The Devil's Labyrinth

CHAPTER 36

SOFIA CAPELLI WAS in the science laboratory, finishing her regular Saturday job of cleaning out all the cages where the frogs and rats and rabbits — all the animals that were used for lab experiments — were kept. It never took more than an hour, and Sofia didn’t really mind it, except for the frogs, whose skin always felt slimy. Today, though, even the frogs didn’t bother her. She was actually holding one of them in the palm of her hand, cupping her fingers around it. The frog sat absolutely still, as if it knew that she could kill it in an instant. It stared up at her, and Sofia fixed her eyes on those of the small creature in her hand, and as their gazes held, Sofia suddenly felt as if the frog knew her — knew what was in her mind.

And didn’t just know her.

It hated her, too.

And she knew why.

It had been watching.

For weeks, it — and all the other frogs in the terrarium — had been watching as every day someone came and snatched one of them from its home and took it to a lab table and jabbed a slim blade into the base of its spinal cord before cutting its skin open to examine and toy with the organs inside.

It didn’t hurt them, of course. Or at least that’s what Sister Agnes had said.

But now Sofia knew that the frog in her hand had been watching, and as she gazed down at it she felt its hatred radiating outward like a million tiny needles, jabbing at her as painfully as the blades that had been used on the others of its kind.

Kill it, a voice inside her instructed. Kill it before it kills you.

Obeying the voice — and not even aware of what she was doing — Sofia closed her fingers, and the frog’s fragile bones snapped under their pressure. Its guts swirled inside its skin, then spewed out through both its mouth and its anus.

The voice inside her sighed contentedly.

Sofia opened her hand and stared at the shapeless mass that now lay where only moments ago a living frog had been, then she dropped it into the wastebasket.

What had she done?

And why?

Feeling suddenly nauseated, Sofia turned away from the terrarium, cleaned out the rat cages, then turned her attention to the rabbits. Two fully grown ones, one black and one white, were lying side by side, sleeping as their litter nursed on the white one’s teats. There were six in the litter, one black, one white, the rest in various patterns of both black and white.

Just as Sister Agnes had predicted when she’d first brought in the adult pair.

And now there they were, all nursing contentedly on their mother’s teats.

All of them except one.

The little white one, who was staring through the mesh of the cage, its tiny pink eyes fixed on Sofia.

Sofia opened the cage, grasped the baby rabbit by its ears, and took it out. “Don’t do that,” she whispered as she left the science lab and started back toward her room. “Don’t stare at me that way.”

The tiny rabbit, as if sensing exactly what was to come, trembled in her hands with terror, and its very trembling made the voice in Sofia’s head sigh in anticipation.

† † †

The dark cloud of depression that had gathered over Melody got darker by the moment. The weekend loomed interminably long with Ryan gone, which was ridiculous, considering that only a week ago she hadn’t even known him. And now, here she was, missing him terribly and with nobody even to talk about him with.

Until Tuesday night, she would have talked to Sofia, but after she’d come back from the infirmary, everything about her had changed, and even though she kept insisting she was “just fine,” Melody knew she wasn’t.

She was completely different.

And no longer someone Melody could talk to.

So she’d just do something else — anything to fill the time until tomorrow afternoon when Ryan got back.

She’d do her laundry. And study.

Great.

Sighing heavily, she stood up from the bench and started back to the dorm. The courtyard was almost empty, and the girls’ dormitory was bereft of its weekday babble of a hundred girls all trying to get to different places at the same time. Her footsteps sounded oddly loud as she walked down the hall, but when she got to the door to her room, she paused.

There was another sound, even louder than her own footsteps, and it was coming from inside her room.

It was a squeal.

A squeal as if something were in terrible pain.

† † †

Sofia sat on her desk chair. In her lap was the baby rabbit, staring up at her, its eyes wide, too terrified now even to attempt to escape. Not that it could have even if it hadn’t been paralyzed by fear, for one or the other of Sofia’s hands never let go of it.

Sofia herself was barely aware of what was happening. It was as if she were no longer quite inside her own body, but somewhere else — somewhere in a strange foggy place where she could observe what was happening, could feel the small furry creature in her hands, even feel its heart pounding, but could do nothing about it except watch through the strange mist.

And there was something else, too. Something inside her body and her mind that she could hear and feel, but not control. It was as if something had taken over, controlling her body and her mind, telling her what to do as she herself — the part of her that was the real Sofia — stood aside, reduced to nothing more than an observer.

And now, as she watched, her hands moved from the rabbit’s throat to its foreleg.

She held it in both hands, like a long willow twig.

She pressed her thumbs against the bone, and applied pressure.

But the bone didn’t bend like a willow twig would have. It snapped like a brittle straw at the end of summer.

