment him, if the things that had melted away from in front of him had somehow managed to get behind him.

  As he reached out for the circle that would take him to the next chamber of this tunnel, he saw that he was trembling, his hand jittering almost as much as it had when he first stepped out of the frigid pool that had waited beyond the sex room.

  The Sentinel Queen had told him not to linger for long in any one place, but he needed to take a moment now. He closed his eyes and focused his attention not on the road and not on his past, but on nothing at all. He buried himself in an internal darkness, hid himself in there and waited for the pounding of his heart to slow. When at last it had, he looked down at his hand and was pleased to see that, while it was still trembling, it was not shaking quite as much as before.

  He was braver than this. He knew he was. He’d been through worse than this already tonight. He could surely survive a long walk in a dark tunnel. He put his hand out and pushed open the fourth seal.

  Chapter 4

  There were more roots between the fourth and fifth seals. They snaked through various cracks in the stone. Most were small, but some were as big around as his arm. Avoiding them was becoming more difficult, requiring a conscious effort and therefore robbing him of the distraction that was his sanctuary.

  As he ducked lower and lower to avoid the dangling hazards, he felt more and more vulnerable with his naked body cold and exposed. His anxiety swelled. His imagination grew more restless. With these roots came more shadows and more crevices in which lurked even more imaginary terrors. The road grew steadily more intimidating and more threatening with each step, fraying his nerves and whittling away at the patience he needed to pass through the thickening roots of the Wood.

  If he tried to rush, he would certainly brush up against them and the beehive in his imagination was more than willing to keep reminding him of all the things such carelessness might bring. So with his teeth firmly clenched against his mounting panic, he pushed slowly forward, telling himself that there were only ten more seals to go and pretending that number was better than it sounded.

  But the tunnel seemed to sense his fear, and as his tension mounted, the voices began to come. They were whispers at best, faint, nearly inaudible, but he knew that the whispers, like everything to be feared, would grow.

  Now and then he heard a name, usually his own, but occasionally others as well. He thought for sure that he heard them speak Albert and Olivia, and he thought they even spoke Gail’s name, but that might have been his imagination. He focused his attention firmly on the roots as he made his way through, trying not to hear the things he could not really be hearing. But it was impossible to dismiss them entirely. He did not merely hear the voices. He actually felt the presences of the things that spoke to him. They were all around him, perhaps even within him, things that filled his very soul with ice and sent gooseflesh rippling across his naked body.

  Ahead of him, the tunnel had become crisscrossed with black, dangling roots, each of them cold and dead and some of them seeming to glisten like the skins of serpents in the glow of his flashlight. It looked like a black cobweb, strung by some gigantic spider in great haste.

  He made himself stop and close his eyes. He forced himself to focus on Olivia Shadey, on the poor girl for which he’d set out on this horrible journey. He focused on her pretty face, how she’d looked up at him in the second floor restroom of Gilbert House, as though he’d rode in on a great white steed instead of stumbling in like a terrified child, cursing his rotten luck and wishing his flashlight was strapped to a machinegun. The memory brought him strength. It was not much, but it was enough that the whispers quieted around him and the deepening dread let up on his pounding heart.

  When he opened his eyes, he realized that some of the shadows had seemingly withdrawn. It was now that a realization struck him, one that gave him some added courage. This place, this “Road Beneath the Wood,” was powered by his fear. It fed from it and gained strength. It was purely psychological. It was just like those chambers in the Temple of the Blind. It was taking his natural inclination to fear the darkness and the unknown and it was magnifying it, sending it back at him, attacking him with it as a cruel young boy might use a magnifying glass and the sun’s rays to flash fry ants on a sidewalk.

  He took several deep breaths and began walking again. He did not really know that this was true, but it was something for him to embrace. It gave him a little bit of hope to aid his determination.

  The tangle of roots was impeding, but not impossible. Wayne slowed his pace and concentrated only on not touching them. With his mind preoccupied, and an explanation for all the weird things he imagined satisfying his anxious mind, he soon found that the focus required for this task was as effective a method of distraction from his fear as his bittersweet trips down memory lane. Sometimes merely ducking beneath them was not an option. At times, they dangled in such thick clusters that he was forced to press himself against the wall and slide around them. And once, he had no choice but to get down on the ground and slither beneath them on his belly.

