The Disciple and Other Stories of the Paranormal (14 page)

This path was fairly simple to follow for
quite a while. We turned frequently, enough that it was hard to
remember which was the way we were supposedly heading. But it was
all turns, no forks, no decisions.

Of course, it couldn’t last. We finally came
to a three-way intersection. “Right, left, or straight?” I asked
Susan, who had kept track of every step on her map.

“
Straight. I think. The
map shows that they all lead back on each other.”

“
One way’s as good as
another if it all leads to nowhere.”

“
So true, Mister
Philosopher.”

We were instantly faced with turn options.
We headed back and checked the other two paths – both also had
intersections almost immediately.

“
None of these show on the
map,” Susan said worriedly.

“
Then we just give it a
shot and see where we end up.”

We went back to the middle path and started
picking directions at random. I’d pick one, then Susan, then me,
and so on. The intersections were random – sometimes we’d walk a
few paces and hit a new intersection, other times we’d go for a
good few yards before we had to choose where to turn.

We were moving quickly, and moved faster as
we went on. Not out of excitement or even impatience. There were
noises coming from behind many of the walls. Snarling, sobbing,
scratching, moaning. Some of the noises sounded human. Some
didn’t.

“
This place is horrible,”
Susan said. “I don’t see any way that the sounds could be piped in
from anywhere else other than inside the walls.”

We knocked on the walls, but no one knocked
back. In some cases, our knocking made the noises go away. In
others, the noises got louder. And sounded closer.

“
Do you think there are
animals or people in here making those noises?” Susan
asked.

“
No idea,” I lied. Well, I
knew they weren’t animals as she’d know them. Or people,
either.

The third time that happened we both started
to trot. We rounded a corner to find another intersection. “Is this
the twentieth?” Susan asked.

“
I’ve lost count. My turn
to pick?”

“
Yeah.”

“
Left.” We turned, still
at a trot. But we both pulled up and stopped dead. “A
door?”

“
Maybe it’s an exit,”
Susan said excitedly. She grabbed the handle.

“
Wait a second
–”

Scrabbling and scratching interrupted me. It
was loud, insistent, desperate. Susan let go of the door and backed
away. The scratching continued and increased.

“
Do we go in?” Susan asked
in a whisper. The scrabbling became frenzied. And the door moved
just a bit.

“
No way.” I had a good
guess what was behind this door, and it wasn’t something anyone
would want to meet. There were plenty of ways to lose your
promotion, and being ripped apart by an unnamed monster from the
depths was certainly one of them. I grabbed her hand. “We
run.”

We turned and ran. I could have sworn I
heard a door slam behind us. I hoped it was slamming closed, not
open, but wasn’t willing to bet on that kind of luck. We sped up,
flinging ourselves down paths willy-nilly. I heard scratching for a
long time.

The sound finally died down as we rounded
another corner and hit a dead end. We spun and ran back, choosing a
different path. Dead end again.

Well, dead end with a door. This time, Susan
only touched the knob, she didn’t turn it. Scratching ensued. We
turned and ran like hell.

I lost count of how many turns we made, how
many dead ends we hit, and how many doors we reached that all had
the same creepy scratching coming from behind them – but it was a
lot.

We ran on, and this time we were rewarded
with a long hall. It had a lot of paths jutting off it, but we ran
to the end. The hall turned to the right, and we went with it. To
find another dead end.

“
Now what?” Susan
asked.

I leaned against the wall to catch my
breath. “Now we figure out how to get out of here without going
near any of those doors ever again.”

“
Three paces down, then we
turn right.” Susan bit her lip. “I think.”

The hall had turned out to be a decent
choice. Susan had been able to identify where we were because of
it, and now we were trying to get out of this section as fast as we
could without doing any more blind panic runs that would lead us to
scary doors with scarier sounds coming from behind them.

“
It’s okay,” I replied.
“At least we’re away from those doors and those awful noises.
Whatever they were.”

“
It sounded like badgers,”
she said. “At least, some of them did.”

“
Badgers? I thought they
all sounded like claws scrabbling against the walls. Long, sharp
and nasty claws.”

“
Some sounded like badgers
to me,” Susan replied, as we turned walked two more paces and faced
another dead end. “Sorry,” she said miserably. “I really thought
I’d counted right.”

“
The clawing would’ve made
anyone mess up. Let’s face it, that you even have a guess as to
where we are after the last section we were in is a credit to your
brains and map-reading skills and nothing else.”

“
Thanks. I’d feel a whole
lot smarter if I could get us out of here.”

I looked around. The walls weren’t any
lower, still high enough that we couldn’t see the ceiling clearly.
“Any hidden doors?” Not that the doors around here, hidden or
otherwise, sounded like a good bet.

Susan tapped. “Nothing I can detect. Matt,
how are we going to get out of here?”

“
The Guide said that if we
worked at it, we’d find our way.”

“
What a great vacation.”
Susan sounded on the verge of tears. “We’ve been in here for days.”
We hadn’t been, not in reality, but I had to admit it felt like it
by now.

I shrugged. “I thought it was weird, but you
know, when the boss sends you on an all-expenses paid vacation, you
don’t argue.”

“
Guess we should
have.”

“
Let’s go back and see if
we can make any sort of progress.”

We retraced our steps. “Okay, let’s go to
the left here,” Susan said with sudden authority. I thought I saw
something small and white fluttering up ahead. She headed right
toward it. She was moving fast, almost as fast as she’d been when
we’d been running away from the whatevers behind the doors, and I
had to trot to keep up with her.

Susan reached another intersection, turned
right without seeming to think about it, left at the next three
intersections, then right again. I could see the fluttering thing
just ahead of us the whole way. I was fairly sure she was following
it. I chose not to mention that the fluttering thing hadn’t exactly
helped us the last time we’d seen it because, well, maybe it had
and I didn’t realize it.

We walked through an archway and were in a
large garden. Lots of flowers, shrubs and trees lined the far
edges, creating their own kind of walls. They were grown so thick
there was no way to get through. There was plenty of space in here,
though – the only overgrowth was along the edges.

There was a small hillock in the very center
of all of this, and on it stood one tree. The tree had fruit
hanging from its limbs and the white fluttering thing flying around
it. There was a small wrought iron fence around the base of the
hillock. The fence was clearly there for show – a child could climb
over it easily.

This was the moment of truth. Susan was
smart, beautiful, and loved me. If I refused the promotion right
now, the boss would understand. I’d be up for another promotion
soon enough, after all, because I really was that good. The only
rule about promotions the boss had, other than surviving the Test
of Worth, was that you couldn’t refuse promotion three times in a
row. This was the first promotion I’d even considered passing on in
a very long time, so I definitely had the leeway.

We’d have to actually get out of the maze
unscathed, but that was a doable thing. I knew for a fact that
Helen ran the maze all the time, simply because she enjoyed the
challenge. She was legendary, even among the boss’ employees, and
she remained one of his favorites, so my following suit wouldn’t go
against me in any way.

These facts made my decision harder.