It snapped, and the rabbit screamed.

She could put it down now, and it wouldn’t run away. How could it, with all four of its legs broken?

But she couldn’t put it down, not yet. The voice — the demon — the thing—inside her wouldn’t let her. No, there was more to be done, more pain to be inflicted on the tiny creature, more—

The door behind her opened, and she heard a gasp. Sofia turned to see Melody Hunt staring at her.

“My god,” Melody whispered, her face going ashen as she stared at the whimpering animal in Sofia’s hands. “What are you doing?”

Sofia stood up and turned to face Melody, whose own eyes weren’t even looking at her, but were fixed instead on the panicked and broken rabbit in her hands. As Melody watched, Sofia gripped one of the bunny’s broken rear legs and twisted it hard.

The baby rabbit screamed again, and Melody recoiled from what she was seeing. But then she took a deep breath, and before Sofia could do anything else, she snatched it out of her hands and sank onto her own chair, cradling the rabbit as gently as she could.

An instant later their door opened and they both heard Sister Mary David’s voice. “What’s going on in here?”

“Look,” Melody said, holding out her hands with the grotesquely twisted baby rabbit.

Sister Mary David crossed herself as if to ward off whatever evil had befallen the rabbit. “Where did that come from?”

Before Melody could speak a single word, Sofia spread her hands helplessly. “I just got back from the library,” she said. “Melody was torturing it.”

“What?” Melody stared up at her roommate, whose face revealed nothing — no shame, no remorse, nothing. “I can’t believe you said that,” she breathed, then turned back to the nun. “Sister, I came in to get my laundry, and she was the one who had it.”

“Give me that poor thing,” Sister Mary David said, and took the barely breathing, twitching little body. “You stay right here. Both of you!” She whirled and swept out of the room, closing the door firmly behind her.

“What’s the matter with you?” Melody demanded, turning on Sofia. “Why would you even do that? It was just a baby! A sweet little harmless bunny!”

Sofia said nothing, and for several long minutes a terrible silence hung in the room until the door opened again and Sister Mary David reappeared.

The nun took Melody’s arm and drew her to her feet. “Father Sebastian wants to see you immediately.”

“Me?” Melody protested. “But all I was trying to do was rescue the rabbit. Sofia was the one who—”

“Lying only compounds your sin,” the nun said, and began steering her toward the door.

“I’m not lying!” Melody cried, turning toward Sofia. “Tell her, Sofia! Tell her the truth!”

Sofia only looked at her impassively. “I only know what I saw,” she said softly.

With Melody still insisting she’d done nothing, Sister Mary David marched her out of the room, leaving Sofia alone once more. As the door closed behind Melody and the nun, she lay down on her bed and gazed up at the ceiling. Her fingers twitched slightly as the thing inside her remembered the feeling of the rabbit’s bones breaking beneath their pressure.

The feeling was good.

† † †

Sister Mary David guided Melody down a series of stairs into the labyrinth that was the school’s basement.

“Isn’t Father Sebastian in his office?” Melody asked, her throat dry.

“No,” the nun replied, walking so quickly through the darkened tunnels that Melody had to trot to keep up. “He told me to bring you to the chapel.”

“This is stupid. I didn’t do anything — it was Sofia!”

“Hush!” Sister Mary David stopped in front of an old wooden door, and a sudden surge of panic gripped Melody as she remembered what Sofia had told her about going to confession in the basement chapel.

A chapel where she’d been forced to pray on her knees for hours on end.

Was she herself going to have to do that now?

Was whatever had happened to Sofia about to happen to her, too?

She did not want to go inside, and took a step back, away from the door.

Sister Mary David pulled the door open, and in spite of herself, Melody looked in.

An enormous, hideous crucifix, with a hollow-eyed, dying Christ loomed over the candlelit altar.

“No,” she said, backing away. “I don’t want to go in there.”

“It’s all right, Melody,” Father Sebastian said softly as he stepped through the doorway from the vestry.

“It wasn’t me, Father,” Melody cried as tears of frustration and fear began to choke her. “It was Sofia. I came back to get my laundry, and she had that little thing, and—”

Father Sebastian beckoned to her, inviting her inside. “Come in and let’s talk about it.”

Melody felt her anxiety begin to melt slightly as she heard the priest’s soothing voice. “I–I don’t—” she began, but the priest held up a quieting hand.

“Please, Melody,” Father Sebastian said. “Talk with me.”

Melody swallowed. Something still told her not to go into the strange chapel, but surely Father Sebastian would never hurt her. And he was offering her an opportunity to explain what had just gone on in her room. “All right,” she breathed.

Father Sebastian held out his hand. She took it, and stepped across the threshold into the chapel.