Roses for Rachel

Chapter 13.

           

I was on a literal cloud as I walked out of the room and twisted into the corridors. My mind was racing replaying every single word we'd spoken and still trying to feel his touch on my skin everywhere he'd put his hands. I was so lost in my own head that I wasn't even looking where I was actually going. After a while I kept coming to dead end after dead end. I knew I should have been paying more attention when Calvin walked me to the room, but I had been a little more focused on him, rather than which turns we were taking.  

The further and further I went, taking turns on a whim, it started to get colder and darker. Even more concerning, the passages began to get smaller around me until I hardly had a foot of clearance between me and the top of the wet corridor. The racing in my heart turned to a different kind of pounding, no longer excitement, but more fear. When I hit yet another dead end I finally decided I needed to quit being so stubborn and just ask for some help.

"Gua-." I started to call out, but quit when a small man appeared in front of me like he came out of thin air.

"Can I help you, Miss?" He asked politely. I looked around still feeling on edge, the little voice in the back of my mind telling me something wasn't right. The man inclined his head to me, waiting for me to respond. "Miss?" He asked again. When I further inspected him, I noticed he wasn't dressed like a guard. He had on plain black pants, and a black t-shirt, but the guards always have on nice clothes, suit jackets even. This guy just seemed too casual.

I laughed nervously. "I seem to have gotten myself lost." I explained. "I was just going to have a guard escort me back." I took a tentative step backward, not trying to let my discomfort show on my face.

He laughed, his squinty dark eyes roaming over me. "I'd be happy to give you directions, Miss." He told me nicely, something about his posture and the closeness of his eyes reminding me of a rat. "Just keep going this direction." He pointed into the darkness the way he'd come. "I know it's a tight squeeze, but you're in the old section of the castle, it'll level back out soon. When it does open back up, take the first left, then continue down that hall until you reach two black doors with crosses on them. The old elevators are just through there." He smiled creepily, and I started walking quickly, just in a hurry to get away from him.

He wasn't kidding when he said it was a tight squeeze. If I were claustrophobic I would have been in a heap of trouble down here. The black stone walls of the corridor were so tight that I could feel it brushing the top of my head, and the sides of both of my arms as I made my way through. The further in I got, the more condensation was built up on the walls, and the air became increasingly cold and moldy smelling. My heart skidded with joy when the passage finally opened up at the end to two separate hallways. There was a large sign in front of me, but the writing on it was another language. It looked a little like Latin, but I hadn't ever been very good in my language studies classes. That had been Greer's specialty. 

I lingered in that little opening, nothing but a single lightbulb hanging over my head that flickered every few seconds, trying to decipher the sign to no avail. Taking the left seemed to be going down an even darker path, whereas the right seemed a little safer and less creepy. My head and my body were at odds on which way to go, but finally my head won out, convincing my body that that nervousness I was feeling was just from being lost, nothing more.

I followed the hallway to the left for a long time. I could finally see a dim red light hanging above a set of black doors at the end of the hallway, but as I looked around I moved slower and slower. The walls and ground were covered in...scratches? They were scraped up with what looked to me like nail marks.

I stopped dead in my tracks, my heart racing. "Guards!" I called, but no one came running. I started to walk the other direction, back up the hallway I'd come from, but then I stopped again. I closed my eyes, counting to ten and tried to convince myself that I was being silly. The man told me that this is the old section, that's probably why it's so scary and run down. Just for the hell of it, I called the guards one last time, again no response, so I started back towards the doors again.