Mazes and Monsters

by Rona Jaffe

  Jay Jay had also decided what the treasure would be: an excellent copy of the dull-black steel Porsche watch, which he’d seen during his Christmas shopping in New York. He’d collected money from the others, and when he went home for Spring Vacation he’d pick it up. It was a man’s-size watch, but he thought it would look good on Kate if she won it. He was so fond of the watch he thought he might just buy one for himself while he was at it, since he couldn’t win it.

  He wondered how far into the caverns they would be by the end of the school year when the treasure was finally found. It occurred to him that they were doing an extraordinary thing mapping the caverns this way. It was even a sort of public service. Maybe after they were through, other students could use the caverns for a geological study of some kind. It never occurred to him that this was an inflated and unreal idea. After what he had conceived and done, nothing else could ever be too unreal.

  Lately he was hardly ever in the dorm. Besides having to show up at classes, he was either playing the game, getting things he needed for it, or in the caverns setting his scenes. He was always precise and careful about leaving a trail so he wouldn’t get lost. They were now far beyond the place where rice would help them get back; by now a trail of rice could take you in circles and you’d never get out. This was just as well, since he had been buying so much rice that the checkout clerks at the supermarket thought he was some kind of health freak. Now Jay Jay spray-painted arrows, codes, and direction symbols on the walls of rooms they had used, and kept his maps with him at all times. He was so busy, as his chores as M.C. became more complicated, that he didn’t even have time to go to the movies anymore. That was the one thing he regretted. But one had to have priorities, and since he had to make the choice, Jay Jay chose the game. Watching movies, much as he loved them, was passive.

  His fear of the caverns had turned instead into a kind of respect. It was as if he and the maze understood each other. He wondered if that was the way someone felt who trained a huge, dangerous animal. You could never become the master of that animal, but you both agreed to work together. Some nights, after he had finished what he had to do in the caverns, Jay Jay would stay there for a while, surveying this domain that would never be his but would never be anyone else’s either. He knew if he ever got lost there was a strong probability no one would be able to find him. He was the only one who understood his direction codes. But somehow that didn’t scare him. There was a lure to this dark and deadly place; it drew him, called to him. He knew what that attraction was. It was not death, it was not danger, it was not the excitement of fear and the relief of fear overcome. It was none of these.

  It was power.

  CHAPTER 7

  Robbie thought about the game all the time now. Even when he was doing other things, it was with him. Whenever the Grant swimming team competed against another college and won, the others were jubilant but he only pretended to care. How trivial it seemed, compared to his other world! When the Grant team lost and the others were depressed he pretended to be unhappy too, but losing was just as unimportant as winning. There were no risks, no real excitement, no genuine fellowship. The coach yelled at those swimmers who had not done their best, goaded them to try harder. Robbie could not imagine a Maze Controller behaving in such an irrational way. He thought perhaps next year he would switch to another sport; one that would let him be alone and in peace.

  Being Pardieu gave him that peace. He moved through the game in the caverns as if it were a magical dream, and at night his dreams took on the quality of real life. It was hard sometimes to tell what was real and what was not, but this didn’t bother him—he rather liked it. At times he felt he had real powers; that his mind could extend far beyond his physical self and create miracles. His new monastic regime of giving up meat, alcohol, and sex made him feel cleansed. He had also given up all sweet and artificial desserts, eating only an occasional piece of fruit. He had lost weight, but that was natural. He felt closer to the purity of his spirit.

  The Great Hall came to him almost every night in his dreams now, with such a look of saintly beauty on his face that it made Robbie want to weep with gratitude. In his dreams he was always Pardieu, and he was better, stronger, more worthy than ever before. At last he was ready to receive messages about his mission.

  He dreamed about the City of The Two Towers. They rose up out of mist in the pink and blue sky of dawn, gleaming white and tall. Pardieu was walking along in this mist as though he were in heaven, and The Great Hall was walking beside him.

  “That is where you must go,” The Great Hall said.

