Mazes and Monsters

by Rona Jaffe

  “Did you ever ask him?”

  Think fast, Jay Jay thought. Say yes so they’ll go in and find him. Say no—they’ll go in anyway. No, you have to say yes. “Not exactly,” he compromised. “He did say he thought it would be a lot of fun to play the game in the caverns. He really seemed interested in those caverns.”

  I blew it, he thought. Did I blow it? I should have said, Yes he did! Now I can’t go back and say he did; he’ll know I lied. Jay Jay was starting to feel really sick. His skin was prickling all over. What had happened to the great Jay Jay, the future actor and star?

  The cop walked over and looked at Merlin. “What kind of bird is that?” he asked in a friendly voice.

  “A mynah bird.”

  “Does it talk?”

  “Birds can’t talk,” Merlin said.

  The cop laughed. “Funny. You teach him that?”

  “Yes,” Jay Jay said. “A smart mynah bird can have a vocabulary of several hundred words. Speaking is a conditioned reflex with them though—they don’t reason the same way we do.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Merlin,” Jay Jay said. His skin wasn’t prickling quite so much. He tried to decide if Martini was playing Good Cop to disarm him, or if he really was interested. He supposed a mynah bird was something Martini didn’t see very often, even in his line of work.

  “Does Merlin bite?”

  “All birds bite,” Jay Jay said.

  “Fecalite,” Merlin said.

  “Oh, shut up,” Jay Jay said to him.

  “Who else was playing Mazes and Monsters in the caverns?” Martini asked.

  Wham! There it came. “I don’t know,” Jay Jay said.

  “But you were his friend.”

  “He didn’t tell me everything.”

  “Did he have a girl friend?”

  “He used to go with Kate, but they broke up.”

  “Was he upset about that?”

  “You mean, like suicidal?”

  “Yes.”

  You just told him Robbie was never depressed, Jay Jay reminded himself. But depressed is different from upset over a broken love affair. He thought of saying yes, and the caverns would be a good place to end it all; but he knew the cop would question Kate too, and less information was always better than more in a clash of wits. On the other hand, Robbie could have hidden his unhappiness from Kate but told his friends …

  “Was he upset or not?” Martini asked.

  “I think he got lost in the caverns,” Jay Jay said.

  Martini raised his eyebrows. “Why would he go in during vacation?”

  “Maybe Robbie and his friends were playing the night of my party,” Jay Jay said. “That was the last time I ever saw him.”

  That is the first intelligent thing I’ve said this whole time, Jay Jay thought. He felt a sudden rush of relief. In a funny way, it was also a kind of alibi.

  Kate had been psyching herself out the entire time the cop was questioning Jay Jay, and by the time it was her turn she had almost convinced herself that what she was about to say was all true. She felt calm, detached, almost schizophrenic. She had always been able to close herself off from dangerous situations and too-painful ones; and now she was ready for something that was both.

  “Robbie was really getting to act peculiar,” she told Lieutenant Martini. “He was more interested in the game than in me. When he started spending all his free evenings playing the game instead of with me, I realized we had no relationship any more.”

  “The game has that kind of influence?”

  “Oh, it can become obsessive to some people. You know—all games have a possibility of becoming too important. Gambling, for instance.”

  “Apparently he was playing the game in the caverns with a group of people. Who were they?”

  The important thing, she told herself firmly, is to make them go into the caverns after Robbie as quickly as possible, and not to incriminate any of us. When they find him safe and alive—not if, but when—everyone will be so relieved they’ll probably drop the rest of it.

  “I don’t know,” Kate said. “People wouldn’t talk about that sort of thing. It’s against college rules, you know. I was so scared for Robbie that I just had to get out of his life at that point. It was too painful to see him taking those risks. He really didn’t understand how dangerous it was. A lot of people don’t.”

  “So you think he went into the caverns alone and got lost?”

  “I’m sure of it,” Kate said.

