59 Glass Bridges

by Steven Peters

  • 43 •

  AFTER THE YELLOW BRIDGE, our path fluctuates less. The floors, if not entirely clean, are better swept. We stop and rest, on the far side of the bridge. I pull my shoes off and massage my wounded feet.

  Then we continue down our new, gentler corridor. Generic paintings of black-and-white flowers are hung on the white plaster walls. The entire thing seems quaint, tame, and more than a little dull. The building reminds me of a dentist’s office, or at least the hallway leading up to one, but no doors connect to our corridor.

  I look at Willow, who walks calmly beside me, but her expression’s a steel trap.

  The corridor makes minutes feel like hours, and even Willow seems weary of the hallway’s repetitiveness by the time we reach our next bridge. Wooden and rickety, the bridge is starkly out of place with our surroundings. The floor tiles end abruptly at the foot of the bridge, and the earth spills away beneath us. A white river pushes angrily down rapids, far below us.

  I shake my head, mutter, “Weird dentist’s office,” and put a cautious foot on the bridge. The wooden board creaks alarmingly and the ropes swing under my weight, so I quickly step back.

  “We’re getting close, finally,” Willow says. She points at the water far below us, “That feeds into the river we traveled down with the boatman. The forest should be near.”

  “What’s the river called?”

  “I don’t know. Does it matter?”

  I suppose it doesn’t. “This bridge is the only way?”

  “It’s perfectly safe,” Willow says. She steps out onto the bridge, and I hold my breath, only to exhale when it doesn’t creak or even sway. But of course, ghosts don’t weigh anything. It wouldn’t be dangerous—for her.

  “You’re giving me that look again,” Willow barks. “Ghosts don’t feel pain, right? Or fear? Fuck you.”

  She turns around and walks, almost runs, across the bridge. It doesn’t move, and there’s no sound of her footsteps, just the quiet roar of water far below us. At the bridge’s far side, she looks back at me. Then she carefully sits herself down with exaggerated daintiness, and looks expectantly at me.

  All right. I can do this.

  I swallow my fear. I loosen my tie and place my foot back on the bridge. Its far end is tethered to another office building, because of course it is. The building’s exterior is covered in reflective glass panes that mirror the bridge back at me. The effect is disorienting, as if I’m walking backwards, or into a mountain made of funhouse mirrors.

  Still, better than looking down.

  I reach the centre of the bridge with many threatening creaks, but otherwise without incident. Then a gust of wind bucks the bridge and the beams lurch beneath me. I hold onto the knotty rope railing with the same iron-grip with which I clung to my Grandmother’s fox trotter while learning to ride. I’m bent low now, my knees almost touching the wood. I’m suddenly uncomfortably aware of my bladder.

  A second gust lifts the Stetson from my head and Willow and I both watch it tumble into the valley below us. It takes more than twenty seconds to finally be swallowed by the river’s white foam.

  “Your loss,” Willow shouts at me. “The boatman’s gain.”

  I can’t laugh at her joke. I can’t move. I can’t even look up. I’ve come this far, and now I’m going to give up here.

  And then there’s a hand on my shoulder. “Come on,” Willow says in my ear. She pulls my left hand, then my right, from the bridge’s rope railings, and gives me an encouraging smile. “Look down,” she says. It seems like terrible advice.

  Nevertheless, I look down. And yeah, it’s a bad idea.

  The water far below me bullies its way past rocks, smoothed and lichened by time. The water whips itself into white foam as it eddies downhill, and its passage, while quite loud, I’m sure—is still only a murmur up here. “Rocks and water,” Willow says. “There’s so many other things to be afraid of, it seems silly to chicken out over rocks and water. Don’t worry. I won’t let you fall.”

  It’s not the pep talk that I would have made, but those last words lend me strength enough to take another tentative step, then two. Together, we creep across the bridge. Willow keeps her eyes fastened to mine, her lips hooked in a smile. She doesn’t seem perturbed that every step of mine sets the bridge swinging.

  We reach the far side, and I drop to my knees. Willow, still standing, pats me on the head like a child. “There now,” she says. “You made it. I guess that means I have to deal with your hat-hair for the rest of the trip.”

