“What’s that smell?” Nicole groaned, her face scrunching into a sour expression of revulsion.
The air in this passage had grown rank. A deep, pungent odor was permeating the air in the narrow space through which they walked.
“The hounds,” Albert said. “Or if not them then some sort of animal. Smells like the zoo down here.” Although he never remembered the zoo smelling this bad. Not even at its worst. Down here, there likely weren’t any animal keepers to clean up the exhibits.
“It’s disgusting!” Nicole complained.
“One of the hounds’ tunnels must be just ahead,” Albert surmised. But as he walked forward, he found that the passage went on much farther than he expected, and likewise, the stench grew much stronger. By the time they reached the next intersection—which was, indeed, a crossing of one of those lowered passageways—the air was so pervaded with the pungent, ammonia-stench of animal waste that it brought tears to their eyes and threatened to strangle them.
The floor of this reeking passage bore the same scratches as those in all the other areas where the hounds were allowed access, but it was considerably more damaged than any they had encountered so far. The center was worn nearly to sand. Something about these creatures was obviously hard on the stone. Albert assumed that they must walk on incredibly formidable claws to do such damage. After hundreds of years, or thousands, or even tens of thousands, it wasn’t unthinkable that the floor would eventually wear beneath the feet of such creatures, whereas the rest of the temple likely suffered very little traffic and therefore remained pristine. And this passage, for some reason, endured significantly more traffic than others.
“What is this place?” Brandy coughed.
“A lot of animals always do their business in the same place every time they go,” Albert explained.
“So this is a giant litter box?” Nicole asked. Her hand was pressed over her mouth and nose, muffling her voice.
“Something like that.” Albert shined his flashlight left and right. Once again, no hounds were in sight. But this was obviously a place they frequented. If the smell was any indication, somewhere very near this spot was a passage or chamber that was the equivalent of a sewer.
Directly across from them, the passage they were traveling continued forward.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go quick, before one of them comes back.”
Brandy and Nicole didn’t like the idea of crossing another of these passages, but they already knew that Albert wouldn’t backtrack as long as there was an alternative. He was probably saving them hours of walking in the long run, but it still seemed like an unnecessarily dangerous risk. None of them knew how fast the hounds could run. If one caught their scent, there was no guarantee that it wouldn’t be on them before they could climb back up to higher ground.
Quickly, the three of them dropped down and rushed to the other side. Albert gave Brandy and Nicole each a gentle boost and then heaved himself up and over the ledge, once again managing to avoid being mauled.
Coughing on the noxious stench, Albert did not even bother to glance back in hopes of glimpsing a hound. He pressed the chalk to the wall and hurried on, hoping the air would soon clear.
A few minutes later, the left wall of the passage opened up, revealing another lower passageway running alongside them. The same, foul stench filled the air and the same, telltale scratches covered the floor.
The Sentinel Queen told them that her children acted as caretakers for the Temple of the Blind. Albert had assumed that part of their job was keeping the place tidy, explaining the immaculate cleanliness of the corridors. There had not even been any dust to dirty their bare feet. He had also assumed, then, that their work must extend to cleaning up after the hounds, but this area suggested the hounds to be very clean animals that likely required little effort on the part of the Sentinel Queen’s blind brood. Given that he had not detected any foul odors in other areas where the floor was scarred, it seemed likely that the hounds preferred to keep most of their territory clean.
Perhaps that meant that this was a fairly safe place for them to be. Clean animals usually didn’t like their food too near their waste. If a hound should appear in that lower passage while they were passing through, it might not even be interested in them.
On the other hand, just because it was picky about where it evacuated didn’t necessarily mean it was particular about where it came by its food. And the things might be violently territorial, in which case hunger wouldn’t have anything to do with it. They would kill anything that wandered into their labyrinth on pure instinct.
However, he had to keep reminding himself that he knew nothing of these things. They could have been engineered specifically to break all the rules of nature. Someone, somewhere, designed the fear room, after all. There was no guessing what kinds of monsters someone like that might be capable of breeding.
They moved on, each of them keeping near the wall as they walked, their flashlights repeatedly drifting down into the shadows of the lower passage, their eyes watering from the pungent stench that pervaded the air.
The two passages parted again less than a hundred feet from where they met and the stench finally began to dissipate a little as they moved away. About forty yards ahead, they turned left at an intersection and immediately crossed another section of the hounds’ labyrinth (this one mildly less rank than the last) and again there were no hounds to be seen.
Albert was beginning to think that there was something unnatural about their luck. Once again, he wondered if the Sentinel Queen had done something to distract the hounds beyond hanging up their undergarments, since they had surely grown wise to that trick by now.
They came upon another intersection and Albert turned right. Several yards beyond, Albert heard the curious noise of a hound drifting toward them from somewhere up ahead.
“I don’t like it here,” Brandy said. “There’s way too many hounds.”
Nicole agreed. “I keep thinking we’re going to find ourselves trapped between two of those passages and they won’t let us leave.”
Albert had to admit, that was not a pleasant thought. But so far there had not been any two junctions between the two labyrinths with nothing between them. He would not, however, rule out that there might be such places somewhere down here. In fact, something like that would be just the thing to trip up someone like him, who was choosing to cross those junctions rather than spend extra time backtracking through the labyrinth. It made sense, even, when he considered the twisted logic of the temple. It seemed that for every advantage they found, there was an equal disadvantage. Entering the hate room blind protected one from the overwhelming emotions. But exiting the room blind could mean sharing Beverly’s gruesome fate.
The Temple of the Blind had a way of punishing those who learned its tricks.
At the end of the passage, as expected, was another sunken tunnel. The noise of the hound was still droning on, but the creature itself was not within sight. It seemed to be lingering somewhere to the left, concealed in shadows.
“Tell me you’re not planning to cross this one too,” said Nicole as she gazed nervously toward the noise. As the chilling sound went on and on, it sounded deceptively like purring to her, as if the hound might be nothing more than a happy, napping cat, if a terrifyingly large one.
Albert glanced at the opening across from them. It was so close, and yet so incredibly far. “No,” he replied. “Not this time.”
The hound was right there. It was making its noise, which might mean that it was agitated or at least that it was awake and probably alert. It would be only a matter of time before it caught their scent. It didn’t take much time to drop down and climb back up, but when danger was so close, and so obvious, the risk became too great to justify. Perhaps if it was only him down here he might have considered taking the risk, but there was no way he would so blatantly risk Brandy’s or Nicole’s life just to save a little backtracking.
“So we go back to that last intersection,” said Brandy, relieved that she didn’t have to talk him out of risking it.
“Yeah.” But Albert did not turn back. He lingered there, his light aimed toward the droning racket of the hound. It was becoming more than he could bear. He wanted to see one, wanted to know what to expect in case they had to deal with these things later. But it remained stubbornly out of sight.
“So let’s go,” Brandy urged.
Albert nodded, but still he lingered for a moment, waiting, watching. He wanted only a glimpse, just a fleeting flash of the creature. He began to walk only when Nicole started back ahead of him and Brandy took his hand and pulled him away.