As has become hallowed tradition, I’ll be posting my novel BLACK HOUSE on this blog one chapter per week in 2024.

27. The Anteroom

“Are you hungry, doll? I’m hungry.”

Marks closed his eyes and pinched his nose, but didn’t say anything. He’d mentally established a policy of not responding to Agnes, and this had inspired her to become more annoying and distracting than before. She sat perched on the secretary, tossing the wooden pawn into the air and catching it, kicking her impossibly shapely legs.

“You must be hungry. You ate all your little snacks such a long time ago.”

Marks opened his eyes and stared blearily around the small room. His notes were everywhere, scribbled in haste and torn from the notebook. It had only been hours. had it been hours? Or days? Weeks? No, he thought, days or weeks and he would be dead, of dehydration or starvation or some creative combination of both.

He was afraid to move.

He was afraid to make the wrong decision. He was afraid to get mired and lost, to waste time following cold leads and falling into traps, and losing Dee, who he’d brought here, who he’d smugly lectured on the nature of places like this. He should have known better. His brain wasn’t right. He’d lost so much, his memory like smoke in his hands, and yet he’d just assumed he would know what to do, how to solve everything. And now he was in this room for the third—fourth?—time and she was lost and he had to solve two puzzles: He had to find her, and quickly, and he had to find the way out.

He wondered if she knew she was lost, or if she was still bedazzled by Dennis, the image of her father. If she knew she’d been fooled, she might leave a trail, make a mark in each room for him to find. He’d searched through the Anteroom and found nothing, and he knew this place, this Black House, was untrustworthy. It shifted, it changed—even Agnes had complained about it. If she was leaving a trail, it might be erased and deleted before he got there.

He was frozen. Every possible route seemed fraught with the certainty of disaster, of moving further away from Dee, of leaving her even more deeply buried.

“You only have three choices,” Agnes said in a sing-song voice. Marks reflected that at least she’d stopped humming that damn song for a little while.

Marks closed his eyes again. He wondered who Agnes had been to him, who it was this place had so carefully tried to replicate in hopes of manipulating him. It had chosen Dennis for Dee, and it had worked. She’d embraced him, followed him and—

He froze. The details, he realized, were personalized. Agnes, someone he’d forgotten, someone lost to the mists of his downfall—that had been an oversight. She was meant to be someone he would fall for, someone he wouldn’t be able to resist. He even wondered if her troubling morphing, her constant blurring and subtle revisions were a result of his own messy memories. Dennis was obvious. Dee had come here hoping to find her father—it made sense that the place, this black, endless house, would use that against her.

There were other details, he realized. The chess stuff. Dee played, knew an awful lot about the game. The food in the dining room had been their favorites, and the song she kept humming, it was maddeningly familiar even if he couldn’t recall it. There likely had been other things he hadn’t noticed—or things he would notice when he got there. The whole place had been set up to fool them, to trick them, to mislead them.

Three choices. He knew which rooms were available from the Anteroom: The Library, the Dining Room, and the maze of New Rooms.

He started gathering up his stuff. Dennis was a phantom, a trick. He would naturally seek to lead Dee in the worst possible direction. He would, like Agnes had, try to leverage her connection to him to fool her.

He left his notebook to last, and opened it to a fresh page. He looked at the pawn in Agnes’ delicate, nimble hands. He flipped through pages and made notes:

Anteroom: One pawn

Library: Two pawns

Queer Lounge: Three pawns

Ballroom: Two pawns

Underground: Queen

He studied the list. There was a chess set hidden in this place, and while he didn’t know yet how it worked, he was suddenly certain this was a clue. The Black House took bits and pieces of you and fed them back—sometimes to cheat you, sometimes to guide you. The trick was figuring out which was which, and Marks thought the rule was actually very simple: The people you met cheated you. The things you found guided you.

He pushed the notebook back into his bag and turned to regard the three doors.

“We’re leaving?” Agnes asked, her voice like music, the sound of her slipping off the secretary to her feet sensual and suggestive. “Thank god. It’s been so boring in here waiting for you to wake up. Where to? Research in the Library? I’ll bet there’s at least one actual book in there. In fact, I tell you what: I’m so bored I’ll just be honest and tell you there is. One book that’s not a dictionary, and it will be very useful. But that’s all I’ll say!”

Marks wondered if he’d let other people down like this, how many people he’d left to terrible fates because he’d made assumptions, arrogant assumptions. How many people had he killed? Trapped? Worse? And then forgot.

And then forgot. The gravity of that hit him, staggering him, and he stood unable to move under the weight of it.

“No?” Agnes chirped, suddenly right behind him, leaning up to place her chin on his shoulder, her perfume enveloping him. “The Dining Room then. Good choice. A bite to eat, for sustenance. And they likely went that way, yes? A hungry little girl—because you brought no supplies and left her starving—she remembered that table! Oh, yes she did.”

Marks took a deep breath. “Jesus Christ, shut up,” he muttered, and strode forward. Taking hold of the handle on the door with the Newt carving, the door to the maze of New Rooms, he hesitated just one moment, then pulled it open.

“Mr. Marks!” Agnes gasped, but her voice sounded delighted.

He stepped through into the usual brief hallway. She believed she was with her father. He would convince her to go the worst possible way. And that would be back into the maze—offering some bit of doggerel reasoning, insisting on some brilliant insight. She would go with him because doing otherwise would mean he wasn’t her father.

And Marks thought if he was wrong, he might find his way back out—he’d done it once—but he might also waste too much time, with Dee getting deeper and deeper with each passing moment. But he wasn’t wrong, he told himself. Not because he was certain, but because he had no choice. He started walking towards the other end, eyes moving around as he tried to catch the trick, the moment when the architecture and the space shifted and changed so it became a one-way tunnel, spitting him into the maze and barring any retreat. He didn’t catch it. When he came to the door at the other end of the hall, he turned and looked back, but the bend in the hallway made it impossible to see where he’d come from.

Agnes was right behind him, fragrant and warm, everything about her tactile, inviting touch. She smiled brightly.

In the moment of silence, he could hear the terrible scraping noise, the murmuring voices. Like a monster dragging itself across the floor, some awful beast grunting and flailing, leaving a trail of slime behind it. Terror spiked in his chest and he stood, frozen, for a moment, fighting the primitive instinct to run as he had before. The monster in the library had been an illusion, yes, but would all the monsters they encountered be tricks?

He closed his eyes. It is just a trick, he said to himself. It’s always a trick.

Keeping his eyes closed, he opened the door. The noise instantly became unbearably loud, climbing into him and shaking him, his bones, his organs, every cell of his body. It felt like a hot, dry wind was pouring over him, and he could feel the vibrations in the floor, through his shoes.

He opened his eyes, and everything went quiet.

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As has become hallowed tradition, I’ll be posting my novel BLACK HOUSE on this blog one chapter per week in 2024.

26. The Ballroom

“I suppose you’re cross with me, now,” Agnes said, following him back into the Queer Lounge. “I suppose you’ll say you’ll never trust me again.”

Marks ignored her. It. He reminded himself that Agnes wasn’t human. She was … she was this place, he thought. She was the personification of the Black House. It’s Id.

Wordlessly, he retrieved the folding shovel he’d dropped, snapping it closed and stuffing it back into his backpack. He walked back to the door with the Bear carving on it and opened it up. Without waiting for her to follow, he stepped into the short hallway. At the other end he pushed open the door and stumbled a bit as he entered an immense space, his footsteps echoing hollowly.

It was a huge ballroom, the floor polished marble, blood red and perfectly cut. Chandeliers hung from the vaulted ceiling like liquid diamonds, threatening to rain onto the floor. Dozens of round tables, set for dinner, were decked out in silverware and perfectly folded napkins. A bandstand at one end of the room held instruments, ready and waiting.

As he moved deeper into the space, he realized the shiny glamor was an illusion; the tablecloths were motheaten, the silverware dulled and tarnished, the instruments cobwebby and dust-covered. Instead of glittering and tinkling, the chandeliers hung limply, unused. The air smelled dusty and stale, and Marks felt his throat closing up as if he might not be able to get enough air.

The room was very large, and all around the edges columns supported balconies. The central stairway leading up to them was collapsed. Behind the columns were frescoes—dancers in a silvery paint that seemed to shine with an endless reflected twilight. The eyes seemed to follow Marks, and he kept imagining he heard music, a fading note, sweet and careful.

After a moment he was startled to realize the music was, again, the same terrible song, the song about fruity drinks and getting caught in the rain. It was off-rhythm, the notes scattering into each other, but unfortunately recognizable.

“I do hate this song,” he said.