  • 44 •

  OUR INCIDENT ON THE BRIDGE should have been team-building, but I can’t help but watch Willow through slitted eyes as we settle in for sleep on the far side of the bridge. She lies against a wall of the corridor opposite me. She lies beneath my suit jacket, her arms pillowing her head. A small smile dusts her lips as she sleeps.

  It’s that smile I mistrust.

  This whole thing feels like a wild goose chase—like the world made more sense when it was just weird hallways that looped back on themselves. That I could explain away as a practical joke or the worst funhouse ever … but this?

  Since Willow got here, things have just gone from weird to worse. I don’t even know if this maze has an end, or—if it does—if I will ever see it.

  And she knows more than she’s letting on.

  The section of the maze we’re in now has traded the last building’s uninspired floral paintings for an equally trite floral-print wallpaper. Blue vines stretch vertically up and down the wall every few inches, with small leaves and flowers budding from them. It was probably a niche look in the ’90s.

  But despite the retro façade, behind me, not five metres away, hangs a gaping wound in the side of the building—the monstrous chasm and the rope suspension bridge we crossed. These two worlds should not co-exist.

  I still have no memory of how I came to be in this maze, which bothers me. I have plenty of memories of my childhood, being raised by my Grandmother, but the last few months—they’re blank. What was I doing to get here? How did Willow know exactly where to find me?

  Every denizen of this maze is lonely.

  Behind us, the rope bridge creaks in a breeze I cannot feel, the rapids far below echo their ominous murmur up to where we lie. As we rest, the corridor gradually simmers into a bright, bloody red. I assume the sun must be setting, somewhere out of sight.

  I cannot sleep. I pillow my head on my arms, eyes wide open, haunted by suspicions I can’t shake. I keep craning my neck to peer behind me at the creaking bridge, expecting to see some massive figure lurking on the far side, steeling itself to cross.

  I’m starting to believe in the Minotaur more emphatically, if only because Willow keeps denying that it exists.

  When Willow yawns awake, I haven’t shut my eyes for longer than thirty seconds. She squints at me and asks, “Did you sleep?”

  I sit up and nod. I wonder if my eyes are bloodshot and betraying me.

  “I have some chips, if you’re hungry.”

  I stare at her in disbelief. “Food?” I croak. “Where did you find food?”

  “The train platform. Two vending machines, or didn’t you see them?”

  More and more secrets. Something fishy. “So when I said I wanted to eat something in the wood, you didn’t think—”

  “We had a train to catch. There wasn’t time. But now, you really do look awful—are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I would kill for a piece of pork tenderloin,” I say. “Real food. Steamed asparagus with a spoonful of butter melting on it. A mountain of potatoes—real potatoes—in a lake of gravy.”

  “I have Lay’s Original.”

  I nod and Willow hands me the crinkling bag. I thank her, but she’s lying. I don’t remember any vending machines. And I certainly didn’t see her lugging a bag of potato chips around since we left the train behind.

  “We’ll have more choices, up ahead,” she says. I nod, but I’m only half listening, “We’re almost at
the woods I mentioned. I’m afraid this leg is always rough.”

  “We’re indoors.”

  Willow nods. “These are the outskirts.” She runs her hand across the wallpaper we lean against. “You’ll see what I mean.”

  “Any chance that this wood is secretly an orchard? Or maybe we’ll find some wild blueberries on the path?”

  Willow cocks her head to the side. “If you see any fruit, I wouldn’t be inclined to try it. But, you know, you do you.”

  “Are they poisonous?”

  “Are you hungry now? You’ve mentioned food a lot.”

  “No,” I say, tossing the empty chip bag away. “But eating makes me feel normal in a way that nothing else in this backwards-ass world does.”

  Willow sighs and retrieves the trash from the floor. “Well, I don’t know if the fruits are edible. I haven’t tried. But I have broken a thorn from the vines, and I’d suggest you don’t eat them if you can help it.”

  “Poison sumac? Or are these—” I narrow my eyes “—your talking trees?”

