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.

† † †