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

18. The Waiting Room

“It occurs to me,” Dennis said slowly, “that you might be a dirty trick.”

Marks sipped the coffee. It was terrible, watery and gritty, with only a vaguely coffee-like flavor. “Like maybe we’re not what we seem to be.”

Dennis nodded. “I met a woman when I arrived. Nice older black lady, said she’d been here for days, suggested we team up. Full of opinions about where to go.”

Marks nodded, blowing on the steaming cup. “She changed. Looked different by the end.”

Dennis nodded, studying Marks, then leaning forward a little to study Dee.

“And now you’re wondering if we’re part of the Welcome Wagon, here to mess with you.”

Dennis leaned back and pursed his lips. “It had crossed my mind, yeah. Shit, man, I dealt with the prison yard, basically didn’t sleep for four years because I was convinced I was getting killed or … or something if I did. And I still felt more secure than I do right at this moment.”

“Smart man.” Marks toasted him with his coffee cup. “You’ve been living on donuts and coffee for two weeks now?”

They were seated on the floor near the urns, Dee to one side of her father and Marks on the other. People sometimes approached the tables and sniffed in irritation before getting their own cups or plates of pastries, but no one said anything. Marks watched them curiously, wondering how in the world they could possibly just sit there.

Dennis nodded. “I got experience with terrible coffee, man, and stale donuts. Meetings, AA.” He blinked. “Wait. You say two weeks? I count two days.”

“Time’s different in here. The whole point is to drain you, keep you spinning.” He sipped the coffee again and winced. “The donuts as bad as this?”

“Worse,” Dennis said. “There’s a definite sawdust vibe going on.”

“You walk the perimeter?”

Dennis nodded, and Marks found himself impressed. There was something of himself in Dennis, he thought, even though they looked quite different: Marks white, wearing a cheap suit, somehow inert and heavy; Dennis black and wearing denim, his hair cut short (but slowly growing wild), his hands calloused. But Marks could sense that despair, that knowledge that you’d lost more time than you had left, that opportunities were running out. He smelled familiar desperation on Dennis and it made him feel like they were on the same team. A losing team, perhaps, but at least familiar.

“I started at the elevator,” he said. “And walked right. Hit the wall, turned left. Kept walking. And walking. And walking. This room is god-damn huge.”

“You find the edge?”

Dennis shook his head, sipping his own coffee. “Not yet. I decided I would get some sleep, stuff my pockets with donuts, and carry two cups of coffee with me, make an attempt at finding the other side of this room.” He looked around. “This place is crazy.”

Marks nodded. “Who fills the coffee urns? Puts out the donuts?”

“Never saw no one.”

Marks sipped the coffee with a straightfaced sense of resignation and looked over the crowd of people sitting around them. Some stood, in small groups. Marks ran his eyes over them, reminding himself that they might be plants, figments, or even Agnes herself, who had demonstrated an ability to change her form to some extent, and who certainly wasn’t human.

“Hey!”

A doughy-looking woman with hair that had been dyed bright read, but which had grown out into a dull silver, giving her a two-toned look, turned and looked at them with dulled, blank eyes. “What?”

“How long you been here?”

She shrugged. “Dunno.”

“Guess!”

“Dunno.”

He got to his feet and carried his coffee over to one of the knots of people: Three young men wearing casual office clothes: Button-down shirts, jackets. They looked at him politely as he approached.

“How long you been here, guys?”

They looked at him, then at each other, smiling secretly. They shook their heads and turned away, leaning in close to have a private conversation. Marks nodded and returned to where Dennis and Dee were sitting.

“Not too friendly, huh?” Dennis asked.

“The Waiting Room part is genius,” Marks said. “For a lot of people, they can’t process what’s happening to them. It’s so far outside their experience and expectations, they don’t know what to do. Their brains shut down, become paralyzed. And then you give them a waiting room, and instinct takes over. They sit. They wait. Anyone trying to upset that is ignored, or attacked.”

“Okay,” Dennis said. “So what do you do for a living, Mr. Marks? Because it sounds like you build places like this. Or, like we touched on, maybe you’re my old black lady friend fucking with me.” His eyes flashed in Dee’s direction. “Messing with me.”

“I know the word, Dad.”

“No,” Marks said. “Just been to a few places in this general category. That’s how I came to look for you, in a building that shouldn’t exist.”

“All right. All right. So, we walk the perimeter. You really think there’s a way out of here?”

“You tried the elevator?”

Dennis shook his head. “No button. Tried pulling the doors open, even tore apart one of the chairs and tried prying them with one of the legs. All it got me was bloody fingers.” He held up his hands. The fingers were scabbed and raw.

Marks nodded, looking over at the shiny metal doors. “Hey, Dee, remember the slide into that weird lounge? We had no idea it was there.” He nodded again. “I’ll make a bet, we walk the perimeter we’ll walk for a long time, and find nothing.” He looked at Dennis. “This whole place is designed to waste our time. Chances are, if you see an obvious way, you’re being screwed.”

Dennis sighed. “All right, so we can’t wait, we can’t walk, so what do we do?”

Marks gestured. “The elevator. Look, this place is trying hard to convince us the elevator’s a dead end. But it can’t be. If we couldn’t go back, it wouldn’t be here—the doors usually disappear when you can’t go backwards.”

“Yeah,” Dennis said, leaning forward. “Yeah. That’s right, when you can’t go back, the door just ain’t there. I remember that.”

“So if the elevator is still here, there has to be a way to get back in it. Ride it back up. Or ride it somewhere.”

Dennis smiled. “Mr. Marks, you just saved us a lot of walking. So how do we get the elevator doors open?”

Marks shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Dennis studied him for a moment, then smiled broadly. “My man!”

“Dad,” Dee said.

Marks smiled. He’d forgotten how good it could be to just have voices around you, people paying attention to you, interacting and reacting. He stared at the elevator doors and basked, for a moment, in having another adult just sharing his company.

“We could just wait for the next bunch of stupid people,” Dee said.

Marks turned to look at her, his dreamy half-smile still in place. “What?”

Dee shrugged. “We came down the elevator, and the doors opened and stayed open until we stepped off. Why not wait for the next group of dummies who get trapped in here, and just step back on?”

Dennis and Marks looked at each other.

