The Box (14 page)

Shapes in gray materialized as Brandy entered the fear room. For the first time in her life, she wished her eyes were actually
worse
than they were. A single stone statue stood before her. She could not tell if it was male or female, human or otherwise, but its arms were outstretched, almost a cruciform pose. She felt her way around it, gently feeling her way across the floor, her bare toes tracing the unseen path before her.

This room was bigger than the others. She could feel it. All around her, limbs were reaching toward her. She turned right, then left, then right again, slipping around statues of things she knew would drive her mad if she could see them.

Seeking distraction, she began to sing softly to herself as she walked, trying to focus on the words to Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Less Traveled,” that she used to sing in choir when she was in high school.

An aisle spread out before her between the gray forms, and the silhouette of a woman appeared at its end. This woman was on her knees, bent painfully backward. Brandy could barely see it, but from her angle the profile of the breasts and chin and upturned face were clear, and she could only imagine what might have caused her to take that pose. Something was standing in front of the woman, something big and animal-like, something that she could not make out at all, but that scared her nonetheless, as though the shape reminded her of something, something locked away deep in her mind, something forgotten all her life, too terrible to remember.

“How are you doing?” Albert asked.

“Okay. I’m scared. I don’t think this room’s as nice as the last one. It still scares me.”

“That’s because you’re scared of it.”

“No. There’s something else.”

There was a pause from Albert as he considered this and then, “Just hang in there, okay?”

“Okay.”

“And be careful.”

“I am.”

Every step was painfully cautious, her mind flooded with agonizing certainty that the next would bring unspeakable pain. Beneath her bare feet was cool stone, smooth and hard, and she tried to focus on that, tried to see only the floor, the flat, cold surface that could be her undoing if it should suddenly end, but all around her, hulking figures loomed, figures that were almost unseen by her poor eyes, but were there nonetheless, as much in her mind as in the room. She felt Albert squeeze her hips reassuringly and tried to focus on that, tried to focus on
him
, on his companionship, on his friendship, on his courage, and when she could not, she focused on his sexuality, on the sex room and what they’d done together. She forced herself to remember how he felt inside her, how they’d attacked each other and did what could not possibly be called making love even by the most perverse joker. They “fucked.” That’s what they did. The two of them, no telling how many miles underground, in a room full of stone pornography, threw away all their modesty and shame and morals and they fucked each other like animals. She recalled the act—what she could remember of it—and focused on it, though she’d hardly let herself think of it until now. She grew hot, her stomach knotting. She reminded herself that they were still naked and that she could have him again if she wanted. He wouldn’t turn her down, not even down here. She reminded herself of this and it made her hotter, more excited. She could have turned around and fucked him again, as hard and loveless as she did in the sex room, right there amid the ageless terror of the fear room. She knew she could. That sexuality scared her. That excitement terrified her. The effects of the sex room were still with her and embracing it was like embracing a deadly sea snake, its slimy, coiling body writhing against her skin, but she embraced it nonetheless. She
gorged
herself on it, for the fear of her lust was not as great as her fear of the fear. Yet the terror of the fear room was still there. The fear still surrounded her. Even unrestrained lust could not push it back entirely.

She stopped. Before her, amid the dark, shapeless forms, something stood blocking her path, something that was a good head shorter than she, but made up for its height in breadth. She told herself she could see nothing, not a thing, only shadows and forms and blurry gray blobs, but she could not take her eyes off it. It was familiar to her, like a forgotten childhood boogeyman lurking in the closet, peering out at her from the darkness and grinning hungrily. A memory rushed back to her, a memory buried so deep inside her brain that it could not possibly have been her own. A cloudless sky, a burning sun, dunes of sand… She closed her eyes and forced away the image. That memory was not her own. That was the memory of a desert and she had never in her life been to a desert. But the image persisted. There was something in the sand, something hungry and clever and merciless.

“What’s wrong?”

She realized that she was standing motionless, completely distracted by those creepy thoughts. “Nothing,” she replied. But it wasn’t nothing. She started forward again, walking around the stone creature. She did not look at it again. She kept her eyes aimed firmly forward, yet it was still there, tempting her. She could see things in her mind, horrible things, things (screaming, terrible screaming) that could only be from her own imagination but somehow weren’t. These things were all real. She slipped around the statue, turned to avoid another one and was suddenly in a corner of stone. Blurred faces stared back at her, all of them screaming, some in terror, some in terrible glee, others in complete madness. Panic shot through her like an electric bolt.

“
Albert
!”

“I’m here.” He could feel her rapid breathing. He pulled her back against him and felt the hammering of her heart.

“The path is blocked!”

“It’s okay. Just backtrack a little.”

“I can’t!”

He let go of her hips and slipped his arms around her, hugging her. “They’re just stone. This room’s just an obstacle. We can get past it.”

Brandy shook her head. “I’m too scared.”

“It’s okay.”

“I can’t.”

He hugged her closer. “You’re braver than this. I know you are. You’re the bravest girl I’ve ever known. Look what you’ve already done. Don’t let some stupid statues get the better of you.” These were big words to speak for someone as scared as he was. He told her to go on, begged her to get a grip and keep moving, but his own brain was screaming at him to turn back. He could not see the statues at all, and still he was afraid. He could not imagine how terrified she must be, seeing all the things she saw, even with her eyes in her purse and the world a permanent cloud of haze. “I know you’re stronger than that,” he whispered into her ear.

