04 The Edge of Darkness (3 page)

FOUR

MURPHY SHRUGGED OFF the pain in his gut and looked around. The faint illumination revealed a sign pointing to a doorway. The sign read:

Having fun yet
?
How about a game of roulette?

The next room contained a large spinning wheel like a merry-go-round without any animals or poles. The wheel was low to the ground and covered with polished wood. He had a vague recollection
from childhood that people would sit on the wheel and it would turn faster and faster until the centrifugal force threw the riders off the wheel and into a low, curved wall. The only way anyone could remain on the wheel was to be in the exact middle. Murphy could see that something was in the center of the spinning wheel. It looked like another one of Methuselah’s three-by-five cards.

The next clue
.

As Murphy started forward, he heard a grunt. An enormous man in crimson emerged from the darkness. At least, Murphy
thought
it was one man. He was dressed in red wrestling tights and must have weighed in excess of three hundred pounds. He was at least six and a half feet tall and looked like he had been lifting weights since the age of five.

Murphy took a few cautious steps backwards. He had been trained in boxing and the martial arts, but had never faced an opponent of this size. He had to stay out of the giant’s long reach.

Murphy hurled the impact case at the wrestler, and he batted it away without flinching. But it bought Murphy a few precious moments to open his backpack.
Water, compass, first-aid kit
…

As he fished inside for a weapon, the man charged. Murphy’s fingers brushed against the handle of the knife just as the wrestler barreled into him like a Mack truck, sending him to the ground and his backpack flying onto the roulette wheel.

A pair of huge hands grabbed for Murphy. He rolled and kicked at the man’s muscular legs. It was like connecting with two tree trunks, but he somehow managed to sweep the wrestler’s legs out from under him. He went down hard.

The bigger they are
, thought Murphy. He leaped onto the man’s back and held his face against the spinning wheel. The enraged giant roared and swung, and suddenly Murphy found himself airborne.

He landed a few feet away. Before he could recover, the giant seized Murphy, lifted him over his head, and slammed him against the wall. Through a dull haze of pain, Murphy saw the wrestler moving forward
and reaching for him on the floor. He scooted between his thick legs and rose to his feet. He looked for his backpack, and finally spied it in the center of the roulette wheel.
The one place where it won’t spin off. Just great
. He had to get to his weapons or he was done for.

Murphy ran over and hopped onto the wheel, staggering forward in a low crouch. He reached for the backpack, just nicking it, but could not maintain his balance. He flew off and spun into the curved wall.

The wrestler charged, and Murphy was in no position to defend himself. He waited for the crushing blow, but instead something crashed into the wall nearby and burst, spraying them both with liquid. The wrestler looked behind him, and the squashed water bottle landed at Murphy’s feet. Then his first-aid kit skidded across the floor. The open backpack had fallen on its side and its contents were flying out at great velocity. The wrestler turned back to Murphy and moved in for the kill.

A sickening sound of metal meeting bone echoed through the chamber, and the wrestler cried out. He fell to the ground, Murphy’s hatchet lodged in the back of his leg.

This was Murphy’s chance. He grabbed the wrestler around the neck and squeezed. The wrestler caught an arm in his crushing grip, and Murphy knew he couldn’t match the man’s strength. He put his foot on the hatchet and pushed it in deeper, as blood splattered everywhere. The giant howled and released Murphy’s arm. He tightened his chokehold and finally the man ceased struggling and collapsed to the floor.

Lucky
, thought Murphy.
That hatchet could just as easily have hit
—

He hit the deck as his knife flew overhead. Another water bottle rolled in his direction. He glanced about and saw his belongings scattered around the room. He sighed and picked everything up. Lost a couple of water bottles and the compass was smashed, but everything else seemed to be okay.

Now he just needed to get that backpack.

Now empty, the backpack continued to spin in the center of the roulette wheel. Murphy tried to get to it once more, but it was spinning too fast, and he was thrown again.

There must be a way to do this
.

Murphy ran his fingers through his hair and looked around.

Laser
.

He grabbed the impact case and took out his bow and an arrow. He then tied his rope to the arrow and took aim. It was an easy target. The arrow shot between the backpack and one strap, and lodged into the opposite wall. He gently pulled on the loose end and guided the pack off the wheel.

Something fluttered and flew out from under the backpack.
The next clue!
Murphy had forgotten all about it.

A corner of the index card landed in the pool of blood oozing from the giant’s severed tendon. Murphy retrieved the card. It read:

IN THE TOWN
OF KING YAMANI
A GREAT MYSTERY
HAS BEEN SOLVED
.

I Kings 8:9

Murphy frowned.
Who in the world is King Yamani?
He turned the card over and read the other side.

RIDE YOUR FEARS
TO THE END
.

It made no sense. He tucked the card into a pocket and gathered his belongings into his backpack. All except…

Ugh
. He reached down and reluctantly dislodged the hatchet from the giant’s gargantuan leg. He wiped the blood off on the man’s red outfit, and put it into his pack. The blood ran freely from the gaping wound and Murphy’s stomach turned.

And they say professional wrestling is fake
.

FIVE

MURPHY ENTERED a dimly lit hallway that twisted a couple of times until it came to another entrance. The sign above read:

Mirror, mirror on the wall
Who’s the fairest of them all?
Those who can escape the hall.
Welcome to the Hall of Mirrors

Murphy let out a sigh.
What next?

