Edgar told him that he and the others were once compelled by a dream much like his to find a clay pot and carry it to the cathedral.  Clearly one of these was that very pot.

But which one?

With time ticking away, Eric walked around the room, examining the eleven pots, trying to determine which one was the one he came all this way to find.  He was sure that opening the wrong one would put a quick and disappointing end to this long day.  Yet he had no idea how he was supposed to choose the correct one.

He found himself reminded of the third Indiana Jones movie, in which Harrison Ford found himself forced to choose the Holy Grail from a large display of various goblets.  There were considerably fewer pots to choose from here, but picking a wrong one would likely be just as disastrous for him as it was for that movie’s villain.

And he wasn’t half as smart or suave as Indie.

Think…

There had to be something here to tell him which one was the right one.

They weren’t identical.  Not by any means.  One was green.  Another was considerably larger than the others.  A third had a chipped rim.  Two of them had odd patterns painted on them.  A sixth was smaller than the rest.  A seventh had a red ribbon tied around it.  Another had a black lid.  He studied each of them as he made his way around the room.  Here was one that was tall and skinny and stopped with an old cork.  The next looked dirty and crusty.  The last one had a rope tied to it for a handle.

Which one?

He recalled the lake.  The two boats.  Karen’s words of wisdom.  There was always a way.  He just had to find it.

Isabelle told him the same thing.  She said she’d discovered a thread of order in the universe since escaping Altrusk.

He had to believe.

He promised he would believe.

He closed his eyes and tried to recall what Edgar told him.  He said there were six of them who arrived in that hayfield.  One died along the way.  Ben.  They carried a clay pot all the way to the cathedral and then the five survivors spent the rest of their lives in the fissure to ensure it stayed there.

That was all he said.

How was it, Eric suddenly wondered, that the five of them came here and survived to see another forty or fifty years?  According to Father Billy, everyone who entered the cathedral remained there, never to be seen again.

He couldn’t think about that now.  Time was still ticking.  Eric circled the room again, looking at each pot, examining it, trying to remember something.  There must be something somewhere…

Taylor told him how to stop the golems.  But he never said anything helpful about the cathedral.  Grant educated him on the importance of sticking to the path.  Not one of them told him anything significant about the cathedral itself.

Annette hadn’t told him much of anything at all.  She was far too lost in her own grief to have been any real help.

Again, he circled the room.

The foggy man wouldn’t stay lost forever.  And he was probably going to be pissed about losing him.

He had to calm down.  He had to think.

Father Billy had only told him to stay away from the cathedral.  Isabelle only knew what the other people trapped in Altrusk’s house knew.  The gas station attendant revealed plenty, but none of it helped him determine which of these clay pots was the one delivered by Edgar and company nearly a century ago.

The answer had to be with the ghosts.  They were the ones who brought it.

He tried to recall the dream, but he had only stood there in the dream much as he was now, staring at the pots, trying to decide which one he should open.

This was getting him nowhere.

And he desperately needed to hurry.

He closed his eyes and tried to clear his head.

At the same time, he recalled doing the same in his dream.  He recalled thinking about everything that had happened to him.  Every detail.  Every conversation.

It was difficult to think down here.  The pressure was distracting.  He wanted to leave.

His mind kept turning back to Annette for some reason, but she was the one who told him the least about what he was doing here.  She was too busy talking about her dead father and the husband she pretended wasn’t also long dead and gone.

Was that a noise he heard outside the door?  The sound of someone approaching?

No.

But he didn’t have much longer.

Hurry!

Again, he circled the room, practically darting from one to the next.

Which one was it?

Was it the tall one?  The green one?  The black lid?

Come on!

The big one?  The red ribbon?

Eric stopped, his breath momentarily stolen.

Suddenly it occurred to him…

Annette…

Something she said between telling him about her dead father and that it was a long way to the cathedral.  He’d nearly forgotten.  It seemed so unimportant at the time.

“I gave him a red ribbon before he went in.  That’s good luck.  Did you know that?”

Eric stared at the clay pot with the red ribbon tied around it.

He recalled something else that Edgar told him as well.  While talking about Annette’s tragic state, he said, “She couldn’t take losing someone again.”

He thought Edgar had been referring to the father Annette told him about, but now he realized that there had been another tragedy in her life.  There was a third man she’d loved and lost.

He wondered before why it was that Father Billy was so sure no one had ever entered the labyrinth and lived to tell about it when Edgar claimed to have gone there with five others and then lived to a ripe old age.  Now he knew the answer.

Edgar never told him how Ben died.

And because he didn’t care to think more than necessary about death on this journey, Eric hadn’t asked.

But now he knew.

Only Ben entered the cathedral with the clay pot.

And he never came back out.

“I gave him a red ribbon before he went in.  That’s good luck.”

He thought she was still talking about Ethan.  But she was giving him the most important message of all.  She didn’t give the ribbon to Ethan before he went in the hospital.  She gave it to Ben.  Before he went in the cathedral.

And Ben left it tied around the clay pot.

His heart broke a little for Annette.

Yet he had no time to dwell on her tragedy.

He stared at the pot with the red ribbon.  He was finally here.  He was at the end of his journey.  The secrets were at last about to be revealed to him.

He reached out and grasped the lid.

In his dream, he recalled doing the same thing.  Dream Eric had taken longer to piece it all together, but he got it in the end.  And now the final memories of that dream were coming back to him at last.

He hesitated.  He closed his eyes.  He made himself breathe.

He remembered lifting the lid…

And then he remembered his death.

Chapter Thirty-One

Eric let go of the lid as terrible images returned from the depths of his memories and filled his mind with unimaginable horrors.

The dream that had once been his guide became the worst kind of nightmare he had ever experienced.  Something awful reached out of the pot.  It seized his hand and raced up his arm.  Agony shot up to his shoulder and neck to his head and then enveloped his whole body.

Within seconds, he was alive with relentless, searing pain from head to foot.  It consumed him.  The memory was so perfect that he could actually feel it.  His flesh crackled.  His nerves were on fire.  It felt like his bones were melting.

But it was more than mere physical pain.  He felt himself being torn apart emotionally and mentally.  Terrible things, indescribable things, filled his brain, shredding his very sanity.

Screaming in unspeakable agony, his final thought had for some reason been, Don’t open the pot!