  Daniel couldn’t understand why the cops were wasting all this precious time asking questions in the dorm when they should be out in the caverns with a search team. He was frightened for himself and Kate and Jay Jay, but much more frightened for Robbie. Daniel’s whole future in the outside world depended on not getting expelled, on being able to have that good job after graduation and build his life. But right now Robbie could be minutes away from no future at all.

  “You and Kate Finch are going together?” Lieutenant Martini said to Daniel. It was more a statement than a question. He glanced at the king-size bed in Daniel’s room. Daniel didn’t like that each of them was being questioned separately. It was as if they were being blamed for a crime. Why didn’t Martini just go get Robbie out?

  “Yes,” Daniel said.

  “But you were still friendly with Robbie?”

  “Oh, sure. I didn’t take her away from him. It was all over when I came along.”

  “He was playing the game in the caverns. Do you know who else he played with?”

  “No. But I don’t see how that matters.”

  “It matters very much,” Martini said. “Or not at all. You yourselves suggested Robbie might have been murdered. Suppose someone who was playing the game with him got carried away and killed him?”

  Daniel tried to control the queasy feeling that started in his stomach and ended as his whole body shaking. “That’s kind of far-out,” he said.

  “Mazes and Monsters is a far-out game,” Martini said. “Swords, poison, spells, battles, killing, maiming … a lot of violence there, wouldn’t you say?”

  “It’s imaginary violence,” Daniel said.

  “We may be dealing with a sick mind.”

  We are! Daniel wanted to shout. All that time, all that precious time, already wasted! Robbie was in the caverns—why couldn’t the cops get him out and then look for their alleged perpetrators, or whatever their dismal jargon called it?

  By the time Martini was finished with him Daniel was bathed in sweat. He knew it made him look guilty as hell, but that didn’t matter now. All that mattered was to get out of here and be of some real help to Robbie. He had to get Jay Jay’s map to the police—the M.C.’s map that went further than Robbie’s did. They should have thought of that earlier.

  But if Robbie was really lost, the maps wouldn’t help. And if Robbie hadn’t taken a map then he was certainly lost. All that precious time …

  Lieutenant Martini was busy with people on Robbie’s floor. Daniel rode his bike through the dark to the bus station and chained it outside. He took Jay Jay’s map out of the locker, wiped off the fingerprints, and wearing gloves, he addressed the envelope, trying to keep his trembling hand steady as he made neat block letters. He was still shaking all over, as if he had the flu. There wasn’t time to send it by mail. He couldn’t just walk up to the police station and hand it to them; they knew him. Throw it through the window wrapped around a rock? No, that was some sort of crime, and they were being blamed for enough.

  He pedaled as fast as he could back to the dorm. Lieutenant Martini’s car was still parked in front. Daniel placed the envelope containing the map carefully under the windshield wiper blade on the driver’s side, and then rode away.

  He was too nervous to hang around and wait for Martini to be finished and come out. Right now he didn’t even want to be with Kate. He didn’t know what he wanted to do. He rode his bike back along the road until he came to the detour that led to the caverns, and turned down
it, drawn again to the place that had been so destructive to his kind and innocent friend. A searchlight had been set up, and there were some cars and a van nearby; curiosity-seekers. The news had traveled fast. And then he saw the police cars, and for the first time that whole evening the awful shaking stopped. The cops were looking for Robbie anyway.

  At least that was a start.

  CHAPTER 5

  The days dragged by. The police were still looking in the caverns and questioning students. The Pequod newspaper picked up the story of the missing student, and of course The Grant Gazette did, and then the wire services got hold of it. Suddenly the press was fascinated by the game. The idea that a game that was supposed to be a fantasy could have taken on such reality as to cause the disappearance—and possible death—of a player was thrilling. Sales of Mazes and Monsters soared. It was inevitable that someone would finally advance the theory that the game had caused Robbie to flip out. But it was all conjecture. The fact that Robbie had been so normal: an athlete, good grades, popular, friendly, pleasant, attractive, made the story even more intriguing to the press. It seemed as if reporters were interviewing everyone on the campus.

  “Life for most people is boring,” a psychologist said. “There’s not much excitement. We’ve run out of frontiers. The only frontiers we have left are in our minds. Testing yourself becomes the challenge. If a person isn’t too well put together to begin with, it’s not going to be good for him.”

