Chapter 3

“Do you think he hurt her?” Brandy sat in the front passenger seat of Albert’s aging Ford. Nicole and Wayne had climbed into the cramped back seat.

“I don’t know,” replied Albert.

“She obviously wasn’t that hurt if she was still demanding to know what we saw,” Nicole said. She reached over and touched Wayne’s hand. He had been staring silently out the window. He looked at her, gave her a pitiful, half-attempt at a smile and then turned away again.

“She really didn’t want to go in there,” Albert said, pondering. “She flipped out when he carried her toward the door.”

“How could she be so obsessed with that place and not want to go inside?” Brandy wondered. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Albert pulled onto Redwood Avenue, which bisected the campus at an angle from northwest to southeast. It was still fairly early, and the campus would still be crawling with students for another couple of hours, but they might get lucky. With Wayne’s help, they should be able to move the cover off the service tunnel entrance, get in and cover it back over relatively quickly.

“I think she was just nuts,” Nicole said. “We’re probably lucky she didn’t pull a gun on us or something.”

Albert had already thought about this. Considering how desperate she’d been to learn what they found, it seemed surprising that she wasn’t armed, especially considering that there were four of them and only one of her. She’d also been directly involved in the deaths of four people. With something like that on your hands, why not go ahead and get the information you want at gunpoint?

“I’ve never attacked anyone like that,” Wayne said miserably. “I swear I’m never that violent.”

“Forget it,” Albert said. “Not your fault.”

Brandy agreed. “You were upset over Olivia. We all were, and she was just begging for it.”

“Still, I shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t have thrown her like that!”

Nicole gave his hand another reassuring squeeze.

“It’s not like you punched her out,” Brandy said.

“She sent her in there,” Wayne continued. He was talking about Olivia. “She sent all of them in there. She killed them all.” He turned away from the window and looked at Nicole. “And she knew it wasn’t safe. She told me it wasn’t safe. She told me that’s why she picked me. Because I was big.”

Not big enough, Albert thought. The memory of that monster lifting Wayne by his head in one huge hand made him shudder.

“I can’t believe she’d even show her face,” Nicole said. “We could totally go to the police if we wanted, tell them about her crazy letters and how we found bodies in there.”

“They wouldn’t believe us,” said Brandy.

“She seemed to think I already knew who she was,” Albert remembered. “Maybe she approached us because she thought we already knew she was there.”

“If we went to the police and told them about the envelopes,” pressed Nicole, “and just that we went into Gilbert House through that cellar door and found the bodies, if we said nothing about the rest of it, they’d have no reason not to check it out. Then they’d see everything for themselves.”

“That’s true.” Brandy turned to Albert. “I wonder if we should tell someone.”

Albert wasn’t paying attention. He was thinking about Beverly Bridger and the hostility with which she’d approached them. Why no weapon? Why all the secrecy? It didn’t make sense. And what was with her accusing him of stealing her file?

“I don’t know,” said Nicole. “It seems wrong to just leave those people in there and not tell anybody where they are.”

“Gilbert House should be forgotten,” said Wayne as he gazed out the window. “Wherever we were when we were in there, I don’t think people were meant to go there.”

“He’s got a point,” Albert said. “Do you know how many police officers and crime scene investigators would have to go in there if we told them where to find those bodies? And then who gets involved? Scientists? The military?”

“So we should just leave them there?” Nicole asked, her voice understandably doubtful.

Albert shook his head. “I don’t know. We should go to the temple first. Maybe then we’ll know what to do.” He turned off of Redwood and onto Third Street, and drove south toward Jackson Street. “I wonder what she knows. She knew about the temple, said she dreamt it.”

“Do you think she was there?” Brandy asked. A shiver ran through her at the thought. It was terrifying to think that they could have been watched the whole time they were down there. And if Beverly had seen them, could someone else have seen them too? How many pairs of eyes could have been on them as they roamed those dark corridors? She remembered the things she and Albert did inside the sex room and the thought of someone standing in the dark, watching the whole thing… It was mortifying.

Albert considered the idea. “I don’t see how.” It was awful dark down there, but it would have been difficult to stay out of sight and not get lost or stumble into a trap. He supposed it would be possible, however, assuming someone knew the corridors well enough.

“Do you think she really dreamed it?” Brandy sounded skeptical, but she knew better than to dismiss anything. Nothing was impossible. The temple had taught her that.

Albert shook his head. He had no idea. The woman was an enigma to him, as mysterious as the wooden box that first brought him into these bizarre worlds thirteen months ago.

He turned west onto Jackson Street. The nearest place to park to the service tunnel entrance was the south parking lot, by the stadium.

“Maybe she did,” Nicole said. “It wouldn’t be much different from the phone calls you two were getting.”

“I guess that’s true,” Albert agreed.

“Phone calls?” Wayne inquired.

Albert forgot that Wayne still knew very little about his and Brandy’s experiences with the temple. “I told you that we found the temple last year…”

Wayne recalled that Albert had referred to it as “the Temple of the Blind.”

“Last night, we started getting these strange phone calls. We’d pick up and nobody was there. It was just silence, except that while we listened, we kept remembering things we saw down there. Really strong mental images. It felt like we were being called back. Then we got the envelope and I figured they must be connected, but so far I haven’t seen how.”

“So you think those phone calls were…what? Some sort of psychic telegraphs?”

“Yeah. Just like that.”

“Weird.”

“Not the weirdest thing you’ve seen or heard today,” Nicole pointed out.

“True.” He no longer doubted anything that Albert told him. Between the monster that nearly crushed his skull and the dark forest and five-story building that only existed on one side of an old cellar door, his former perception of what was possible had already been obliterated. He now fully believed that there were men with no eyes and underground chambers designed to make him fear and hate uncontrollably.

Albert pulled into the south parking lot via its northeast drive and drove west, along the northern edge. The signs read simply “Perimeter Parking” and “Any Permit,” but it was commonly referred to as “the south lot” or “the big lot”. It was huge, stretching back into the forest and wrapping around behind the college stadium. This was the lot where people parked when they were not lucky enough to get a good parking permit. It was not terribly far from Happens, Juggers or the field house, which was fine if you happened to be an art, music or physical education major, but if you majored in anything else, you had to expect a hike.

“Thanks for bringing me along, guys,” Wayne said. Nicole had taken her hand from his and was staring out the window toward Juggers Hall. Behind it was the place Albert and Brandy told her about, the place where they’re great adventure began. She could not believe she was finally going there.

“Don’t thank us yet,” Albert said. “It’s just as dangerous down there as it was in Gilbert House. Maybe more so. You can still change your mind, if you want.”

Wayne shook his head. “No. I want to come. You said you came to Gilbert House because you thought it had something to do with what you found down there. Maybe it does. If so I want to know.”

Albert nodded. “Then welcome aboard.” He found a spot in the third row from the stadium and parked the car.

“Besides,” Nicole added, “if we run into anything we don’t like, he can rough it up for us.”

Albert chuckled. “I thought for a second you were going to toss her right down the cellar steps, like it or not.”

“That’s so bad,” Brandy giggled. “I hope she’s all right.”

“So do I,” said Wayne. There was no humor in his voice.