Across the huge, empty dance floor were the exits, two sets of elegantly ruined French doors, their animal carvings split between each side—one the familiar Duck that, he assumed, led to the Dining Room, and one a floating Octopus, tentacles seeming to float lazily in unseen water. Between the doors, leading down into a darkness where a light flickered on and off rapidly, was a staircase. Marks walked over to it and noted the floor tile, where a familiar-looking Stag had been carved.

“Some truly mythical parties were thrown here,” Agnes said, launching into a graceful series of dance moves. “The ballroom is dark these days, and it has been a long time since anyone’s entertained here, besides me, of course. And my entertainments rarely involve dancing and feasting. But I remember when it was once a grand place … a part of me yearns for its past glories, the laughter, the light, the music.” She stopped and spun to face him, skirt suddenly full and flowing instead of tight and tapered. “But really I’m glad it has died. I have darker interests now, and like these muted places.”

Marks noted the cloud of dust her dancing had kicked up into the air, and he controlled his panic response with effort, forcing himself to keep breathing. He wondered if the Black House reflected her moods, her mindset, if it changed with her, growing brighter when she cheered and darker when she soured.

“You’re saying there were permanent residents here?”

Agnes nodded. “The purpose of this place has changed, you know. It wasn’t always designed for you. Or me. It was once a glorious place, filled with light and noise.” She kicked at the dust again with an elegant move of her leg. “It has been allowed to fall into disrepair.”

“By you.”

She scowled. “Rude.”

He walked over to the ruined stairway and examined it, squinting up through the gloom at the balconies above. He went back over his memories and asked himself if it was the first blocked exit he’d seen, the first time there was a space he couldn’t get to. No, he thought; in the Underground area there had been collapsed tunnels. He thought it interesting that all the blocked tunnels lacked identifying carvings, as if, perhaps, they’d been designed blocked. He wondered if there was another route to the balcony, if that mattered. If it was part of the trick.

“Only one choice,” Agnes said primly, once again launching into some solo dancing. “Unless you want to go back to rooms you’ve already been in.”

He considered. In the Spare Room, the Viper and the Rabbit. In the Dining Room, the Viper again. Three choices, actually, with the Octopus; her vague attempts to confuse him were more amusing than anything else.

He looked at the dance floor where Agnes was performing her own private ballet, spinning and gliding, arms held poised as if around an unseen partner. The floor was tiled black and white. He counted: Eight on each side. He thought of the chess pieces in the other rooms and counted the tiles again.

Heart pounding, he ran over to the French doors and began examining them. Suddenly he knew exactly what he was looking for, and found it quickly: Two wooden pawns, carved and polished from a blonde wood, green felt underneath, set on top of the lintel of the Octopus Doors. A part of a set along with the others they had found.

Carefully, he put them back and nodded to himself. Wondered why two; the pattern was unclear.

“This song,” he said. “You seem very fond of it.”

“This song,” she said with a smile, dipping herself awkwardly. “I hate this song. But those things can be deceiving. For example, I thought you liked the girl, Dee. Deandra. Darling Dee. And yet, you left her behind, where she will very likely starve to death, getting weaker and weaker.”

Marks felt himself flush. It hit home. He did feel guilty about it, but it remained the only choice that made any sense. “She’s with her father,” he said quietly. “It wasn’t my place.”

Agnes paused to smile at him. “Is she?”

Marks went cold. “What?”

Agnes shrugged and went back to dancing. “Remarkable, isn’t it? Am I here? Am I real? Am I a person with desires and motivations or a manifestation of this place, a mirage, an illusion? An illusion so real you think of me as a person, a person you can almost—”

She paused again, studying Marks. “No, you can’t, can you?” She laughed. “Oh my that is a relief. Here I went to so much trouble to look like her, and you can’t even remember her! I thought I was losing my touch.”

This was revenge, he thought. This was a fit of pique. He hadn’t fallen for her monster, and she was angry about it. She was seeking to punish him. But was she lying, or was she revealing something in order to hurt him?

Marks ran over the last few days. Dennis—he’d seemed real enough. Dee had accepted him, immediately. Without reservation. And yet, maybe he’d only resisted Agnes because she—this place—hadn’t realized how damaged he was, how lost most of his prior life was. Whoever Agnes was supposed to be, maybe that was why she’d been morphing, changing. It couldn’t lock in on his memories, because he couldn’t lock in on his memories. Maybe Dee’s memory of her father was crystal clear, and it was able to produce a perfect doppleganger.

“Is he dead?” he asked quietly.

Agnes nodded. “Of course he is.”

He closed his eyes. Everything was his fault. He shouldn’t have brought her. He should have gone back and called the police, family services, then come back. Then come in alone. He shouldn’t have left her alone, either.

He opened his eyes and started walking towards the staircase heading down into the depths. The flickering light and its crazy, random rhythm was foreboding, and his sense of balance and direction was offended—but he knew the architecture of this place made no sense. Why shouldn’t it be possible to find yourself in the Spare Room by going down these stairs?

The stairs led him to an unmarked door, which led to a short corridor of damp stone and dirt floor. A right turn and another unmarked door, and he found himself in the closet again, pushing his way through hanging fur coats. When he fought his way into the spare room, he didn’t hesitate, he strode directly to the door marked with an Ape carving, pulled it open, and stepped through into the short hall beyond. A moment later he was back in the Anteroom. Everything was as it had been. The secretary, the doily, the pawn.

Dee was nowhere to be seen.

He stood, frozen. His brain seemed locked up, paralyzed. He ran through the possibilities: This was a different room altogether, magically re-created down to the precise placement of the pawn where he’d put it down days ago. This was an illusion, he and Dee were both there but out of phase, unable to hear or see each other. Least likely: Dee and her father had truly escaped, and were on the outside working to rescue him.

Most likely: Dee had been lured away and was lost.

He heard the click of Agnes’ shoes as she entered the room. He wanted to turn and strike her down, do violence to her, make her afraid and unhappy. Instead, he did not turn to look at her. He did not run around and try to tear the room down around him. Instead, he sat down, swung the backpack off his shoulder, and pulled out the battered notebook and his pen, and started reviewing all his notes. She was somewhere. Somewhere in the maze. All he had to do was figure out where, figure out how to get to her, then go find her, figure out the escape route, and avoid other traps. Before he starved to death. Before he died of thirst. Before they’d both been in the Black House too long.

Behind him, Agnes started to hum her song again. Something about health food, a neighborhood bar. he shut his eyes and pushed it from his mind.

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As has become hallowed tradition, I’ll be posting my novel BLACK HOUSE on this blog one chapter per week in 2024.

25. The Queer Lounge

The refrigerator door almost tore off its hinges, and for a brief moment Marks caught a glimpse of something dark with what looked like glowing red eyes. A blast of fetid air hit him, warm and damp and heavy with some kind of animal scent.

Someone grabbed his hand. He turned and found Agnes, pulling him towards the door that led back to the library.

“Come on, morbid myopic Marks!”

There was a grumbling growl from inside the fridge, and Marks nodded, turning and letting her pull him towards the door. She pulled it open and as they ran down the short hallway he could hear something roaring behind them, an awful, bloodthirsty sound. And the thud of something heavy galloping behind them.

They burst back into the library, the sudden sense of space as the ceiling soared above them making Marks feel dizzy. Agnes continued to pull him along, dashing into the stacks without hesitation.

“Why are you running?” he gasped. “You are this place!”

“Not everything here is tame, mopey moronic Marks,” she hissed, pulling him deeper and deeper into the maze of bookshelves. Without warning, she dashed into a little alcove formed against one wall by the intersection of two shelves, dropping down and pulling him into a crouch next to her. Her scent seemed to surround him, and he was conscious of the warmth of her next to him. He knew she wasn’t a pretty girl, she was something else entirely, something inhuman, and yet he found himself forgetting.

Over the wheeze of his labored breathing, he could hear it: Something heavy moving through the library nearby, slow and deliberate. Its breathing was ragged and heavy, punctuated by grunts and wet swallowing noises.

“What is it?”

Agnes made an impatient noise. He realized she was gripping his hand tightly. “Something that predates me, Mr. Marks. Something that was here when I arrived,” she whispered. “Others who came before you had to contend with it, which of course was the intent. The design. But then, so did I and I did not enjoy it. Someone contrived to trick it into that appliance and secure it within, and I have left it there ever since.” She pursed her lips. “That was a long time ago, Mr. Marks. A long time. It must be quite hungry by now. And irritated.”

As if in agreement, the thing snarled suddenly, and there was the sound of it running off, claws of some kind clicking against the floor.

Marks looked up. The bookshelves stretched up much higher than he remembered, the spines of the books neat and appealing. They varied inconsistently from ancient leather with ridges and gold-leaf titles to cheap paperbacks that simply read DICTIONARY in bold red letters. Some were worn and well-thumbed, some seemed brand new. A few were even in plastic dustcovers, perfectly preserved. Most were in English, but a few were in other languages.

