Benediction Denied: A Labyrinth of Souls Novel by Engstrom Elizabeth

Author:Engstrom, Elizabeth [Engstrom, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy Book, Horror Book, Fiction, psychological thriller, Underworld Book, Dark Fantasy, Self-Revelation
ISBN: 9781370020331
Publisher: ShadowSpinners Press
Published: 2017-06-27T16:00:00+00:00

7

IT SEEMED TO ADAM that whatever evil dwelt in this tunnel hovered mere feet from him. Perhaps inches. On all sides.

He was surrounded by it.

He could smell its putrid breath.

An oppressive blackness encircled him. A thickening stench. A weighty darkness.

After a few steps in, he had a change of heart.

Slowly, he took a step backward. And another. And another, and then he backed into the wall.

He turned around and reached for the tunnel entrance, but it had vanished. The entrance had sealed itself off, trapping him inside with … with something he didn’t want to know about.

This darkness was absolute. Vast. Heavy. Darker than dark. It flowed into his lungs with every breath.

His heart pounded so hard he saw red globes floating around him.

He could run screaming further into the tunnel, but that would mean certain death. Besides, he didn’t think this was a tunnel at all. A room, maybe. A vestibule.

Perhaps his coffin.

His only option was to throw a card.

Standing perfectly still in the absolute darkness, with a hot, nauseating darkness within that darkness pressing closer to him, he tried slowing his breathing. He stood quietly, letting the evil sniff him, touch him, taste him. It looked into him, saw his fears and magnified them. It saw his shortcomings and embellished them until he saw himself as an insipid cartoon. An uninteresting clown of predictably immoral behavior.

This evil reveled in his sins.

Slowly, very slowly, he reached up to his breast pocket, unbuttoned it and pulled out a card.

“I need a way out of here,” he whispered, and bracing for the concussion, threw the card down the tunnel.

The flat concentric circles of blue light flashed only briefly. The darkness muffled, absorbed, the concussion. The darkness, it appeared, was too thick, too substantial, too … evil even for the magic.

He hoped to God that the magic hadn’t strengthened whatever it was that pressed in on him, so close he could feel it oozing around on his skin.

And yet … and yet he heard the faintest of crackling sounds.

This was similar to the crackling sounds the blue magic made when it melted these tunnels out of the pure rock to begin with.

Was it melting a new tunnel for him?

He didn’t want a new tunnel.

All things being equal, he would just as soon go back to the big cavern with the lake and the rocks and the giant coconut and spoiled squash. He had tried to keep track of where he was within the tunnel system, but he had long ago lost his way.

He could live in that big cavern with the lake. He could rest and eat and drink and swim and get himself strong and healthy, and then when ready, he could dive down and find the outlet. If it had an inlet as strong as the river he had ridden on to enter the cavern, then surely it had an outlet. He would find that outlet, swim through it, and be in another moving water system.

He might drown trying, but at least he wouldn’t be here, caught in this black web of soul-numbing, paralyzing terror.

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