Maze: The Waking of Grey Grimm

by Tony Bertauski

  The needle’s kiss.

  His awareness was yanked from his body like a log chain ripping a tree from the earth. He dreamed a dream and for the thousandth time felt sand beneath his toes, salt on his cheeks. The laptop was hardly enough to support the alternate reality he craved—he couldn’t walk around, couldn’t explore—but he could sit on the dune. And that was enough.

  The dragon would sleep for a little while.

  He was a victim of greed and the long shadow of abuse. Hunter couldn’t trust his thoughts and memories, and perhaps that was the deepest wound struck by the old men. That lash separated him from his own self. Now he lived for the needle to survive. What choice was there?

  If there was a way to slay the dragon, he would pay the price. If Dova could do so, he was powerless to stop her. Foreverland wasn’t of this world. And he lived his entire life as if he belonged there, not in this life, not in this skin. He would pay any price to get off this wheel.

  That scared him more than anything.

  27

  Hunter

  After the Punch

  THE OLD WOMAN WAS IN the office.

  Hunter quivered with déjà vu. She had been there on the day he arrived, sitting in the detective’s office, and now she was there again. And Freddy wasn’t.

  His phone buzzed. Who is this?

  It had been a while since he’d gotten one of these cryptic texts from the same number he’d blocked a dozen times. How is this prick doing it? The phone number seemed familiar. There were a lot of things he didn’t care about anymore. That number was one of them, familiar or not.

  Your mother, he typed back.

  “Can I help you?” a young officer asked. He was handsome, hair as black as his pupils. His shirt was tucked in, belt buckle shiny and Gutierrez was on the ID around his neck.

  “I have a meeting with the detective,” Hunter said.

  “He got called out, be back in an hour. He expecting you?”

  Hunter had spoken with Freddy on the phone, told him he was still in town and had a few more questions. Freddy wasn’t thrilled, sighing long and hard into a stretch of silence before agreeing to meet with him.

  Hunter had moved to a hotel on the other side of the city and checked in under an assumed name. No one would find him. Not his employer, and not Dova. He needed to get his head right, get control of the situation like he’d done for the last fifty years. But the stent was beginning to ache. He was using every day now. Something had to change and he didn’t want it to be Dova’s people.

  “You can wait,” Gutierrez said, “or leave a message up front; he’ll call you back.”

  If Hunter went back to the hotel, he’d go facedown. At least outside, he broke the ritual of pulling the drapes closed and indulging.

  “I’ll wait.”

  Hunter remained standing, briefcase over his shoulder, looking much the same as he did the first day he arrived. And she was there.

  He’d seen the old woman before, and not just in Freddy’s office. The more he thought about it, she was at 511 when he first met Dova. And she was on the veranda at the lake house while Dova smoked a clove cigarette.

  She’s following me. He didn’t expect an old woman to spy on him, to find him at the hotel, watch him eat breakfast, learn where he was going. She had to be working for Dova.

  She always gets there first. How does she know where I’m going?

  He sat on the corner of an empty desk, arms crossed. Folders were spread over a keyboard with papers spilling out. One was labeled Foreverland. The cops were doing research. Why would they have information sitting out like that?

  They’re all watching.

  He realized the absurdity of that paranoid thought. There must’ve been more than ten thousand old women with white hair in the city. And everyone knew about Foreverland. But he was looking for a reason to explain this city and what was happening to him. Everything had fallen apart since arriving.

  It was the same report on Foreverland: the advanced technology, the sophisticated network, the kidnappings. They’d been printed right off the Internet. A list of victims was paper clipped to one of the folders. It was long and alphabetized. Hunter pushed the other pages around, expecting to see his photo or name, a background check or something. There were plenty of photos, but none of them were him. His name wasn’t even on the list of victims.

  “Weren’t you here a ways back?”

  Hunter had been caught reading the file, but Gutierrez didn’t seem to notice.

  “FBI, right?” he said. “Looking for the Grimm woman. Sunny Grimm, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You find her?”

  Hunter shook his head.

  “The city has her now,” Gutierrez said. “Stay here long enough and you learn that. People come for the bright lights and just melt away.”

  “I didn’t realize giving up on a missing person was police procedure.”

  “I get it.” He nodded along. “You think we don’t care, right? But hang around, you’ll see. People are going to do what they want; you can’t stop them. Some, they don’t want to be saved. That’s why they come to the city.”

  “To melt away?”

  “You got it.”

  “So just let the Maze have them.”

  Gutierrez bristled at first. “You mean the Grimm boy?”

  “Him, others. Whomever. You don’t care if they punch a needle; that’s their choice, right?”

  “You’ve been here, what, six months?”

  Months? Gutierrez waited for an answer. Hunter didn’t have one. It was a strange place to be, not knowing how much time had passed.

  “City’s an evil bitch.” Gutierrez laughed, genuinely laughed like a joke that struck him dead center. “Once you know that, you can live with it. You fight her and you melt away like the Grimm boy.” He pretended to perform a magic trick. Where did the quarter go?

  “Look the other way, is that it?” Hunter said.

  “Don’t piss the bitch off and maybe you’ll get out.”

