by Gwynn White
Quietly, he turned the lock on the front door. Everyone on the street would see him now; barring the door would give him time should anyone investigate. He leisurely crossed the room. His steps echoed off the walls. He listened for an alarm or approaching footsteps.
A police siren whined in the distance.
He put his phone on silent and slipped through the back door. Wall fixtures threw light down a long hallway. The air was dense and cool with a hint of saline and something antiseptic.
His heart was very much alive.
Water dripped somewhere. Hunter proceeded cautiously, pausing after each step. The first couple of doors were open, inside each of them a small room with a table and two chairs and nothing else. Further down was a similar room, this one with a padded examination table.
The next couple of open doors appeared to be efficiency apartments. Hunter slowly inspected them with the light of his phone, holding his breath as he crept around without touching anything. Water was dripping in a sink. He let it run.
A smell grew stronger, a sickly smell of fresh wounds or the slime on fresh meat. It clung inside his nostrils and thumped between his eyes.
He swallowed hard.
The last doorway was an open set of double doors. He stopped outside of them and shut down his phone. Water was running. It was much more than a sink. The air had turned to fumes, penetrating his sinuses, punching the inside of his forehead. He couldn’t place the odor, a distinctive haunt that could never be forgotten. Like that of a dead body.
Tears rested on his lower eyelids. He coughed into his fist, gut clutching. He pulled his shirt over his nose and blinked.
It was a small warehouse.
The atmosphere was pale and dense. The dank pallor of things old and secret. Faint lights glowed on black conduit lining an elevated ceiling. Large objects were set to the left and right, enormous cylinders that emitted syrupy burps, the kind floating from vats of tar.
He took a breather in the hall, listening for signs of life. This was what he was searching for, the bedrock of a Maze room. The furthest from his thoughts was the fact that he’d succeed in busting the city down a notch, taking from her the power to seduce her citizens, to slam a fist straight through her insatiable maw.
Sunny Grimm.
That solitary thought drove him through the fumes, forced him to breathe the foul air. His pupils had dilated, absorbing the details of the bubbling objects.
Tanks.
Dark objects floated inside them, lumps of drifting arms and legs, ghosts long since submerged. Heavy bubbles swung their limbs like seaweed, listless and empty.
His stomach clutched again.
The memories of all the times he’d seen tanks, how he’d helped winch limp bodies from the solution, pull them over the edge, wipe the mucus from their faces. But with all those memories, one thing was missing.
Why don’t I remember the smell?
He could see the details of their lifeless expressions, imagined the soft flesh beneath his grip, the countless contestants that gave their life to the game. But he felt like an observer to his memories, a moviegoer. He didn’t remember a smell.
And there should’ve been.
A tank was centered at the end of a very long stretch of concrete. It was larger than the others. The body inside was dimly lit from behind. As he approached, the nudity was apparent. It was a slight man with narrow hips and tender arms, the legs of someone on the verge of starvation, or submerged far too long.
Seaweedy tendrils stroked the body. Translucent microtubules slowly bent the elbows and knees, held the man’s bobbling head. A swirl of white hair moved about his scalp. Thin eyelids were locked tight, the eyeballs rolling in a fitful dream.
Micah.
This was the man that had seduced him at the bus stop, called forth the car and promised to kill the itch, to lay quiet his suffering. And then the world turned inside out.
Was Micah really there? Or was I talking to a hallucination at the bus stop?
The man inside the vat had clearly been there for quite some time. He didn’t climb out for a leisurely visit to recruit Hunter. But the car was real. It had pulled up to the curb and the back door was open. If he’d climbed inside, Hunter would’ve ended up a specimen in a vat of goo. Had the old woman not somehow saved him.
But it was a dream.
Nothing was making sense. And somebody from this place was texting his phone, had been since he arrived in the city. Why was the message so cryptic? Why not call? Why not explain what was happening?
Who is this?
Footsteps echoed in the dark.
Hunter spun around. A dark form stood in the open doorway. It entered with hips swaying. Lights on the ceiling slowly anticipated the woman’s approach.
“Mr. Hunter,” she said.
34
Hunter
After the Punch
Each step she took pulsed between his eyes, the echo of her heels bouncing off the distant walls. The large tank was at his back, the curving glass humming along his flesh. The body of the white-haired man drifted behind him like a ghost haunting the moment. The light of the tank illuminated a red smile creeping into Dova’s perfect cheeks.
“This is what you wanted from me?” Hunter said. “To put me in one of these?”
That was the promise, that they would take away his suffering if he surrendered. And he would’ve, gladly. Just like everyone who entered the Maze, he would’ve done so willingly if the itch had not vanished.
Dova gazed over his head, catching the blank expression of the nude man behind him. “There has been an unexpected turn of events. The investors of this experiment, I believe, have gotten more than they expected.”
“Experiment?”
She toyed a glance at him. “There are a variety of reasons people leap into the Maze, Mr. Hunter.”
“The money is a constant.”
“Currency is a formality. We reward all participants well. And the masses are entertained. We are generous, Mr. Hunter.”