“Would that work?” Dennis asked.

“I have no idea.” Marks looked back at the elevator doors. “But unless we come up with something better, we’re going to find out.”

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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.

17. The Waiting Room

For a moment, Marks had the sensation of being sealed off, the air going still and the pressure climbing. Then the cab lurched, sending him stumbling into Dee. They righted themselves, and the elevator shuddered into motion.

“Why isn’t she coming?” Dee asked. “Why didn’t she come?”

He sighed. “Because it’s a trap, kid. Because we messed up and fell for a trap.”

She looked ready to cry. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

He reached out one hand awkwardly and put it on her shoulder. “Shut up, kid. We were fucking doomed from the moment we walked in here.”

She started crying. “Also my damn fault,” she sobbed. “Ah, shit, I’m sorry. You didn’t have much going on, Mr. Marks, but you looked like you were on the upswing, huh? Cash, and you looked like a man hadn’t had a roof over his head for a while. And I dragged you here, and now we’re gonna die, aren’t we?”

“No,” he said quietly, looking around. “This place wants us alive. That’s the point. It wants to steal our time.”

The elevator cab was oppressively red. The music seemed to be on an endless loop without structure, just a motif repeating endlessly. He looked up; there was a maintenance panel in the middle of the ceiling.

The ride went on longer than should have been possible, the cab just shaking and screeching on and on. They stood in silence, him with his hand on her shoulder, her with tears streaming down her face. The music playing.

Suddenly, the music was interrupted by a burst of static, and then Agnes’ voice came over the air, tinny and cheerful.

“Fifth floor: Knickers, moonbeams, and carcinogens,” she announced. “I wanted to thank you for a truly entertaining time! You totally broke records. You lasted long time. I will never forget you, dour poor man and black moppet.”

“Is she going to just keep talking to us forever?” Dee asked. “Is that how this goes?”

“Sixth floor: Seashells, seashells, by the seesaw,” Agnes continued, her voice somehow seeming to fill the entirety of the cab, a pulsing vibration using every molecule of the elevator as an amplifier. “To be clear, while, yes, it’s true I pushed you towards this option from the very beginning, I also offered some better choices. For example, there is actually a map in the library! Really there is! It would take you ever so long to find it, but I was not, actually, lying.”

“Seems like it,” Marks said, leaning back against the rear of the elevator and wishing fervently for a cigarette for the first time in a long time.

“Seventh floor: Kittens, barbells, feral children. Nasty place, the seventh floor, do not go there. Mr. Marks, you wished to know who I made myself resemble. I shan’t tell you, but I am sure you will figure it out in time. And then, my manly, miserable Marks, you will wish you had not.”

Marks nodded to himself as if this made perfect sense. He glanced down at Dee, who was staring up at him apprehensively, and winked.

“Eighth floor: Blood diamonds, blood money, blood donations,” Agnes snapped off. “Ninth floor: Beetles, earworms, human centipedes. Tenth floor … tenth floor, end of the line.”

Her voice cut off, the shaking stopped, and with a neutral-sounding ding the doors split open again.

It revealed a pleasant room, quite large and filled with people. There were hundreds of multi-colored plastic seats arranged either in rows or little groups. A long table along the wall nearest the elevator held urns of coffee and plates of donuts. Many of the people had paper cups in their hands. A Muzak version of a sad, melancholy song was playing softly—but Marks was momentarily relieved to hear it was a different song than the one he’d been hearing everywhere else.

“Tenth floor,” Agnes said softly all around them. “Old friends.”

They stepped into the room, and the elevator doors closed behind them softly. The smell of coffee was strong, and the music seemed to recede to an almost subliminal level of volume. Marks squinted and leaned forward, then straightened up.

“Jesus Christ,” he whispered. “There’s a horizon.”

A few people seated nearest them glanced over. One elderly gentleman, wearing a suit of tattered and oversized clothes, looked Marks up and down and sniffed audibly.

“There’s a five year wait for a chair,” he said. “I’m not moving.”

“Is my Dad here?” Dee asked, straining up onto her toes. “I mean, this is where she wanted us to go. This was her trick. He has to be here, right?”

“Maybe, kid,” he said. “Stay close, though—this place is huge!”

“Dad!” she shouted, setting off between the rows of chairs. “Dad!”

Marks noted how many of the people in the chairs were elderly. A few scowled at Dee as she raced by.

“Keep it down!”

“I’m sleeping here, sweetheart.”

“Shut up, you fucking brat!”

Marks waved them away as he hustled after her, trying to keep up. He noted that the people near the elevator were all uniformly older, often decrepit. A few he noticed had dust on their shoulders as they dozed, and the air, he realized, had a thick, earthy smell that definitely implied a lack of bathrooms. He glanced down and saw that the floor was covered in a soft pelt of dirt that wasn’t dirt—too light, too springy. It hit him a moment later and he stumbled, gagging, and almost losing his balance: It was skin flakes and hair, dirt and fingernails from the people who’d been sitting here, waiting, for years, possibly decades—so long it had all mulched into some sort of soil, complete with tiny sprouts, their delicate green leaves reaching up for …what? Tears? Sweat? Saliva?

For the first time, the fear that maybe they were trapped got a hand on him. He wondered at the odds: All of these people, he had little doubt, had entered this room just as he had—a little stunned, possibly already exhausted by a lengthy journey through the maze, but essentially certain there was always another door, another option. Even if you looped back to the beginning or found yourself in some terrible room again, there would always be another way.

And now here they were, sitting down, letting their lives slip away.

“Dee! Slow down!”

She ignored him, racing forward and shouting. The room, Marks noted, went on and on, impossibly large. Their voices, rather than echoing off the high ceiling and distant walls, just fell flat. The effort to shout was a strain, as if the air was thicker than usual and it required more energy just to be heard. The sheer scale of the place started to eat away at his equanimity, and he was suddenly afraid he’d lose track of her and not be able to locate her again.

“Dee!”

For a moment, Marks thought there was a faint echo, then he realized he was hearing someone else shout her name.

“Dad!”

Dee swerved, cutting down a new aisle between a whole new island of seats. Marks hurried after her, backpack bouncing. Through the sweat that started to fog his vision he could see a tall, lanky man wearing a denim jacket, wearing blue work pants and a pair of battered old boots. He was running easily through the narrow lanes between the chairs, and scooped Dee up into his arms when they met, swinging her in a half-circle before setting her down on the floor.