He turned his head and noted that someone had obviously found the alcove before them—or been led to it, as he had. There were hash marks carved into the side of the bookshelf that formed one shallow wall of the alcove, the sort of lines and cross-outs people made when marking the passage of time. He counted them and they added up to thirty-four.

A shiver went through him. The scratches held his gaze, and for a few seconds he felt like he couldn’t look away. There was something about them that tugged at his brain. The number of them, maybe. Thirty-four. What did that mean to him? Had he seen something else in the maze—what had Agnes called it, a black house? Had he seen something else in the Black House that made him think of thirty-four?

“Rumor is,” Agnes whispered in his ear, her breath warm and sweet, “that it’s the original visitor to this place. The first guest. He never fell for a trap, and so he simply grew older and older, leveraging the curious magic of the Black House to stay alive. Over time, because of the strange temporal properties of this place, he evolved. He changed. He became what all humans will, eventually, but in the process of course he left humanity behind.”

He could almost believe it. Time worked differently in a place like this, he knew that. Being here for so long, trapped, circling around yourself forever—it would change someone. And maybe being stuck in this place would cause a transfer of … magic? Power? He didn’t know the right word. He just thought it possible that someone trapped in this maze for a very long time might start to take on some of its attributes, to become part of the maze.

He looked at Agnes. “Is that what happened to you?” he whispered. “Did you come here as a … did you come here like I did, and you’ve been here so long you’ve … gone over?”

She didn’t turn her head. She moved her eyes to look at him sideways. “Why, Mr. Marks. Always thinking. The answer is, my morose man, that I have always been here and I am also a recent arrival.”

The words chilled him. He kept staring at her even as she looked away. Something was scratching at the edges of his thoughts, something he thought terribly important. Something vital. But it slipped away from him, turning to dust and smoke as he grabbed at it.

A growl pulled him back into the moment. It was deep and disturbing, a sound that made every muscle tense, kicking his heart into high gear.

“It’s on the far side,” he whispered. “We can make it back to the Lounge. We can lose it in the spare bedroom, through the closet.”

“Unless it follows us,” Agnes offered, smiling. “Mr. Marks I know we are not friends but please do not lead me directly into that creature’s maw.”

“We can’t just sit here.”

“Oh, but we can, can’t we? Stay quiet, like little mice, and hidden, like shadows. The beast will wander off.” She made a gentle tsking sound. “Of course, that means it will be wandering and we might encounter it again. You have no idea how hard I worked to imprison it, Mr. Marks! A lot of effort. A lot. Which you have undone.” She pursed her lips for a moment. “Of course, it may be that my little trick has worsened its mood a bit, for which I supposed I apologize in advance of our dismemberment and consumption.”

The beast suddenly howled and began to run, claws scraping the floor. They both stiffened, and Agnes grabbed onto Marks’ arm in a way he was certain was calculated to trigger some sort of a protective masculine instinct in him, but which felt incredibly good anyway. Everything about her was in perfect sync with what he wanted, and he could feel resistance waning. He was tired. he was hungry. He was exhausted, mentally and physically. And she felt good, an inch away, touching him. He knew it wouldn’t be that long before giving in was inevitable.

The creature suddenly howled, a raw, primitive sound that made him shiver.

“You’re thinking again,” Agnes said. “You’re about to do something. Something incredibly stupid, if prior behavior is any indicator.”

He nodded, slowly. He stood up, shrugging her arm off. “It’s a little too perfect,” he said. Being hunted, the protective instinct, pretty, good-smelling Agnes clinging to him as they hid from certain death. Certain death he was suddenly certain he’d been tricked into releasing by the simple twist of making it seem like something he wasn’t supposed to do. And this, this being chased, being hunted—it was the ideal way to ensure he wasted time, wasted energy.

He started walking towards the center aisle.

“Marks!” Agnes hissed, springing to his side. “I don’t think this is a good idea!”

He shrugged. “Duly noted.”

“I may not have your best interests at heart,” she continued, whispering urgently as they moved out of the protecting shadows of the stacks, “but that’s not the same as wishing you torn apart by beasties and ghouls!”

Marks nodded. “I’ll be honest,” he said. “I’m almost half hoping I’m wrong. I’m almost half hoping I get torn to pieces. It would almost be a relief.”

He stepped out into the aisle and looked around. The library seemed unchanged; nothing seemed out of place, nothing disturbed by the passage of some monster. He could hear the thing breathing nearby, short, damp breaths that made the floor shake and vibrate under his feet. Designed, he thought, to get him up and running, sweating, terrified. Racing through doors without a plan or pause for thought.

“Marks!” Agnes hissed from the stacks, leaning out and looking, Marks had to amdit, pretty authentically terrified. “Mr. Marks I swear to you this is not a ruse. Don’t get yourself massacred and leave me all alone here just after I’ve found someone halfway decent to talk to!”

She sounded sincere. There was a slight quaver in her voice, but he also detected an insistent attempt to cover it up, to force bravado, which made it seem even more realistic. And it was appealing to think that something—and she was a thing, he thought, and not a person, not a real person with a real person’s feelings—as beautiful as her wanted him, desired his company, found him interesting. Decent.

He nodded. All of it just made him even more certain.

“Come on!” he shouted, throwing out his arms. “Let’s get it over with!”

“Marks!”

The howl again, visceral, wild, terrifying. The beast burst into the aisle from his right, loping into view. It was vaguely lupine, walking on all fours with the rolling, semi-upright gait of a gorilla, its snout short and its lips peeled back to reveal dripping, sharp teeth, far too many to reasonably fit in its mouth. A carrion smell, rotten meat, carried to him, and sweat popped out all over.

The thing’s glowing eyes locked on him. It pawed the floor and snorted.

He glanced at Agnes. Her face was terrified, eyes wide, one hand half stretch out towards him.

“Let’s go,” he said, and turned his back on it. He started walking back towards the doors. It roared, rattling everything around him, and then he heard and felt it gallop after him, its claws hitting the floor in a shuffled rhythm, click-click-click … click-click. His heart pounded and sweat ran into his eyes, but he forced himself to keep his shaky, uncertain gait slow. If he was wrong, if there really was a horrible monster about to tackle him and tear him to shreds, he was going to be as wrong as humanly possible.

He felt its gravity behind him, felt its hot breath, the splash of sizzling spittle on him. He stopped. He closed his eyes.

Nothing happened. After a moment he opened his eyes and turned. Agnes was standing right behind him. Her face was cold and angry.

“Rude,” she said.

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As has become hallowed tradition, I’ll be posting my novel BLACK HOUSE on this blog one chapter per week in 2024.

24. The Library

“Well, you’re certainly less exciting the second time around.”

Marks didn’t look up at her. He could smell her perfume—it was almost supernaturally appealing, a smell that might have been engineered on the atomic level to appeal to him. The smell made him think of young women he could no longer remember accurately lying in freshly-cut grass, a little drunk from cheap wine and looking at him with that peculiar mixture of lust and innocence only the very young can manage. Agnes was an excruciating distraction, because he kept expecting her to be a good, friendly person simply because she was pretty. Gorgeous, now. It was a personal flaw of his, the expectation that a pretty girl would be a good person.

No doubt, the place knew this about him.

Marks sat at one of the wooden tables in the Library. The door back to the Anteroom wasn’t there, just as it hadn’t been there before, disappearing the moment he’d stepped through. It should have been disturbing, but he found it oddly comforting. The behavior of the rooms, at least, was consistent. He had his notebook and several of the various dictionaries open. He was conscious of hunger and thirst; he still had a little water left in the bottle, but the possibility of dying in this place was now very real, and it filled him with a strange excitement that urged him to work fast, to keep moving.

“What are you doing, anyway?”

He looked up at her. His memory of Agnes when they’d first arrived was muddy, but he was certain she hadn’t had such a perfectly round face, with such an ideal complexion, or so much silky, curly hair. That her legs hadn’t been so long, her waist so small, her curves so pronounced.

“Checking a theory,” he said.

“Which is?”

He sighed. He didn’t think there was any reason not to just go ahead and tell her. “There’s always clues in places like this, I think.” He tried for a moment to dredge up the specific memory he had that made him so certain, but it squirmed out of his mental grasp. “I’ve been in such a rush I haven’t been thinking about them. The animals on the doors. The dictionaries in here.”

She smiled brightly, and he felt a rush of warmth flow through him, a sympathetic reaction. “Red herrings!”

He nodded, forcing himself to look back down at his notes. “Maybe,” he conceded, and it was certainly possible. But the dictionaries stuck in his thoughts. The animal carvings. He’d searched the dictionaries and found all of the animal names they’d encountered in them, and they all seemed to be normal dictionaries, with nothing unusual about them aside from the age of a few. Most were the sort of dictionaries you’d find in any bookstore or online, in any normal classroom or actual library.

