Aftermath: A Labyrinth of Souls Novel

By Cynthia Ray

Homes have gone missing. Carly and Michael track three of the runaway houses to a place in the backwoods, where unexpected events threaten their lives and their sanity. Trapped in the dark, they are surrounded by a malefic intelligence that compels them to navigate the ever-shifting walls of a subterranean chamber. In order to survive, they must draw on every skill they possess, but unlocking the secret of the labyrinth will require more than they ever imagined possible.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ShadowSpinners Press
• Release date: Jun 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005976286

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am-ebook-cover.jpgCover image for Aftermath : A Labyrinth of Souls Novel

Aftermath

A Labyrinth of Souls Novel

by

Cynthia Ray

Shadow Spinners Press logo and link

Copyright © 2020 Cynthia Ray

All rights reserved,

including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

Cover art by Josephe Vandel.

Book design by Matthew Lowes.

ShadowSpinners Press

shadowspinnerspress.com

Typeset in

Minion Pro by Robert Slimbach

and IM FELL Double Pica by Igino Marini. The Fell Types are digitally reproduced by Igino Marini,

www.iginomarini.com.

Learn more about the Labyrinth of Souls game at

matthewlowes.com/games.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Editor’s Preface

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

AFTERMATH

About the Author

Dedicated to all those lost in the dark, slogging through a personal labyrinth. There is always a way out. Grasp that rope — It is attached to a bucket that goes down into the deep well inside yourself. It is hope, it is strength, it is you.

Acknowledgements

No book would be complete without a grateful acknowledgement of all those behind the scene people without whom any book would not be possible. Thank you to Elizabeth Engstrom, whose passion for teaching and inspiring new writers is a gift. Thank you Christina Lay, editor and visionary. Thank you, Matt Lowes, whose game inspired the series, and whose layout skills are evident here. Thank you to beta readers Sarah Sokol and Cheryl Wilson, whose suggestions and ideas were more than helpful. There are many more whose friendship I value, and who inspire me every day.

Editor’s Preface

Dungeon Solitaire: Labyrinth of Souls is a fantasy game for tarot cards, written by Matthew Lowes and Illustrated by Josephe Vandel. In the game you defeat monsters, disarm traps, open doors, and explore mazes as you delve the depths of a dangerous dungeon. Along the way you collect treasure and magic items, gain skills, and gather companions.

Now ShadowSpinners Press is publishing this and other stand-alone novels inspired by the game. Each Labyrinth of Souls novel features a journey into a unique vision of the underworld.

The Labyrinth of Souls is more than an ancient ruin filled with monsters, trapped treasure, and the lost tombs of bygone kings. It is a manifestation of a mythic underworld, existing at a crossroads between people and cultures, between time and space, between the physical world and the deepest reaches of the psyche. It is a dark mirror held up to human experience, in which you may find your dreams … or your doom. Entrances to this realm can appear in any time period, in any location. There are innumerable reasons why a person may enter, but it is a place antagonistic to those who do, a place where monsters dwell, with obstacles and illusions to waylay adventurers, and whose very walls can be a force of corruption. It is a haunted place, ever at the edge of sanity.

ASHES denote that fire was;

Respect the grayest pile

For the departed creature’s sake

That hovered there awhile.

Fire exists the first in light,

And then consolidates, —

Only the chemist can disclose

Into what carbonates.

—Emily Dickinson

Chapter One

She’s mad

but she’s magic.

There’s no lie

In her fire.

—Charles Bukowski

Cascade foothills 2052

Carly gripped the wheel of the Jeep with sweaty hands as they bounced along over the old gravel road; more of a trail than a road. The car was twenty years older than her, but reliable. She hung on to it because of the built-in coffee maker in the dashboard; after all these years it still made decent espresso.

They hit a rut and she bounced a foot into the air, and back down onto the springs of the well-worn seat. Carly grimaced and tasted dust — her teeth scraping on grit. That was a doozy, but no worse than the others. They’d been a week on the road already. They both looked and smelled like they needed a shower, her back hurt and her patience was gone. She hoped this trip panned out; she needed the money.

She tapped the pocket on her shirt, where she’d stashed her good-luck card. She’d found a deck of cards laying on the ground near the Jeep the day they had left. They’d looked like fortune telling cards, in black and white with strange figures. She thumbed through them and pulled out one that caught her eye; a robed woman holding a staff topped with a half-moon titled, ‘The High Priestess’. That gave her pause; perhaps the Priestess would bless her venture. She’d shrugged and put the card in her shirt pocket.

The corner of another card stuck out from the deck, so she’d pulled it out, too. A huge pot of fire. Well, that was apropos. She put that one in her pocket along with the priestess, then tossed the rest of the deck into her backpack. Maybe it was a silly idea, or maybe it wasn’t. Luck, magic, and fate all seemed tied together until it was hard to tell which was which. She was a rational person, but open to possibilities.

She glanced at the man in the seat next to her; her client, Michael Espinoza. Rivulets of dusty grey sweat flowed over the scars on his brown face and onto his T-shirt.

The left side of his body and face were marked with mottled burn scars; he’d lost the leg and had a prosthesis. He’d told her that his squad had been bombed in the Middle East. He was the sole survivor of the explosion, and had received his injuries trying to pull his buddies out of the fire, but didn’t remember much of it. Lucky him. She remembered every stinking detail of the fire that had killed her mother; the burn scars on her own arms were a constant reminder.

She and Michael had both survived something that should have killed them. She’d sometimes thought she would have been better off if it had. Why did she survive? Why did Michael get to live, but the others didn’t?

When she asked about the tattoos on his arm, Michael had confessed to her he’d seriously considered blowing his head off more than a few times, but the idea of his buddies looking down on him while he shot himself kept him from pulling the trigger. After that he’d had their names tattooed on his right arm, and she’d heard him calling those names at night, in his restless dreams. He dreamed of combat, mortars, fire and death, and apologized for waking her. She had her own dreams.

After another hour of rough driving they crested a steep hill, just before sunset, and looked down on a placid green lake surrounded by Ponderosa pines and scrub. Carly stomped on the brakes and gripped Michael’s arm. Look. I told you I’d find one for you, and see, there are three of them. Three! She pounded the dashboard and bounced in her seat. That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout!

Carly pulled the Jeep to the side of the road, parked it, then grabbed the binoculars that hung from the rear-view mirror. She surveyed the homes, pleased with herself. There, about a half mile before them, at the bottom of the hill, in a large meadow, lay a small gathering of feral SmartHomes. A faded mid-century ranch huddled next to a massive Tudor mansion with an attached three-car garage and off to the side, alone and at the lake’s edge, stood a small and tidy craftsman bungalow.

She could see the wide path of flattened trees and brush that the houses had made as they moved to the field. She’d seen signs and tracks of their movement earlier, but hadn’t been sure, and hadn’t wanted to say anything to Michael until she was certain.

She handed the binoculars to Michael, and said, Well?

He scrutinized the homes. That bungalow looks damn near perfect; not too big, not too small and it looks like it’s in decent shape. That’s the one for me. Nice job, Ms. House Hunter.

She tingled all over at the sound of his deep voice. Every time he spoke, her gut hummed with a happy resonance, which annoyed her. Okay. We should park here and approach them from that side, I think. Let’s not spook them.

Spooking a feral house was kind of like spooking an elephant. They were big, and they moved fast once they got going. She’d heard stories of wild houses that had killed would be claimants, mashing them to death under their movable foundations. Carly suspected most of those stories were made up by other house hunters who wanted to scare away the competition, and keep the field clear for themselves, but why take chances.

But first, let’s make it official. Let’s stake our claim. She got out, opened the