Several of those seated scowled and grumbled.

“Baby, what are you doing here?” he asked. Marks slowed down and walked the last few feet towards them, breathing hard. He halted and leaned over, putting his hands on his knees, sucking in air. The backpack slid forward and rested on the back of his head.

“I came after you,” she said. “When you didn’t come back I knew somethin’ had happened to you.”

Kneeling in front of her, he put his hands on her shoulders and looked into her face. Marks liked him: He was middle-aged, fortyish, and had the skinny frame of someone used to being hungry, but with a paunch that hinted at a slow down, more time spent sitting around than he was used to. His face was deeply lined, the sort of face, Marks thought, that was used to a lot of expression.

“You shouldn’t have come, baby,” he said seriously, eyes shining. “You shouldn’t have come.”

Dee was crying. “I wanted to find you,” she said softly.

As murmurs of disapproval swept the crowd, Dee’s father’s eyes drifted over her shoulder to where Marks stood.

“Who’s this?”

Dee turned and dragged an arm across her nose. “Mr. Marks. He’s helping me.”

Her father eyed Marks up and down, his face set. “You brought her here, man?”

“I followed him! He didn’t know!” Dee added quickly. “He was comin’ here to look for you, and I snuck after him.”

Marks looked at his shoes. “I had a chance to turn back when I knew she was here, and I didn’t,” he admitted. He forced himself to look up. “I’m sorry.”

The man stared for another few moments, then stood up. Patting Dee’s shoulder, he stepped around her and approached Marks, who steadied himself. He’d been punched in the nose more than once and while he didn’t enjoy it, he’d found that he came back from it admirably.

“All right, what’s done is done and we can talk about it later,” the man said. He held out a hand. “Dennis,” he said.

Marks took his hand. It was warm and dry and rough, the hands of someone used to working with them. His grip was powerful, his shake efficient. “Phil,” Marks said.

“He’s been keepin’ an eye on me, Dad,” Dee said from behind them. Dennis studied Marks for another moment, then sighed.

“All right,” he said. “All right. I know how willful this one is. And I know I sure didn’t expect this bullshit when I showed up here, so … all right. You’re here now.”

Marks nodded. “You have a look around? Any doors? Any way out?”

Dennis nodded. “Yeah, I been lookin’. All we got in here is chairs. And people. And if you walk a real long way in that direction—” He turned to indicate an area of the room behind him. “You find some real old chairs with some real dead people sittin’ in them.” He looked back at Marks. “So, as far as I can tell, no, no way out.”

Marks smiled slightly. “That’s what she wants us to think, isn’t it?”

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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.

16. The Queer Lounge

The slide melted away and he was free-falling, crashing down through a drop ceiling suspended by thin wires and an aluminum frame. He landed on something with a lot of give and bounced off, crashing down onto the floor and rolling over. He looked around.

“Ah, shit,” he said. “Not again.”

A moment later, screaming, Dee rocketed from the slide that was hidden up above in the shadows gathered near the ceiling. She hit what Marks could see now was the trampoline and bounced off too, landing on top of him and knocking him over. He heard Agnes follow, cheering as she hit the air and laughing uproariously as she bounced and crashed into them in a cloud of peppermint.

“Oh, lovely!” she said, sitting up with her legs stretched out in front of her. “Lovely! Sorry, I would have warned you but I didn’t put in the slide. Someone has been very naughty!”

Dee sat up and stared around. “No!”

Marks pushed himself back until he was resting against the door of the closet. “It is a maze, after all,” he said.

They all jumped as the refrigerator suddenly tipped violently as something inside it threw itself against the door. It fell back into place after coming very close to tipping over, and Agnes burst into laughter.

They were back in the oppressive, queer employee lounge. The Victrola was playing the same jazzy music, and the place still had the deflated air of a room recently abandoned. Marks indulged himself for a moment, wondering if the sensation of someone having just been there was actually them, if they were somehow displaced and out of sync with time, following themselves.

“Wonderful!” Agnes said breathily.

Dee stood up and brushed herself off. “Doors are the same,” she said. Then she scowled. “Everything’s the same. We just looped back on ourselves. We’re wasting time.”

“Calm down,” Marks said, grunting as he pushed himself to his feet. “We’re not wasting time. It’s a maze. This has to happen.” He shrugged off the backpack and took out the notebook, which was getting a wrinkled and tattered look to it. “We know where that dumwaiter leads to,” he said. “So we choose something else.” He looked up over the notebook at Agnes, who remained on the floor smiling. “Any suggestions for finding her Dad faster?”

Agnes sighed. “All business, you are, Miserable Moody Mr. Marks. All business and fussing. It’s why you’re so unhappy. We just rode a slide from the Underground to the Lounge! It was delightful! And all you can do is get out your grimy notebook.” She sprang up and made a stuffy, angry face. “Let us see, turn to page nine, class, and let us examine the Incident of the Dum Waiter.” She grinned and looked at him. “See?” she said, pointing. “Fussy.”

Marks nodded. “I’m making a note: Don’t be so fussy.”

Agnes grinned. “Was that a joke? A terrible, weak, unfunny joke? Progress!” She spun and took Dee by the shoulders. “Now, dismal, despairing Dee, let me go on record and state that I have been trying to steer you in the right direction since the start, because my official advice is to follow the wolf and take the elevator.”

Dee and Marks both turned to look at the door. It was the familiar door they’d seen in almost every room, and the wolf carved on it looked intimidating, feral. Dee looked at Marks, and he shrugged.

“Dee’s Dad is at the other end of that ride?”

“It’s your best bet, Mr. Mopey Marks. As I just discovered, someone is not only tearing down barricades I set in place, someone is installing slides! So I have no idea if my memories are accurate.” She grinned. “Which, I hear, is something you of all people should understand and sympathize with! But you won’t, because you’re a nasty sort of person. But if you’re looking for dear dopey Dee’s Dad, the Wolf Door is the door I would try.”

Dee looked at Marks. “We got to.”

Marks nodded. “I know.” He turned and studied Agnes. “But there’s a trick. We should spend a moment trying to see it.”