He pushed the books aside and studied his map. He’d re-copied it in a neat grid, and he studied the two doors he knew of but hadn’t passed through—the Viper and the Bear—represented by two thick lines that led to white space. He had three choices—reviewing the map had reminded him of the Rabbit in the odd spare bedroom. Nothing he’d found in the library had clarified the issues in any way.

He picked up the notebook and shoved it into the backpack, standing up. Immediately, Agnes was next to him, filling his senses with the warm, Autumn smell of her and an implied intimacy that raised the hairs on his arms. “Oooh,” she said breathily. “Finally! Where? You head into the Queer Lounge, of course you do—then what? Bear, or do you go to the Spare Room and try the Rabbit?”

Marks heard the capital letters in her speech. He didn’t respond, heading down the middle aisle towards the doors at the back of the room. He found he couldn’t quite quantify how long it had been since he and Dee had walked down this way, when they’d first encountered Agnes. It felt like decades, couldn’t be more than a few days, based on the food and water consumed.

He should have brought a second bag filled with supplies. He should have brought walkie talkies, a gun, a blowtorch—he should have brought everything. He thought of Dee and her father. He wondered if he might be wrong, if he might fight his way back to the Anteroom and find they’d escaped, found a way out and through. He shouldn’t have left her. But if he hadn’t he’d still be sitting there when they all starved to death, listening to Agnes as she evolved beyond human comprehension.

He should have stayed. He couldn’t have stayed.

The doors resolved into the three he remembered: Wolf, Quail, Stag.

Something Agnes had just said made him slow down. He could feel her looking at him, her lovely eyes dancing over his skin.

Queer Lounge.

It was an odd way of describing the room. He’d used the phrase too, but somehow hearing it back had crystallized something. He looked up at the doors again. The Quail carving was exquisite, the detail was incredible, and it was suddenly absolutely obvious that the first letter of the animal depicted was related to the room beyond. He closed his eyes.

Ape for Anteroom. Duck for Dining Room. Lion for Library. Hippo for the Hall of Mirrors.

He remembered the underground area, damp and earthy, and how the tunnels leading from it hadn’t been marked the same way.

Still: Stag for the Spare Room. Newt for the New Rooms.

He opened his eyes. It didn’t mean much. Maybe it meant there were twenty-six rooms in all, but the Underground argued against that—that might have been a wholly separate system of rooms, with the Underground as an intersection between the two. He stepped forward and opened the Quail door.

The odd, empty employee lounge of sorts hadn’t changed. At all. The refrigerator was still chained closed, and something still made it jump and shimmy. The food on the tables was still there, the music was still playing.

He walked to the rear of the room and studied the Bear door. He turned and glanced back; the door to the library was still open, to his surprise. Agnes stood in it, a vision, smiling at him in a warm and gentle way that seemed affectionate, as if she truly wished him well. He considered the books behind her, the endless rows of dictionaries, and wondered if the solution to the maze, the way out, was that simple: Spelling a word. Answering a question. A riddle.

It might be, he thought. If he could figure out what the question was. Again, without being able to put his finger on why, exactly, he knew it might work that way.

“You’ve thought of something,” Agnes said as he turned away. “Clever boy.”

He turned back to regard her. “Did you build this place?”

She smiled, crossing her arms over her chest. “No.” She sighed, stepping into the lounge and letting the door close behind her. “No, it’s just that I’ve been here for so long, I’m the god of this place.” She snorted, tracing a delicate finger over the small table as she walked past it. “I don’t control anything, actually. I try. But any changes I make are … undone, eventually.” She shrugged. “Sometimes things I do last for a while.”

“How long have you been here?”

“A very, very long time. I came here just like you, you know. I stumbled in. I became trapped. I spent some time trying to find my way out—I got out of the Waiting Room a different way, incidentally—and then I started to feel at home here. And I thought, so much time had passed, everyone I knew was long gone, why not stay, be a Queen?”

Marks smiled. “That’s what you are, a queen?”

“Queen of the Damned,” she said, leaning back against the table. “Queen of this place, anyway.”

Her charisma was exceptional. Marks wanted to just stand there and discuss the Maze with her, forever, just chatting and smelling her and waiting to see if she would reach out and touch him, maybe, on the arm or the shoulder. The feeling reminded him of being a teenager and trying to act cool around his first girls, trying to imagine a world where he might actually touch such creatures and feel their warmth against his skin.

He took a step forward. “Must be lonely.”

Her face rippled through several sudden emotions. “It … it is. It is.” She smiled again. “But I do get to meet some lovely people. Like you.”

He smiled back. “And lead them to the Waiting Room, the New Room Maze, other traps.”

She looked down at her shoes, which Marks would swear had become shinier, almost like mirrors. “Well, we all have work to do, Mr. Marks. You are apparently all about saving young ladies and reuniting them with their useless fathers. And failing, I’m sorry to say.”

As he stepped closer he imagined an invisible line between them, warm and humming with energy. How long had it been since he’d known a woman? Talked to a woman? He focused on that feeling of sinking into someone else’s space, the smell of sandalwood and musk wrapping itself around him. “Yes,” he said slowly, thickly. “We all have work to do.”

She leaned her weight forward as he drew close, her lips parting. He reached out and touched her hair, tracing one dark curl with his fingers. It felt like silk, a delightful sensation. He leaned in and breathed her in, imagining he could feel her heart beating, feel the heat evaporating from her perfect, flawless skin.

“What’s the question?” he whispered.

She swallowed thickly. “What?”

“The riddle. The question I have to answer to plot the route out,” he said softly, touching her perfect little ear. “What is it?”

She froze, and Marks felt the temperature in the room suddenly drop, the light growing dim. As the darkness crept in, she seemed to grow, stretching up towards the dropped ceiling, color bleeding from her, leaving her a photocopy of herself, all bright white skin and pitch black hair and eyes. An invisible force pushed against him roughly, and he had to lean in to hold his ground.

And then, a second later, everything snapped back to normal and he was in the Queer Lounge and the music was playing on a loop and Agnes was there, normal-sized, fully-fleshed, her face stoic and expressionless.

“Rude,” she said softly.

Marks smiled and shrugged. He thought he’d been too concerned with the rules. With playing along, with gingerly making his way around the edges. He walked over to the refrigerator. The brightly color letter magnets didn’t spell out any secret messages this time. The chain was rusted and old.

As he stood there, the appliance lurched as something inside it slammed itself against the side, like some sort of horrific, manufactured jumping bean. Marks nodded and shrugged the backpack to the floor. He knelt and opened it up, extracting the folding shovel. He stood up and began unfolding it.

“What are you doing?” Agnes asked, sounding bored.

He weighed the shovel in his hands, judging the balance. He held the handle in both hands like a baseball bat. “I’m getting the feeling,” he said, “that I’ve been letting you guide me a little too much. That maybe when you clearly want one reaction from me, I should give you the opposite.” He reared back and swung the shovel at the chain; the impact sent a lance of pain up one arm into his back.

“Mr. Marks!” she shouted, and he thought there was a legitimate note of tension in her voice.

“So, for example,” he continued, hitting the fridge again. “When you chain up a major appliance and something in it makes a lot of noise, reason states we should stay far away from it. So now I’m thinking maybe I should do—”

He hit the chain.

“—the—”

Again.

“Mr. Marks, don’t—”

“—exact—”

He swung the shovel and connected the blade cleanly, and the chain snapped with a metallic ping, sliding to the floor like a metal snake.

There was a moment of silence. A moment before the refrigerator door burst open, he heard Agnes whisper

“Oh, no.”

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23. The Anteroom

For a moment Marks was confused; after what seemed like infinity in the endlessly similar rooms, his nose filled with dust and gypsum, his eyes filled with an unending field of gray and white, the familiar anteroom seemed incredibly alien and lush, giving him a headache. The scratched floor, the hatrack, the buzzing silence, the yellow wallpaper; it was all exactly the same.

Agnes also appeared to be the same pretty, tall girl with dark curly hair and a long, narrow skirt. She stood frowning in the middle of the small space, her arms wrapped around herself.

“This,” she said for the third or fourth time, “is quite unusual.”

Marks ignored her. This was his immediate decision regarding Agnes: Ignore her. He knew her role, now. To trick. To confuse. To lead them invariably to traps and mistakes. He wished he’d made note of her suggestions when they’d been together earlier, so he could cross each and everyone one of them off their future route.

They’d all been standing in silence, and Marks cleared his throat tentatively. They’d made their way out of the maze of newly-built rooms and seemed to be basking in the achievement.

“Listen,” he said. “We have to get moving. We’re still trapped in the larger maze, the longer we stay here the harder it will be to escape.”

Dee and Dennis turned and looked at him. Dee nodded tiredly. Dennis just looked around, dreamily.

“We know where these three doors go,” Marks said.

