The Maze

now. You going home, Toby?"

    "Yep, just waiting to let you in. Don't forget to lock up now, Mrs. Bramfort."

    "I won't."

    She was alone in the gymnasium, a vast room that resounded with her breathing, with every step she took, filling the empty air with echoes. All the nearly built props were neatly stacked in the corner. She'd been doing this a good five evenings in a row now. She unstacked all of them, laying them out side by side. Not much more to do.

    She began work, her right hand turning the screwdriver again and again, digging in new holes through the plywood. Some of them were L shaped, most flat. The brackets were just to support the two pieces of plywood. She didn't have all the lights on; just the corner where she worked had lighting. It wasn't much. There were deepening shadows all around her, growing blacker as the minutes passed. Soon it would be nine o'clock. Dark outside. Darker inside.

    It was the fifth night.

    There wasn't much more to do now except paint. Everything he'd sent over she'd used. She rose and dusted her hands on her jeans. She'd been to see Marlin Jones several times. He was always polite, always eager to help her, seemed to like it when she flirted with him. He had dark, dark eyes, almost opaque, as if no light ever shined behind them. He had dark brows, a thin nose, and full lips. He was good-looking, built well, if a bit on the thin side. He wasn't all that tall, so perhaps then he could be called scrawny. After each time she saw him, she thought that he was just a plain man who earned his living cutting wood.

    "There," she said aloud, wishing something would happen soon, praying it would happen, knowing she wasn't going to like being conked on the head, but not caring. A drop of pain behind her ear, a headache, were nothing compared to what he was going to get. "Done. Now let's see how easy it is to undo all this stuff."

    "It's real easy, Marty."

    It was his voice, Marlin's voice. He was right behind her. She'd never heard him come in. She wanted to leap for joy. Finally, he'd come.

    Her heart pounding, she whirled about, a gasp coming out of her mouth. "Oh goodness gracious, Marlin, you scared the stuffing out of me. Oh yeah, you scared me shitless."

    "Hi, Marty. I just came by to see how you were doing with the props. You know, you really shouldn't curse like that. Ladies shouldn't. It just doesn't sound right."

    "Everyone does, Marlin, everyone. You should hear that scum bucket husband of mine cut loose. Look at this. I'm all done. I just need to paint, but I forgot which colors go on which piece so I'll have to go home and get the drawings."

    "Not bad," he said after a couple of minutes. He had run his fingers over the brackets, frowning when they weren't straight, frowning even more when the screws weren't all the way in.

    He turned to smile down at her. "How's your husband?"

    "That asshole? I left him drinking Bud in front of the television. I'm going to leave that jerk, anytime now, I'm going to tell him to haul his saggy butt out of there and-"

    It came so fast, she didn't have time to do a single thing, even be frightened, even to prepare herself for it. The lights went out. At nearly the same instant, she felt a shock of heavy pain just behind her left ear. She wanted to cry out, but there wasn't any sound in her throat, nothing at all, and she simply collapsed where she stood. She realized just before the blackness took over everything that she hadn't hit the floor. No, Marlin was holding her. Where was Toby? Well hidden, she hoped. Please, don't let him freak out and ruin the plan. No, he wouldn't. Everyone knew she had to take a hit.

    She'd begged for it.

14

    SHE WOKE UP TO DULL, thudding pain behind her left ear. She'd never been hit in the head before. She'd only known what to expect in theory. The reality of it was that it wasn't all that bad. Marlin knew what he was doing. He didn't want her incapacitated. He wanted her up soon, panicked, scared, and begging. He didn't want her crawling around puking up her guts from the nausea.

    She held perfectly still until the pain lifted. She knew this time that she was lying on the floor, a raw-plank floor that smelled like old rotted wood, decades of dust and dirt embedded deep, and ancient carcasses, withered and stale, probably rats.

    It should have been pitch black, but it wasn't. She knew what was going to happen and still she felt such terror she doubted she could even get enough saliva in her mouth