The Box (16 page)
Albert and Brandy ran, not waiting for it to climb up and continue its pursuit.
They fled down the tunnel to the waiting pool and plunged into the water. The cold was just as intense as the first time. It sucked the breath from their lungs, but they dared not linger. They swam as hard as they could, propelling themselves through the frigid water. The sound of their splashing echoed through the tunnels around them and the waves crashed against the walls in the narrow confines of the passage.
They crossed the pool much more quickly than they did the first time, but still they moved too slowly. They kept looking back over their shoulders, terrified that something dark and deadly was right behind them, snapping at their kicking feet.
Not until they reached the other side did they pause. Gasping, they collapsed onto the floor, and with water dripping from their shivering bodies, they stared back across the pool, searching for any sign of their mysterious pursuer.
“What the fuck was that?”
Brandy hissed, her teeth chattering violently. She held the flashlight as steadily as she could, but still the light danced across the tunnel walls as her hands trembled with adrenaline and the quaking of her shivers. Her eyes were wide with terror, her lips quivering in the cold.
Behind them, there was no sign of the creature. The water tossed and rocked in the wake of their furious swimming. At its edge, the paint can clanked against the stone floor as it rose and fell in the waves.
“I don’t know,” Albert replied. He was out of breath but not yet ready to quit running. “We should keep going,” he said, snatching the paint can from the water. “We don’t know if it can swim.”
He stuffed the can into his backpack and the two of them continued up the tunnel. He didn’t know if it would do them any good or not, but it certainly wasn’t going to be of any use floating in that pool. Halfway up the incline, the lid to the can was still resting undisturbed on the floor, but he chose not to take the time to pick it up.
They hurried past the praying statue and retraced their way back through the maze to the back door of the sex room.
They didn’t discuss the sex room as they approached it. Brandy had already removed her glasses and was stuffing them into her purse. She was still afraid of this room, but at the moment the only alternative to going through it was to go back to where that creature was, and even the fear room sounded like a better option than that. She grasped Albert’s cold hand and led him through the doorway.
Albert closed his eyes and tried hard not to think of what they’d done in here. Hopefully they could cross this room as easily as they crossed the hate room just a little while ago.
But as the dark shapes began to swim around her, Brandy began to realize that this room was different from the other two. She could not see the pornography around her, but she
remembered
it. That gray blob over there was a woman on her knees, performing oral sex on a man who looked like he might kill her if she stopped. One of the woman’s hands was stuffed between her thighs, touching herself. The very memory of that statue gave her a nervous knot in her stomach. Desire swam up from some dark place deep inside her. She was disgusted to realize that she wanted to put her glasses back on and look at it again.
Nearby was another shape she remembered: A woman on her hands and knees, clawing at the stone beneath her as a man took her from behind. Her expression was agonizing ecstasy. Beyond that, she could still somehow see a woman straddling a man’s face, her fingers buried in his hair as she ground her hips against him. It seemed that she must be suffocating him, but he didn’t appear to be concerned with escaping. In fact, he appeared to be pulling her closer.
She tried to move between the statues without looking at them, but even from the corners of her eyes, the obscene shapes teased her.
She couldn’t escape it. Everywhere she looked, another statue reformed itself from murky shadows into vivid memories. And it was far too easy to picture herself in these women’s places, enjoying the same insatiable pleasures. She didn’t want to lose herself again to that uncontrollable lust, but she could feel the wanting. It was so hard to resist, especially when it was so easy. All she had to do was turn around and she could have him again…
“Albert…”
“Right here.”
“Oh, Albert…”
“What is it?”
“Not working…” She stopped, her knees pressed together against the terrible wanting in her body. She bent forward, breathing rapidly. “I can still see it.” Though she was terrified, she found that she
wanted
. She
craved
it. It was like a nicotine addiction, only so much more intense.
“No! Close your eyes!”
“I
did
…” She turned toward him, letting go of his hand, and groped for that part of him that she wanted so much, the part of him that was meant for giving her pleasure. She needed that part of him.
It was already beginning to grow erect—his memories of the room did that much by itself—but her touch was an instant stimulant. The feel of her fingers on his skin was more than he could bear. He wouldn’t be able to resist her for long, even without looking at the statues.
Albert wanted to open his eyes. He wanted to see those statues. For the first time in his life, he understood how sex could be an addiction, how some people could fall into such a darkness of sexual wanting. Every muscle in his body was tense with yearning.