  “Where is it?”

  “Underground.”

  What did that mean? A secret city under the earth? “Where?” he asked.

  “When you are ready it will be so easy.”

  “How will I know?”

  “You will.”

  “When?”

  “Soon.”

  The graven Eye of Timor was always with him now, and often Pardieu patted the pouch where he kept it, or sometimes took it out to look at it for reassurance. He kept his possession of it a secret. Someone might try to steal it—perhaps Nimble the Charlatan, for Charlatans were never to be trusted.

  Now when he awoke from his travels through the streets of his dreams Robbie began to make a map of them so he would remember. They looked just like a maze, but they were a different maze from the one in the caverns, which he had already mapped. He knew he had secret knowlege of the future in this new maze, and almost every day he was able to add something to it. He reread Tolkien and Castaneda, and sought out books on the occult, but none of them seemed to apply. The Great Hall was displeased.

  “Books will not give you the answers,” The Great Hall said. “Only I can. Why are you so impatient?”

  “Because I love you,” Pardieu answered respectfully.

  “Yes, I have seen that. You have purified your body, now you must purify your mind. You must seek the way to clarity.”

  “How must I do that?”

  “Trust me. Remember what you see.”

  “I am making a map.”

  “If it pleases you.”

  “But does it please you?” Pardieu asked.

  The Great Hall gave him a kindly smile. “When you are truly ready you will not need maps. You will know everything.”

  Everything! By day Robbie drew his map, intricately, carefully. Sometimes he looked at it and wondered how he could ever have been wise enough to draw such a marvelous maze. He never had before. He drew it on the palest blue paper, the color of the sky in his dreams, and on the edges of the paper he drew the tall white towers and the clouds below them. In the most beautiful illuminated letters that Pardieu could make he wrote THE GREAT HALL. Then he wrote THE TWO TOWERS. He surveyed his handiwork and thought that something was still missing.

  Then one day he realized what it should be. It was the mark of his love and respect for The Great Hall and for Pardieu’s sacred mission. Precisely, neatly, with red ink, Robbie drew a tiny heart hidden in the center of his maze.

  No one came into his monastic room anymore, so it was not necessary to hide any of this. Besides, even if someone saw all these things he had drawn, that person would have no idea what they were.

  CHAPTER 8

  For the first time in his life Daniel felt a new and surprising emotion: he was genuinely jealous of Jay Jay’s ingenuity. Sometimes he thought it was really himself he was annoyed at, not Jay Jay, because he hadn’t thought of playing the game in the caverns even though he’d run past them and wondered about them, and because he’d never had the inspiration of using real props. A long time ago, when Daniel had bought his first beginner’s Mazes and Monsters rule book, the introduction had said this was a game where nobody ever lost. But that wasn’t true. If you got killed you lost. You could create a new character and start again, and you could even use the same character you had become attached to, but that character was a neophyte, a newborn. Having to start all over from nothing when succes
s was so tantalizingly close was certainly losing.

  He had lost control of his own game, he had lost his position of power as M.C., and now he had watched his self-respect dwindling as Jay Jay constantly amazed them all with his brilliant imagination. If only Jay Jay hadn’t been such a genius in what was supposed to be Daniel’s chosen field for life after college …

  Daniel realized there was really only one way he could get his pride back. He had to outwit Jay Jay and win the treasure. He would never go into Jay Jay’s room and steal a look at his maps; the idea was repellent. But he wanted to be ahead, to know what was planned, and thus keep out of trouble and make the right decision. You never knew what the throw of the dice would determine, but if you knew where the dangers were in the caverns and what to stay away from, you had a much better chance of winning. Daniel decided what he had to do. He didn’t like it—it was dangerous and pretty dishonest—but something beyond his control kept nagging at him to do it until he felt he would never be able to concentrate on anything again, not even schoolwork, unless he did it.

  He had to sneak into the caverns alone and find out what Jay Jay had planned.

