The Devil's Labyrinth

CHAPTER 41

RYAN MCINTYRE DUMPED his gym bag on his bed, dropped down next to it and swore softly. So much for spending a night back home; now he’d hurt his mother’s feelings, Tom Kelly was sure to be pissed off at him, and he had no idea what to do about the whole mess. On the other hand, maybe there wasn’t really anything to do; it was his mother who’d decided to let Kelly move in, not him, and maybe the best thing to do would be just to stay at school and let his mother do whatever she wanted.

Maybe it wasn’t any of his business. Except it was his business — anything to do with his mother was his business, and even though he knew Tom Kelly was a perfectly decent guy, there was just something about him that rubbed Ryan the wrong way.

Bullshit, he heard his father’s voice whispering inside his head. You’re just pissed off because he’s not me, and he never will be. But that’s your problem, not your mom’s. So grow up and deal with it.

He took a deep breath, looked up, and saw his roommate look quizzically up from the book he was reading. “Thought you were gone for the weekend,” Clay said.

“Change of plans,” Ryan said, seeing no point in even going into it with Clay. “Have you seen Melody?”

Clay shook his head. “I’ve been in here all afternoon.”

Ryan fished his cell phone out of the gym bag and punched in Melody’s number, but her voice mail came on fast enough to tell him she either didn’t have the phone on, or didn’t have it with her. So where wouldn’t she have taken it? Nowhere very far from her room — probably just the laundry room in her dorm. “Hey,” he asked Clay, “can I go into the girls’ dorm?”

“No chance,” Clay said without looking up from his book. “But maybe you can find someone who’d go knock on her door or something.”

† † †

Five minutes later, Ryan opened the door to the foyer of the girls’ dormitory. In a small parlor to the right, an elderly nun sat in a wing chair by the fireplace, reading. She peered suspiciously at Ryan over the rims of her glasses. “May I help you?”

“I’m looking for Melody Hunt. Or her roommate. Sofia Capelli?”

“I haven’t seen Melody,” the old nun said, “but Sofia will be working in the kitchen this evening.”

“Thanks,” Ryan said. By the time he’d turned back to the foyer, the nun had already disappeared back into her book.

† † †

“Sofia, stop daydreaming and take the garbage out.”

Sofia made a face at the cook’s back and her fingers tightened on the haft of the carving knife she’d been about to drop back into the drawer under the serving table. She felt a sudden urge to plunge the blade deep into the cook’s back.

“Now!” the heavyset nun who had been cooking the same recipes at St. Isaac’s for the last thirty years commanded, and the vision of blood spurting from her back vanished from Sofia’s mind.

“Okay,” she sighed and pulled the heavy black plastic bag from its container by the sink. Half-carrying and half-dragging the bag, she pushed the heavy outside door to the kitchen open, and nosed the wooden doorstop into the jamb with her toe, so she wouldn’t be locked out when the door closed behind her.

The stench of rotting meat filled her nostrils as she raised the lid off one of the garbage barrels that stood at the mouth of a narrow passageway leading to the street, but instead of turning away from the stink as she always had before, tonight she found herself breathing it in deeply, sucking the noxious fumes into her lungs as if it were fresh salt air blowing in from the beach.

Releasing her grip on the bag she’d brought from the kitchen, Sofia leaned over the open barrel, peering down at the source of the oddly exciting aroma. At the bottom of the barrel lay a tangled mass of chicken entrails, scraps of beef, and rotting vegetables.

Crawling over the whole mass, making it look as if it were some kind of living thing, were hundreds — thousands — of tiny white squirming things.

Maggots.

The light from the security lamp high above cast a strange yellow-orange glow into the barrel, and as the creatures wriggled and slithered, their skins seemed to glint with millions of tiny diamonds.

She bent closer.

The mass boiled, heaved and swirled, as if all the maggots were but tiny parts of a single living being.

She reached into the barrel and let her fingers brush over them.

Hunger rose in her.

She could feel saliva coming into her mouth, and deep in her gut she felt a strange craving, a craving she knew could only be satisfied by one thing.

Her fingers closing on a fistful of the tiny larvae, she straightened up, then opened her hand to gaze at what she held.

The maggots moved in every direction. One by one they began to drop back into the barrel, instantly burying themselves in the rancid mass at its bottom. But before the last of them could escape, the hunger overcame her and Sofia raised her hand to her face, sucking the last of the maggots into her mouth.

