Passages by T. Kulp

Author:T. Kulp
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horror, Anthology (Single Author), Haunted Toys
Publisher: Making Adventure
Published: 2023-09-29T00:00:00+00:00

FIVE

When the door opened, William saw three things.

Flapping red flags hanging from the ceiling.

Another door across a long wooden bridge over a gaping black chasm.

Ten holes in the wall across the bridge with arrow tips pointing out.

As Sergei pulled him into the room, William pushed the giant behind the door and pulled it all the way open, hiding behind it. Steel arrowheads thumped against the thick door, with a few splintering the wood but being held fast. One arrow sliced William’s stomach through his shirt. The wound wasn’t deep. Just enough to spill a trickle of blood.

Sergei gasped as the arrows hit the door. He looked at the tips that stuck through the wood.

William shut the door quickly and said, “Keep low.” Both of them got on their bellies and crawled toward the bridge.

The charcoal stone was darker here. The room was rectangular with a slight stone lip that traced around the wall. Between the bridge and the wall was a black pit. William smiled, considering how this was the second, and probably not last, bottomless pit he’d seen in the tower. He and Sergei were laying on a small stone platform at the edge of the bridge. Above them, the ceiling was as high as the hospital was tall, with long red flags hanging down on each side of the bridge. Gold thread adorned the flags to form a spiral at their triangular ends. They flapped in a wind William couldn’t feel.

“Traps?” Sergei examined one of the arrowheads through the door. He sniffed it. “Will, I believe this arrow was dipped in Sleepweed.” He searched for a term that William might recognize, but couldn’t find one. “A poison. I don’t know how it will affect you.” He shrugged. “Lloyd wasn’t always affected by the toxicities of our world.”

William nodded thoughtfully and crawled toward the bridge. “I feel fine.” And he did, except for some tightness in his stomach, but that would be expected when you get a cut or three as he had from the arrows that broke through the door. “Let’s go.”

He crawled onto the bridge, keeping low and moving slow as they came to the first set of flags. The wind was still moving them. They swayed toward the bridge and back to the wall laterally.

“Give me your boot,” William said.

Sergei did so without question. William held it forward where the flags were swaying. A sharp THWIT split the air as an arrow lanced the boot. He pulled it back quickly.

“Sorry.” He handed it to Sergei.

“It wasn’t my favorite boot.” Sergei took the boot, pulled the arrow through, and put it back on.

“I felt the wind when I held out the boot. Its blowing from behind the flag on the right to behind the flag on the left. It’s like a trip wire.” William had seen enough James Bond movies to know about laser trip wires. This wasn’t a laser, it was wind. And he didn’t have special glasses or sprays to make them visible.

The flags flapped heaviest at the bottom.

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