After all there were those things that had been raised by the explosion of Doctor Saint’s strange weapon. Surely if the hinges of the world were breaking, then the door to hell was already torn off and cast into the dust. It made him wonder about all those wild tales he’d read in dime novels about the lands of the Great Maze. Monsters and demons, angels and goblins. He’d enjoyed those books as exciting and absurd fancies.
Now he wondered.
And he feared.
If even a fraction of them were true, then dear God in Heaven why was he riding west? Why had he agreed to this job? Why was he moving toward the lands of madness and monsters?
As if in answer, the voice of that woman — that witch or vampire, whatever Mircalla was — whispered inside his memory.
You do not know what you are, man of two worlds. The man who lives between the worlds. Yes… that’s what it says about you. You do not belong to either life or death. That means that I and my sisters cannot have you, Greyson Torrance. You are exempt, pardoned. Not from your crimes but from my web.
And when he had demanded to know what she meant, Mircalla had confounded him more.
It means that the universe, for good or ill, is not done with you. I am forbidden to claim you. Your journey is not over.
But the thing that had frightened him most was what she said about the ghosts he dreamed about every night. He had never spoken of them to anyone, but she had either plucked the thought from him, or possessed a true second sight.
The dead follow you, Grey Torrance.
“No, goddamn it,” he said between clenched teeth.
Looks Away glanced at him. “What’s that, old chap?”
“Nothing,” mumbled Grey. “It’s nothing at all.”
The lie fit like thorns in his mouth. Looks Away studied him for another few moments, then shrugged and turned away.
They rode on.
Two hours later he and Looks Away stopped there and stared out at what lay beyond. The horses trembled and whinnied. Grey felt his own heart begin to hammer while his skin felt cold and greasy.
“Suffering Jesus on the cross,” breathed Grey.
Beyond the mesa was madness.
Beyond the mesa was the world gone wrong.
A world where sense and order had drowned along with mountains and fields.
There, shrouded in drifting clouds of gray mists lay the bones of the earth. Tall spikes and shattered cliffs. Great gaping holes. Monstrous caverns that gaped like the mouths of impossible beasts. And through it, swirling and churning, the ocean reached into the tortured land, slapping at the rocks, smashing down on newborn islands, sizzling into steam as it flooded into deep pits.
Grey had once read a book by a man named Dante that described the rings of Hell.
He was certain he and Looks Away stood looking at the outermost ring.
“Welcome to the Maze,” said the Sioux. “And God help us both because that is where we’re going.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“Where exactly are we heading?” asked Grey as their horses picked their way down through a series of crenellated canyons. Juniper and eucalyptus trees leaned drunkenly over them, their damaged roots clinging desperately to the shattered rocks. “Does your Doctor Saint have his workshop up in these hills?”
“Yes and no.”
“Damn, son, have you ever considered giving a straight answer?”
“Life’s not that easy,” said Looks Away.
Grey thought about it. Nodded. “So—?”
“We’re going back to where this all started.”
“You mean to the laboratory where those guards were killed?”
“Yes. Maybe there was something I missed, something that would give me a new trail to follow.”
“Worth trying. What’s the town?”
“You won’t have heard of it,” said Looks Away. “Sad little place called Paradise Falls. Way out on the edge of the Maze. Dusty little nowhere of a town.”
“Sounds charming.”
They pushed on and Looks Away brought them along a chain of trails that linked former trade routes and newer traveler’s roads. There was no longer such a thing as a straight and reliable road. Not since the quake. Many times they had to dismount and lead their horses on treacherous paths along the sheer sides of mesas, or in the darkened hollows at the feet of crumbling mountains.
“A goddamn billy goat wouldn’t take this road,” complained Grey more than once. Looks Away offered no argument.
By the afternoon of the third day they emerged from a canyon and paused on a promontory beyond which was a sight Grey Torrance had never before seen.
The land was as blasted and broken as it had been, but now, past the cathedral-sized boulders and spikes of sandstone a wide blue expanse spread itself out under the sun. The Pacific was sapphire blue and each wind-tossed wave seemed to glitter with diamond chips. White-bellied gulls wheeled and cried. Long lines of pelicans drifted on the thermals, changing direction, taking their cues from the flight leader. After the blistering desert and the heartbreak of the shattered lands, the deep blue of the rolling ocean was like a balm on the soul.
“God…,” breathed Grey.
Looks Away smiled faintly. “Looks lovely from here,” he said, “but I don’t recommend taking a swim.”
“Why not? Are there sharks?”
The Sioux shook his head. “I saw a few sharks once. Big ones. Bull sharks, I think. Or Great Whites. Washed up on the beach. Bitten in half or crushed.”
“Crushed by what?”
“What indeed?” said the Sioux mysteriously. “This is the Maze, my friend. I’m afraid there are far more things that we don’t understand than things we do.”
“What, sea serpents and cave monsters?” laughed Grey. “Those are just tales from dime novels. There’s nothing to any of that nonsense.”
The Indian turned and studied him for a long moment. There was a small, knowing smile on his lips, but no humor in his eyes. “As you say.”
Grey could not draw him into an explanation. So, in another of the moody silences that seemed to define their relationship, the two men rode down a crooked slope toward a massive cleft in the ground. A rickety bridge spanned the chasm. They stopped at the foot of the bridge and the men slid from their horses to peer over the edge.
“This gorge runs for two hundred miles north and south,” said Looks Away as he and Grey squatted down on the edge. “It opened up during the quake.”
Below them was a raw wound in the earth. Far below, nearly lost in the misty distance, were spikes of jagged rock that rose from a threshing river. Fumes, thick with sulfur and decay, rose on columns of steam.
“The water comes from some underground source,” said Looks Away. “Not salt water, which means that it comes from inland, but I wouldn’t dare call it ‘fresh.’ Anyone who drinks it gets sick and some have died. They break out in sores and go stark staring bonkers.”
“Jeez…”
Grey stood and nodded to the bridge. “Is that thing safe?”
“It hasn’t fallen yet.”
“That’s not exactly an answer.”
“I daresay not.” Looks Away shrugged and pointed to the twisted remnants of a second bridge. All that was left was a pair of tall posts and some rotting tendrils of rope. “That one, the Daedalus Bridge, used to cross a lovely little stream of crystal clear water. It was destroyed in the Quake. A man named Pearl organized the building of a second and much longer bridge to span this chasm. Not sure who chose the name, but people call it the Icarus Bridge.”