“Do you?” Agnes asked, smiling.

“The newt is the maze we just escaped,” he went on. “The lion is the library. The duck is the dining room.” He rummaged in the bag and pulled out the notebook, which had become a tattered disaster. “There’s actually only one room we haven’t gone through yet. In the Dining Room, there was a door with a snake on it.”

“A Viper, specifically,” Agnes added. When they all turned tom look at her, she smiled brightly and curtsied. “Here to help!”

“There’s one more!” Dee sdaid excitedly. “In the weird lounge, the break room, there was a door with a bear on it.”

Marks smiled. “Right! Two doors we haven’t tried.”

“No,” Dennis said.

“No what?”

“No, we don’t go back in. Mr. Marks, I know you mean well. And you been a real help and comfort, but you don’t know nearly as much as you think you do, right?” He spread his arms and turned around. “We’re here. In the entryway. I know the door … vanished, whatever. But this is where we came in. It’s the closest we’ll be to getting back out. We stay here and concentrate on fighting our way back out. The door’s gone, but that don’t mean the exit’s not just through the wall or something.”

Marks shook his head. “It won’t work.”

Dennis smiled. “Man, you’ve been talking like you have some sort of advanced degree in Crazy Places, but as far as I can tell your ideas ain’t gotten us very far.”

“Dad!”

“Deandra, quiet. I know Mr. Marks helped you. He’s a good man. I ain’t sayin’ otherwise. Two people can disagree on strategy. Right, Mr. Marks?”

Marks nodded. “They can. But do you really think this place would make a door just vanish but leave the connection to the outside world?”

“It’s a maze after all,” Agnes said brightly. A tub of movie theater popcorn had appeared in her hands. “If you can just go back out the way you came, kind of defeats the point.”

Marks shut his eyes. “Don’t help,” he snapped.

“Don’t help, don’t talk to me, don’t follow us around,” Agnes sighed, scooping up popcorn and tossing it into her mouth. “You are all so rude. Every one of you.”

“Marks, you want to go right back into that place. Different doors? Different rooms? Man, I’m grateful—truly, I am, though maybe a little irritated you brought my daughter here—but you’re wrong. You said it yourself, man. This place is all about gettin’ us to Hamster. Spin the wheel. Chase ourselves around. I think the smart play here is to ignore all the bullshit and think outside the box.”

Marks shook his head. “You’re wrong. It’s not that easy.”

Agnes nodded, grinning. “Really, it’s not.”

“Don’t help.”

Dennis shrugged. “We’re staying here and we’re going to try to find our way out. You do what you gotta do. You did what you said you would. You found me for Dee. Let me take care of her from here.”

Marks hesitated and looked at Dee. She was looking at the floor, and he reminded himself that for all her tough talk and confidence, she was just a kid, and here was her father she thought she’d lost. They were wrong—he knew it in a way that was impossible to explain or justify. Dennis would still be in this room a day from now, a week, a month, a year. But he couldn’t prove it, and there was always the slightest possibility he was wrong, because he knew places like this, they cheated.

He looked at Agnes. She smiled back at him, bright, beautiful. He thought her ongoing transformation into the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen had reached the edge of the Uncanny Valley; soon she would be so otherworldly beautiful she wouldn’t seem human any more. She would be hard to look at. And if it continued long enough she would cross through and become something totally alien. The place cheated. Even if he didn’t have this vague, half-remembered experience, she was evidence of that.

If they stayed to follow Dennis’ plan, it would be just like being trapped in the Waiting Room or the new rooms—they would waste time. The longer they stayed, the harder it was going to be to escape, the easier it would be to just sit and wait. Staying was death. But he couldn’t force Dennis to follow him, and he couldn’t force Dee away from her father.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll go on.”

Dee looked up. The expression on her face resembled terror.

“Look,” he said, talking to both of them but looking at Dee. “I’ll find my way. I’ll make notes. And when I find the route, the way out, when I solve the puzzle, I’ll come back here and get you both.”

Agnes clapped her hands in delight.

“What if we break out?” Dennis asked.

“Then when I come back here I’ll just follow you.”

“Marks,” Dee said. “Don’t … we should … we should stay together. You might get lost in there and never find your way back here.”

He saw fear in her face, tamped down but pushing its way to the surface. But he didn’t have any choice. If he stayed to help them it was doom. They would lose track of how long they’d been in the room. Any work they did to tear out the walls or floors would be repaired, subtly, an inch here and there, so that they never made any real progress. The place would play tricks on them, as ever.

He smiled. “I’ll be okay. I’ll find the way out and come back for you both. I promise.”

The smile felt tight and false on his face. She looked back down at the floor. Dennis nodded. “Man, I think you’re making a mistake, but good luck. And when we break out, we’ll send help. We’ll keep watch. We won’t just abandon you.” He held out his hand.

Marks took it and shook. Then he turned hurriedly, still indecisive, worried about the kid. He didn’t think Dennis would hurt her on purpose, but nothing was on purpose in a place like this. As he turned and looked up, Agnes was standing there, a vision.

“I’ll come with you,” she said. “You’re so much more interesting.”

He sighed. He didn’t want her company, but he didn’t think he’d be able to stop her. He shrugged the backpack, now filled with just a flashlight, the notebook, and quarter-full bottle of water, and reached for the door marked with the lion carving on it.

“Marks!”

He turned to look at Dee, who had taken a half-step towards him. She hesitated, then seemed to reach a point of resolve, straightening up.

“Thanks, man,” she said. “For helping me.” She frowned. “Something’s been bugging me. Why the animals? Why do the doors have the animals carved on them? A different one? Duck for the dining room, lizard for those new rooms. Lion for the library. Is it just random shit?”

Marks shook his head. “It means something. We just haven’t figured it out.”

“Does everything mean something? Like all the dictionaries in the library—is everything a clue?”

“Everything!” Agnes said cheerily. “Except the things that aren’t.”

For a moment they all stood there. Then Marks nodded, turning again. “We’ll figure it out. Don’t worry.”

“Sure.”

The word sounded like a curse. He looked at Agnes, who had an expression of excitement, her eyes shining. She still smelled like sandalwood, clean and fresh. He turned and opened the door, thinking about the dictionaries in the library.

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As has become hallowed tradition, I’ll be posting my novel BLACK HOUSE on this blog one chapter per week in 2024.

21. A New Room

Marks regretted the rope. It dangled from the ladder and there was no way to retrieve it, and now that it had proved its usefulness he worried about it. There might come a room up ahead where they would wish fervently for a rope, and there would be none.

He looked around. “Seems like they’re expanding,” he said. “Building new rooms.”

“Great,” Dennis said. “That’s what we need. More of this.”

“Where are the workers?” Dee asked. “If they’re building, where are they?”

Marks looked around. “Maybe if we make our way through this section, we’ll find them.”

This was met with silence. He looked around. “Three doorways,” he said. “Who wants to pick?”

Dee pointed at a doorway in the far corner. “It’s the opposite direction of the elevator shaft,” she said. “So maybe it takes us away from the Waiting Room.”

“I’m all for that,” Dennis said.

Marks led the way. The doorway led to a short hallway that was also rough, new drywall and unfinished flooring. At the other end was another unfinished doorway, which led them into another room of taped, sanded drywall. This one had eight doorway openings.

“Whatever they intend this to be,” Dennis said, “it’s going to be huge.”

Marks nodded thoughtfully. “Any guesses on the next move?”

No one said anything. After a moment he nodded and headed for the doorway directly opposite the one they’d just come through.

.o0o.

“It’s the same.”

Marks nodded, looking around at the newly-installed drywall, the thick white lines of the taped and sanded seams, the rough subfloor, the bare bulb. They’d tried four doorways so far, and all led to a similar room, with the sole difference being the number and positioning of the doorways. None of the rooms had actual doors, just openings that led to short, identically drywalled halls and then to a room that appeared to be just as recently created.

“It’s a maze,” Marks said resignedly. “A maze within the maze.”

“How long have we been in here?” Dee asked.

“A few hours,” Marks said.

“Anyone know where the first room is any more?”

A moment of silence as they contemplated the walls and floor that looked exactly like every other room they’d been through. Marks swung the backpack around on his shoulder, reached in, took out the notebook, and turned it to a new page.

.o0o.

“How big can the maze be?”

Marks looked at Dennis and shrugged. “Theoretically? Infinite. But there has to be a way through.”

“Doesn’t do us any good if it takes infinity,” Dee said.

They were sprawled on the rough floor of one of the rooms, eating a desultory meal of water, donuts, and power bars. Supplies were getting low, but Marks decided not to make that a topic of conversation at that moment.

Dee yawned.

“Let’s get some sleep,” Marks said after a moment of depressed silence. “Gotta sleep some time.”

“All right,” Dennis said. “I’m done in, sure enough.”