  First, though, he had to get rid of Jay Jay. The fanatic was in the caverns every night. Daniel couldn’t go in the daytime because he needed his bicycle to carry his equipment, and someone might see it. What could entice Jay Jay away from a night in the maze without arousing his suspicions?

  Daniel went in search of Glenna, the girl Jay Jay had taken to the Fifties Prom and hadn’t seen since. Maybe this wasn’t a very nice thing to do, but on the other hand, the worst thing that could happen would be she and Jay Jay would have a date, and the best thing would be they might even have a little romance. He found her in her room studying.

  “May I come in?” Daniel asked pleasantly.

  “Sure,” she said.

  He sat down on the edge of her bed, since she was in the desk chair. “How’ve you been?” he asked.

  “Fine. How’s Jay Jay?”

  “It’s funny you should ask. He was just mentioning you the other day.”

  “He was?” She looked pleased. “What did he say?”

  “Oh, something about you being a very interesting person and he really wanted to see you again but … Jay Jay’s very shy, you know.”

  “Oh, he is not.”

  “When he’s planning a party he’s not shy,” Daniel said. “But he’s much too timid to invite you to the movies, for instance.”

  “Did he say that?”

  “I know Jay Jay very well. He’s one of my closest friends.”

  “I’d ask him to the movies,” Glenna said. “I’m not scared of him. I think he’s cute.”

  Sitting duck.

  Jay Jay and Glenna went off to Pequod to the movies the following Tuesday night. She rode behind him on his motorbike, screaming with fear and pleasure. “She’s too young for me,” Jay Jay had said. “But I don’t want to hurt her feelings.” He had seemed quite flattered at the thought that any girl, even Glenna, had had a secret crush on him all this time.

  Two sitting ducks.

  As soon as they were safely gone Daniel got his things together: his flashlight, the map of the maze, fresh graph paper and pencils, an enormous roll of twine, his knife to cut it with, chalk to mark the walls as he entered rooms, a sponge and a plastic bottle of water to wash the chalk marks off when he left the rooms on his way back to safety, and the all-important compass. He would take the large lantern Jay Jay had left in the caverns. He was a little nervous, not about being caught, but about getting lost. He reminded himself that Jay Jay had gone alone into those caverns almost every night for nearly three months now, and nothing had happened to him. Jay Jay hadn’t been afraid, and he was only sixteen.

  Daniel put his paper bag of equipment into his bicycle basket and rode away into the dark evening, as if he were just going into town. But where the road branched to the east, toward the caverns, he turned off to where they beckoned him.

  CHAPTER 9

  Kate was driving back to the dorm from town, where she’d been to the drugstore to pick up some things. She’d bought three different kinds of shampoo when she needed only one; anything for the hair was her weakness. And she’d bought a new kind of conditioner, and something she’d never tried before called a Finishing Rinse. She hoped it wasn’t a rip-off. Coming toward her, on his way to town, she saw someone on a bicycle who she could swear was Daniel. She thought of honking at him, but it was too dark to be sure, and if it wasn’t Daniel she didn’t want to scare him. She looked into her rearview mirror after she passed him and then she noticed that he turned at the turnoff that led to the caverns and disappeared.

  That was odd. Why would Daniel—if it was Daniel—be going to the caverns? That road led to a lot of other places too, but they were all too far away to get to on a bike. Even if he were a commuter coming back from the library, he wouldn’t live there. He’d live in Pequod, or in the suburbs, not east of here. Besides, she was sure now that it had been Daniel. She turned her car around and went back, and drove to the caverns to find out.

  She parked in the clump of trees where they always parked when they played the game. She left her headlights on so she could see, and walked around. The night was clear and still, with a light wind rising and the moon and stars very bright. The ground was still muddy and oozy from the week of rain that had followed the spring thaw. Whoever had come here must have wanted very badly to be here.

