Chapter 43: Into the Labyrinth

Gabriel wakes with a start. He looks around and all the girls seem to be there except Molly, she is missing. Gabriel gets up and does a quick look around the room, other than Molly not being there, nothing seems disturbed. He reaches for the door that is still locked; he fills with panic and rage and breaks the doors open. There is a loud noise, but nobody wakes up. Gabriel goes through the doors and he is in a passageway lined with ivy on both sides. It goes for as far as he can see. The door slams shut behind him. He goes back through it, but the girls and the room are gone, just more passages of Ivy covered walls. He looks up and the sky is orange, black and blue with white clouds, and it is doing the time-elapsed thing again. Gabriel turns and then turns again and even the doors are gone, he is standing alone in the labyrinth.

“Molly!”

Molly is asleep with the arms of her knight holding her lovingly and protectively. She stirs and smiles and turns to look at him, but all she sees is ivy. She blinks a few times thinking this is a dream, but it is not, she is now alone in the labyrinth.

“Gabriel.”

“Think man think!” He looks both ways and all he sees is endless ivy. “Molly! MOLLY!! Damn it! Come on just pick a direction and go.” Just as he is about to start double-timing it he sees a glittering object up ahead of him.

He runs up to it and it is a golden ticket with something written on it. “What once was will be again.” He takes it as a good sign. He turns in the opposite direction he saw the ticket from and goes.

“Come on Molly, Gabriel has trained you for this. Even now he is looking for you. Gabriel! GABRIEL!! Damn it! Oh, sorry,” then she looks around and laughs because Gabriel is not there to chastise her.

She chooses left because they are both left-handed and she starts to go at a brisk walk. She comes to a golden ticket stuck in the ivy. “All actions are judged, even inaction.”

Gabriel comes up to a four-way intersection. Just down each isle is a golden ticket. One reads, “Works alone is not enough.” Another reads, “In the beginning was the Word.” Another reads, “Is love enough?” And yet another reads, “Faith leads the way.” Gabriel doesn’t even hesitate because he knows works without love is worthless and when it comes to his babygirl Molly, love is definitely enough. He goes that way.

Molly comes to a five-way intersection. Just as with Gabriel just inside each passageway isle is a golden ticket. The fact that the intersection is laid out in a pentagram isn’t filling Molly with confidence, but she reads them one by one. Then she remembers Gabriel telling her that the pentagram was actually once a positive connection: she will have to remember to ask him about that later. Molly’s trust in the Lord is absolute so she expects to be reunited with her knight soon.

The golden tickets are numbered with their clue as follows: One, “In the flesh.” Two reads, “In the spirit.” Three reads, “Two by two.” Four reads, “Is he really what you seek?” And finally the fifth one reads, “God leads the way.” Molly thinks about it for a second and then she puts them altogether and tears them up and throws them in the air. She closes her eyes, spins a few times, and then Molly opens her heart and links her spirit with Gabriel’s. She chooses the one that feels right. Coincidently that was the one that read ‘In the spirit’.

Next Gabriel comes up to a five-way intersection. The Labyrinth seems to defy the laws of physics. He stops and starts reaching for the nearest ticket, but stops. He kneels and the beast thinks he has him defeated and then he says, “Amen.” The beast roars loudly.

Molly and Gabriel hear it just as if it is right in front of them. Molly remembers one of Gabriel’s lessons where he said, “Go towards the gunfire. We go forward with the Lord.”

Gabriel’s rationalization isn’t as poetic. He figures he can either find Molly or find the beast and defeat it, and then Molly will be safe either way. Gabriel puts his head down and whispers, “I’m coming babygirl.”

“Gabriel? Gabriel, was that you?” She stops and kneels and prays one of Gabriel’s older prayers, one he used to say all the time before they met, ‘Please, my Lord, link us in light.’

Molly hears crunching foot steps and gets excited and then the Minotaur flashes by heading in another direction, not paying attention to Molly. It is very big. He seems to be in a hurry. Molly rushes after him, but keeps her distance.

Molly pokes her head around a corner and sees that the Minotaur has stopped and is sniffing the air. He turns quickly in Molly’s direction, but then from still far away they both hear, “Molly! Molly!”

Molly wants to yell out, but she doesn’t. The Minotaur makes a tactical choice and chooses a different tunnel than the one it seemed Gabriel had called from. “Gabriel,” she whispers.

“Molly, is that you? Hi, babygirl, are you okay?”

“Yeah, but the Minotaur heard you call out and is coming for you.” They are now hearing all this in their heads.

“From what direction?”

“He seemed to go to the tunnel just to the left of the one it seemed you called from.”

“He’s trying to outflank me. I’m going to a full run in hopes of getting past him before he cuts over. What do you sense?”

Molly goes into a trance-like state and says, “It appears God is here for he answered my prayer to link us in light.”

“Oh, I should have thought of that.” Gabriel starts to wonder if maybe they have counted on each other too much and taken away from their Godly connection. “Babygirl?”

“Yeah.”

“I think we are being punished because we turn to each other so much, we often look past our Lord; after all he is a jealous God.”

“I was just thinking that He separated us to prove to each of us that we can go forward without the other as long as we have Him.”

Gabriel stops running and thinks for a second, “I don’t like that, but I get it. Maybe something is coming where we will have to turn to Him to find the other.”

“You mean like now?”

“No, I’m thinking bigger, like maybe death.”

That shakes Molly to her core, “No, Gabriel, don’t say that.”

“Actually, honey, I think it is a good thing in that we will find each other after.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want it to end now.”