He tried to remember the thing in the round room, tried to remind himself that it might still be behind them, slowed, but not stopped. Right now it could be charging down that tunnel after them, but it seemed to matter less and less with each stroke of Brandy’s slender fingers.
He wanted to open his eyes so badly. He wanted to see the statues. He wanted to see
Brandy
. He wanted to look at her, to see her in the throes of ecstasy. He grabbed her wrist, but he didn’t have the will to actually make her stop what she was doing. God help him, he wanted to let her do it. He wanted to take her right there, and he knew he would not last much longer. If they lost control inside this room, they might never get out. They might just go on and on until their hearts gave out from exhaustion. Inside this room, there would be no regaining control.
That was it!
He opened his eyes, let in the world around him and snatched the flashlight from Brandy’s trembling hand. Immediately that hand dropped to her groin, to that part of her that needed so badly. He yanked her wrist from his manhood so hard that she scratched him with her nails, but he hardly noticed the pain through the pleasure. He bolted for the door, dragging her along, and did not stop until they burst from the mouth of the sex room door.
When he was clear of the chamber, he turned and kissed Brandy hard on the mouth, savoring the feel of her lips, the taste of her tongue, attacking her with the full drive of the sex room. She moaned with want and as they dropped to the floor she kissed him again and again, begging him between each one to take her.
They shared sweet, quick intercourse on the cold, stone floor as the erect sentinels watched with apparent delight. He ran his hands over her body, thrusting with forceful passion that began to quickly melt into a gentler, lovelier thing. Brandy’s orgasmic panting also slowed, becoming a softer, smoother sound, less a moan than a purr.
The orgasm was intense, but it was not the same as those they’d experienced inside the sex room. No longer did only the next one matter. Now they both savored just the one and it seemed to last and last as the world around them slowed to a stop. For Albert, this was his first time. The last time was meaningless, but this…this was
perfect
.
After they finished, Albert lay atop her for a moment, listening to her breathing, feeling the rise and the fall of her chest, the warmth of her skin, the hot wetness of her sex, her hair against his face. He could smell her. She was like apples and perfume. At last, he lifted his head and gazed at her, embarrassed.
She was smiling back at him. That was a good sign.
“I’m sorry,” he said lamely.
She shook her head. “That was a good idea.”
“I thought maybe if I could just make myself wait until we got out here, we’d be okay. Even if we did it, maybe once would be enough.”
“I think if you hadn’t taken me here, I’d have gone back in.”
Albert was still on top of her, still inside her even. God she was warm down there. “I guess I should get off of you now.”
She smiled, but did not speak.
Albert rose and they both gasped a little when he slipped out of her. He then knelt beside her, looking at her. She was lying with her arms and legs spread apart as though she were in the middle of making a snow angel, her breasts flattened against her chest, her soft eyes gazing back at him. She was so beautiful.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, not sure what else to say, and picked up the flashlight he’d dropped when he gave in to the lust.
“Don’t be. It wasn’t your fault. It was that room. We can’t expect not to want each other like that.”
Albert felt relief that she was not angry with him this time, but at the same time his heart was torn in half. She was taking it all as a result of this place, of this strange underground temple. Whatever happened down here, as terrifying or as wonderful as it may be, was all just illusions from a temple full of faceless sentinels.
Brandy sat up and dug her glasses out of her purse. She was visibly calmer somehow, despite their near run in with the thing in the round room and the terrors they’d faced all through the night.
Albert also felt better, but only in some ways. Now he felt like his whole world was bending into an orbit around Brandy Rudman and he was terrified of what may lie ahead for him. What they just did had merely intensified a feeling he’d been trying very hard to suppress, a feeling that admittedly began even before they set foot in the first tunnel. “I guess we should keep moving,” he said, trying not to think about the loneliness of the life he’d left behind at midnight, the same life to which he would soon be returning. Would they go back to being nothing more than lab partners again? “I guess that thing didn’t follow us or we wouldn’t have gotten this far, but we don’t know that for sure.”
Brandy nodded. She stood up and took his hand. Together they walked out of the room. It seemed fitting to them both, after what they’d just done, that the sentinels along the walls were slowly wilting, their excitement dying away.
Ahead of them lay the first room of this strange, underground labyrinth. Beyond that awaited the tunnels that would lead them back up to the city.
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.
