by Gwynn White
“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.
26
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 t
he 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.”
“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.”
The stent was weeping from overuse. Infection wasn’t far away, if it hadn’t already started eating through his gray matter. To continue the chase was the same as eating a bullet. A very slow-moving bullet.
“Or you can stop running, Mr. Hunter.” He nodded curtly. “Let me show you your true potential. Let me show you that what you think of as a curse is an immeasurable treasure. Very few people know the true purpose of the game, Mr. Hunter.”
“The game.” Calling it a game sounded so innocent and fun. “Is this how you recruited the boy?”
Hunter suddenly felt sadness. An image of him strapping the gear on his head crystalized in his vision, the feeling of hope just before the darting tongue pierced his forehead.
“Did you promise him riches, too?”
“We offered opportunity.” Micah opened his hand.
“And his mother? What did you do to her? Where is she?”
Hunter’s legs were dead and shaking, the flesh between his toes puckered and peeling. He stepped out of the shelter. The sky gently stung him with tiny droplets.
“Risk comes with reward, Mr. Hunter.”
“And what are you risking?”
Hands perched on the umbrella’s handle, the man pushed onto his feet. He put the folded card with the Maze symbol—the one Hunter had spent a day cutting and piecing together—into his coat pocket, then retrieved the thick square card he had slapped on the bench.
He took Hunter’s hand and pressed the square card into his palm, the sharp corner biting into his flesh. It was cold and heavy, as if minted from a dense alloy. He could feel the raised black lines against his palm. On one side, the card was blank.
On the other, the Maze symbol.
“This is my world, Mr. Hunter,” Micah said. “I am the risk. I am the reward.”
Hunter quivered. The queer sense of déjà vu, the sinking feeling of an imploding dream. The quaint man with white hair was psychotic. He was calm, self-assured. The posture of an untouchable man of immeasurable power.
He thinks he’s god. That this is his world.
A bus roared up to the curb, the brakes hissing. The door folded open. The driver, an old man with sagging eyes, looked out. Hunter didn’t look away from the white-haired man and his sharp blue eyes. Rain pooled on the rim of his fedora, trickling onto his shoulders.
“My offer stands,” he said, “to rid you of the weight you’ve been pulling all this time, to quell the hunger that lives inside you.” He tipped the fedora and spilled a pool of water then gently tapped his forehead. “You have the potential to create your own world, Mr. Hunter. I can show you how.”
Leaving the city was the same as eating a bullet. Had he been down that path before, taking the easy way out? And now here he was, asked to choose when there was no choice, only the illusion of one. Accept his invitation, or the end of his life.
Have I done this already?
The bus door closed and the air brakes hissed. Dreary faces peered from dark windows as the bus pulled away. A decision had been made.
Micah unfurled the umbrella and held it over Hunter’s head. The patter of rainfall danced on the fabric. Streams dribbled from the spines like tiny f
aucets. It was a promise to protect him from the weather, should he accept the invitation.
A silver sedan stopped at the curb.
Micah opened the back door without breaking eye contact. He protected Hunter from the rain, inviting him to seek shelter from the pain.
The potential to create my own world.
Hunter grabbed the door, hand trembling. Dova had told him they wanted to hide him. Micah wanted him to create his own world. The offers were vague, their motivation cryptic. But the choice was clear. They would kill the dragon.
Before it killed him.
As he dipped toward the backseat, the umbrella following him, Hunter looked over the hood one last time. The old woman that followed from a distance was now in the open, watching him commit to the man that was presumably the Maze.
This is my world, he’d said.
And just as he lowered himself toward the safety of the car, a jagged line of static ripped the scene like an old photo. It popped in Hunter’s ear, a high-pitched squeal that deadened the roar of traffic and the patter of rain. In complete and utter silence, the colors of the world flipped. The woman’s hair was now black. The asphalt now bleached white.
Rain exploded on the car, giant droplets splashing in slow motion as raindrops glittered in a slow, silent descent.
Micah’s hair was black, his coat white. He frowned at Hunter, the first sign of life since he’d entered the bus shelter. It was an expression of doubt and confusion. He looked around, then across the street. His mouth moved, but words didn’t come out. He dropped the umbrella. His foot splashed in a growing puddle. Gray water was hurled over his shoe and spread over the wet pavement.
He reached for Hunter. His hand closed on the lapel of his black overcoat as rain dripped from a twisted snarl. The driver began to exit the car when colors flipped back to normal.
Gray then color. Color then gray.
Back and forth it went, each turn of the wheel slowing traffic, unwinding the rain. Each time the colors flipped, a crackle of static struck him with fingers of electrical current. Each time, the colors bleached lighter and the grays had less contrast. The buildings were still there, the road and sidewalks, too.