Agnes drew herself up, and Marks was suddenly aware of just how attractive she’d become. When they’d first encountered her she’d been pretty enough, certainly, but she had slowly and subtly changed, becoming taller, thinner, rounder, her skin clearer, her eyes brighter, her hair somehow shinier and bouncier. She was a goddess, almost too beautiful to look at. “I am insulted. And also no longer interested in your cruelty. That door, as you might recall from your ridiculous map, takes you back to the library. That dumwaiter, as you know, takes you to the odd little bedroom—or it did. That door,” she continued, pointing at the door with a bear carved onto it, “leads to the saddest room in this place. The elevator is the one you want.”

“Fine,” Marks said. “Let’s go, Dee.”

Dee nodded, walked over to the elevator and stood right in front of it. Up close the doors were battered and dented, with at least two very deep scratches in the metal. Like something had attacked the doors. There was just one button. It looked like it was made of pearl, a milky white that shined like plastic. The Wolf was scratched into the metal, etched somehow, as if with acid. Up close it seemed terrifying. Up close it was like the wolf was looking directly at her, and it seemed hungry.

She reached up and pressed the button. It was warm, and she was rewarded with a soft ding. A second later, the doors split open.

The interior of the elevator was all plush red. The floor was a deep, polished black. The music was the same tune being played on the Victrola but in a muted, tinkly version that was all treble, perfectly synced. The same tune Agnes had been humming when they first arrived.

Dee took a step back and twisted around to look at Agnes. “I want to go a different way?”

“There’s a party behind the Bear Door,” Agnes said. “Or was, a long time ago. It’s a sad party, but since you don’t seem to want to find your father, I suppose that would actually be appropriate.”

Dee clenched her jaw and turned back to the elevator. Marks stepped up behind her. “Come on, kid. He’s either in the next room, or he’s not. Let’s go see what’s what.”

Dee took a deep breath. “All right,” she said. She stepped into the elevator, paused, then turned. Marks hurried after her, suddenly terrified the doors would snap shut.

Nothing happened. He turned to peer back into the room at Agnes.

“Coming?”

She smiled. “No.”

The doors snapped shut.

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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.

15. Underground

The hall terminated in a dark space that felt simultaneously wide open and constricted. It was hard to see, but the place was clearly an intersection of dirt tunnels supported by rotted beams. All of the entrances appeared to have been boarded up at one time, the shattered remnants of the lumber scattered on the floor, bent nails rusting in the damp.

“Not this again,” Agnes said despairingly as she flounced in,

A single feeble oil lantern hung on one of the walls, emitting a sickly pale glow that made the tunnels leading away look even darker. Their tunnel entrances are posts and lintels of wood; some were collapsed, making it impossible to enter. A chill wind blew through the intersection. Marks tried but couldn’t determine which direction the wind came from.

Next to the lamp, something had been tied to a string and hung from the ceiling. He stepped up close to it and blinked. It was a small carving, another chess piece like the pawns they’d seen in other rooms. But this one was a queen. Marks pulled the notebook from his bag and made notes: That made four rooms with chess pieces. Plus the Hall of Mirror with all the chess openings. He didn’t know what it meant. Maybe it was just another set of random details designed to confuse, to seem meaningful, just to send them spinning off in other directions. Or maybe it was the key.

Single sheets of paper, like fliers, had been nailed to the beams in places, and rustled gently in the breeze. Six of the tunnels remained open, each with a simple, crude wooden sign nailed to their crossbeams. Each sign had a single word carved onto it: LIMBO, NARNIA, MORDOR, XANADU (a thin stream of water marked the floor of that tunnel, fed by a persistent drip from the ceiling), VIDESSOS, and finally MULVAN.

The air was humid and smelled earthy.

“This place,” Dee said tiredly, “makes no damn sense.”

Marks reached over and tore one of the papers from the framework. “Attention,” he read. “Beware of man eating rats.”

Dee looked around in sudden terror, but Agnes leaned in to her. “Nonsense,” she said. “I haven’t seen him for ages. Though, to be fair,” she added, looking around, “there do seem to be fewer rats down here.”

“Why are some of these closed off?” Dee asked, looking at Agnes. “What if the right way is blocked, and we can’t get out because of it?”

Agnes pursed her lips and looked contemplative. “I hadn’t thought of that, darling dim Dee,” she said. “It is possible. Let’s see, they keep changing things—”

“Who’s they?” Dee demanded, eyes wide.

“I don’t know,” Agnes said, laughing. “I really don’t. But they keep changing everything on me, all the time, the little scamps.”

“Oh my god.”

Marks swung the backpack around and consulted his notebook. “Don’t listen to her, Dee,” he said. “This is a maze. There’s a way in and a way out. We just pick our next move, like we have been.” he looked up. “We’ve only been to maybe ten, twelve rooms so far,” he said. “This place is almost certainly much larger than that. We need a lot more data before we can draw any conclusions.”

Dee’s distress seemed to grow. “How big do you think this place is?”

“I certainly don’t know,” Agnes said with a laugh, “and I’ve been here forever.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Marks said.

“What about my father?”

Marks glanced up at her. “Go on and ask her, if you want. Just be prepared for bullshit.”

“Tosh,” Agnes said, smiling. “Dear, dimwitted Dee, if I were you—not the nasty and quite rude Mr. Marks—I would look to the Abyssinian maid with a dulcimer, singing of Mount Abora!”

Dee frowned. “What? Say anything that makes sense!”

“She means Xanadu, kid,” Marks said. “It’s from a poem.”

Dee turned, scanning the tunnel entrances. “It’s one of the choices!” she said excitedly.

“Sure it is,” Marks said. “Hey Agnes, is Xanadu the tunnel we should take because it will lead us to Dee’s Dad, or is the tunnel we should take because it will keep us spinning through your little pleasure palace longer?”

“Well, gee, Mr. Grumps,” Agnes said, spinning in place. “Why can’t it be both?”

Marks looked up and met Dee’s gaze. “Sorry kid. I know you want a short cut. There might be one, but she’s not going to tell us about it, okay?”

“But,” Agnes said, pausing in her spin to hold up one finger. “I never lie.”

“You can mislead without lying,” he said, glancing back down at his notebook and making a mark. “Or, fuck, you’re lying about never lying.”