  Jay Jay threw the paper across the room in disgust. “Boring?” he said to Kate and Daniel. “He should see our lives. Life is far from boring—it’s terrifying. Look what’s out there. Is he kidding?”

  “I don’t know what world he’s talking about,” Kate said.

  “When we find out,” Daniel said, “let’s go there.”

  The three of them spent most of their time together now, holding on to each other’s presence for moral support. They couldn’t even think of playing the game, and wondered if they would ever want to again. When they passed rooms where other students were still playing it, they couldn’t stand to look. The heartless cries of enthusiasm, the click of the dice, were like laughter at a funeral. There was a lot of free time now without the game. Time to study, to do class assignments, to participate in real life—but they couldn’t concentrate. Daniel was lucky that he could run in the mornings to work off some of his nervous energy. But for Kate and Jay Jay, karate and fencing weren’t enough. They all tried to keep each other distracted, but it was hopeless.

  Naturally some of the students who were interviewed defended the game, because they were still playing it. “It’s a perfectly harmless game,” one was quoted. “I mean, people who think that stuff is real are just nuts.”

  Kate, Daniel, and Jay Jay refused to be interviewed. They had discussed it and decided whatever they said could be held against them in some way, at some future time. Besides, they couldn’t tell anyone they thought Robbie had become Pardieu. You didn’t tell the world your friend was crazy. That would be the ultimate betrayal.

  In the midst of all this horrible tension, the amazing thing was that Perry, who had lent Jay Jay the bones, and the people in the drama department who had let him borrow other props, never told anyone. It was, of course, partly their own fear of being expelled for having been part of this madness. But it was also out of loyalty. Nothing they had to contribute would bring Robbie back any faster, so why would they hurt their friend Jay Jay and his friends?

  It was spring. The weather had turned soft overnight, and green buds began to appear on the spindly trees around the campus. The days grew longer. Soon it would be Reading Period, and then Final Exams. They had to study—the three of them who had been so worried they would be expelled were now in danger of flunking out because of grief. They began to force themselves to work, and finally it became a relief to lose themselves in their responsibilities.

  Still, there were the newspapers to remind them. The police were receiving hundreds of calls and letters; hints of some of them were in the papers. There was a demand for ransom to be left at a motel in the next town, where someone claimed to know that Robbie had been kidnapped. The “kidnapping” turned out to be a hoax. Only Kate, Daniel, and Jay Jay had been sure from the start that it was. They believed nothing else but that Robbie was in the caverns—Pardieu on his quest.

  Lieutenant Martini wasn’t bothering them anymore. They decided to bother him. They went to the police station three times before they found him in.

  “We want to know what’s happening,” Kate said.

  Martini looked genuinely sorry. “Not much luck,” he said. “Lots of psychics are coming out of the woodwork. They’ve got him here, there and everywhere. Most of that stuff is garbage.”

  “Did any of them say he’s in the caverns?” Jay Jay asked.

  “Sure. And we looked. But you don’t think they’d pinpoint a place, do you? They describe a place. That could be anywhere. We still haven’t a clue where the body is.”

  The body? They looked at each other aghast. Robbie was now just “a body.” They refused to believe it.

  “I thought psychics helped the police,” Jay Jay said.

  “We use them sometimes,” Martini said. “But you only hear about their successes. They never tell the public about their failures. I heard a funny line from one of the officers—he said we ought to give a dinner dance and invite all the psychics, but not tell them where it is. Then we’ll see how many of them find it.” He waited for them to laugh, or at least smile. They didn’t. “One of them sent me a map of New York,” he went on. “Can you imagine—New York? Where are we supposed to start looking in a place as big as that?”

  “New York State or New York City?” Jay Jay asked.

  “The whole state,” Martini said. He chuckled. “Big deal.”

  “What did you do about it?” Kate asked.

  “Filed it with the rest of the crank letters,” Martini said. “What do you think?”

