Chapter 4: The Ride of Agony

Chapter 4: The Ride of Agony

The Furby’s synthesized laughter, a sound of pure, mocking malice, followed Leo as he turned his back on the illusion. It burrowed into his skull, a tinny ghost that promised to haunt him long after the false scent of popcorn and sugar had faded. “What will you trade?” the voice echoed in his mind. He had nothing left. Nothing but the shriveled finger and the smooth stone in his pocket, and the all-consuming rage that was the only fuel he had left.

He plunged back into the oppressive tunnels. The rock walls were cold and damp, weeping a thin, greasy fluid that made the footing treacherous. The air was heavy, stale, and silent, the absence of the Wyrm’s pursuit offering no comfort, only a different kind of dread. Now, the Labyrinth was playing with him, a cat with a half-dead mouse. It had shown him hope only to reveal it as a meticulously crafted lie.

Thirst was a physical pain, a layer of sandpaper lining his throat. Hunger was a hollow, aching cramp deep in his belly. The gash on his back from the Wyrm's claws burned with a dull, insistent fire. He stumbled on, driven by a momentum that was more memory than conscious will. One foot in front of the other. Survive. Find Fulcrum. The mantra was frayed, the words losing their meaning, but it was all he had.

Hours bled into one another. He navigated by instinct, choosing tunnels that seemed to slope downward, following a faint, almost imperceptible draft of air. At one point, he collapsed, his body finally refusing to obey. He lay on the cold stone, his cheek pressed to the gritty floor, and slipped into a delirious haze. The faces from the Hall of Whispering Glass swam in the darkness behind his eyelids. “You left us, Sergeant.” “Why didn’t you turn around, Leo?” He saw his mother’s face, contorted in terror, and the shadow of the man in the top hat consuming everything.

He didn’t know how long he was out. A minute? A day? He was roused by a growing ache in his bones from the cold stone, a signal from his body that to stop moving was to die. With a groan that was more animal than human, he pushed himself to his hands and knees, then staggered to his feet.

His flashlight beam was weaker now, the yellow light dim and sputtering. He pressed on, a ghost haunting the veins of the earth, until the narrow tunnel suddenly opened into a cavern so vast his dying light could not find its walls. The space was immense, cavernous, and held the dead silence of a cathedral.

In the center of the vast, flat floor stood a single, monolithic structure. A carousel.

Even in the gloom, he could see it was a derelict masterpiece of rot and ruin. The ornate, gilded panels were peeling, the once-vibrant paint faded to ghostly pastels. Rust bloomed like a disease across every metal surface. It was a monument to dead joy, a perfect centerpiece for Fulcrum’s kingdom of despair.

This was it. The end of the line. He had no more strength to run, no will to fight. He stumbled toward the skeletal ride, his legs giving out twenty feet from its base. He collapsed into the thick dust, his pack digging into the raw wounds on his back. His flashlight rolled from his numb fingers, its weak beam casting a long, lonely finger of light across the floor before flickering and dying, plunging him into absolute blackness. Exhaustion, final and total, claimed him.

He awoke to music.

It was a calliope, but the sound was hideously wrong. The melody was slow, ponderous, and weeping, each note sour and discordant. It wasn’t the cheerful tune of a summer fair; it was a funeral dirge. A lament for the damned played on the instrument of childhood joy.

A groan of protesting metal accompanied the music, a rhythmic, agonizing creak. Leo forced his eyes open. The cavern was no longer dark. A sickly, greenish-white light, the color of phosphorescent bone, was emanating from the carousel itself. It was moving. The entire structure was rotating in a slow, majestic, and utterly horrifying circle.

He pushed himself up on his elbows, every muscle screaming. His heart hammered against his ribs. The carousel turned, and he saw that it was not empty. There were riders.

He squinted, trying to make sense of the shadowy figures sitting upright on the carousel mounts. They were too still, too rigid. As the ride brought a section closer, the putrid light illuminated them. Goats. Their fur was a matted, dirty white. They sat bolt upright, their forehooves—unnaturally long, like bony fingers—gripping the brass poles before them.

And their eyes. As they passed, their heads turned in perfect unison to look at him. Their eyes were not the flat, vacant eyes of livestock. They were intelligent. They were ancient and filled with a cold, contemptuous malice. They watched him not as a curiosity, but as a jailer watches a prisoner.

A wave of nausea and primal fear washed over Leo. The sentient teddy bears had been a prelude. This was the main event.

But as the slow, inexorable dread tightened its grip, his gaze was pulled from the malevolent riders to the mounts they rode. They weren't the prancing, whimsical ponies of a normal carousel. They were something else entirely.

He crawled closer, dragging his broken body through the dust, his mind refusing to accept what his eyes were telling him. He had to be sure. He had to see.

The first mount that came into the dim light was a wooden carving of a man, his body contorted around the rising and falling pole as if impaled upon it. The craftsmanship was exquisite, every taut muscle and corded vein rendered in painstaking detail. The figure's head was thrown back, its face a permanent mask of unbearable agony, the mouth stretched open in a silent, wooden scream.

The carousel creaked on. The next mount was a woman, her hair carved to look like a nest of writhing snakes, her hands clawing at her own face, her eyes wide with a terror that transcended the inanimate wood. Each figure was unique, a different soul captured at the peak of their private hell, their torment immortalized as a plaything for demonic goats. This wasn't a ride. It was a trophy case.

Leo felt the last of his sanity begin to crumble. This was Fulcrum’s art, his grand collection of despair. The mirrors had shown him ghosts; this was the flesh, or the wood, of it.

The funeral dirge played on, its sour notes scraping at his soul. Another figure was rotating slowly into view. It was a man, broad-shouldered, his form radiating a strength that even the agonizing posture could not completely erase. There was something familiar about the strong line of his jaw, the stubborn set of his brow beneath the carved, sweat-slicked hair.

Leo’s breath hitched. His heart stopped.

No. It was a trick. Another illusion. Like the concession stand. Like the mirrors. Fulcrum was just using his memories again, weaponizing his past.

He scrambled forward, closing the remaining distance until he was at the very edge of the moving platform. The figure rose and fell in front of him, its wooden face passing in and out of the strongest part of the sickly light. The details were undeniable, seared into his memory from a thousand old photographs and a lifetime of yearning. The small scar above the left eyebrow from a fishing accident. The slightly crooked nose from a fight in his youth.

The wooden eyes, wide and staring, were filled with a carved pain that was so real, so profound, it seemed to look right through him. As the effigy reached the lowest point of its orbit, coming level with him, it was as if he was looking at a photograph from the worst moment of his father’s life. A moment that had apparently never ended.

The world dissolved into a silent roar. The last bastion of his composure, the iron wall he had built around his heart for thirty years, shattered into dust.

It was the face of his father.