The Devil's Labyrinth

so long ago.

Used to exterminate his family, to tear them from the faith that had sustained them for a hundred generations!

What could be more righteous than that?

Fresh strength flowed through Abdul Kahadija, setting his whole being aquiver with energy, and he raised his hands to Allah in praise and worship. Then, when his trembling ceased, he stood, gathered his materials into a cloth bag, and left the room that was little more than a monastic cell, clad once more in the black cassock that belonged to Father Sebastian Sloane.

† † †

It was no more than a quarter-hour later that Sebastian Sloane placed his cloth bag on the cold floor next to the stone sarcophagus that held Jeffrey Holmes’s corpse. Removing a handful of candles from his bag, he placed them in a wide circle around the sarcophagus, and lit them slowly, whispering a prayer from the ancient ritual before igniting each wick. Only when all the candles were lit did he turn off his flashlight and put it back in the bag. Then he withdrew the precious scroll, wrapped now in a large square of emerald green silk.

Next came the single piece of chalk he would need.

By the flickering light of the unsteady candles, Sebastian carefully surveyed the uneven stone floor, visualizing how best he could expand the drawing of the labyrinth contained within the ancient scroll to fit the floor around the sarcophagus. Yet even as he gazed at the space around the stone coffin, he knew it couldn’t be “best.” No, “best” wouldn’t do.

The labyrinth had to be perfect.

Yet from one angle, the room didn’t seem big enough to hold the complexity of the pattern, while from another angle, the space seemed far too big.

Yet it had to be done, and it had to be perfect.

The labyrinth had three entrances and three paths, and though all three paths found the same destination, all moved in different directions, twisting and turning as they led toward their goal, yet never connecting, never intersecting.

Where even to begin?

Trust in Allah, he told himself. Let the hand of Allah be your guide.

The chalk began to vibrate in his fingers, and a moment later he was on his hands and knees. As if of its own volition, the chalk began making marks on the floor. The lines encircling Jeffrey Holmes’s tomb were all evenly curved; those that radiated out were perfectly straight. As he worked, the man in the priest’s garb found himself moving first one way around the sarcophagus, then the other, moving out a little with the completion of each circle. At first he saw nothing but a jumble of lines, but slowly a pattern began to emerge.

He worked faster, not feeling the cold hardness of the stone floor beneath his hands and knees, utterly unaware of how much time might be passing.

As the labyrinth took shape, the entire room grew darker as if filling with a shadow, though the shadow had no visible source. The candles burned steadily, but it seemed as if their light was being swallowed by the gathering shadow. The cavernous, high-ceilinged chamber grew close, the air thin and difficult to breathe.

Yet Sebastian’s arm raced over the stones, detailing the path the servers would tread to complete the ritual he’d begun with each of them in the preceding days. His arm moved faster and faster, jerked this way and that by an invisible force. Though the stick of chalk had worn away, the drawing continued, as he tore off the skin and meat of his knuckles until it was completed in his own blood.

Still, the room filled with the strange shadow, and the atmosphere grew heavier and heavier until finally Sebastian Sloane lay prostrate on the floor.

The weight in the chamber grew so heavy that his very breath rasped, and the pressure on his lungs threatened to collapse them inside his body.

What if he did not survive the preparation?

Please. Without me, this cannot be completed.

And then it was finished.

After seven complete revolutions had been made around the coffin, the pressure in the room eased, and the deep shadow suddenly vanished.

As if startled out of a reverie, Sebastian hesitated for a moment, then rose slowly to his feet and looked down at the diagram that had been traced on the floor.

Though he knew it was perfect, he still compared it to the labyrinth laid out in the ancient scroll.

They were alike in every detail. But beyond that, he could feel something — some presence — in the chamber that had not been there before.

All was ready.

Only the children were missing….

CHAPTER 57

THE FLICKERING LIGHT glowing at the end of the long tunnel drew Ryan through the darkness like bait in a trap, and even though he knew that very soon the jaws of the trap would close in on him, he could no more turn away from the light than a wolf can turn away from fresh meat.

Moments ago, he’d been sitting in the cafeteria eating dinner with Melody and Sofia, and trying to figure out the easiest way to get to the hospital to see his mother. But then a strange feeling had washed over him, a feeling that he was wanted — that he was needed. He’d looked around, half-expecting to see one of the priests or nuns beckoning to him from the doorway, but even as he saw no one he realized that the feeling hadn’t come from outside himself at all. It had risen from somewhere deep within himself, and he had stood up from the table and walked toward the door.

He’d wanted to stop, wanted to bus his dishes, but there was no time.

He had to follow the summons.

Melody and Sofia had risen at exactly the same moment as Ryan, and he followed them out of the dining room and through the door at the top of the stairs. This time, though, there was no hesitation as he gazed into the darkness below and no fear of the confusion of tunnels through which he must pass.

As he drew close to the soft, pulsing light he found himself gazing into the dank chamber in the very center of which stood Jeffrey Holmes’s carved marble sarcophagus. But unlike the last time he’d been here, when the chamber had been filled with darkness, now there was a circle of candles around the room’s perimeter, and a strange diagram — like a maze — was inscribed on the floor.

Inscribed in chalk, and in blood.

To the depths of his soul, Ryan did not want to go into that room and though his feet threatened to disobey him — though he felt an almost irresistible force drawing him into the chamber — he stopped at the doorway.

Sofia and Melody were already inside, standing quietly at two of the three entrance points to the labyrinth that had been drawn on the stone floor.

The third entrance point was vacant, and Ryan knew they were waiting for him.

The strange force inside him urged him on, but still he resisted. He could smell the stench of death mixing with the smoke of the candles, and the stink of the rotting corpse that lay inside the coffin.

Now the power of the candlelight itself combined with the force within Ryan, and he gripped the edge of the doorway to keep himself from crossing over the threshold.

A black figure emerged from the shadows of the far corner of the room and stepped into the glow of the candlelight. “Come in, Ryan,” Father Sebastian said, his voice soft, soothing. “A gift awaits you.”

Beads of perspiration erupted on Ryan’s face as he struggled against the forces that were compelling him to step into that room.