“You’re bribing the human race toward extinction.”
She stepped closer. Her fragrance couldn’t penetrate the tanks’ odor swirling in his head.
“Why climb the mountain, Mr. Hunter, or explore the ocean? They are risks, are they not? Why should we risk so much when we could live safely in a prison cell? Because we are human. It is our nature to risk and discover. The Maze offers an opportunity never before available to the human race, a chance to explore the limits of the mind. And unlike the mountain or ocean, you will discover it has no limits.”
She leaned into him.
“The Maze is more than a game, Mr. Hunter.”
He paced out of the eerie glow, partially hid in the shadows of one of the smaller tanks, the participant floating darkly.
“Have you heard of the multiverse, Mr. Hunter?” She pointed at herself and him and gestured to the tanks. “We are the creators of those realities. We create dreamlands from the stuff of our minds, a dreamland that becomes a reality.”
“A dream is a dream, nothing more. The Maze is no different.”
“It is as real as the air we breathe.” Her knowing smile was playful. “As real as you.”
“There’s a room full of floating bodies and you think dreaming is a higher calling? Look around you! This isn’t some higher purpose, it’s a fucking graveyard.”
“You came here for a reason, Mr. Hunter.”
“To stop you.”
“Maybe you came seeking salvation from your past, an escape from a self-centered dream, perhaps.” She passed out of the bluish light, her face half-hidden in shadows. “The truth is a destroyer of delusion, Mr. Hunter. It will strip away your beliefs and destroy the monster that’s eating you.”
He backed into a dark tank. She stopped at the edge of its light.
“I’m going to call this in,” he said. “You’ll be arrested, Dova. All of you will go to prison for this, for what you’ve done.”
“We’ve do
ne nothing, Mr. Hunter.”
“You tricked them into doing this to themselves.”
“Tempt them, perhaps. But they reach for it, Mr. Hunter, willingly. They always do because they know, deep down, their human potential is to create.”
“Create dreams that turn into reality.”
“It is our untapped potential.”
Reach for it. They did that on the island, the boys in cells forced to endure discomfort until the needle dropped from the ceiling. They reached for it to take them away from the suffering, to draw them into Foreverland. It was a place as real as earth and water and no one could’ve convinced him otherwise.
Why wasn’t my name on the list?
“They come to the Maze for various reasons.” She turned to face the large tank. A blank expression looked back at her, the white hair swirling in slow motion. A bluish glow turned her complexion sickly brown. “But mostly, they seek something greater than themselves.”
She pawed at the glass. “This experiment, however, has been unlike any game.”
“What experiment?”
She put both hands on the big tank. The light sparkled in her eyes, eyes that gazed with a mixture of sadness and admiration at the drowning man.
Hunter reached into his pocket and pulled out a thick square card. It was heavy and sharp, the raised lines of the Maze symbol upon it. He had seen Micah at the bus stop. He talked to him, accepted the card from him. Hallucinations didn’t leave calling cards.
“Who is he?” Grey pointed at the tank.
“He is a god.”
“A god?”
“What would you call the person who hosts a universe? It is his dream where players exist.”
“You’re saying he is the Maze?”
“It’s not as simple as that, Mr. Hunter. But close.”
His mind was the players’ destination. They awareness leaped into his dream—a dream so convincing it became reality. But I met him. I spoke to him. He was in front of me. He was real, and now he’s floating in the tank. How is that possible?
Dova turned with a smile that glowed inside him, an expression that warmed his chest. He resisted taking her in his arms and weeping.
“You haven’t found what you came seeking, Mr. Hunter.” She looked into the dark tank behind him. “A great sacrifice was made, one as unexpected as it was illuminating.”
“Where is Sunny Grimm?”
She took the hand he was offering, then reached into his pocket to pull out the envelope from the hotel. “You are indeed lucky.”
“Where is she?”
“Someone could’ve escaped the experiment. She could’ve escaped the endless cycle of birth and death and left you behind. She solved the Maze but chose to stay. In doing so, the experiment’s investors were richly rewarded with her revelations. They learned more about the potential of the Maze than they ever hoped.”
“Left me behind? Where is she? What did you do to her?”
She raised her hands and he didn’t stop her. She slid them through his hair and caressed the place where once a stent awaited a needle on the back of his head. Her alluring fragrance finally beat back the room’s pungency.
“Why were you texting me?” He fumbled for his phone. “Why did you give yourself away?”
“I didn’t.”
He tried to pull away, to escape her tender touch. The truth was in the open and he couldn’t see it. She pulled him closer. He let her. Dova kissed his cheek. Her breath tickled his ear.
“Good luck, Mr. Hunter.”
She strode away, her path suddenly illuminated by the glow of the tank behind him. Hunter’s shadow stretched across the concrete. She slowed to a stop, looking around to drink in the room’s details one last time. Her silhouette in the doorway, she fully turned.
“Perhaps we will see each other again,” she said. “In another dream.”