  Hunter reached into his briefcase. Fingers on the folded piece of paper, he hesitated. Gutierrez stood quickly. Maybe he thought he was reaching for a weapon. Hunter pulled the folded piece of paper out slowly, no quick movements. He held it like a badge. Once a thick, off-white card, it had been cut and folded in a dozen directions, the black lines on the back matching up to form a piecemeal ransom note.

  The Maze symbol.

  Gutierrez took the makeshift origami. He grinned at first, looking around, considered showing it to someone, but the office was relatively empty. He laughed, shaking his head.

  “Go down to the corner and get one of those street performers to fold you a miniature flamingo out of a napkin.” He held the symbol like a flashcard. “If all you look for is the Maze, all you see is the Maze.”

  “But if you don’t look,” Hunter said, “you won’t find it.”

  “Can I keep this?”

  “Get your own.” Hunter snatched it back. “There’s a stack of them at 511.”

  “Okay. Well, good luck. Don’t make yourself crazy.”

  “Once I’m gone, another fed will come. He’ll be in here asking the same questions, looking in the dark and rainy piss-poor corners of the bitch you’re so fond of feeding.”

  “Oh, I know. There’s always another one and he’ll find the same as you.” Gutierrez walked off. “Same as you, brother.”

  Hunter only wanted to speak with Freddy one last time, dig around about Micah before getting out of the city. Maybe he’d ask why they were investigating Foreverland. After that, he’d fall off the radar for a while, call in sick and request an extended leave of absence.

  Gutierrez was right about one thing, the city was hungry. Hunter just wanted to get lost, not consumed.

  Is there a difference?

  Freddy’s office was still open. The old woman was gone. Hunter looked around before peeking inside; the desk was still cluttered, the computer asleep. He put his hand on the seat to
see if it was warm where the old woman had been sitting.

  “Mr. Hunter?”

  A velvet tongue dragged over his brain. It sent a butt-puckering shiver down his spinal cord. Dova was behind him, wearing a silky black dress that matched her skin.

  “You are coping well, I see,” she said with a tight grin. “And haven’t left us.”

  He cupped the back of his neck. A trickle of pinkish liquid oozed from his hairline. The city wasn’t the only bitch. There was another one in his head.

  “You have moved to a new hotel,” she said. “And turned off your phone.”

  “Why are you here?” He looked around. “To stop me from asking questions?”

  “We had a disturbance at the business today.”

  “More problems. Bit of a pattern with you.”

  “Problems are part of life. Why are you here, Mr. Hunter?”

  “Sunny Grimm is still missing.”

  “And her son.”

  “And her son. Seems no one wants to talk about Micah.”

  “What do you wish to learn from the detective?”

  “My decisions need to be well informed.”

  “You’ve already made your decision, Mr. Hunter. I believe you know that.”

  Her seductive grin vanished in a grim line. She believed he wasn’t leaving the city, that he would hole up in the hotel until he couldn’t take it anymore. The only question was how long he could avoid joining them.

  “You are the Maze,” he said quietly.

  “I won’t deny or admit that, Mr. Hunter.”

  No one heard her. Still, he jerked with surprise that she had admitted as much.

  “The painting at the lake house,” was all he said, wagging the card with the cobbled symbol of the Maze.

  It was the abstract painting he had stopped to admire, the one by the spiral staircase, that tipped him off. It had the same display of lines as the card, but included faint additional lines throughout the canvas. He followed them from memory, treating them like dotted lines to be folded or cut. It was the third card he got right, the thick black lines coming together to build the Maze symbol and an altered tagline. Find a way to please yourself had become something much simpler.

  Find yourself.

  The Grimms were lost. And so was he. He’d been lost all his life. Maybe now he was just admitting it.

  “I’m putting an end to this, you hear me? I’m calling this in and bringing more agents to shut you down. You can move around all you want, we’ll find you and end it.”

  A smile crept across her face. His threats were hopeful but empty. They both knew it.

  “We are many things, Mr. Hunter. I believe I told you that.” She inched closer. She gently wrapped her fingers around his hand, lowered the makeshift symbol and slid it into his briefcase. Why were they recruiting him? Was it because he’d survived Foreverland?

  They want me in the Maze.

  “What happened to you as a child was a tragedy,” Dova said. “We can take that burden away from you.”

  “And what do you get?”

  “To help you get lost.”

  “Get lost?”

  A bored officer approached with a handful of papers and asked Dova if she could step over to his desk so they could sort out whatever disturbance had occurred at 511. Her hands were still on Hunter.

  “Your decision has been made.” She squeezed him one last time and left him standing alone.

  Conversations continued around him, a blur of words, snippets of dialog and laughter as if he didn’t exist or matter. Dova spoke quietly to an officer, answered questions, and wrote out statements. Hunter fidgeted at the desk, staring at the Foreverland list of survivors and wondering if his name had been deleted. Were they making a folder just on him?

  He left before she did.

  Freddy wasn’t going to return, wasn’t going to answer questions if he did. No one could help him now. He returned to his hotel, ready to indulge his need, and discovered what Dova meant.

  Your decision has been made.

  28

  Hunter

  After the Punch

  A DRIP.

