“I’m okay,” he assured her. “It’s not bleeding anymore.”
But she wasn’t entirely convinced. Her cuts had stung. They still stung, now that she thought about it. No matter what he said, his had to be hurting him.
“Let’s go home.”
She looked down at him from the upper step, her blue eyes soft and caring. “But what about the answers you were looking for?”
Albert smiled. “Fuck it.”
Brandy returned the smile. “Yeah. Fuck it.”
As they climbed, Albert thought about the room they turned away from, that mysterious lair of terror. What fantastic things could lie beyond such a border? Treasure? Maybe, but he doubted it. Besides, more important to him than treasure was discovery; the discovery of a secret truth that he felt must lie waiting to be found. The truth of the box alone was worth the adventure. Why? Who? He yearned to know these things, but not at any cost. Not at the cost of Brandy Rudman. Not at the cost of his own sanity. He stared at her naked bottom as they climbed, studied the rhythmic pumping of her buttocks and thighs, and could not help but sigh at the thought of returning this beauty to the surface, where he would have to share her with the rest of the world.
Naturally the trip up the steps was much slower than the trip down, and a deep silence fell between them as they climbed.
It was Brandy who broke this thoughtful silence with a question that surprised Albert: “Are you mad at me?”
“No. Of course not.”
“You were quiet.”
“Just thinking.”
“About what?”
“This place. And the box.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?”
“You want to keep going.”
“Only part of me.”
Brandy was silent for a moment, thinking. Albert could hear her labored breathing, could see the small beads of sweat that were forming on her back.
Albert said, “The other part of me is scared as hell.”
She looked down at him, smiled, but said nothing. She was pleased that he was scared too. It made her feel better, but still she felt bad for turning back, for leaving this adventure behind. She felt ashamed of her fear, but she wanted badly to go home.
The two of them paused to rest as the top of the staircase finally came into view. They sat down on the stone steps and stared down into the empty darkness below without speaking. Somehow the moment seemed somber, as though they had before been three and had lost their companion into this spiraling abyss.
“My legs hurt,” Brandy complained, breaking the silence for the second time. She rubbed at her sore calf muscles. “So many steps.”
Albert put his hand on her thigh and gently rubbed it. His legs hurt, too, but he could go on. In fact, the pain was almost cleansing. It peeled away the fear, little by little.
She gazed at him, her eyes soft and pretty. “You’re so good to me down here.”
He shrugged, embarrassed. Of course he was nice to her. She deserved to be treated nicely. “It’s my fault you’re down here.”
“No it’s not.” She gazed back down into the hole, her expression thoughtful. “When we were in that room down there, did you see anything?”
Albert nodded. “Yeah. I did.”
“Did you see those statues?”
“Some of them.”
“When I saw them, I felt like I knew what I was seeing, like I’d seen it somewhere before, only in real life, not in stone.”
“I know.”
“What does it mean?”
He shrugged. “Maybe it just means that whoever carved them is damn good. Or maybe there’s something a lot deeper to it than we ever expected.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe those images were real. Somewhere, sometime, maybe thousands or millions of years ago, those things might have actually happened. If so, maybe we still remember. All of us. The way you sometimes remember old movies you forgot you ever watched. Somebody mentions a scene and it’s just there, a memory you didn’t even know you had, locked away in your brain somewhere for years and years. Maybe this is like that. A forgotten memory, passed down in our blood, generation after generation.”
“That’s really creepy.”
“Yeah.”
“If that was true, then what is this place?”
Albert shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe it’s the oldest place on earth. Maybe where it all began. The lost resting place of the primordial ooze from which all humanity crawled once upon a time.”
“Right here under Briar Hills?”
“Maybe. Or maybe under some farmer’s field ten miles from Briar Hills. This place is enormous.”
Brandy shivered. “I don’t think I want to think about that.”
“Or it could all be some kind of complex hallucination, some kind of subliminal projection. Either way, that’s a very bad place.” That thing by the door came back to him, a tall, twisted shape, a grotesque perversion of nature with awful, diseased flesh and gnarled limbs. The very thought made his stomach lurch with fright.
Brandy shuddered as she remembered the tortured woman who forever struggled for her life in the front of the second chamber. She forced the thought away and stood up.
Albert stood up too, not saying another word. He followed her up the last of the stairs, unable to keep from wondering what lay beyond that terrible fear room.
Chapter 20
Brandy shined the flashlight into the hole she’d marked in the room atop the staircase. It was clear as far as she could see. She turned and held the flashlight out to Albert. “I went first last time,” she said.
“Sounds fair.” He removed the backpack and shoved it in ahead of him. He then took the flashlight from Brandy’s hand and squeezed into the opening. “Stay close, okay?”
“Don’t worry about that.”
The two of them crawled on their bellies along the narrowest stretch of the passage and then rose to their hands and knees when it was high enough. Albert remembered the view he’d enjoyed of Brandy when they first came through this tunnel and found himself embarrassed to think that he was now showing his to her in the same fashion. He supposed it was fitting. Tit for tat, after all.
“Albert?” Brandy’s voice was soft behind him, like the voice of a little girl.
“Yes?”
For a moment she didn’t speak, then, as though forcing the words to come, she said the unthinkable: “What if…whoever brought us down here… What if he doesn’t want us to leave?”
Albert did not stop. He crawled forward, his kneecaps striking the hard stone beneath him over and over again. He hadn’t even considered such a thing. He tried to think of something, tried to come up with some answer, but he couldn’t. Finally he said, “I don’t know.”
“Do you think he can hurt us?”
Probably, was the answer that came to mind. After all, that person—assuming it was a person at all—must have had some reason for wanting them down here. There was a very good chance that their mystery host would not want them going back to Briar Hills and telling everybody what was down here.
“I don’t know,” he answered after a moment, unable to lie. “But after all this I’m not going down without a fight.”
Brandy fell silent and Albert found himself wondering what she was thinking.
Finally, the ceiling rose high enough for them to stand and soon they were walking again. Ahead of them lay the bridge and the maze. Beyond that was the empty room that bothered Albert so much on their way in. And just past that lay the spike pit and then the hate room.
Albert didn’t want to think about the hate room. Theoretically, they should be able to pass back through it as easily as they did the first time. However, the same strategy did not work in the fear room. What if Brandy’s eyes were adjusting to the surroundings or something? What if it affected her through her poor vision? Would they be safe?
They stepped out of the shrinking passage and onto the bridge. Immediately, they both took a longing look at their hanging undergarments. Neither of them had forgotten that they failed to retrieve any of their clothes. Even if they did make it back to the service tunnel entrance, they were still stark naked.