Brandy sniffed back the tears that had formed in her eyes. The terror was intense, but Albert was right. They were just stone, and reason was reason. They could not hurt her. “Okay.”

Albert dropped his arms from around her and grasped her hips again, and then the two of them turned and backtracked.

The statues in the sex room were a jumbled mess, but it was a mess that was reasonably easy to navigate. The hate room was worse, but she had assumed it was because she was blind. Now she realized that the rooms were getting more complicated, each one designed to be more of a maze than the last. She wondered what would happen if they could not find their way back and quickly forced that thought away.

An odd form appeared ahead of her and to her right. It seemed human, but oddly stretched out of proportion. She stared at it for a moment before it occurred to her that this was one of the sentinels. He stood amid shorter statues, straight and tall, his arms outstretched over the heads of those formless things around him.

She went toward him, wondering. There were none of these statues in the sex room. Those were all human.

But she did not dwell on the statue’s presence for long. Behind it, she saw another statue that was clearly not human. It was close to the floor, spread out across the space it occupied, and there, just beyond
this
creature, was a square opening, barely visible to her poor eyes in the pale light.

“I found the door!”

“Look first.”

Brandy was already taking her glasses from her purse. “We’re not there yet.” She stepped around the sentinel, forcing herself to move slowly, watching each step, knowing that to forget the hate room was to forget to survive.

She edged around the last statue, a beast that reminded her of an animal, but seemed twice as wide as it should have been. She brushed it with her leg and felt a sharp pain.

“Ouch!”

“What’s wrong?”

She touched her leg where the pain was and lifted her finger in front of her face. She was bleeding, but not badly. “I cut myself.”

“
What
?”

“It’s not bad,” she assured him. “It was a statue. It’s got a claw or something. Be careful.”

“Okay.”

She pushed forward, encouraged by the sight of the door just ahead of her.

“We’re here,” she announced.

“Be careful.”

She slipped the glasses onto her face and peered into the next room as she did in the hate room. She knew her mistake at once, but there was no undoing it. She turned, her eyes squeezed fiercely shut against the image that was already burned into her brain, and threw herself into Albert’s arms.

Albert stumbled backward a step, startled, and his eyes flew open.

He saw what Brandy had seen. He saw it clearly, even though the flashlight was sandwiched between their bodies, its beam reduced to a narrow slit.

This door did not exit the fear room. It entered another chamber of it.

The next room was narrow and curved, filled with more statues like those that surrounded them. One stood out from the others, the first in the room, looming in front of them. He closed his eyes at once, frightened so badly he could not bear to look upon it, but still he saw the horrible image. In his head it went on and on, his mind unable to close its eye.

The statue showed a woman, naked like all the rest down here. Her face was contorted into an expression of terror and agony. She was up to her waist in a hole in the floor. Curved spikes rose from the rim of this hole and dug cruel gouges into the flesh of her hips and waist. Three other people, two men and one woman, each as naked as the day they were born, were shoving her down into the hole from where grotesque things that looked like something between tentacles and talons clawed at her, pulling her to her death below. The statue could have been the work of any artist obsessed with the macabre except for the terrifying detail. The terror and pain on the woman’s face and the mad glee in the eyes of her murderers were too intense, too
real
for anyone other than a madman to recreate. But there was more to the statue than just the intensity and the reality. There was something much deeper than just the image. What startled him, what terrified him beyond his imagination, was the
familiarity
of the statue. This scene was not something merely imagined by some mad artist. This was a life-sized portrait of the past. Somewhere, sometime, lost in eternity, this event really took place. The murderers were real. The woman was real. The thing in the hole was real…

A sound escaped him, a shrill utterance that might have been a scream or might have been a laugh or might have been his sanity fleeing his skull. He held Brandy tightly in his arms and tried to force away the thing he saw, but he couldn’t.

“
I want to go home
!” Brandy sobbed. She was crying, terrified not only by what she saw but by what she remembered, by what she could not possibly have known but somehow did.

“Okay.” The mystery of this place seemed unimportant now. Nothing mattered now except getting home. He did not care where the box came from or why it and the key were given to them. He did not want to go any farther. “Okay let’s go.”

She did not move. She held fast to him, her naked body pressed firmly against his.

“You have to lead us back out.”

“I can’t!”

“You have to.”

“I can’t! I can’t go! I’m too scared!”

“I can’t get us out of here, Brandy!”

“I can’t!”
Her tears coursed down his chest. She was terrified beyond the limits of her courage. She could not turn back and face those things she’d stumbled past again.

He wanted to run, to just turn and flee back the way they’d come. Had he been capable, he might have left her there in the darkness, crying and screaming until she died of fright, but he could not do that. He could not leave her there. He picked her up instead, cradling her in his arms, and began to walk back the way they’d come.

He banged his leg against the statue that cut Brandy a few moments ago and felt the same sharp pain. Whatever it was, it was covered with claws or spikes or something. He could feel the blood trickling down his leg and the pain magnified the fear.

But he couldn’t run. To run would be to lose control. To lose control would be to die. This was no exaggeration and he knew it. Fear alone could kill and this place was terror in its purest form.

A blind man in a tomb of monsters, he walked. His eyes tightly shut against the terrors that surrounded them. Brandy still held the flashlight, and to look would be to invite madness. He stumbled through the dark, guiding himself only with his feet, feeling his way around statue after statue, trying to walk only in one direction, only in the direction from which they’d come, and found only one obstacle after another. His feet struck stone limbs and more than once he bumped Brandy’s shoulder or leg into one of the many solid occupants of the room.