Dee stood looking from Agnes to Marks, wringing her hands. She stared at Marks for a few moments, eyes wide and glassy.

“Xanadu,” she said, stamping her foot. “We take the Xanadu tunnel.”

Marks glanced up, then down again. Agnes clapped her hands. “Oh, well done, Dee!” she chirped. “Well done!”

Marks nodded. “Okay.”

Dee stamped her foot again. “Okay?”

He nodded, stuffing the notebook back into his backpack. He looked around. “This is pretty incredible,” he said to Agnes. “Congratulations.”

“I didn’t build it.”

Marks nodded briskly and glanced back at Dee. “Ready?”

“That’s it? We just go?”

Marks shrugged. “We don’t have enough information, kid. We can’t scout ahead, so all we can do is pick a path right now. Your Dad might be down this tunnel—or that might be the exit, or it might be a trap, or might be a room filled with man-sized Venus Flytrap plants.”

“Oooh!” Agnes chirped, clapping her hands.

“Look at this place!” Marks said, waving his arms around. “Five minutes ago we were in a hall of mirrors. Now we’re a mile underground. We’re going to walk through a door and be underwater, or a mile in the air, or in a room made of tinfoil. This is a Soul Battery. It’s all insane architecture and nonsensical topography. Nothing makes sense until you map it out and find the path.” He grinned. “So, let’s go. You’re either right and for some reason Cruella here is telling us the truth, or you’re wrong and she’s leading us deeper into the maze. Either way, we’ll have one more data point.”

Agnes emitted an outraged snort. “Cruella?”

Dee smiled. “All right.”

Marks turned and faced the tunnel with XANADU on the sign. The tunnel was pitch black, and he suspected there would be some design component to ensure they couldn’t peek ahead even if he wasn’t worried about leaving Dee alone. He took one second to marvel at the verisimilitude: The damp smell, the sound of dripping water, the sense of immense weight above them. It was amazing.

Then he checked to make sure Dee was right behind him, turned, and started walking down the tunnel. After a moment, light bloomed, and he twisted around to see Dee had taken out her phone, and was using the flashlight feature. He winked, and turned back just in time to feel the floor skid away, and then he was on a metal slide, free-falling downwards.

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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.

14. The Hall of Mirrors

“Holy shit,” Marks said.

It was a large room, with a very high, arched ceiling that had been painted, spectacularly, with a beautiful painting of a naked woman surrounded by a lush junglescape, her hair flowing as if she was underwater. She seemed to reach down to them, Marks thought, a comforting embrace from one of the immortals, welcoming one of her own back into the warmth of her bosom.

“Simplistic in theme,” Agnes said, stepping next to Marks and following his gaze. “Gaia, Mother of the Earth. But the artist had an eye for technique and detail, and the work remains at my insistence. Something about her, regal and grand, powerful. There is a fluid motion to the scene that I like.” She nudged Marks playfully. “In case you think I’m just an inhuman monster, trapping souls here for my amusement.”

Marks shook his head. “No,” he said quietly. “Not for your amusement.”

The walls of the room were covered floor to ceiling with mirrors, sending reflections of them bouncing back and forth, making every movement a ripple in time. The facing mirrors created infinite worlds, all seemingly identical. Marks had a sense of movement, subtle and unhappy, as if in the furthest reflections, the tenth or twelfth multiple reflection, seemingly so far away, there was a lot of movement, even though they were all standing quite still.

“Lots of doors in this one,” Dee said, her voice sounding small.

“Yes,” Agnes said. “This has usually been a major intersection of the maze, and so it is now. I don’t like the room, personally. Too cliché, don’t you think? Mirrors. Hmph. Everyone wants a creepy room, oh I know, mirrors.” She sighed. “But every time I try to get rid of this room, it comes back.”

Marks thought he detected a legitimate tone of unease in her voice, as if the persistence of this room despite her efforts bothered her.

For the first time, Marks had a real sense of being underground, not simply in a windowless space, but buried under rock and dirt. There were six archways with heavy-looking doors set into them, quite wide and ornately decorated. In front of each archway was a plaque. At first Marks expected to find the usual animal engravings, but instead each brass tile had been inscribed with words: Giuoco Piano, Indian in Reverse, Polugaevsky Variation, Santasiere’s Folly, Torre Attack, and Foyle’s Double Reverse.

“No animals,” Marks said. Their voices had a curiously dead tone to them, as if something was absorbing the noise instead of bouncing it.

“I know!” Agnes said, spinning around, arms out. “That’s a naughty twist, isn’t it? Set up certain rules, then suddenly change ?em. It disorients and upsets, you see. Oh!” She theatrically clapped her hand over her mouth. “I shouldn’t have said that, now. No doubt I’ve upset you even more which would possibly have been my intent all along. Oh!”

“They’re chess openings,” Dee said.

Marks turned to look at her. “What?”

Behind him, Agnes tilted her head, eyes locked on the girl.

Dee was flustered. “Chess. I told you, Marks. My Mom taught me a little. She liked to play. She said her father taight her, that he used to sit in the park and play for ten dollars. Had a little clock, hustled people.” She looked down at her feet. “I asked her how in hell you make any money playing chess in a park, and she said you can cheat at anything and make money from it.”

“Cheat at anything!” Agnes cheered. “Whatever could that mean!”

“Chess openings,” Marks said musingly, turning to look back at the nearest door, where the plaque read Giuoco Piano.

“A chess master memorizes them, like, dozens of moves deep,” Dee went on. “Two masters can play an opening’s first fifty moves in a minute, just slamming through it until someone introduces a change.”

“You might want to take a little more time with your moves,” Agnes said.

“Chess,” Marks said. “Random.”

“Excuse me?” Agnes sounded outraged, but she was still smiling.

“What do you mean, random?” Dee asked.

Marks sighed. “A place like this … it’s filled with random details. It’s part of the scam. Everything seems like it should tie together, everything seems like its part of this huge, ever-increasing pattern. You feel like you just have to see a little more, think a little more, and it will all become clear. But it’s all bullshit. None of it means anything. This is just pretty details. It’s all designed to keep our minds racing, chasing tails, to distract us.”

“Oooor,” Agnes said, raising one delicate eyebrow, “it’s a clue. A big, huge, exciting clue, the key to everything.”