  CHAPTER 6

  Underneath Grand Central Station, in the middle of New York City, there is a maze of steam tunnels that snakes around for several miles, supplying steam to the large office buildings and hotels nearby. Not many people know about them, nor would have any interest in them. They are the home for drifters, street people; homeless men and women who have no other place they want to go, or can think of to go, or have the energy and hope to go. They carry their belongings with them, and sleep lightly, lying on newspapers, watchful that their meager possessions are not stolen. They eat what little they can get. They cook, talk, make friends. Some of them have been there for years. In the morning the rumbling of the trains overhead awakens them, and many of them leave for the day, to wander the streets. But at night they come back to sleep. This is their home.

  There are many ways to enter the underground tunnels from the street, if you know where they are. A polished brass door at the side of the famous Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, emergency exits in Grand Central Station itself, a doorless opening near the lower level that has the words BURMA ROAD handwritten over it. Burma Road is the main tunnel. It is easy to get lost there if you are unfamiliar with the winding passages. It is, of course, a maze.

  It had taken Pardieu a long time to find this maze, and now he was resting here before continuing on his journey. He had known from the first moment he set out that he was blessed, but also that he would have to be very careful. A kindly stranger had given him transportation, and after passing through what seemed to be an endless tunnel they had emerged at last into a great city filled with noise and lights and all kinds of beings, mostly Human. Tall towers rose everywhere, but as he scanned the landscape Pardieu saw The Two Towers in the distance and knew he had found the right place. He walked through the streets, watching everything, looking into the eyes of the inhabitants and finding them full of anger and fear. He realized these people did not want to be looked at—they felt it was an assault. And yet some of them had dressed in such gaudy clothing that he knew they wanted to be notice
d. It was their souls they were trying to hide. They knew he was a Holy Man and could see within their souls, and so they glared at him. Pardieu looked away, not wanting to incite them to a fight.

  Not everyone in this city was unkind. Some smiled at him, returned his glance, and wanted to join him. But Pardieu had to journey on alone. He would smile back and bless them, and walk away.

  Whenever he was hungry or thirsty there were places to buy food. He ate simply, buying from vendors who cooked in the open air. At night he would rent a small room in some unsavory inn where he could bathe and sleep, not wishing to sleep in the street. Only Trolls slept in the streets of this city; squat, waddling wanderers carrying bags of plunder and speaking in their own tongue. But even staying at the cheapest places he could find, Pardieu was growing short of coins. Soon he would have to beg.

  Everywhere he trudged he looked for some sign that he was closer to the place where he would find the underground maze. “Do you know The Great Hall?” he would sometimes ask passersby, and often they would look bewildered, but occasionally they would point out some way, giving him instructions. He realized they had no idea who he was talking about. They thought he was looking for a building. They were only Men—how could they have heard of The Great Hall?

  He tried to recall the map he had drawn, remembering that The Great Hall had told him not to take it because it was unnecessary. Where was he to go? What was the next step? Such an endless city, teeming with people! He waited for night, and his dreams.

  Then one night Pardieu had the dream he sought. In it he saw a great door made of gold, as one might find in a castle, and he knew. The next morning he went forth to find it.

  He saw it on the second day, set in the side of a fine castle that was guarded by a man in regalia. When the guard turned away, Pardieu pushed the door open and entered.

  All mazes are different, and yet they are the same. This one was warm, dimly lit, and pervaded by the strange smell of ancient air. Pardieu longed to be back in the freshness of nature, as he remembered it fondly from so long ago, but he knew he had to go on for he was almost there. He touched his pouch of magic spells, cupping his hand gently over The Eye of Timor, and with the other hand he grasped his sword, in case any monster should appear. Then suddenly, from above, he heard a terrible roaring and screeching that shook the very walls. He knew it was the dragon of the hill, and from the sound it had to be the greatest and most ancient of any dragon he had ever encountered. He stopped, waiting motionless and silent, until the dragon stopped its outcry and was still. Was this to be the final test The Great Hall had set for him—to kill this dragon? In spite of everything—his faith and his magic and the battles he had already won—Pardieu was afraid.