She could feel them on her tongue, feel them writhing against her cheeks.

She began chewing, and as each of the tiny bodies exploded, a burst of sweetness erupted in her mouth.

She reached into the barrel again, scooping out a larger handful of maggots mixed with rotting flesh, and shoved it into her mouth, whimpering softly as she chewed and swallowed.

Another fistful followed, then another.

She could feel them in her belly, as if they were still alive, squirming and twisting, radiating out to fill not only her stomach, but every cell in her body. She was tingling all over, feeling them under her skin, giving her a strength she’d never felt before.

She reached for another handful when suddenly she heard someone behind her speak her name.

Instantly, she brushed the maggots and scraps of rotting meat from her lips and chin, wiped her hands on her apron, and swallowed quickly, emptying her mouth of the last morsels of her feast, then turned to see who had spoken.

Ryan McIntyre was framed in the open door to the kitchen.

“Sofia?” he asked, almost as if he wasn’t certain it was really her. “I’m looking for Melody.”

“She’s not here,” Sofia said, her voice rasping oddly as she raised the hem of the apron to wipe her chin.

Ryan cocked his head uncertainly. “Have you seen her?”

Sofia shrugged. “Father Sebastian wanted to see her,” she said as she lifted the heavy garbage sack.

“Let me help you with that,” Ryan said, stepping forward to take the sack from Sofia. But before he dropped the bag into the barrel his eyes fell on the slimy mass at its bottom, and he instinctively pulled away from the stench that boiled up from it. “Yuck,” he muttered as he pressed the bag down on top of the writhing maggots. “That’s disgusting.”

Sofia only shrugged again, this time saying nothing at all.

“Well, if you see her, have her call me, okay?” Ryan asked as he put the lid onto the barrel.

Sofia just nodded, then turned and disappeared back into the kitchen.

† † †

Ryan watched Sofia go. What was going on? It looked like she’d been eating out of the garbage can. But of course that couldn’t be — his own stomach was still churning after only a glance at the roiling mass of maggots squirming like something in the last throes of death. And the stink—

He shuddered just at the memory of it.

He must have been mistaken — she couldn’t have done what he thought she’d been doing. It must have been the way the light hit her. But telling himself he must have been wrong wasn’t calming his own stomach at all, so he turned his mind away from what he’d seen to what he’d heard.

Father Sebastian had wanted to see Melody.

On a Saturday? Why?

Ryan walked slowly away from the little alcove where the garbage barrels were kept, through the narrow alleyway to the street beyond. When he came to the sidewalk, he paused, gazing unseeingly at the row of bowfront houses across Louisburg Square, his mind filled instead with the memory of Tuesday night, when Father Sebastian had wanted to see Sofia for making out with Darren Bender.

She had to be carried to the infirmary that night, and she’d been…He searched his mind for the right word, and only one came to him.

Weird.

Sofia had been just plain weird ever since.

He crossed the street and went into the square, and sat on a bench in the deepening dark as the streetlamps cast strange shadows all around him.

Could the same thing that happened to Sofia have happened to Melody, too?

Could Melody be in the infirmary?

With a bad feeling in his gut, Ryan got up, left the square and crossed the street back to St. Isaac’s. He threaded his way through the narrow alley, then headed toward the building whose second floor was occupied by the infirmary.

He didn’t see a single person on his way; the whole campus seemed to be deserted.

Once again — just as on the night he and Melody had gone looking for Sofia — the infirmary door was locked. He cupped his hands around his eyes and tried to peer through the frosted glass in the door, but all he saw was a faint light, way in the back.

Had there been a light when he and Melody were looking for Sofia?

No, because Sofia hadn’t been taken there yet.

But now someone was inside, and something inside him was telling him it was Melody Hunt.

He jerked at the door handle, praying maybe he’d been mistaken and that it wasn’t locked at all, but it wouldn’t budge.

The back way!

But even the thought of the maze of dark tunnels beneath the school brought the taste of fear to his mouth.

But Melody was in the infirmary, he knew it in his bones, and if anybody was going to help her before the same thing happened to her that had happened to Sofia Capelli, it was going to have to be him.

He turned away from the locked door and started back the way he’d come.

Would he even be able to find the door to the underground tunnels that Melody had showed him a few nights ago?

And if he could, would he find the courage to go down into the darkness below?

He didn’t know, but at least he had to try.