  “What? No. Not really.” Willow stands up and stretches, then holds out a hand with which to hoist me up too. “Is sumac a plant?”

  “My Grandmother had some growing in her backyard, once. White flowers, green leaves with wavy edges. The top of the leaf is darker than the bottom. Even the twigs cause pretty severe wounds.”

  “No, it’s not sumac.”

  Willow begins walking away from the rope bridge. We leave the natural red light behind and fluorescent bulbs take over. Willow runs a finger across the wallpaper as she walks. “I don’t know what this plant is, but its thorns are sharp. It doesn’t have flowers and it doesn’t cause a rash. But it doesn’t like being tampered with.” As I watch, Willow absently lifts her hand to trace the scar on her palm.

  “And they grow in this building? Or—mountain pass? Or whatever this part of the labyrinth is? Is it a weed?”

  Willow skips her finger over each vine on the wallpaper pattern, like someone skipping cracks in the pavement as they walk. “Let’s just say that you’ve never really met wallflowers before now.”

  • 45 •

  I FOUND MY GRANDMOTHER in the garden, kneeling in the mud. She peeled off her decorative nails and placed them carefully on the porch next to her rings, while she busied herself with her plants. Now she cradled a deformed cucumber in her soil-browned gloves.

  She looked down at the vegetable, then up at me, and spoke the words that began our nuclear arms race: “Next, I’m planting kohlrabi.”

  My Grandmother had bequeathed unto me a small plot, five feet squared, at the edge of her garden, which I could neglect or tend as I saw fit. I had free rein of her tool shed and her fertilizers and she promised to provide me with seeds for each passing season. She pressed three seed packets into my hands that first crop, told me to take my pick: radishes, iceberg lettuce, wax beans.

  “Plant your favorite.” She winked. “We’ll add it to the supper menu.”

  So I opted for none of the above. Instead, I raided the sack of seed potatoes that she kept sitting in the shed. My thought process was myriad: french fries, potato chips, Thanksgiving day gravy volcanoes, or maybe just ammunition for a potato gun. What entertainment could wax beans offer me?

  I buried the tubers twelve inches apart in holes six inches deep, not realizing that I was firing the first round.

  My Grandmother was pleased to see me take to gardening, and soon we toiled side-by-side beneath the sweltering orange sun while she endeavored to gift me her green thumb. For weeks we watered, weeded, and talked together.

  Then I murdered her cucumbers.

  Potatoes, I hadn’t realized, need a more acidic soil to flourish. Cucumbers need basic soil. While cucumbers made fine bedfellows with the seeds my Grandmother had given me, they’d been poisoned by the neighbours I’d covertly introduced. Before too long, I harvested my fat, golden potatoes, while my Grandmother’s cucumbers remained pickle-sized and Frankensteinian.

  The next spring, my Grandmother’s vengeance grew bulbous. I’d planted neat rows of peppers, while my Grandmother sprinkled her promised kohlrabi seeds into the cold earth. A few short weeks after germination, her first harvest was already underway and she planted another crop of kohlrabi, while I waited patiently to pick my vegetables in a couple months’ time.

  My peppers never saw the summer. Sapped dry by the kohlrabi, my pepper plants grew stunted and barren. My Grandmother entered the house, soon after I uprooted my botched crop, and plunked her basketful of perennials on the table in front of me.

  “Well.” She smiled. “At least one of us reaped what they sowed.”

  It took two more failed crops of mine to realize that my Grandmother’s sabotage was intentional. Whenever she ventured out into our corner garden, clad in her sunhat, thick gloves, pair of sun-bleached jeans and long sleeves, she’d just put on her battle gear. And while we watered, weeded, and talked together, she was poisoning my plot of land. All for vengeance.

  Well, two could play that game.

  My revenge took the form of pumpkins. My Grandmother tried to coyly coax my crop out of her, but I lied and said it was carrots. I’d purchased a packet of jack o’ lantern seeds with my allowance money and planted them while she grocery shopped. Sensing that I’d guessed her plan, my Grandmother shored up with spinach—every crop’s best friend. Or so she thought.