  It fell steadily on Hunter’s forehead, trickling coolly down his face and beneath the collar of his overcoat.

  A bus pulled up, air brakes hissing. The door folded open. A driver—a woman this time—stared into the shelter. Hunter blinked lazily. She aggressively chewed gum, glanced down at the needle wagging in his hand, then yanked on the handle.

  The bus rolled off.

  A dirty wave of rainwater sloshed over the gutter. Cars honked and swerved as the bus bullied its way into traffic. The tailpipes coughed soot, a thinning charcoal cloud between cars. A sane man would have gotten on the bus.

  A rational man would fly home, get his job back, and live a normal life. A lucid man knew the city was consuming him, that the flies were already circling a corpse. A sane man would avoid the rain dripping through the shelter.

  Hunter looked at the bent needle in his hand. Leave now, Hunter. Or stay forever.

  His belongings were still in the hotel. The rest of the needles were in the room, bent and broken just the same as the one he was holding. They were scattered on the bed, thrown in the sink.

  Your decision has been made.

  He hated himself for not leaving, hated what he’d become.

  Dova knew what was waiting for him in the hotel. She was at the police station to see him one last time, to look in his eyes, to size up what he would do. One look and she knew.

  He wanted to hate her, too.

  A man stopped outside the bus shelter. His slacks were creased, his leather wingtips tucked into rubber slip-ons that shed the rain. He folded his umbrella before stepping inside and filled the enclosure with a fresh scent, a clean smell.

  His legs were dainty, twigs that folded one over the other, the top one rocking into place. He tugged at the rim of a charcoal fedora, a red feather splayed in the band. Chalk-white hair was sharply trimmed around his ear and across his equally powder-white neck. He looked in Hunter’s direction, hands folded over the teetering umbrella, sharp blue eyes falling on him.

  A long black coat falling open.

  “You missed the bus.” His accent was slightly British. Or was it South African?

  “What have you done to me?”

  “We all make choices, Mr. Hunter. The choices we make may have been given to us. The words on our lips and the thoughts in our heads may come from a parent or a teacher, perhaps an old man, but we own our choices nonetheless, whether forced upon us or not. These choices make us, Mr. Hunter. Fair or not.” A small twisting smile aimed his way. “You made a choice.”

  “I didn’t do this.” He twirled the twisted needle.

  “You made it your master. You fed it, nursed it, loved it until it became what it is now. Bent or not, Mr. Hunter, that was your decision.”

  “What do you want?”

  “You, Mr. Hunter.”

  “For the Maze?”

  The fedora-wearing man ran a finger and thumb over the corners of his mouth. Hunter dipped his head between his knees. The drip pattered the back of his head, soaked through his hair, and kissed the inflamed stent.

  “I know what you are.” Hunter held up the folded card, the Maze icon tattered and soaked, and threw it on the man’s lap. “Micah.”

  The man did not answer to the name, did not deny it, either. He studied the invitation with a tight twitching smile, turning it between his fingers. In return, he slapped another card on the bench. This one was square, not rectangular. The stock was thick and heavy, the corners sharp.

  “The twisted minds you create,” Hunter spat. “The horrors, the madness. Your Maze is torture for the entertainment of a few.”

  “A few?” His eyebrows rose. “The masses know exactly what we do.”

  “And you sit there as if no one gets hurt.”

  “Only the willing enter, Mr. Hunter. Remember, choices.”

  “You tempt.”

&nb
sp; “You would take away their freedom to choose?”

  Hunter ground his palms into his eyes. The rain dripped down his overcoat. When he opened his eyes, the gray world slowly came back into focus. Between gaps passing in traffic, someone was watching him from across the street. Her white hair flashed like windows in a passing train. A sense of the familiar calmed him. He’d seen her so many times, but she had not looked at him until now. Even from that distance, he felt her warmth and comfort.

  Micah followed his gaze. The amused smile dropped, the light snuffed from his eyes. The man accustomed to control, from the clothes he wore to the people around him, looked slightly troubled.

  “Is she one of yours?” Hunter asked.

  Micah twisted the handle of his umbrella. He did not answer.

  “I never saw her, not before I came here. And now she’s everywhere.” Hunter faced the man sitting next to him, proper and grim. “What have you done to me?”

  He tapped the metal point of the umbrella on the concrete. His back rigid, head postured as if a string was attached to his crown, he patted the bent needle in Hunter’s grip. The shank was still slick with gel.

  “You have choices, Mr. Hunter. Take your life and slay your problem. I believe you have entertained this option before.”

  Hunter had spun the barrel many times. If there was a god, he or she would understand his need to escape this life. He had every right to eat a bullet, even dreamed of times he’d done so. Dreams so vivid that he smelled the gunpowder and saw the flash. He heard the top of his skull pop as the bullet tore through his brain and decorated the ceiling. There were dreams he tasted the steely aftermath and the iron flood spreading across the floor. There were mornings he woke up and couldn’t believe it wasn’t real.

  Yet here he was.

  “You may leave the city,” Micah said. “Go back to chasing the serpent’s tail and the cycle will continue. I think you know that game doesn’t have much time left.”