Stan was quite dead.
Another section of maze began to slide next to ours. I got the impression that the maze was set up like one of those puzzles where you slide one square piece at a time until you’re able to correctly arrange them into a picture. Whenever I try to do those I end up with some kind of pseudo-Picasso surrealist nightmare.
Though this would have been a fine time to stand there and just gag for a few hours, we had to move. Roger squeezed his way through the blades, getting a nasty cut on his elbow but suffering far less than Stan. Charlotte made it through just as we saw Daniel running down our old path. Since the maze had shifted, he’d have to take a slightly different route to the gargoyle, but Stan was definitely visible through the clear walls from his vantage point.
We didn’t stick around long enough to see his reaction to Stan’s closed-casket-funeral body, though we did hear his scream of fury. We selected the center path of three and continued moving through the maze.
“You’re dead, Mayhem!” Daniel screamed. “ Corpus delicti! ”
His words chilled me. Which was pretty weird, considering that after all I’d been through so far, the simple fact of Daniel informing me that I might perhaps be in a spot of trouble shouldn’t have been much of a mood-breaker. Must’ve been his delivery.
After a couple more turns, we reached a narrow wooden door. I didn’t especially feel like seeking out more keys, but this one didn’t appear to have a lock. I opened it and immediately saw hundreds of razor blades falling toward me. I got out of the way right before the razor blade-lined ironing board fell. It was classic slapstick: the unexpected ironing board dropping out of the closet, smacking the poor bozo on the forehead. Thank goodness I’d been able to avoid the uproarious facial lacerations.
We retraced our path and moved on. The maze was undeniably disorienting, but I felt confident that we were at least moving in the same general direction. Well, until we found ourselves back at Stan’s body.
Naturally, Roger had a smart-ass comment, but in his anxiety he completely messed up the timing and the phrasing, so it’s not worth repeating.
“Okay, so, what do you think about splitting up?” I asked. “If one of us finds the exit, they can call out to everyone else, sort of guide them in the right direction.”
“And give away our position,” Charlotte noted.
“Right. But we have no idea how big this thing is, or where we’re supposed to be headed. We could be wandering around for days.”
“That’s probably a good idea,” said Roger. “As long as I’ve got my trusty meat hook, I should be okay.”
“All right, then,” I said. “Everyone pick a path.”
I had a very strong temptation to give Roger a good-bye hug in case I never saw him again, but I resisted it. We each took our separate paths, myself to the right, Roger straight ahead, and Charlotte to the left.
My path quickly came to a dead end, so I cheated and went down Roger’s path, just as he was returning.
“Yours a dead end, too?” he asked.
I nodded. Together we followed Charlotte ’s path, which very shortly separated into two. I took the right and Roger took the left.
I peeked at myself in one of the mirrored walls. Ugh. Not a glamorous sight. If Helen ever saw me like this, I’d be practicing forced abstinence for the rest of my life.
Two turns and a quick glimpse of Mortimer later, I was at another door. Now, past experience told me that I probably did not want to open this door, but then again, it could also be the way out. All these risks were doing wonders for my machismo. There wasn’t room for me to stand to the side of the door when I opened it, so I settled for turning the doorknob carefully and easing it open inch by inch.
When I was satisfied that nothing sharp or heavy was going to drop out on me, I opened it all the way. Inside was a mummy. A pretty darn cool mummy, almost a dead-on replica of Boris Karloff in his dusty bandages, but it didn’t seem to have any function beyond just standing there, being a mummy.
I closed the door and moved on, promptly walking into a wall. It was bound to happen with all these clear walls and mirrors, so I could only be thankful that it had happened while I was alone.
After another half-minute or so of wandering, the floor began to move under my feet. As it slid, it revealed another section of the maze…where Daniel stood.
I raised my machete, and he raised his revolver. The tip of my weapon was practically touching the barrel of his.
“Well, well,” he said. “You’re pretty damn impressive, I’ve gotta give you that. How’d you like the gasoline shower?”
“Is that what was that was supposed to be? All it did was trickle a little bit,” I said, just to piss him off.
Daniel frowned. “That’s fine. It wasn’t really completely ready to go yet.”
“So where’d your fancy machine gun go?” I asked, trying to keep him occupied while I waited for a good chance to run for cover.
“The last thing I need is for you or your friends to get a hold of a machine gun, don’t you think?”
“I thought you just didn’t want to shoot up the maze.”
“That, too.”
“So what’s up with the mummy? Was it supposed to attack me or something?”
“It’s a placeholder. That’s where the rattlesnakes are going to go.”
“Cool. I hope they weren’t too hard to smuggle into Alaska, because we accidentally killed a few of them.”
“Why would you kill innocent snakes in an aquarium?”
“It got knocked over. Sorry about that.”
“As long as you didn’t do it on purpose. So, have you formulated some brilliant escape plan while we’ve been talking? There’s not a chandelier above my head, is there?”
“Nah,” I admitted. “I’m pretty well screwed, actually.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. And now I’m going to shoot you.”
I instinctively held the machete in front of me, like a very narrow shield, as Daniel pulled the trigger.
Now, if somebody had said to me last week, “Andrew, guess what? You’re going to be standing in a big maze, and the main bad guy is going to have a gun pointed at you, and you’re going to gab for a while, then he’s going to fire. But you’ll have instinctively held this machete in front of you, and not only will the bullet hit the machete right around where you heart would’ve been, but the bullet will ricochet off the blade and hit the main bad guy in his gun-shooting arm. Oh, yeah, and you’ll really look like crap,” the only part I would have believed was the part about me looking like crap
But it happened. Daniel fired. The bullet struck the machete blade, knocking the flat edge against me with painful force, and then ricocheted off and struck Daniel in the upper arm. His hand opened, and the gun dropped out of his grip.
I was, to put it lightly, pretty damn surprised. Almost too surprised to take a swing at Daniel with the machete. Unfortunately, with my hands throbbing violently from the fact that they’d been holding the machete when it took a bullet, it wasn’t a very good swing.
It was, however, a good enough swing to convince Daniel that he needed to get out of there. And so he turned and ran through one of the maze paths. I picked up his revolver, trying to count how many times we’d played musical guns since the vacation began.
The maze split off into two paths again, but I could hear Daniel’s footsteps to the right. I followed him, smacking into a mirror this time, but continued the pursuit.
Chapter 24
NOT ONLY did I have the sound of Daniel’s footsteps to follow, but he was also emitting a stream of outrageously creative profanity, so I was able to keep on his trail.