They fell silent. Marks took off his jacket and balled it up to make a pillow, but the stacks of money he still had sewn into the lining made it the worst pillow ever made. He slid the backpack over to Dee, and she struggled similarly to make it resemble something comfortable.

For a few minutes they all tried to relax, to close their eyes. Finally, Dennis sat up.

“Anyone see a light switch?” he said, his voice ragged. “I’ll never sleep with that light in my face.”

“Part of the torture,” Dee said.

Marks climbed to his feet and walked over to the bulb hanging down. He squinted up at it, examining the fixture, then pulled the flashlight from his pocket and with one efficient tap smashed the bulb.

For a moment, there was silence. The room wasn’t entirely in darkness; light from the four doorways bled into it, giving it a twilit, spooky cast.

“Do you … hear something?” Dee asked.

They sat and listened. Dennis lay back down again. “Try to sleep, baby.”

.o0o.

Marks was bent over his notebook when Dee and Dennis woke up, stiff and aching from a night on the hard floor.

“Damn, I think I’ve got splinters in my butt,” Dee said, scowling.

“I’ve got a plan,” Marks said.

.o0o.

They walked into the room, the same room as usual: Drywall, mudded seams, bare bulb. This one had three doorways, including the one they’d just walked through. Marks walked briskly up to the bare bulb and smashed it, then made a note in his notebook.

“How many rooms so far?” Dennis asked, stretching.

“One hundred fifty four,” Marks said.

“Jesus.”

They stood for a moment in the darkness. Both of the other doorways were lit up, meaning they hadn’t been in those rooms yet. Marks thought surely they would start encountering some repeated rooms soon.

“Marks.”

He stepped over to where Dennis was standing in the middle of the room, looking down at the floor.

“You must hear that!” Dee suddenly said.

Something crunched under Marks’ feet. he knelt down and picked up a shard of glass. “Sons of bitches,” he said, face reddening.

“They been replacing the bulbs,” Dennis said flatly, his voice low and spiritless. “They been followin’ us and replacing the bulbs. We maybe already been through half the rooms we’ve seen.”

“Can you hear that?!”

Ignoring Dee, Marks dropped the shard. He looked up at Dennis, whose face had taken on a tight, still look. “How? How could someone be following us and doing that and us not notice?”

“Guys!”

They turned to look at Dee. For a moment they stood in perfect silence. Distant, they could hear what sounded like voices, deep and random, and a sort of scraping sound, like someone was dragging something across the rough flooring. Dee backed away from the direction of the sound. After a few beats the men joined her, all three backing away.

“What does that sound like to you?” Marks asked.

“Nothing good.”

“Come on, come on!” Dee shouted, and turned to run through the opposite doorway. Dennis cursed and spun to follow. Marks hesitated for one moment, then ran after them.

They no longer looked around as they entered a room. They were all the same: Apparently newly-built. sometimes even smelling faintly of the joint compound used to seal the seams, damp and earthy.

And behind them, always seemingly closer, the voices and the incessant scraping noise. Marks thought he could feel it inside his head, like an angry insect had gotten trapped inside his skull and was chewing its way out.

They stopped, breathing hard, and he realized they’d been moving through the rooms faster and faster, almost running, without any conscious thought. The noise kept creeping closer no matter how quickly they moved, and the voices had resolved into ominous shouts and screams, the scraping noises sounding like something sharp being dragged along the walls.

But they never saw any signs of anyone else in the maze, and unless by sheer luck they were continuously advancing deeper into it instead of walking back over their own trail, which seemed much more likely, Marks couldn’t understand how that was possible.

“Stop,” Dennis said, breathing hard and staggering over to one wall, leaning against it. “Stop. It’s been hours. I can’t go any more.”

Marks nodded, stopping and putting his hands on his hips and bending over, breathing in air in greedy gulps. Dennis slid down to the floor and sat desolately, his legs spread in front of him. Dee just sat on the floor, sweaty, and lay back, closing her eyes. To Marks, it felt like they’d just given up. Without a discussion of any kind, they’d simply decided to sit down and let whatever it was overtake them.

He had to admit, it felt good to stop. He wasn’t certain how long—subjectively—they’d been in this place. Two days? Three? Less? More? And he had no idea how long they’d actually been inside. It felt like infinity, and all he knew was that after so much time spent running and thinking and deciding, he was ready to be done. And if all he’d accomplished was reuniting Dee and her father, he thought maybe that was an okay legacy. He’d fixed one thing. A lot time when he’d gotten involved in situations, investigations, he’d accomplished nothing. And sometimes, he knew, he’d only made things worse.

He stumbled over and sat down next to Dennis, and closed his eyes. He listened to the storm of sound inching closer to them, and it suddenly seemed comforting.

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20. A New Room

For a moment they stood, frozen with surprise. Then they all looked up at the ceiling and the panel.

“Dennis,” Marks said. “If you got on my shoulders, could you climb up there?”

Dennis squinted. “Yup.”

No one moved. “Dennis,” Marks said. “If you get up there, do you think you’d be able to pull me up after you, if Dee helps?”

Dennis’ squint turned into a frown. “Well … ” He turned and looked Marks up and down. “Maybe.”

“And leave me here?” Dee demanded.

Marks shook his head. “One of us braces the others legs, and he dangles down, grabs your arms, we pull you up.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Not saying anything specific about anyone’s level of physical condition here,” Dennis said, “but you feeling confident we can pull off those feats of strength?”

Marks straightened up. “Jesus, I’ve got rope in the bag.”

In short order, Marks had produced the rope he’d bought and gotten down on his hands and knees. Dennis took the rope and used Marks as a human step stool, pulling himself up into the service hatch. His legs disappeared, kicking and wriggling, and a moment later the rope dropped down, looking like a thin, frail white line that would obviously snap when tested.

Dennis’ face appeared framed in the square of the hatch. “You doin’ all right, baby?”

Dee offered him a sardonic thumb’s up. Marks was amused to see how quickly she’d gone from joy at seeing her father to a sullen sort of exasperation. He assumed this was standard for children.

“You next,” he said.

She eyed the black square for a second. “Where do you think it leads?”

He shrugged. “Back to the lounge?”

She shook her head, her expression uneasy. “Seems too easy, don’t it? Too damn easy to just backtrack. Like you said, this room is a trap. We ain’t supposed to be able to get out. So why have an access panel in the damn elevator?”

Marks pursed his lips and looked up at the black square above them. “A trap within a trap,” he said thoughtfully.

“Make it worse,” Dee said. “That’s what I’d do, if I was Agnes, lookin’ to keep us in here like bugs in a jar or something.”

Marks kept staring at the hole in the ceiling. Presently Dennis’ face reappeared.

“I got it secure enough,” he said. “You guys coming?”

Marks animated, coming back to the present. “You go,” he said to Dee. “I’ll follow.”

She looked at him dubiously. “You think you be able to climb this rope? When’s the last time you had gym class?”

“Go,” he said with a grimace, taking hold of the rope and holding it taut for her. She shook her head and grabbed on, easily pulling herself up with four powerful tugs, Dennis grabbing onto her and reeling her up the last few feet. Two faces looked down at Marks.

“Come on, old man,” Dee said. “You got me into this mess, you got to get me out.”

“You volunteered,” Marks said, tossing the backpack up. Dennis caught it smartly, and it disappeared into the darkness beyond. He took hold of the rope and tugged on it, took a deep breath, and launched himself upwards, pulling with all his might.

That went well enough. When it came time to move one hand up, he found it no easy task, eventually managing to support himself somewhat by clamping his feet together and letting some of his weight go there. Where it had taken Dee seconds to scramble, it took Marks nearly a minute, and when they pulled him onto the roof of the elevator, he was sweating and breathing hard. He lay on his back staring up at the total darkness of the elevator shaft, catching his breath and waiting for the tell-tale signs of a heart attack while Dennis retrieved the rope and untied it.

There was a strange sense of space all around them, as if the shaft were much larger than it should be and the elevator was in fact swinging freely like a pendulum. The light leaking up and out of the elevator was weak and quickly absorbed, illuminating just a few inches of the elevator’s top, the thick metal cables rising up into darkness.

Rolling over, Marks grabbed his bag and extracted a flashlight by feel. He clicked it on and aimed the beam around them, revealing they were, in fact, in a shaft just large enough to hold the elevator cab. There was a maintenance ladder on one wall. He aimed the flashlight up above them, but the beam diffused and dissolved long before revealing anything of note.

“At least there’s a Ladder,” Dennis said.

Marks snorted. “I was hoping for an exit.”

“You sure there is one?” Dennis said, then looked sharply at Dee. “Oh, shit, of course there’s an exit, right?”

Marks nodded. “There is. There has to be. It’s hard to explain why, but if there wasn’t an exit we’d know. We’d feel it, and give up. But we can sense there is one, so we keep moving, and that’s what this place wants.”