  Then she saw Daniel’s bike, hidden in the bushes. She knew it was his because he was the only one at school who had a bicycle with a sticker on it that said: NEVER HIT ANYONE SMALLER THAN YOU. Her heart lurched with fear. He had hidden his bike and gone into the caverns alone and she didn’t know why, but she knew he was in terrible danger.

  Kate went back to her car and got her flashlight out of the glove compartment. She turned off the headlights so she wouldn’t run down her battery—or be caught—and walked to the caverns guided by the wavering beam of light in her hand and the moonlight.

  She paused at the chain and felt as if she were choking. She couldn’t go in there alone, not in the dark, not for anyone … she was too afraid. She took another step and ducked under the chain, moving the flashlight up and down and around the now familiar black stone walls.

  “Daniel!” she screamed. “Daniel!”

  Silence. Maybe he wasn’t in there. She went back outside and ran around in the mud calling his name, but he never answered and she knew he was in the caverns and that she had to go in. Maybe he was hurt, or lost. He’d probably gone in to play some sort of practical joke on the rest of them, put in some scary prop for the next session, and she was sure he had his map. She didn’t have hers; why would she?

  “Daniel!”

  She ran into the caverns quickly, like someone terrified of water jumping in for the first time.

  “Daniel!” Her voice echoed off the vaulted walls as if it were mocking her. Daniel, Daniel … Yell, Yell.

  The darkness of the laundry room flashed through her mind, and she could almost hear the insane whispery breathing of that man. But there was no rapist-murderer here now, only the pitch dark that frightened her so much she felt icy cold and sweating at the same time … and the real dangers of the caverns … and Daniel. The thought of never seeing Daniel again made her start to cry. She suddenly remembered how last Christmas she had thought if you really loved someone you had to be willing to die for him, and she realized she felt that way about Daniel and always had, but she’d been afraid to admit it to herself because she thought he would leave her. I love him, Kate thought.

  She walked slowly, cautiously, to the room she remembered contained their lanterns, and with a gasp of relief saw them in the corner. There was the tin box of safety matches too. Kate lit one of the lanterns. It was better than the flashlight, but she was still in the dark and still in danger. She walked through the part of the maze she remembered, more quickly now, avoiding the bottomless pool, calling out Daniel’s
name until she was hoarse. Jay Jay had painted all kinds of graffiti on the walls so he wouldn’t get lost, but she had no way of deciphering it. If Daniel’s nearby he has a light with him, she thought, and I’ll see it. She had forgotten to count the lanterns, but she hadn’t seen the large battery-powered campsite lamp anywhere and she realized Daniel had taken it. Maybe the batteries had gone out … when had Jay Jay changed them?

  “Daniel!” He’ll hear me, even in the dark, and see my light. Maybe he fell and he’s unconscious, or … No, she wouldn’t let herself think “dead.”

  Now there were only the new uncharted places, the maze only Jay Jay knew, and parts no one knew yet at all. She suddenly realized she wasn’t afraid of the dark anymore, hadn’t been for almost five minutes, and was only afraid of what could happen to her if she took a false step. I won! she thought. I conquered the dark! She entered a small passageway and went through it to another room. Her light shone off the ghostly shapes of the stalactites and stalagmites—what were they anyway, petrified water?—and the damp cold walls. Nothing in this room, back again to another … and Kate realized she was lost.

  Lost.

  At first she ran in circles, frantically, like a panicked animal. Then she forced herself to stop and think. She was crying again, little gasps of grief and fear. Somewhere she could hear the sound of water dripping, and she wondered if that was the earlier room with the bottomless pool in it or another new one. At least sound would be a help. But then she realized that it didn’t matter: the caverns branched off endlessly, repeating their patterns—you could wander here forever and ever and not know the difference. But of course it wouldn’t be forever; it would only be until you were dead.

  She remembered something she’d read about being able to live for a month without food, but only two days without water. Was that right? Maybe she should find a pool of water and drink from it. At least that way she wouldn’t die in agony; she’d just faint and slip away. She didn’t want to die here! It couldn’t be possible—she had to find her way out.