The Devil's Labyrinth

CHAPTER 15

HE AWOKE AS the energy around him began to change. He could feel it, almost smell it in the air.

Someone was coming.

He sat up in the corner, and rubbed his hands over his eyes, oblivious to both the grit on his palms and the slime of broken pimples that coated his face. The important thing was to erase the last vestiges of the indolent sleep that had stolen so many hours of his time.

Time that could be far better spent than in allowing this useless body to rest.

He searched the darkness around him, but saw no more of his prison than a pinhole of light at the door.

They thought the darkness would terrify him, but they were wrong. The darkness was his friend.

The darkness gave him shelter.

The darkness made him invisible.

He knew far more than they thought; saw everything despite the darkness. He needed no eyes, no ears, nor any other senses. Merely by being still and feeling the rise and fall of energies around him, he understood his surroundings.

Now he tingled with the rising energy, as happened every day.

Or was it night?

It didn’t matter.

All that mattered was that someone was coming.

Someone was coming, and bringing an opportunity for escape. If he was smart. If he did the right thing.

But so far, he had failed.

The first failure had surprised him. It should have been simple; nothing more then manipulating his own energy, focusing it on the pinhole of light that would lead to freedom. Yet when he’d made the attempt to ooze through the tiny hole like so much smoke, he’d failed.

Failed!

The human body, apparently, was a far more formidable prison than the chamber in which it dwelt.

The answer, of course, was obvious: he would simply take the human body with him.

But he had failed to manipulate the machinery of the lock on the door as miserably as he had failed to escape the human body.

Thus, he must manipulate the approaching personality.

He felt the rise in energy again, then heard footsteps through the ears of the body he inhabited.

A metallic screech erupted as the pinhole of light suddenly expanded into a blinding rectangle. The brilliance of the light slashed through the body’s eyes and into its brain, and it reflexively jerked back, slamming into the wall.

“Time for dinner,” a soft voice — a female voice — said.

He struggled to recover — why hadn’t he guarded himself against the light?

Be human, he told himself. Be what she thinks you are. He crept forward toward the slot in the door through which the female on the other side was bringing the food tray. “Hello?” he said, barely able to use the voice that was so rusted from disuse that it emerged as little more than a faint croaking sound.

There was silence, then the human beyond the blinding rectangle spoke. “So you’ve decided to speak.”

A toehold!

“Please,” he said, searching for the words — the human words — that would make her open the door.

“Here’s your dinner,” she said, and slid a tray through the rectangular opening.

“I–I need something,” he said softly, quietly, gently, taking the tray. What would make this human use the keys that would open his prison?

“Oh? What do you need?”

“A doctor,” he said.

Again there was silence, and he could feel her indecision. Once again he tried to focus his energy, tried to reach into her mind to bend her to his will, but once again the body in which he was imprisoned held him back. Even before she spoke he knew what she would say.

“I don’t think so,” she sighed, with just enough uncertainty to give him hope.

“No, wait, please,” he said, as she began to close the slot.

She stopped.

“I need something.”

“What do you need?” she asked.

“You,” he whispered. “I need to touch you. To feel you. To put my hands in your—”

She slammed the rectangle closed, and he heard her footsteps as she walked quickly away.

Furious, he hurled the tray of food across the room, then smashed his fist against the door, only barely aware of the pain that shot up the arm.

How long would it be before he got another opportunity?

Panic began to build.

He had to get out of here!

Brushing the searing pain in the wounded hand aside, as if it were no more than an annoying fly buzzing around him, he began moving his fingers over the stone walls, exploring every contour of his prison that he could reach. But he already knew every stone, knew every one of their personalities, knew the texture of every seam of the mortar that held them together. He knew the lichen that grew there — knew it all — yet once again he began going over it all once more, feeling everything, examining everything, with only the pinhole of light to help him see.

Everything he touched was exactly the same as the last time he’d touched it, and with every second his frustration grew.

When finally he was back at the point where he’d begun, he began to realize that all of it was futile.

He’d never escape.

He’d never fulfill his purpose.

He sat down and began to howl.