35

We found ourselves in a room that was somehow vast and claustrophobic.

Vast, because the far wall-and the only other door-stretched away from us like a hallway in a bad dream. The kind that keeps extending the more you run.

Claustrophobic, because the side walls and low ceiling loomed in on us. Every few feet I saw narrow slots that ran from the floor up the side walls and across the ceiling. There were elegant sconces with candles on the walls. Miles pulled out his Zippo and lit a few.

To my left, I noticed a bizarre mosaic on the wall, made out of tiny slick tiles. It traced the form of a demon, a grotesque creature with massive lips and hands, and an odd phallus that hung limp.

Miles walked up next to me.

“Ugly little fucker,” he said.

Sarah was across from us, examining a mural on the opposite wall. This one resembled a subway map but with no stops labeled. She studied the branching paths.

I put my hand on the demon and let my fingers trace over the tiles.

“What is it?” I asked him.

“It’s a totem of some kind. A god from some ancient religion.”

“Which one? What does it mean?”

Miles squinted his eyes.

“South American, maybe. Or Pacific Islander… Looks like one of those Easter Island heads.”

“You guys have no idea what you’re talking about,” a voice said from behind us. It was Sarah. She was laughing.

She started walking toward us, and her foot came down on a floorboard that sank inward with a series of sickening clicks, like an old man cracking his knuckles. Sarah’s head jerked up at us. Her eyes were wide.

“What did I just do?” she asked.

Before we could guess, there was a grinding noise from within the walls. My fingers were still on the tiles. I felt a vibration pass in a wave under my hand. There was a tremendous noise, like a machine rumbling to life, and then there was a release-the noise a carnival ride makes after it’s raised you up ten stories and the claws suddenly spring open.

We heard a screaming metallic cry. It started slow and then accelerated, rising in pitch. Then there was a flash of mirror and the blade-as tall and wide as a man-came tearing out of the slot with blinding speed. It arced down, sliced a hair above the floor in the center of the room, then disappeared into the slot on the far wall. The screaming slowed, then stopped.

Then it built up again, and a moment later the blade tore back across the room, straining its cable like the pendulum of an asylum clock.

“Oh, shit,” Sarah said.

The blade swung back and forth at the far end of the room, in front of the lone door.

“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s okay. It’s not that fast. We can time it.”

“Time it wrong, and you’re salami,” Miles offered.

Every pass of the blade made a palpable whomp, a pulse of wind that reached us. I counted from the time it disappeared into the slot until it reappeared and ripped across our path. At least three seconds. No problem.

“We can make it.”

No sooner had I spoken, than the noise roared louder and a second flash of silver released from another slot in the wall-this one about a foot closer to us. Now two pendulums were slicing past each other, out of phase.

“Shit.”

I counted again. They were off, but the cycles were steady-I could hear the motors grinding above. The noise was terrible, and the smell of burnt oil was filling the room. But there was a moment of opportunity, once the blades crossed paths. One or two seconds, but long enough. If we took turns, we could make it, one by one. We just had to be patient.

I started to say so when the third blade fell, a foot in front of the second and closer to us. It came tearing out and cut a lunar path across the room.

Now three blades were crossing; it was getting harder to see the door behind them. The cables whined and the motors squealed like animals being branded.

“I no longer think we can make it,” I announced.

“That,” Miles said, staring at the walls, “really isn’t the issue anymore.”

I saw what he was looking at.

The blades came out of slots, all about a foot apart. I hadn’t paid attention before, but the slots continued from the far end of the room, where the blades were swinging-all the way to us. In fact, there were only six inches between the door we came through and the first slot. Miles was more than six inches thick. So was I. Maybe Sarah could suck in, but then what? Spend infinity watching a giant pendulum slice past your nose? Plus or minus a few toenails?

“Maybe there’s just three,” I said hopefully.

I barely got the words out before hiss, clank, release and a fourth monstrosity whomped across the room.

That broke the spell.

Miles grabbed the doorknob behind us and twisted it frantically. Locked. He put all his weight into it. Nothing. He rammed his massive form into the door. It didn’t even buckle.

“This,” he shouted, poking a thick finger into my chest, “is the last time I listen to you!”

Miles kept slamming his shoulder into the door. I turned to Sarah. Her eyes were locked on the colossal blades, six of them now, mesmerizing. She was paralyzed. This wasn’t a room designed to kill. This was a room designed to make you lose your mind. The killing was an afterthought. Another blade dropped, and this time I really felt it-my hair blasted in the breeze.

I grabbed her shoulders and shook her. I shouted her name, but it was hard to hear over the roar. It sounded like a trash compactor closing in on thousands of glass bottles. I pulled her back. Her feet dragged like she was unconscious. She looked at me blankly. She looked at the blades and started screaming.

I had lost count of them. I yelled at Miles-he was getting nowhere with the door but probably breaking his shoulder.

I saw the image of the demon, grinning at me with those big lips.

Sarah knew something about the demon. She said so.

“Sarah!” I yelled, trying to get her to hear me over the machines. “Sarah, you said it wasn’t a totem…”

She blinked at me. She shook her head like she couldn’t hear me.

“You said we didn’t know what we were talking about… What is it?”

I turned her toward the mosaic.

“Please, we need to do something.”

“I don’t know…”

“You do. I need you to focus. Come on.”

The sound roared and a blade fell so close to us that Miles had to jerk us backward with his massive arms.

“We are going to die,” I yelled at her.

That did it. Sarah nodded. Her eyes seemed to clear.

“It’s not a demon,” she said. “It’s a homunculus.”

Miles roared. “Demon, homunculus, it’s the same thing!” He looked at me. “The alchemists made life from scratch. They called them homunculi.”

“No,” Sarah said, shaking her head vigorously. She had to shout over the machines. “Listen to me. Not alchemy. Biology.”

“There’s no time,” I said. “Can you stop this or not?”

“I don’t know,” Sarah said. “But I know what he is.”

She pointed at the demon.

“Talk fast,” I pleaded.

“He… it… is a map. Of the nervous system. It shows where our nerves are. The more nerves, the bigger you draw the body part.”

“What?”

“From neurology… the hands, the lips, the genitals… that’s where we have the most nerves. That’s why they look big in the picture. It’s a symbol.”

“That ugly little shit is us?” Miles shouted.

“So what’s that?” I asked, pointing to the subway map.

“I knew I’d seen it before,” Sarah said. “It’s the brachial plexus.”

“The what?”

“A map of the nerves in our shoulders and arms. Look. The median nerve. The radial nerve. The ulnar nerve.”

We were running out of space. The door was impossible to see across the room. We had feet left to go.