Albert pulled his eyes away and continued on. Hopefully, whoever stole their clothes left the rest of them somewhere on the other side of the sex room. He didn’t want to think about having to streak across campus. He lived in a dorm, for God’s sake. Perhaps at this hour everyone would be asleep, but that didn’t change the fact that his keys were still in his jeans pocket. He’d have to wake someone up to let him into the building.
He pushed these thoughts from his head as he hurried across the bridge. There was no need to upset himself just yet. Right now they were still far from civilization. He needed to save his concerns for more important things, like those things below them in the maze.
He stopped suddenly and listened.
“What’s wrong?”
He didn’t want to say what was wrong. He hoped he was mistaken. He hurried to the side of the bridge and shined his flashlight down onto the maze.
He could still hear something moving around beneath them, making that strange ticking noise. Farther out, near their clothes, he could hear another one making that strange buzzing-clattering noise that he still couldn’t identify.
“What’s wrong?” Brandy asked again. The alarm in her voice was clear.
“Nothing,” replied Albert. “Just my imagination.” But it wasn’t his imagination. Yes, there were creatures down there, but not as many as there were before. Not nearly as many. And if they weren’t down there, then where were they?
“Albert?”
“Come on.” He took her by the wrist and led her on to the next passageway.
“Tell me what’s wrong.”
“Nothing.” He didn’t want to alarm her. Perhaps it was nothing. Perhaps some of them simply grew bored of the socks and the briefs and the bra and the panties and curled up to sleep in some crevice somewhere. Perhaps they wandered off to some deeper, more interesting part of the maze. But the very thought of some of those things being out there somewhere made him nervous. Right now, he wanted only to be back above ground, safely away from all these horrors.
The empty room was just as empty as the first time they passed through it. There was nothing there, but Albert still felt that gnawing sensation that he was missing something, perhaps something very important.
He paused before entering the next passage and shined the flashlight up at the high ceiling. Nothing. At least nothing he could see.
“Albert, you’re scaring me.”
He turned and looked at her. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“What is it? Tell me.”
He looked up at the ceiling again, still paranoid. “I think I’m just a little spooked by the fear room,” he explained at last, and realized that it was probably the truth. “I’m nervous.”
She stared at him with those soft blue eyes, piercing him with a gaze that was almost paralyzing.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
“I’m trusting you.”
Struck from his thoughts, he stared back at her. “You can,” he said after a moment. “I promise.”
“Okay.” After another moment, she turned and shifted her gaze into the next room. Those ominous spikes seemed to be waiting for her. “How do we get past this?”
Albert turned and looked ahead. She meant, of course, the hate room. “The same way we got through it the first time,” he replied. He handed her back the flashlight.
“Do you think we can?”
“We should be able to.”
She looked uncertain. “I don’t think I can.”
“Of course you can. That last room was fear. You were already afraid. That’s probably why it got to you.” He did not know if this was true or not, but it made a certain sort of sense, and he needed her to think positively. “This is different. This is hate. You aren’t capable of hating.”
“Yes I am.”
“Are you capable of hating me?”
She stared at him, her lips trembling with words that would not come. Of course she was not capable of hating him. Not after all they’d been through together. Not after he carried her out of the fear room.
“You can do it.”
“But what if I can’t? What if something happens?”
“What else can we do?”
Brandy nodded. He was right, of course. There was no other way back. If they couldn’t go this way they couldn’t. It was as simple as that. All they could do was try. “Okay,” she said at last.
She eased out onto the ledge, still keeping her back to the wall as though it were only inches wide. The thought of what would have happened to her if Albert hadn’t stopped her from stepping out of the hate room still haunted her thoughts and she felt as though just being near these spikes was tempting death.
When she reached the doorway to the hate room, she stopped and removed her glasses. Once they were tucked safely into her purse, she took Albert’s hand and led him inside. The same gray shapes greeted her and for a moment she felt as though she were back in the fear room, surrounded by terrors that pretended to be memories.
Immediately, she became certain that she was going to get turned around and walk right back into that horrible pit. She could almost feel those deadly spikes sliding through her tender body. But as she ventured deeper into the shadows, she discovered that Albert was right. This room was not nearly as frightening as the fear room. The shapes she saw were not familiar. They did not seem to mean anything.
She found this curious. Why should the sex room and the fear room have such profound effects on them while the hate room seemed to have no effect at all? If the fear room was capable of getting past her poor vision, why wasn’t this one? Perhaps Albert was right. Perhaps she was simply incapable of hating.
She sure hadn’t been incapable of fucking Albert, though.
She weaved through the statues, using these thoughts as a distraction. “How are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m okay,” replied Albert. “You?”
“I’m fine. I don’t get it.”
“I don’t either. I guess fear is just more natural than hate.”
“And lust,” she reminded him.
“Yeah. I guess.”
The doorway materialized out of the gloom and Brandy felt an overwhelming sense of relief. She’d made it through. She stepped into the doorway and stopped. She could see the shape of the man’s mouth, the rows of teeth above and below, and she could feel the coarse texture of the tongue beneath her bare feet, but she dared not make any assumptions. For all she knew there could be two openings like this in the room. She did not want to find another pit of spikes.
With her glasses on, she was able to verify that she’d been correct. The angry sentinels stood waiting for them, the nearest pair about to collide just in front of her. “We’re out,” she reported. “Watch your step.”
“Great job.”
“Thank you. You were right.”
“I’m glad. Come on.”
They hurried on, past the many statues to the next passage. Albert felt an odd sort of disorientation as he watched the statues run backward to their posts against the walls and relax once more into their stiff sentinel positions. It was like watching a roughly drawn cartoon.
They made their way down the passageway to the drop-off they climbed on their way in. Albert paused atop it and gazed down. He’d forgotten about it. What was the purpose of such a design, he wondered. And more than that, what caused those strange scratches in the stone. He’d seen nothing like it anywhere else in this place.
“What’s wrong?”
Albert shook his head. “Just wondering about this.”
“I really hate it when you wonder about things.”
“Me too.” He dropped down off the ledge and then turned and helped Brandy down. There was no sense thinking too hard about it. This was their only way out.
They hurried through the tunnel to the round room and from there Brandy headed straight for the tunnel from which they’d originally come. She had taken several steps down it when she realized suddenly that she was alone.