  Twice, he thought he saw a root twitch, as if alive and aware that he was near, but like everything else down here, that was only his imagination, he was sure.

  Before long, the roots became fewer and sparser, making travel a little easier.

  But as the path began to thin, Wayne realized that he was quickly tiring. His heart was pounding not from fright now, but from exertion. And was it any wonder? He’d been physically, emotionally and mentally exerting himself all day. He didn’t have a watch to tell him what time it was, but he was sure it had to be getting late by now.

  He still had much to do, and he wondered if he would be able to survive the rest of this night as weary as he was already feeling. He wanted to sit down and rest, maybe even take a quick nap, but he had been warned not to linger on this path, and he was not willing to risk the consequences of disobeying. But if he was going to get through ten more seals, rescue Olivia Shadey and escape from whatever hell he found her in and then catch up with Albert and the girls, he was going to be utterly exhausted. Was he even capable of getting that far?

  Wondering if he was strong enough to do all that had been asked of him, Wayne pushed on toward the fifth seal.

  Chapter 5

  Looking back, it was funny how Brent Sweney fit in to everything. Brent was a year older than Wayne and the others. He wasn’t really a part of Wayne’s main circle of friends. Brent only knew Sam, Mark, Will and Harvey through Wayne. He was never there when the rest of them were together. He was Wayne’s other friend, the one he did things with when he wanted a change of pace. Brent was also the last one he lost contact with.

  Brent joined the navy after high school and that led to their drifting apart more so than anything else. He spent most of his time on the east coast these days and when he made it home, he had family to catch up with. He certainly did not have time to drive all the way to Briar Hills to visit Wayne. Had Wayne not isolated himself from his other friends, he might still have eventually lost track of Brent, like it or not.

  As he ducked under and past the occasional tangle of roots, Wayne remembered the time the two of them took their road trip to visit the colleges that Brent had his eye on, back before he had decided what he wanted to do with his life. They hit universities in St. Louis, Columbia, Kansas City, Springfield and even Briar Hills, all in the course of a few short days. It was a fun trip. It was also the last time the two of them spent a significant amount of time together.

  Wayne smiled a little in spite of the dreadful darkness. Brent was fun to be around. He was a “character,” as his father was fond of saying. He liked to
talk, liked to tell stories. And it was long suspected by many, Wayne included, that he was especially fond of exaggerating. But even so, Wayne had always found it entertaining to listen to him.

  He remembered that Brent once had a short relationship with a girl from a neighboring town. Her name was Tiffany. Wayne remembered the picture Brent showed him, of a pretty girl with short blonde hair. Wayne never met Tiffany, and Sam, Mark and Will insisted that he’d made the whole story up. They thought it was hysterical. After all, Brent was not the most attractive guy around. He was a little hefty and although he never suffered bad acne, he always seemed to have a light dusting of the stuff. The girl he described was beautiful and sexy and of course had huge breasts.

  Sam was quick to point out that his photograph, which Brent claimed as absolute proof of her existence, was conveniently taken from the neck up. Mark, on the other hand, went as far as to guess that the girl in the picture was probably one of Brent’s cousins. Wayne did not go so far as to call Brent a liar, but he did suspect that not all of what he said was the God’s honest truth that he claimed it was. Tiffany could have been real and she might have been exactly what he described, the beauty whose picture he carried around in his wallet with the waist of a Barbie doll and double-D boobs, but he didn’t quite believe that she rarely ever wore panties or that she was so generous about giving him oral sex. He certainly did not believe the crap about her being “a little bit bisexual” and wanting him to meet her girlfriend, Lori. He just did not believe that pudgy Brent Sweney with a half-inch gap between his front teeth was ever going to be that blessed, not even if he sold his soul to Satan.

  Wayne chuckled a little to himself in the silence. He’d forgotten about that, too. There were so many things he’d forgotten about. He was slowly losing all the nice memories he’d had, yet the ones he wanted to go away were still there, fading, but stubbornly refusing to disappear completely. The things he was trying to forget would be the things that remained the longest, long after all the pleasantries were gone, long after there was nothing left to look back on and smile about. And what would that leave?