  My pumpkins swelled. They consumed my patch of earth. Then they laid siege to the 2x4s that contained my tiny plot. Then they began to creep their greedy fingers into her garden.

  I watered daily, fertilized weekly, and coaxed my plants on with tales of revenge and stories about their soft and fragile neighbours, the rich soil that would be the spoils of war. With every passing week, my vines inched inexorably onward. Soon, it was not only my immediate neighbours who felt my ire, but their neighbours as well. The vines stretched ten feet, then twenty. My pumpkins engulfed her spinach, her peas, and began to sneak up on the flower garden too.

  Come harvest, my Grandmother looked out at the mess of vines and laughed long and heartily. The broad green leaves and ballooning orange fruit had buried her vegetables completely.

  “I yield,” she chuckled. “Now. What are we going to do with your bloody pumpkin apocalypse?”

  That Thanksgiving, my Grandmother toasted any feud both brutal and bloodless. Over our mashed potato volcanoes and pumpkin pie, we discussed strategies to continue our war once the frost thawed.

  • 46 •

  THE VINE-PATTERNED WALL BUBBLES OUTWARD as we walk. At first it looks like air pockets trapped beneath the wallpaper, but as we carry on the burls swell ever larger until cankerous growths surround us on all sides. The vines thicken and lift from the white paper in long ropey tendrils, which snake their way down the hall.

  The thickening vines begin to choke the white wallpaper from view. Heavy roots and thick foliage lie all around us and the tendrils begin to creep across the ceiling. Their greedy fingers latch onto plastic covers that shield us from fluorescent bulbs, until we find that we’re walking in the shade beneath a dense canopy.

  Willow pauses to break out her silver flashlight. Then we creep our way through the gloom.

  The vines begin to take on a life of their own. Broad, serrated black leaves stretch out towards Willow and me like beckoning hands. Between the leaves, I spy red thorns with jagged edges, jutting out seven to nine centimetres from the vines.

  Above us, small grape-like clusters of fruits dangle from the ceiling. They’re elongated and green, like miniature gourds or melons, despite the bunches. But they sport the same spikes on their rinds as the vines.

  Willow nudges me when she sees them and flashes me a malicious grin. She points at the strange green bunches and asks, “Still hungry?”

  I say nothing.

  I soon realize that the walls seem to have melted away. The vines’ stems have thickened and now hem us in like wizened tree trunks and between their dark boles I see more hoary vine
s in the distance, wherever Willow’s silver light touches.

  Which means we’ve made it to Willow’s forest, I guess.

  The entire wood is eerily still and entirely too claustrophobic. The vines grow so close together that I’m reminded of prison bars, hemming me in from all sides—all sides, that is, save for the way onward or the way back.

  No deviating from my path, then. Even with an axe, I’d be hacking my way out of this grove for hours. And who knows what I’d find on the other side.

  The forest seems to grow older the longer we walk. Where at first there were young shoots and clusters of fruit, now the vines seem ancient and weathered. Some older, pallid vines are even being asphyxiated by younger ones, still blue in their infancy.

  I reach out to touch one of the young vines, but Willow slaps my hand away.

  “You said they weren’t poisonous,” I growl.

  “I said the vines don’t like to be tampered with.”

  Willow and I walk in single file to put as much space between us and the thorny walls as possible. The earth beneath our feet—and it is earth, I’m not sure when we left the tiles behind—cuts a well-worn swath through the thicket. I can see that hundreds, if not thousands, of others must have trodden this path before me.

  I wonder if they were lost, as I am. I wonder if they made it out.

  The vines and their wicked thorns don’t encroach upon our path, but they do splay their gnarled roots across our footing. Both Willow and I stumble slowly down the trail. She keeps her flashlight trained at the ground.

  Unfortunately, not even the light helps me as I catch my foot on a particularly knotty root and catapult into her, her only warning a strangled yelp that’s cut short as I collide against her back.

  I’m surprised by the impact. I expect to sail through her and feel the wall’s cruel thorns bite into me, but instead I hit the ground hard, while she goes sprawling forward. I gasp as the impact knocks the breath from my lungs.