Ruled By Fear by C. Cervi Page A

and lighting them along the way.
         “Why would they lock us in here?” Keith asked after a while.
         “I’ve been wondering that myself,” Aaron answered.  “The only thing I can come up with is that it’s another form of punishment.  Probably because we left the group.”
         Keith huffed loudly beside him.
         “Things sure would be easier if they handed out a rule book when we got here,” he said.
         Aaron chuckled softly.
         “I can think of quite a few things that would make being here easier,” he answered.
         “Yeah,” Keith said, “like for starters, not being here.”
         Aaron stopped walking and turned to face his brother.  Taking him gently by the shoulders, he turned him so that he could see his face.  Despite Keith’s sarcasm, he could see the shadows of fear flickering in his eyes.
         “Keith,” he said, “we are going to get out of here.  You have to believe that.”
         “I know,” Keith whispered, hanging his head.  “It’s just that everyone here seems so . . . well, like they’ve just given up.  Like it’s hopeless,” he finished.
         “That’s exactly the problem,” Aaron said.  “They have given up.  They’ve stopped asking questions and are letting their fear control them.  We aren’t going to do that.”
         Aaron turned then and continued down the tunnel with Keith close behind.
         “Aaron,” Keith asked cautiously, “when we leave here, we’ll take Emily and Philip with us, right?”
         “When we leave here, I intend to take everyone with us,” Aaron stated emphatically.
         As he finished speaking, the two found themselves standing before the small chamber they had followed the footprints into earlier.
         “We’ll start getting some answers right here,” Aaron said.
         Aaron and Keith searched for over an hour for any sign of a door or hidden latch, but without any success.
         “I’m getting pretty tired,” Keith said after a while.  “Maybe we should rest for a bit?”
         Aaron nodded and the two settled on the ground, their backs resting against the hard wall.
         Keith was asleep within moments and Aaron shook his head as he watched him.  His youngest brother had always had the ability to fall asleep just about anywhere.  Aaron thought back to the time when Keith had been about four years old.   They had been playing hide-and-seek and Keith had hidden inside a nearly empty pickle barrel in the store room, and fallen asleep.  Aaron had searched frantically for almost two hours before the sleepy head poked out of the barrel, munching on pickles and asking what had taken him so long.  Keith had smelled like pickles for days after that.
         Aaron wasn’t sure when he’d fallen asleep or for how long when the sound of distant voices pulled him back into consciousness.  He jerked awake and was relieved to see Keith still sound asleep beside him.
         He strained to listen and could just barely make out the sound of whispering.  He glanced at Keith one last time and then, taking a candle from the wall, left in search of the voices.  He slowly walked down one of the tunnels until he came to a fork.  As he listened carefully, the whispering seemed to be louder in the tunnel to the left, and he continued to follow the sounds.  He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being deliberately led somewhere, and holding his candle near the ground, he was confused by the lack of footprints.
         Whoever it is I’m following must be floating.
         Aaron squinted to see up ahead.  The tunnel he was in eventually led him into another chamber.  He looked down as he felt the rocky, dirt floor give way to hard, cold stone beneath his feet. Taking another step inside, the whispering abruptly ceased he glanced around cautiously.
         In the center of the room was a low table made of rough