“If that’s what this place wants, then why have a room where everyone’s just sitting around waiting?”

Marks puffed out his cheeks for a moment. “I don’t know. Come on. Let’s climb.”

The ladder was easier than the rope, but it was still difficult. Hand over hand, feet slipping on the rusted, lubricated rungs, he felt the sweat pour from him, his breathing labored and his jaw aching as he clenched the flashlight between his teeth. The darkness above didn’t seem to change, and it didn’t take long to become mesmerized by the steady scroll of the ladder and metal piping along the wall. He knew it didn’t have to make sense, an endless elevator shaft in the midst of this place. His brain still rebelled against the implied infinity of it.

He’d lost the bubbling cheer he’d been feeling earlier. Now it all seemed too neat, too simple, and he worried there really was no choice, no possibility of making their own path. That Agnes was truly in charge, tugging them this way and that.

And yet she’d seemed, at times, as surprised as they’d been, as if she didn’t know everything about this place, as if she’d inherited it, not built it. She’d hinted that changes were made she had nothing to do with, frustration with things that happened without her. It was heartening to think that even Agnes had so little control over her existence, that maybe she wasn’t so different from them, scurrying around like ants fleeing the magnifying glass.

He climbed. His arms burned and his back ached. He climbed long after he thought they should have found the doors leading back to the queer lounge. He felt doubt creeping in, but kept climbing. The idea that it was all a complex trick that had been set up was too much to bear. But as he climbed it seemed increasingly likely that they’d gone much further than they should have, that they’d either missed the doors leading back to the lounge, or those doors had vanished. And maybe that meant this was the trap, the real trap, that they were now in a pitch-dark shaft clinging to a ladder until they were exhausted. Until they headed back down only to discover the elevator had vanished, until they realized they were trapped in this endless, dark space forever, and just let go, to fall endlessly.

He shook his head. He wanted to wipe the sweat from his eyes, but was afraid to let go of the ladder.

He swept the area ahead of him awkwardly with the flashlight, twisting his head this way and that, then paused and swung the light back. Carefully, he stopped climbing and hooked his elbow through on the rungs, taking the light from his mouth and holding it steady. There it was, on the opposite side of the shaft.

“Door,” he shouted. “A door!”

“The Lounge?” Dee shouted back.

He leaned forward as far as he dared, clinging to the metal ladder. “No, it’s one of the other doors, the usual doors,” he said slowly. “It has a carving of … a newt. A lizard, but I think it’s a newt.”

“We’ve seen newt!” Dee shouted.

“Sure,” Marks said, breathing hard in between the words. “But we had a choice before. Doesn’t mean it’s safe.”

“Mr. Marks,” Dennis said, his voice strained. “We’re hanging on a rusty ladder in an elevator shaft. This ain’t safe.”

Marks nodded to himself. “The real question is how do we get over there?”

For a moment he let the light dance on the door. It looked exactly like the doors had looked in the earlier rooms—heavy, wooden, dark.

“Jump?” Dee suggested.

Marks choked as a wave of giddy, hysterical laughter seized him. “No,” he managed to say. “We don’t jump.” He looked up into the darkness above. “We swing,” he said, not believing the words as they came out of his mouth. “We tie the rope to a rung of the ladder up above, then we Tarzan swing over there.”

“Did he just say Tarzan swing?” Dennis wanted to know.

Marks turned the flashlight onto the ladder and estimated the width between the rungs. “I’ll go first. You both stay below.”

He climbed, counting rungs and doing manic math in his head. They needed to get high enough so they’d have the length of rope necessary to swing over. He overcompensated, hooked his arm through a rung again while leaving the flashlight in his mouth, and fished out the rope one-handed. Awkwardly, he lopped the rope around the rung and formed a hitch that he thought would be sufficient. Then he fished up the other end of the rope and repeated the process so he had a long loop of rope knotted twice to the ladder. The loop was long enough, and he hoped having two knots would be insurance against someone plummeting down to their death.

“All right!” he said. “I’m going to try it.”

He ignored the anxious murmur of voices below and trained the flashlight on the door. There was a sliver of landing jutting out from the threshold; he thought it entirely possible to swing over, grab onto the doorknob with one hand while getting his feet on the landing. Then he could see if the door opened inward or outward.

He took a deep breath, tugged on the rope, and put the flashlight in his mouth again. Then he started climbing back down, counting rungs. When he judged he was in the right position, he took hold of the rope with one hand and slowly let it take his weight as he took his other hand from the rung and grabbed onto the rope. For a moment he was suspended with his feet on the rungs, then he leaned back, gathered himself, and launched himself into the air, hanging onto the rope.

He started swinging. The first leap only took him halfway to the door, but he could see he had the positioning right. Like a kid on a tire swing, he began working up momentum, forward, then back, forward, back. Each time the door came closer and closer, but as his arms burned and trembled he suddenly wasn’t confident he’d be able to let go with one hand. He thought it entirely possible if he tried he would lose his grip on the rope entirely.

Sweating, breathing hard, he kept swinging. The door drew closer and closer, and finally something in his brain clicked and he took his right hand from the rope and reached out as he swung towards the door. He closed his fingers around the ornate handle, his feet hitting on the stub of landing and skidding off and on as his momentum tried to pull him back. When he finally settled he was stuck leaning out over the darkness, struggling to breathe around the flashlight and uncertain if he could release the rope and not be pulled backwards by gravity. He teetered out over the emptiness, then slowly pulled himself forward until he was leaning against the door. He pressed his cheek against the wood and breathed for a few seconds, trembling.

“Marks!” Dennis called up. “You okay?”

Marks nodded. Then he realized they couldn’t see him, and forced his muddy brain to consider the problem of letting go of one of the two things keeping him from falling. He moved his hand on the door’s handle and depressed the thumbpiece, became unbalanced and pitched forward as the door slid inward. He lost his grip on the rope and fell, almost sliding back out and down but managing to catch hold of the threshold. Grunting, he pulled himself up and into a brightly-lit room.

“Marks!” Dennis called. “We can see the doorway! You okay? We’re comin’!”

“Fine!” Marks shouted, spitting the flashlight onto the floor and lying back, breathing hard. He considered how inadequate the word fine was in context. He had never been physically built for adventure, and this was turning into more work than he’d done in a long time.

He sat up and looked around. The room looked brand new—it was just a box of recent drywall, taped and mudded. The floor was plywood subfloor. The light was just a bare bulb hanging down from the ceiling. Instead of another door, there were three open doorways leading to similarly bright spaces.

“Marks! I’m sending Dee over to you!”

Marks wiped a hand over his face and flicked sweat onto the floor. He shrugged the backpack off and settled the jacket on his shoulders. Then he picked up the flashlight went and stood in the doorway. He trained the light upwards until he found them; Dee was clinging to the ladder with one hand, the other looped into the rope. She stared right at him, her face a mask of terror.

“Come on!” he said, trying to appear jovial. “I’ll catch you!”

She didn’t appear to be comforted by this announcement. She closed her eyes and let go of the ladder, swinging in a gentle arc towards him. As she came close he reached out with unexpected grace and grabbed hold of her shirt, pulling her in. She let go of the rope and they tumbled to the floor with a bounce.

“I’m okay, Dad!” Dee shouted across the void.

“All right,” Dennis shouted back uncertainly. “Here goes nothing!”

From the darkness, Dennis seemed to materialize from nothing, zooming in close. Marks pushed Dee behind him and reached for her father, but mis-timed it, and Dennis swung back, swallowed by the darkness. Dennis unleashed a stream of invective and reappeared with a determined look on his face, kicking forward with a yelp. Marks reached and grabbed him by the ankles, pulling with all his might. They both landed on the rough subfloor, and Marks felt splinters digging into his legs.

For a moment they lay there, panting. Then Dennis sat up and looked around.

“Well this is kind of disappointing.”

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As has become hallowed tradition, I’ll be posting my novel BLACK HOUSE on this blog one chapter per week in 2024.

19. The Waiting Room

“Why do they all just sit there, waiting?”

Marks shrugged. “It’s a Waiting Room, right?”

The three of them were sitting on the floor in front of the elevator, a picnic of sorts spread out in front of them. Marks had pulled everything out of his backpack and taken an inventory and reviewed his map, making more notes. Dennis discovered there was hot water in one of the urns instead of coffee, so they unplugged it to let it cool. Then they had a meal of power bars, donuts, and coffee.

“That was the worst lunch I have literally ever eaten,” Dee said.

“Your Mom would never have allowed it,” Dennis said, grinning. “That woman, she drove me mad, girl, but she knew how to get things done.”

