Labyrinth - Extract

Amanda Llwyd
Oct 21
4 min read

by A G Riddle

From the bestselling author of Lost in Time and Quantum Radio comes a new mind-bending thriller: a group of strangers with tinnitus begins seeing numbers - numbers they soon realize are a code that will change the world.

Prologue

The first time I saw the numbers was at my wife’s funeral.

I remember looking at those fourteen digits carved in stone and thinking that I was hallucinating (and possibly losing my mind).

I was wrong about that. And a few other things.

Back then, I didn’t know what the numbers meant. I didn’t realize how much they would change my life.

And soon after, the world.

There are three things that stick out in my mind about that day: the rain, the ringing, and the numbers. The rain began as a drizzle. I sat under a tent by the graveside, listening to the pastor’s voice echo across the cemetery. Somewhere along the way, the clouds coalesced and drops started to fall. By the time he finished speaking, the rain was a steady pitter-patter on the canvas above me, a fingernail tapping a tabletop, silently saying, “We’re waiting.” And they were waiting for me.

I rose from the folding metal chair, but I didn’t get far. My daughter, who was sitting beside me, reached up and grabbed me and held tight - tighter than I ever thought a six-year-old child could. I leaned over and kissed the top of her head, pried myself loose, and stepped out into the rain.

My feet sank in the soggy grass, and I shouldn’t have, but I looked over at the casket and that hole in the ground and my life. The ringing started then. I’ve had tinnitus for years. Usually, what I hear is a constant whine, like a tea kettle about to boil. That day, the ringing in my ears was different. Instead of the shrill whine, I heard:

Clang.

I remember thinking that it sounded like an unseen hand had grabbed three rocks, dropped them in a tin can, and started shaking it. I kept walking, and that hand kept rattling those rocks, getting louder with every step. My face was soaked by the time I reached the cover of the pastor’s umbrella, but I didn’t wipe the rain away. I reached into my pocket and unfolded the page that held the eulogy. I knew every word by heart. I’d rewritten it a hundred times.

But the sheet gave me something to do with my hands. The rocks rattled in my ears, and the rain fell harder, and I told my family and friends that my wife had helped me rebuild my life when I was broken. And that my greatest regret was that I couldn’t help her when she was sick. Every word seemed to annoy that unseen hand. It shook the can harder, clanging the rocks like it was taunting me. In the battle that is my hearing, it won. Halfway through the eulogy, I stopped hearing my own voice. All I heard was that abrasive rattling. I kept going.

It kept shaking harder, the clanging ratcheting higher. I getting ready to read the last paragraph, and wondering if people could still hear me, when I looked down at the page in my hand and realized that the wind had carried a few raindrops past the umbrella. Ink ran like blood from a dozen small cuts. The unseen hand shook the rocks even harder, and there was a pop, as if it had slammed the can down on a table.

For a few seconds, the world was utterly silent. After the mind-numbing rattling, the void that followed was strange and disorienting. It felt like the seconds after that roadside bomb went off in Afghanistan. And like then, my world had changed in the blink of an eye. Over there, the bomb mangled the Humvee I had been driving and killed two of my fellow Marines. It took one of my legs.

In the cemetery that day, what the deafening explosion claimed was time. I knew time had passed because the page in my hand was soaked. The ink ran together in a massive blob.

I admit, in that moment, a cold shiver of fear went through my body. It was like realizing that the unseen hand shaking the rocks had a power over me that I didn’t understand. It could take time from me. I had learned the hard way that time was life’s most precious currency.

I stared at the wilted page and heard the silence, and it was as if that unseen hand and I were facing off. Like it was waiting for me, daring me to start up again.

I made my decision.

I looked up at the mourners under the canvas tents, at the confused looks and the heads nodding, and I resumed speaking. The can swirled, and the rocks began to clang, and I said the words my wife deserved. When I was done, the rattling was in full rage. But that was fine with me, because I had finished what I had to do.

I felt the pastor’s hand on my shoulder, and I looked over at my wife’s tombstone. I read her name and the epitaph, and when I got to the dates of her birth and death, the rattling went hypersonic. The screech pushed against reality, and I thought the hand was going to slam the can down again and take more time, but it didn’t.

What happened was that the dates carved in stone changed.

They morphed into:

12122518914208

And when I read that peculiar sequence of numbers, the clanging stopped. And the only thing I heard was raindrops falling on the pastor’s umbrella.

Thanks to Anne Cater - @RandomTTours, A G Riddle @Riddlist and Head of Zeus @HoZ_Books for the opportunity to take part!