Besides, he would probably only end up getting himself shot as he fumbled awkwardly in the dark. He was hardly James Bond. The foggy man, in his curious line of dark work, would almost certainly have the advantage over him in any confrontation.
The foggy man… He’d grown tired of that. Over his shoulder, he asked, “Do you have a name?”
“Yes.”
“You going to share it with the rest of the class?”
“Wasn’t planning on it.”
Eric shrugged and faced forward again. Foggy it was, then. “So what is it we’re looking for down here?”
“No idea,” replied Foggy. “You tell me.”
“How the hell should I know? You’re the agent of darkness. Don’t you know what you came here for?”
“Nope.”
“What did your bosses tell you to find?”
“I was just told to find what’s here and bring it back.”
“But they didn’t tell you what it is?”
“They didn’t say. I didn’t ask.”
Eric recalled Father Billy telling him that his old bosses paid him to not ask questions. It seemed that Foggy here worked under the same contract. “Sounds like information I’d demand to have before I took a job like this.”
“You don’t demand anything from the people I work for.”
“Who are the people you work for?”
“I don’t know, exactly.”
“You don’t know who you work for?”
Foggy fell silent.
“Right. If you say so.”
“It’s a need-to-know kind of thing.”
Just like Father Billy said. “And you don’t need to know. It’s only your ass on the line.”
“Just shut up and keep walking.”
Clearly, Eric had found a touchy spot. If he had to hazard a guess, he’d say that Foggy wasn’t too happy about the lack of information he was given. But he was far too stubborn to admit that he was nothing more than someone’s loyal little, waggily-tailed lapdog.
He didn’t push the subject. He had no doubt that Foggy would kill him if he grew tired of his mouth, but he was beginning to agree with Isabelle. The people this man worked for were bad. It was unsettling to know that there was an organization like this out there somewhere.
Although it would tickle the hell out of the conspiracy theorists, he imagined.
Abruptly, the light began to return. The sky above never changed, but suddenly the sun’s rays were able to reach them again. Eric’s visibility grew from a few inches to a few feet to a few yards. But with the visibility came unsettling things.
The columns were gone again. Only smooth bedrock covered the wall. But far more disturbing than that was the fact that the wall had inexplicably changed sides. It was now on their right, and they were spiraling down into the darkness counter-clockwise, in the opposite direction, with no memory of having turned around.
Eric stopped, forgetting about the gun at his back. “Are you seeing this?”
“I am.”
“Good. Just checking.”
“Keep going.”
“You do realize that if you kill me you’ll be all alone down here, right?”
“If I have to take my chances, I will.”
“Suit yourself.” Clearly, he wasn’t going to reason his way out of this.
The cathedral was silent but for the sounds of their footfalls on the steps, and even that noise was eerily hushed within these walls. The wood did not creak, despite its obvious age, and there had been no echoing of their voices when they spoke.
Nothing down here seemed to be working quite like it should.
Darkness fell again.
Darkness went away.
Things changed.
Openings appeared in the walls here and there and Eric peered into great, cavernous chambers where shadowy things seemed to stir in the stillness. Odd shuffling noises rose from beneath the steps. Sometimes strange lights seemed to flicker through the darkness at the far side of the hole.
The wall was on their left again. Then it was on the right and Eric was sure he’d only imagined that it had ever been on the left. Without being aware of exactly when the steps ended, he was walking on a flat surface, stumbling blindly through the darkness.
Were they at the bottom already?
Had only a few minutes passed? Or had it already been a few hours?
The sky above remained blue and calm.
Were the walls moaning at him?
Was that a face peering at him from the gloom?
Pressing his hands to his eyes, Eric tried to force himself to focus. Something was terribly wrong here. Nothing made sense. It felt like his mind was breaking.
The dream was broken here. Everything came back to him in jumbled pieces and out of order, compounding the confusion. He couldn’t recall if he saw something scurrying past his feet or merely heard it. And that shape that scuttled overhead… Was that from the dream? Or did he see it just a moment ago? And that scream? Was it real or imaginary? Now or then? Here or there?
He was beginning to remember why the dream had always filled him with such dread.
The light went and came without any warning or reason.
“Are you feeling this too?” he asked as the shadows lifted and revealed a forest of stone columns rising up into the sky.
But Foggy did not answer.
“Where are we? What’s going on?”
When silence met him again, Eric turned to face his unwanted companion, only to find that he was utterly alone.
Where had he gone? How long had he been gone? How long had he been down here?
Nothing made sense.
He turned around, his eyes rising up to the towering columns.
What was going on?
He continued down the stairs, descending several of the steps before thinking to wonder where these stairs came from and when, exactly, he began this descent. But he immediately began to wonder if he’d ever stopped descending the stairs, if he had only imagined walking on solid, horizontal ground among those massive columns.
It was becoming difficult to keep up with where he was. The cathedral was doing something to his mind. The two worlds… They overlapped. Two realities. Trying to occupy this one space. The distortions grew stronger as he neared the singularity. He couldn’t tell one from the other, couldn’t even distinguish reality from his dream.
When he looked back, however, the foggy man was still gone.
He was still alone.
The bizarreness of the cathedral must have allowed them to get separated.
Apparently, Foggy’s skills were no match for the otherworldly nature of the cathedral. He’d failed to keep track of his prisoner.
Eric knew that he should take advantage of this. This was his opportunity to beat the foggy man to the prize. But he still had no idea what he was doing. And it was hard to ignore the fact that there was now a likely pissed off psychopath running around down here with a gun.
He peered up into the blue sky that hung over him. Night had not fallen up there, but perhaps night never fell up there. It would not surprise him. Nothing here would surprise him. This place defied all manner of logic. But there remained a few certainties. The first of these was that there was no way back from here.
He was sure that if he turned around and tried to make his way back out, he would find himself turned back again and again, hopelessly forced to continue only downward, swallowed whole by this unearthly pit.
Closing his eyes, he made himself breathe. He tried to focus. It was hard. The morphine blurred his thoughts, dulled his senses even as it dulled the pain.
No. The morphine wasn’t real. That was the dream.
It was becoming so hard to keep the two apart in his weary mind.
Noises behind him. He turned to look. But darkness had fallen over him again.
Somewhere far above him, he heard a scream.
Or was it a laugh?
Or was it only a memory from the dream?
God, it was so hard to tell anymore.
Never in his life had he ever been this afraid.