Marks was re-packing the bag, trying to lay power bars like bricks to gain the most efficient possible use of space. Every few minutes he glanced up at the doors. He didn’t want to admit it out loud, but he felt alive and energetic, almost happy. He had a clear purpose, no distractions, and for the first time in a very long time he didn’t have any bills to worry about, he didn’t have to figure out how to live on ten dollars a week or where he was going to sleep that night. He didn’t have to spend hours pretending to really, really enjoy a cup of cooling coffee just so he could sit inside someplace warm for a while.

And he still had more than four thousand dollars sewn into his jacket. In a strange way he refused to acknowledge consciously, he felt like every day he spent in this awful place, this dark, black house, was a day he didn’t have to spend a dime on survival. It pushed his eventual return to penury further and further out, and that was comforting.

“Maybe we should try to recruit people,” Dee said. “This is messed up. They all got lured here just like us, right Mr. Marks?”

Marks nodded. “That’s probably true, though places like this find its victims in different ways. There are odd little entrances all over the place, hidden. Turn a dark corner, there you are.” He turned to look at them. “The one constant is these places only reveal themselves to people who have nothing to lose, and no one looking for them. People who won’t be missed.”

They all contemplated that for a grim moment. Then Dennis brightened. “Well, then it messed up this time, because I had Dee.”

Marks nodded, turning his attention back to his packing. “Yes. Without Dee you’d just be sitting here, like the rest of them.”

“Who we should at least try to talk to, right?” Dee said impatiently. “They’re being messed with, right? That’s why they’re just sitting here. It’s like a spell or something, the same way Agnes made herself look a certain way. A trick. We got, like, a duty to try and snap them out of it.”

“Agnes,” Dennis said musingly. “That’s the name she gave me, too.”

Marks shook his head. “Your Dad didn’t just sit around.”

“What?”

“It’s a trick, sure, but it’s not forcing anyone. That would be against the rules. This place wants us all in here because it’s easier to soak up our energy, but if it enchanted us into sitting around or something, it wouldn’t get much out of us. It wants people up and moving: Getting coffee, walking the perimeter, arguing, getting into fights. No, the people here who are just sitting? They’re sitting because they don’t want to do anything else. They’ve given up.”

“Then why don’t this place liven them up?” she asked. “It wants energy, movement, business. Why let them just sit?”

He shrugged. “Best guess? Agnes has her hands full. Whatever she is, she’s just one of it. She has to go greet and fuck over every visitor to this place, guide them here. She doesn’t have time to come in here and make everyone do calisthenics or something.”

“What’s calisthenics?”

“Nothing important.”

“Still,” she said firmly. “We should try to snap ’em out of it.”

“No, we shouldn’t.” Marks finished packing and zipped up the backpack. “Let’s say we get a dozen, two dozen, or just one person to get off their ass. These are people who chose to sit down and wait. Your Dad’s been here for what seems to him like two days, we walk in and he’s still motoring, trying to figure this out. These people are sitting here because they’ve given up. If we pry some loose they’ll be dead weights around our necks. We won’t be able to help them, and they’ll hurt us, they’ll slow us down, they’ll argue every decision, they’ll complain, and we’ll suffer for it.”

“Baby,” Dennis said slowly after a moment’s silence. “I got to side with Mr. Marks here on this. You maybe ain’t seen the quality of people I have, and I’m glad of that. But most people make bad decisions, then get mad at you over ’em. We’re better off on our own. These people got eyes and ears. They could come to the same conclusions we did.”

Dee seemed unhappy, but she nodded. “All right.”

They sat for a while. Marks thought about getting another cup of coffee, then imagined himself having to relieve himself against a wall somewhere, as there didn’t seem to be a bathroom anywhere. Then he thought there would be a bathroom somewhere in the maze, wouldn’t there, and he decided it was best that he never, ever see it.

“Listen, we don’t—”

Without fanfare, the elevator emitted a dry, sterile ping.

Marks could hear her, he could hear Agnes, doing the same schtick. Sixth floor, unwanted advances, that sinking feeling, model trains. The voice was dim and muffled, but rising and clarifying.

“Come on!”

They scrambled to their feet. Marks swung the backpack over his shoulder, then turned to glance at the urn of cooling water. He was down to his last few bottles of water, and the gallon or three in the urn would be more than useful. But there was no time. If they paused to gather it, figure out how to carry it with them, there was a very good chance the elevator would leave, and they had no way of knowing if it would ever come back. They had to take the opportunity.

“When the doors open, we go in immediately,” he said, poised. “Don’t hesitate!”

Dennis and Dee both nodded. They all stood, poised, ready.

Agnes’ voice, rising in volume: Eighth floor, bloomers, pantaloons, lederhosen.

The doors split open.

They ran forward, silent, and crowded into the cab, spinning to face the doors, breathing hard from pure excitement. They waited.

“Excuse me?”

They all froze.

“Is this the way out or not?”

They all three turned almost as one, and stared back at the pleasant-looking, washed-out young man in the mid-range suit. He looked a little worse for the wear; rough around the edges. His blond hair was out of place, his jacket was torn, and he had a shallow gash just under his hairline.

Marks smiled and stepped to one side, pushing Dee gently against then wall of the cab. “We don’t know,” he said, feeling honest and upright.

“Dammit,” the man said. “I was really hoping you knew more than I did.”

“Life is disappointment,” Marks said brightly. He looked up at then ceiling. “Dee, if your Dad holds you up, think you can pry open that panel?”

Dee squinted up at the square. “Maybe. With what?”

“It should just push up, like a ceiling tile.” Marks looked at Dennis. “Okay?”

The man in the suit frowned. “What’s going on?”

“Sir, we’re inspecting elevators today,” Marks said. “You go on in and have a cup of coffee.”

“Marks,” Dee hissed.

Marks looked at her, then at Dennis. They both stared back at him. He slumped a little, and turned to face the man in the suit. “I don’t think this is the way out,” he said quietly. “We came down here too. It’s a Trap Room. You should stick with us.”

The man in the suit blinked. “What’s a Trap Room? Do you know Agnes?”

“Everyone here,” Marks said, “knows Agnes. Dee?”

She looked at Dennis. “Dad?”

Dennis peered up at the panel. “Okay. No harm in trying. I’ll lift you up, see if you can push the panel up.”

“Uh,” the man in the suit said. “I’m still standing here.”

Dennis scooped up Dee and lifted her up by her waist. She pushed her hands up against the panel until it lifted.

“Higher!” she said.

Dennis boosted her up.

“Why are we going up through the ceiling?” The man in the suit said, frowning. “Is this room so terrible?”

“It’s the worst room of them all.” Marks said.

Dee pushed the panel up a few inches, then slid it back until she’d revealed the opening, which was about two by two. It was a square of inky black.

Suit Man leaned forward and peered up at it. “So … let me get this right. You’d rather go up into the pitch-black shaft than stay in that room. Jesus, I’ve seen some frightening shit these last three days, but I can’t even imagine what would make me climb into that.”

“Coffee,” Marks said.

“And donuts,” Dennis added, letting letting Dee drop down to the floor.

The four of them stared up at the dark square. “How do we get up there?” Dee asked.

“We’ve got lots of chairs,” Dennis said.

No one moved. One by one they turned to stare at the doors.

“Chances the doors shut if any one of us step outside?” Marks asked.

“What?” Suit Man said, smiling nervously.

Dennis looked at Marks. “Pretty good.”

One by one, they turned and looked at Suit Man. He continued to stare up at the panel for a few moments, then turned and looked around. “What?”

Marks stepped over and took him by the arm and began walking him in a tight circle inside the elevator. “What say you dash out there and grab us a chair or two?”

Suit Man frowned. “Why—you don’t want to—what’s going to happen to me if I go out there?”

“Our experience is limited,” Marks said, turning him in a tight circle. “But probably nothing.”

“You were going in there anyway, right?” Dennis said.

“Sure, but that was before you freaked me out.”

“You weren’t freaked out before this?” Dee asked.

Suit Man pulled away from Marks and stood in front of the doors. “What happens if I step out there and the doors close behind me?”

“All the coffee and donuts you can consume,” Marks said.

“And we’re fucked,” Dennis added. Then he glanced at Dee. “We’re in trouble.”

“Dad,” she groused.

Suit Man turned. “All right,” he said, looking from face to face. “Tell me why you’re going up the elevator shaft. Why aren’t you just picking a door?”

Marks looked at Dee, then at Dennis. He looked back at Suit Guy. “It’s a trap,” he said. “There are no doors.”

“I see.” Suit Man said. He looked back through the doors and set his jaw. “All right, I’ll grab a chair. But then I’m coming with you.”

Marks, Dennis, and Dee exchanged looks, and nodded at each other.

“All right,” Marks said. “Deal.”

“Appreciated,” Dennis added.

Suit Man turned, squared his shoulders, and stepped briskly out of the elevator. He stopped and turned, smiling.

“Well!” he said.

The elevator doors snapped shut.

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