Free The Beholder by Ivan Amberlake

the platform, he managed to tear his gaze off her long enough to do the same. The moment he did, a warm vibration passed through the platform to him, as if it held him there.
    The tunnel stretched for miles ahead. Jason couldn’t help thinking as an interior designer, marveling at what a grand project it all was. What Matt, Debbie, and he had created seemed insignificant.
    “Hold tight, Jason. The speed is tremendous here.”
    “Don’t worry.” He smiled. “I love speed,” Jason said and gripped the platform edge.
    But when the platform started to move, the jerk was so abrupt it almost caught him off guard. Fortunately, the warm connection passing between his hands and the platform held him steady. As they accelerated, his eyes streamed and his hair whipped wildly around his face. They rushed into a mosaic of unearthly lights, merging into a whirlpool of brightness. Just as he became used to the supersonic speed, the platform zoomed downwards, making Jason’s vision go fuzzy. He felt increasingly nauseous and was relieved when the platform started to slow.
    “Are we there?”
    Emily’s amber eyes stared without blinking at a huge, ancient-looking door to their right. She shook her head slowly. “I have a feeling,” she said, “and I don’t like it.”
    She approached the door and pressed one hand to a sphere, one of a number of identical spheres beside each door. The other hand she put on the surface of the door. Her musical voice lowered to indecipherable mumbling, then rose to a mantric incantation that chilled him to the core and left him almost afraid to move.
    The sphere under her hand—as well as all the others—flared suddenly like a sun, banishing darkness so that the walls twinkled like immaculate white marble. As the dazzling light began to fade, Jason’s eye was caught by a flicker of something on the sphere where Emily’s hand had rested: two Es superimposed. Like the W&T seal Jason had seen on the letter in his home. Like the mark on the dead bodies in the articles Debbie had come across.
    Emily’s expression tightened, and she backed away from the door, digging frantically in her pockets.
    “What is it?” he asked, but she didn’t seem to hear his question.
    “Emily?” Jason persisted.
    She stared at him with wild eyes. “I was the last to enter the door of the Hall. I was the one who closed it. Tyler and I had arranged to take you three and meet there. This door,” Emily indicated the nondescript arch, “shows the initials of the one who left the Hall of Refuge the last time.” She shook her head, frowning at the double Es before her. “Tyler, Debbie, and Matt should have arrived long before us. But the door shows my hand.”
    Jason swayed on unsteady knees as she pulled her cell phone from her pocket. She clicked an automatic redial and pressed the phone to her ear, her face set with worry.
    Matt and Debbie were not in the Hall of Refuge. If Pariah had found them, they might already be dead.
     

Chapter 11
     
    Matt snapped from a sound sleep when the house jolted violently. He sat bolt upright, thinking either a wrecking ball had hit the house or someone had driven a car into the wall. When the foundation jerked again, Matt leapt from his bed and threw on his clothes. He found Jason’s room empty, and though he called out a couple of times, his friend was nowhere to be seen.
    The lights flickered then went off, so he had to run downstairs in near darkness. A bloodcurdling scream sent Matt racing to Debbie’s room. They bumped into each other in the corridor, and Matt clutched her hand so as not to lose her in the dark.
    “What’s going on?” she shouted.
    Matt could feel her hand shaking in his. He squeezed it gently. “I have no idea, but we need to get out of here.”
    “Where’s Jason?”
    “Not here!”
    The floorboards rippled and snapped under their feet at another impact, and Matt yanked Debbie out to the street. They ran through blinding light, and though Matt