For a few moments they all just stood. Marks and Dee turned, running their eyes over the doors and the plaques, Agnes swayed in place, humming to herself.

“We still have to make a choice,” Dee said. “We have to pick a door. So how do we pick?”

Marks sighed. “I don’t know. I was picking my favorite animals. I don’t know much about chess.” He turned to look at the girl. “You know chess, what do you see?”

Dee studied the plaques, eyes leaping from one to another. Then she turned and looked at Agnes. After a moment, Agnes looked back at her and smiled.

“You said you would take us to my father,” Dee said. “Which door?”

Agnes cocked her head and tucked her bottom lip out slightly. “I’m sorry, dear. It’s not that simple.”

“Why not? You promised.”

“I didn’t, actually,” Agnes said. Then she shrugged. “I said I would lead you to him.”

“Same thing,” Dee said.

“No,” Agnes said, her expression suddenly sad. “It’s not, actually.”

“Dee,” Marks said softly. “You can’t trust her. Think. Think about chess. Pick a door.”

“I don’t know,” Dee said.

Marks nodded. “Then nothing’s changed. We just pick a door, like we have been.”

Dee stamped her foot. “No,” she said. “She said she would take me to Dad and then she said Hippopatomus. We have to pick the right door.”

“Oh, darling, dumb Dee, there is no such thing as a right door. There are doors. They all lead somewhere. You can spend years opening all the doors in this place! And then, when you’ve opened them all—they change! Sometimes they change without my permission, which is annoying.”

Marks took off the backpack and set it down on the floor. Then he sat down next to it and pulled out the notebook and began making notes.

Dee stared. “What are you doing?”

“Rushing won’t get us anywhere,” Marks said. “Let’s take a breath and think.”

Dee stamped her foot again, then relaxed. With three quick steps she was next to him, dropping to the floor. “Mr. Marks,” she whispered. “Please.”

He turned to her and leaned in close. “You know I used to drink,” he said. “A lot.”

Dee blinked. “What?”

He nodded. “Bourbon, mostly. I never used to—that is, I did, but just once in a while, like regular folks. Then something … happened. I don’t quite … I don’t quite remember what, and my mind,” he brought his hand up to his temple and made a circular motion. “My mind would race. Thoughts ping-ponging back and fourth. I couldn’t stop them. I couldn’t make sense. So, I drank. I slowed myself down by drinking. I would sit in a bar and let the darkness wash over me and the booze would slow me down., one drink at a time, like I was filling myself with gelatin, until finally I passed out.”

Dee frowned. “Why are you telling me this?”

Marks sighed. “It worked. It took a long time, but all those lost afternoons, they slowed me down. They stopped my brain from spinning, and I was able to pull out of it, crawl back.” He snorted, half smiling. “I’m still crawling.” He looked distant for a moment, then snapped back. “Sometimes you have to slow yourself down, give yourself a chance to settle. So, sit here for a moment, kid. Settle.”

Dee’s face scrunched up and for a moment she seemed almost about to cry. She struggled with a fierce sense of impatience. She kept picturing her father receding from her, getting smaller as he moved further away, and sitting still made it feel even worse, even more real. Then she shook herself and slumped down a little. “Okay.”

Marks nodded and returned his attention to the notebook, making marks. “Tell me about your Dad.”

“You guys,” Agnes said, sitting gracefully on the other side of Marks, folding her long legs under herself as if it was a standard move she did quite often despite the narrow skirt. “You’re making me cry.”

“He’s fat,” Dee said, dragging one arm across her nose. “Or, he isn’t, but he will be. He eats a lot, he gains weight, then he gets worried and drops it. He makes jokes. Bad jokes. Dumb jokes, but they make him laugh and when he laughs you can’t help it, you laugh too.”

“I do hope we find him,” Agnes said wistfully. “He sounds delightful.”

“Hush,” Marks said gently.

“Anyway, he has a temper. Or used to. He promised me he was working on that.” She snorted. “Shit, I don’t even care any more. Just want to find him. I mean, if he’d come back, found an apartment, gotten a job, and he turned out to be a prick, at least I’d know. Three years, I’d walk out. But now it’s like he never even got a chance.”

Marks nodded, still making notes. “But he didn’t teach you chess.”

She shook her head, leaning back, her palms flat against the floor. “No, was my Mom. She had this old set her dad gave her, nice wooden pieces, green felt on the bottom, a board that folded up into a box to hold them. She said kids at school teased her when she joined the chess club, but she didn’t care; it was like the first time in her life she’d found something she just enjoyed, you know, something that wasn’t work or grades or because her parents had made her, but because she just liked it. So she didn’t care what people said.” She sighed. “It was fun. I like chess. We would sit with a book she got from the library, 1000 Chess Openings, and just play through them, recreate the famous games, stuff like—” She paused. “Hey!”

Agnes, who had been dozing prettily, suddenly snapped awake. “Hey!”

“What is it?” Marks asked.

Dee stood up and walked from plaque to plaque, lips moving as she studied them in turn. She turned and looked at Marks. “Foyle’s Double Reverse isn’t a real opening.”

Marks sat forward. “Are you sure?”

She shrugged, looking back down at the plaques. “No. I don’t know every fucking opening—sorry. I don’t though. But I know all these others, or I read about them, saw the name. Except that one. I never heard that one before.”

Marks smiled. “See? You slowed down.” He pushed the notebook back into the backpack and stood up, moving stiffly. “All right, Foyle’s it is.”

Agnes made a tsking sound. “I can’t say much—really, I can’t—but I wouldn’t go that way. If they haven’t moved things around—which they do, all the time, and it is incredibly annoying—then that door leads to a dreary, nasty room I prefer to avoid.”

Marks shut his eyes. “You know, trying to decide whether you’re actively deceiving us or telling us the truth or a version of it in hopes that we’ll assume you’re lying to us is exhausting, so maybe you could stop telling us things and just, I don’t know, do some interpretive dancing over in the corner until we make our decision.”

Agnes pointed at him. “Rude. Here I share my wonderful, amazing home with you, and not only have you completely failed to see the truth of this place, but you’re rude to me on top of everything.”

Marks looked at Dee. “You ready, kid?”

