The two of them paused to rest as the top ofthe staircase finally came into view. They sat down on the stonesteps and stared down into the empty darkness below withoutspeaking. Somehow the moment seemed somber, as though they hadbefore been three and had lost their companion into this spiralingabyss.

“My legs hurt,” Brandy complained, breakingthe silence for the second time. She rubbed at her sore calfmuscles. “So many steps.”

Albert put his hand on her thigh and gentlyrubbed it. His legs hurt, too, but he could go on. In fact, thepain was almost cleansing. It peeled away the fear, little bylittle.

She gazed at him, her eyes soft and pretty.“You’re so good to me down here.”

He shrugged, embarrassed. Of course he wasnice to her. She deserved to be treated nicely. “It’s my faultyou’re down here.”

“No it’s not.” She gazed back down into thehole, her expression thoughtful. “When we were in that room downthere, 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 Iwas 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 thatwhoever carved them is damn good. Or maybe there’s something a lotdeeper 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 thingsmight have actually happened. If so, maybe we still remember. Allof us. The way you sometimes remember old movies you forgot youever watched. Somebody mentions a scene and it’s just there, amemory you didn’t even know you had, locked away in your brainsomewhere for years and years. Maybe this is like that. A forgottenmemory, passed down in our blood, generation after generation.”

“That’s really creepy.”

“Yeah.”

“If that was true, then what is thisplace?”

Albert shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe it’s theoldest place on earth. Maybe where it all began. The lost restingplace of the primordial ooze from which all humanity crawled onceupon a time.”

“Right here under Briar Hills?”

“Maybe. Or maybe under some farmer’s fieldten miles from Briar Hills. This place is enormous.”

Brandy shivered. “I don’t think I want tothink about that.”

“Or it could all be some kind of complexhallucination, 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 stomachlurch with fright.

Brandy shuddered as she remembered thetortured woman who forever struggled for her life in the front ofthe second chamber. She forced the thought away and stood up.

Albert stood up too, not saying anotherword. He followed her up the last of the stairs, unable to keepfrom wondering what lay beyond that terrible fear room.

Chapter 20

Brandy shined the flashlight into the holeshe’d marked in the room atop the staircase. It was clear as far asshe could see. She turned and held the flashlight out to Albert. “Iwent first last time,” she said.

“Sounds fair.” He removed the backpack andshoved it in ahead of him. He then took the flashlight fromBrandy’s hand and squeezed into the opening. “Stay close,okay?”

“Don’t worry about that.”

The two of them crawled on their belliesalong the narrowest stretch of the passage and then rose to theirhands and knees when it was high enough. Albert remembered the viewhe’d enjoyed of Brandy when they first came through this tunnel andfound himself embarrassed to think that he was now showing his toher in the same fashion. He supposed it was fitting. Tit for tat,after all.

“Albert?” Brandy’s voice was soft behindhim, like the voice of a little girl.

“Yes?”

For a moment she didn’t speak, then, asthough forcing the words to come, she said the unthinkable: “Whatif…whoever brought us down here… What if he doesn’t want us toleave?”

Albert did not stop. He crawled forward, hiskneecaps striking the hard stone beneath him over and over again.He hadn’t even considered such a thing. He tried to think ofsomething, 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 havehad some reason for wanting them down here. There was a very goodchance that their mystery host would not want them going back toBriar 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 afight.”

Brandy fell silent and Albert found himselfwondering what she was thinking.

Finally, the ceiling rose high enough forthem to stand and soon they were walking again. Ahead of them laythe bridge and the maze. Beyond that was the empty room thatbothered Albert so much on their way in. And just past that lay thespike pit and then the hate room.

Albert didn’t want to think about the hateroom. Theoretically, they should be able to pass back through it aseasily as they did the first time. However, the same strategy didnot work in the fear room. What if Brandy’s eyes were adjusting tothe surroundings or something? What if it affected her through herpoor vision? Would they be safe?

They stepped out of the shrinking passageand onto the bridge. Immediately, they both took a longing look attheir hanging undergarments. Neither of them had forgotten thatthey failed to retrieve any of their clothes. Even if they did makeit back to the service tunnel entrance, they were still starknaked.

Albert pulled his eyes away and continuedon. Hopefully, whoever stole their clothes left the rest of themsomewhere on the other side of the sex room. He didn’t want tothink about having to streak across campus. He lived in a dorm, forGod’s sake. Perhaps at this hour everyone would be asleep, but thatdidn’t change the fact that his keys were still in his jeanspocket. He’d have to wake someone up to let him into thebuilding.

He pushed these thoughts from his head as hehurried across the bridge. There was no need to upset himself justyet. Right now they were still far from civilization. He needed tosave his concerns for more important things, like those thingsbelow them in the maze.

He stopped suddenly and listened.

“What’s wrong?”

He didn’t want to say what was wrong. Hehoped he was mistaken. He hurried to the side of the bridge andshined his flashlight down onto the maze.

He could still hear something moving aroundbeneath them, making that strange ticking noise. Farther out, neartheir clothes, he could hear another one making that strangebuzzing-clattering noise that he still couldn’t identify.

“What’s wrong?” Brandy asked again. Thealarm in her voice was clear.

“Nothing,” replied Albert. “Just myimagination.” But it wasn’t his imagination. Yes, there werecreatures down there, but not as many as there were before. Notnearly as many. And if they weren’t down there, then where werethey?

“Albert?”

“Come on.” He took her by the wrist and ledher 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 ofthe socks and the briefs and the bra and the panties and curled upto sleep in some crevice somewhere. Perhaps they wandered off tosome deeper, more interesting part of the maze. But the verythought of some of those things being out there somewhere made himnervous. Right now, he wanted only to be back above ground, safelyaway from all these horrors.

The empty room was just as empty as thefirst time they passed through it. There was nothing there, butAlbert still felt that gnawing sensation that he was missingsomething, perhaps something very important.