He entered and was greeted by … himself. Dozens of Murphys
were reflected back at him. Most of them were normal but there were several that, under better circumstances, might have caused Murphy to smile. One of them was curved and made him look fat. Another made him look skinny—he really liked that one. There was one that endowed him with a tiny head and big feet, and another that gave him tiny feet and a big head.

He opened his backpack and rummaged through it. He pulled out an energy bar and then strapped on the backpack. He switched the impact case to his left hand. He then began to walk around the room, touching each of the mirrors until he found the passageway that started the maze of mirrors. As he moved forward he would occasionally break off a small part of the energy bar and drop it on the floor.

Hansel and Gretel have got nothing on me
, he thought.

As he worked his way through, Murphy was on the alert for the next attack. At each corner he became more and more apprehensive. Then he heard the cackling laugh of Methuselah echoing through the maze.

“Bravo, Murphy. This is turning out to be more entertaining than I’d hoped.”

Murphy held his tongue. He didn’t want to give Methuselah any more satisfaction than he already had.

I wonder if he can see me. Maybe he has some hidden video cameras set up in here
.

Murphy looked up at the line where the mirrors met the ceiling, and saw a very small red light about twenty feet away. It would occasionally blink on and off. He cautiously approached.

Suddenly, he found himself dropping into a hole in the floor. But even as the realization struck, the impact case carrying his bow and arrows straddled the opening of the trapdoor, wrenching his left arm and shoulder. He was now hanging in the air, barely holding on to the handle of the case. And his fingers were beginning to slip….

The sudden fall had caused him to drop the energy bar, and Murphy heard it hit water somewhere in the darkness below him.

Adrenaline pumped through his body. He struggled to grasp the impact case with his right hand and pull himself up. As he did, the case slipped a little.

Whoa. Easy now
.

He had to work carefully and slowly. It took all of his strength to pull himself up, all the while expecting a minute shift of the case to plunge him into the abyss below. He finally crawled over the edge, exhausted from the effort, his shoulder throbbing. He lay there for a while to regain his strength and derived some small satisfaction from the fact that he had again escaped Methuselah’s gauntlet. He rubbed his aching arm and shoulder.

Close one
.

It took Murphy another ten minutes before he exited the Hall of Mirrors. And it was none too soon as far as he was concerned. In the passageway outside the maze, he noticed another sign with a red arrow. It pointed down a wide hallway to his right. He was growing weary of this game, but there was nothing to do at this point but press on.

At the end of the hallway, Murphy found himself in a large room. To one side he noticed small railway tracks and a brightly colored two-seater roller-coaster car. The car had a bumper that ran around its perimeter. The railway tracks disappeared under two wide swinging doors. Above the arched doorway was a sign:

Tunnel of Fear

Near the roller-coaster car was a red button and the words:
PUSH TO START
.

You’ve got to be kidding me
.

Murphy tossed the impact case and backpack into the rear seats and climbed into the front. The next clue had to be here somewhere. He looked all over and even felt under the seats with his hands.
Nothing
.

He climbed into the second row and continued to search.

Murphy was thrown back into his seat as the car lurched forward. The bumper hit the swinging doors, and they popped open and then closed behind, leaving him in darkness.

He could hear the wheels on the track and the car jerked on the turns. He stuffed the backpack down on the floor of the car to make room to sit back in the seat. He felt strings brush across his face and an occasional burst of air. Every now and then lights would flash as some Halloween-monster reject would pop up and let out a scream. He could hear the sounds of wild dogs howling and eerie music.

Tunnel of Fear, huh. Not so much
.

Yet something made him apprehensive. Call it instinct, intuition, or just plain street smarts—whatever it was sent a tingle down Murphy’s spine. The clicking noise caused him to leap off the seat of the roller-coaster car as fast as his six-foot-three-inch frame would allow. He sailed over the back, clutching the seat with both hands. As his feet landed on the bumper that ran around the car, he hunkered down and held his breath.

It was not a moment too soon. A rush of wind tousled his hair as two eighty-pound blocks of cement smashed into the seat where he had just been sitting.

Another millisecond and I would have been dead
, he thought.
How do I keep getting into things like this?

Murphy held on as he rode the bumper behind the last seat. Methuselah had a way of playing for keeps in his little contests.

After a dozen more turns of the track, Murphy could see streams of light around the edges of two swinging doors ahead.

The exit
.

As he hurtled toward the double doors, something didn’t feel right.
Too easy
, he thought.

He jumped off the car a moment before it shot through the doors. He rolled to soften the fall as he tumbled along the track.

He looked up as a loud crash filled his senses. He got to his feet, walked toward the doors, and carefully opened them.

About ten feet outside the doors the railway tracks had dead-ended into a block wall. The roller-coaster car was crumpled in a heap. His backpack was inextricable from the wreckage and this was one impact that his impact case couldn’t handle.

So much for Laser. Knew I should’ve insured the darn thing
.

Then Murphy saw it. It was another one of Methuselah’s three-by-five cards, taped to the block wall above the destroyed car. He took it off the wall and tried to make out the familiar handwriting in the dim light.

Well, you must be alive
if you are reading this card
.
Since you have come this far
,
you deserve your reward
.

Murphy turned the card over.

Thirty degrees northeast
of the altar
…
press the king’s head
.