She offered him a thumb’s up. He strode over to the archway and took hold of the door, which was different than all the others: It seemed older, and was heavier, the metal hardware blackened and rusted. It moved slowly, silently, revealing another short hallway that turned at a right angle a few feet in, obviously intended to prevent people from seeing what lay beyond just by opening doors. Marks considered scouting ahead, but didn’t want to leave Dee alone with Agnes, or send Dee alone into the unknown. He shifted the backpack onto his shoulder and started walking.

Behind him, he heard Agnes: “Rude.”

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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.

13. The Myna Bird Room

“What,” Dee said slowly, hugging herself, “is going on?”

“Poor, stupid, dumb, idiot Dee-Dee,” Agnes said, spinning lazily and breaking into a fluid sort of dance around them. “Poor, poor, imbecilic, moronic Dee. You see, my dear, your friend Mr. Marks is damaged goods, and only half-smart. So he sees some things you perhaps did not, and he distrusts the evidence of his senses, which is bright. Terribly, terribly bright, and yet his diminished capacity means he mistakes cleverness for insight. In short, he’s like a man in the audience who sees the sleight of hand and thinks that means he knows how the trick is done.”

Dee blinked, following Agnes as she danced around the room in a haze of peppermint. “What?”

“Oh!” Agnes exclaimed. “Darling, dumb Dee!”

“Dee,” Marks said, scrubbing his face. “Agnes isn’t one of us. She’s not trapped here, she’s not trying to find a way out. She’s—”

“Your guide,” Agnes said, stopping and entering a ballet first position.

“—the enemy. She’s here to confuse us, to stop us from figuring things out, to influence us to choose the wrong paths.” He pushed his hands into his pockets. “She’s been trying to keep us from finding our way.”

“If that were true, Mr. Marks,” Agnes said, lifting herself up en pointe on her toes, “you would be in a much worse place than this awful room.” She smiled beatifically at the bird in the cage. “I despise that creature. I’ve been trying to hide it away so deep inside this place that no one will ever find it. But it keeps finding its way back here.” Her face suddenly sobered and she looked at Dee and Marks. “Or someone keeps moving it back. I’m not alone in here, you know. I have enemies.”

Dee took a few steps closer to Marks. “So you’ve been lying to us?”

“Delightful dimwitted Dee! Not exactly. I never lie. At least, not the way you mean.” She suddenly relaxed and took three swift steps forward, clasping her hands together in supplication as Dee crowded into Marks, hugging him in sudden terror. “Please understand, adorable dense Dee, I am your guide here. I am here to help. To assist. But there are rules. I can’t just say, this door, then this door, then that door. You may not realize it, as you are clearly challenged in your thought processes, but I have been offering you clues. Hints.” Her face took on an expression of sorrow. “I wish I could be more explicit, dear, I do. But I am forced to follow the rules too, you see.”

“All that means, kid,” Marks said, “is that it’s up to you and me to find our way. She’s just going to confuse everything, if she can.” He looked at the woman. “Tell me: Who are you trying to resemble? I know I’m supposed to be affected by the way you look.”

Agnes smiled and laughed, and began dancing again, leaping and spinning around the perimeter of the room, making the bird squawk and flutter its wings in alarm. “You don’t remember? For shame, Mr. Marks! Ah, I hate this room I hate this room I hate this room I hate this room!”

“So,” Dee said, stepping slightly away from Marks. “So … you, like, work here?”

Agnes stopped again and drew herself up, standing elegantly with one slender leg extended in front of her. She seemed to grow taller, her face more beautiful. “I am the designer and sole owner of this place, delicious dull Dee. This is my home. I offer guided tours and amusements.”

Marks snorted. “She’s being self-important,” he said. “She’s an employee. Or a prisoner. She didn’t make this place.”

“How do you know?” Dee asked.

Marks shrugged. “I’m guessing—”

Agnes barked a laugh and entered first position again.

“—but she’s been genuinely confused a few times, I think,” he continued. “A few things have been moved or changed that she wasn’t ready for. If she owned this place, that wouldn’t happen.”

“Unless, my dear weird uncle, you had minions who often played pranks and practical jokes on you.” She relaxed again and began to pace furiously. Every time she came close to the cage, the bird spread its wings and squawked. “Oh, they think they’re so amusing, sweet slow Mr. Marks, always shifting things an inch this way, a centimeter that way—the different systems part of the joke you see. They’re always leaving bits and pieces for you to stumble on, to help you.” She snorted. “Thankfully, usually you’re all too slow-witted to notice. I mean, the route out of this place was pretty clear from the first room, if you were paying attention. But of course, you weren’t.”

Dee stepped forward, and Agnes stopped moving to lean down and smile at her.

“Is my father here?”

Agnes nodded enthusiastically. “Yes!”

Marks had turned and was studying the four doors again. The one leading back to the bedroom was still open, the still, dim hallway somehow unsettling. “Don’t trust her, Dee.”

Agnes rolled her eyes. “Go on, darling dumb Dee. Ask me! Ask me!”

Dee swallowed, staring up at her. “Can you take me to him?”

Agnes nodded. “Yes!”

“Will you?”

“Yes!”

Marks turned. “What?”

Agnes straightened up. “Well, of course I will help a poor, frightened, obviously brain-damaged child find her father, who trembled in here a week ago looking quite sketchy—so undesirable, I must admit, that I hid from him and was derelict in my duties by letting him wander almost totally unguided—I do apologize, my delectable dolt, but your father resembled nothing more than a criminal element. I did offer him some clues that he failed to follow almost entirely. I know precisely where he is, and I will lead you to him!”

Dee smiled. “Really?”

Agnes reached down and patted her on her head, three times, slowly. “Yes,” she said slowly, stretching the word out, nodding her head elaborately. She straightened up and flounced over to where Marks stood. She stood next to him for a moment, hands clasped behind her, taking sidelong glances at him.

“I say,” she said, “I do smell nice, don’t I? The perfume? The scent? Still not coming back to you, my miserable morbid Marks?”

“Dee,” marks said as if Agnes were not there. “We can’t trust her.”