The sound of her footsteps suddenly vanished. The edges of his shadow began to sharpen. Micah somehow watched him turn despite bobbing in the tank with his eyes still closed and body limp. Hunter imagined he was watching a grand realization about to unfold.
Micah’s invitation in one hand, crumpled envelope in the other, Hunter backed away from the smaller tank once darkened, now alight. She was nude. No skin suit to leap her awareness. No respirator to shuttle oxygen into her lungs. Mouth agape, she had inhaled the oxygen-rich solution and stared into emptiness.
A crop of reddish fuzz covered her scalp.
Before he could lift the phone and bring up the picture of the boy and his mother at the waterfall, the picture he’d received before arriving in the city—a picture he couldn’t remember getting—and hold it up, he fell on his knees.
The phone clattered on the floor.
A deep well of sadness gushed into his chest, the pressure pushing into his throat and throbbing in his head. He gasped for air and doubled over like an acolyte giving praise to the figure floating angelic before him.
He found her.
35
Hunter
After the Punch
Hunter crossed the city on foot. A full moon lit the way, beaming newborn and alive. He arrived at his destination in the early hours, clutching an envelope.
Someone made great sacrifices.
He stopped outside the apartment door. The door across the hall was slightly ajar, a tiny piece of paper propped on the threshold. He picked it up.
A miniature paper doll.
He turned back to apartment 300, key in hand, and lightly knocked. Resting his forehead on the door, he knocked once more before fitting the key from the envelope into the lock. The teeth bit into the tumblers. The bolt snapped away from the door jamb.
Hunter turned the knob.
The smell of old furniture and burnt popcorn squeezed into his forehead and swelled inside his sinuses. He stepped inside, put his back against the door, and automatically dropped the key in an empty basket like it was something he’d done all his life. The shadow of a vanilla-scented candle reached for him.
A dead television hulked in the corner. The chairs were pulled away from the table where he’d sat down to speak with Henk Grimm. Green numbers glowed on the oven, the time still frozen. Hunter checked his phone.
It was one a.m.
Only the reflection, you’ll see. Of the one you seek.
He was short of breath; his legs were weak. The package was still on the kitchen counter, the flaps open. The shipping label torn from the side. He rubbed his eyes and tried to focus.
Hand to his face, he went to the cabinet above the stove and found the aspirin behind an unwrapped candle. Cupping water from the sink, he downed four pills. He turned the water off and held still.
Music.
It was coming through the wall. It was a tinny, distant sound leaking from a neighbor or the next room. Quietly, lightly, he stepped into Grey’s bedroom. Clothes were strewn on the floor, electric light dancing from the desk. Sharp shadows flickered from a laptop, where music bled from a pair of earbuds.
The sheets were rustled. The pillow, dented.
The air was thick and hot, as if he were breathing through a wool blanket. He sat at the desk.
Only then you’ll be, the one who is free.
Pages of clutter stuck to his elbow and fluttered on the floor. A tin box rattled onto his lap. He shook the box, pried the lid open and dumped the object into his palm. It rolled onto the papers.
A tooth.
It was a molar, the enamel shining in the laptop’s rhythm. It rested on a word typed across the top of one of the pages. Foreverland. Hunter spread the papers like playing cards. It was a technical report for school, red markings left by a teacher that remained uncorrected.
Grey Grimm had researched Foreverland.
He knew the details of that entire event. He knew what the authorities had found, was familiar with the rescue of the boys by the Coast Guard. There was a list of names on the desk, but no need to read it. Hunter’s name wouldn’t be there.
&nb
sp; The truth strips away delusion.
He took a deep breath. The veneer of the moment was thinning. The dark truth was clawing at him.
His phone buzzed.
He dropped the metal box and spilled papers on the floor. Another text lit the corners of the room. He read the question from a familiar number.
He knew the answer.
Reaching beneath the desk without looking, Hunter slid a phone from a makeshift plastic sleeve cut from a soda bottle. He didn’t wonder how he knew it was there, or how he knew it was loaded with virtual reality software.
It wasn’t Dova who was texting me.
The screen responded to his touch. It requested a security code. He recalled the numbers from a dormant memory and punched them in. He didn’t lock the phone into the VR headset. Instead, he held it in his lap. A red line passed over the surface and pierced his eyes momentarily.
Who is this?
A retinal scan was completed. The phone recognized his true identity. Images appeared on the screen.
Rach was smiling in front of a school locker. She pushed up her glasses. Scenes of coffee shops and late nights in front of the television played out. They were hanging out after school. There were weekend video games and long car rides—a lifetime of images that sank in Hunter’s stomach. His hands shook. The pleasure of melting into long-lost memories welled inside him.
The images found their rightful places inside him and stripped away the delusion. Hunter Montebank was not on the Foreverland list because he was never on the island. He knew all about the event, knew how the boys had been kidnapped and their minds erased. He knew the tragedy that happened, had even wished he was one of them. He thought anyplace was better than here.
But Hunter Montebank was not one of them.
“Can I ask you something?” Dova had asked him when they first met. “What does your name mean?”