“And yet, there are two possibilities!” Agnes said excitedly, turning to regard the doors. “Either I will lie to you, and the path I suggest will lead you to further confusion and possibly eternal imprisonment, or I will assume you will doubt me and tell you the true and correct path assuming you will doubt me and do the opposite.” She slapped her hands. “So exciting! I do so love this part, when I am unmasked, and you, Mr. Morbid Marks, are by far the fastest anyone has ever arrived at this realization. But,” she leaned over and put her head on his shoulder. “I will also tell you this: I do not lie. I may deceive, but my statements are always true. And I say this: I will lead you to him, to dear dumb Dee’s father.”

For a moment, they appeared to be a romantic pair, Agnes strikingly pretty, her head on Marks’ shoulder, the two of them standing silent, shoulder to shoulder.

“Marks?” Dee said. “If she knows where my father is?”

Marks nodded. “All right,” he said. “All right. Which way?”

Agnes animated, skipping away and clapping her hands. “Oh, lovely! Lovely! This is going to be ever so much fun. Mr. Marks—not you, dour doting Dee, but our wonderful Mr. Marks—you are the most fun. The funnest. The mostest fun person I have had here in such a long time!” She paused and made a face. “Do you know how many people simply give up? Sit down and wait? Wander aimlessly, weeping? Kill themselves?” She shook her head. “Too many, Mr. Marks. Too too many. But not you, lovely you! You are determined to figure everything out and escape! I adore you!”

Marks nodded, still not looking at her. He knew she’d purposefully resembled someone, someone she assumed would have an affect on him. A memory. Probably a tragic one, someone from his past that would affect his judgment, unbalance his emotions. Only his ruined memories, the lost years, saved him, and he didn’t want to look at her unnecessarily for fear of dredging up the memory.

“Which door, then?” he asked. “To find her father. Which way?”

Agnes stopped and turned to face him. Somberly, she gave a little half-bow, pushing her hands together. “Hippopotamus,” she said.

Marks glanced at Dee, who nodded fiercely at him. He took out his notebook and made a few scratches in it, then closed it and stuffed it back into his backpack. He took a deep breath. “All right, kid. Let’s go find your old man.”

As Agnes mimed clapping, grinning, he stepped forward and took hold of the handle of the door with the Hippo engraving. It revealed what was becoming a familiar, simple hallway. He stepped into it, followed quickly by Dee and Agnes, who continued to mime clapping as she followed them to the other end. Marks opened that door and stepped through.

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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.

12. The Myna Bird Room

He turned the corner and stepped through the open door at the other end. It was a simple room with plaster walls that had been painted a garish shade of red, a hardwood floor, and a caged bird in one corner. There was no other furniture, and Dee and Agnes stood uncertainly in the middle of the space.

Marks leaned back and looked back the way they’d come. The door remained open, and he could see the bed in the other room.

“Mawk, good to see you awk!”

Marks turned back, startled. The voice had been high-pitched and thin. “Was that … was that the bird?”

“Yep,” Agnes said, stepping over to the cage and kneeling down to peer at the creature. It was large and snowy white with a black face like a mask. It shifted on the branch it was perched on nervously, moving from side to side. “Myna Bird,” she said. She turned to look over her shoulder at Marks and Dee. “They talk.”

Marks looked around, counting four doors including the one they’d just entered through, which remained comfortingly there, and still open.

“Mawk, set me free, set me free, awk!”

Marks stepped over to lean down next to Agnes, smelling her peppermint scent up close.

“Sorry, fella,” she said.

The cage was made of gold, with yellowed newspaper lining the bottom. A sullied water bowl looked unhealthy and stagnant. Marks watched the bird’s intelligent face; the tiny black eyes flickered from him to Agnes and back again. He thought they looked knowing.

“You see us, huh little guy?”

“Mawk, way out, I know, set me free!”

They all froze for a moment. Marks leaned forward slightly, and found the bird looking directly at him, fluffing its feathers. He had the strangest sense that it knew what it was saying.

“It’s not crazy, is it?” Agnes asked. “Mr. Marks, what does your expertise say about talking birds offering escape routes from a freaky soul battery maze or whatever?”

Marks shook his head. “If I had to guess, I’d say this was a trap.”

Agnes stood up. “Ah, jeez, you’re killing me, Mr. Marks. Absolutely killing me.”

Marks pondered the peppermint scent he hadn’t noticed before, and continued to stare at the bird. The bird, for its part, continued to stare back.

“Give me something, buddy,” he said. “I need something more to trust you.”

“Mawk! I know, set me free! Awk!”

“I want to,” Marks whispered. “I really do. But I need a reason.”

“Where would it go?” Dee asked. “One time we had a mangy old cat in the backyard comin’ round for food and I wanted to let it in and make it our cat but Mom said it wouldn’t like bein’ cooped up and would be afraid, she said sometimes you do more harm than good when trying to be kind. Maybe we let that bird out it just gets lost in this place and starves.”

“It doesn’t know what it’s saying,” Agnes suggested. “Birds like that they just repeat the noises they’ve heard.” She turned her attention to the doors. “So we can go back and choose the Viper, or we got a Tiger, a Hippo, and a … and a whatever that is.”

Marks stood up and walked over to stand next to her. “Ibex,” he said.

“Ibex? Seriously?”

Marks shrugged. The contents of his memory were unpredictable. He often struggled to remember recent events, but weird facts would bubble up with a certainty and concreteness that was startling. “Ibex,” he said.

“Mawk! Ibex! Awk!”

“Let’s go back,” Agnes said suddenly. “Let’s try the Viper.”

Marks looked at her sideways. She seemed younger, he thought. It was subtle. Had her makeup been thicker before? Were there fewer lines around her eyes? Her hair seemed darker, and he thought perhaps she stood a little taller. Had she changed her shoes? Being near her felt increasingly confusing. It made him want to be bloody-minded and contrarian just to see her reaction.

“You don’t want to go through the Ibex door, do you?”

Agnes shrugged, glancing at him. “I don’t want to go through any of these doors, Mr. Marks. I want to leave this place. So yes, all of these mysterious doors marked with some sort of animal code I do not wish to go through.”

Marks nodded. “Okay, okay, I understand.” He pushed his hands into his pockets and turned away from the doors. “Let’s take a moment. We don’t want to stay here longer than necessary, but we don’t have to go rushing through every door. Let’s take a moment, catch our breath.”

Dee shook her head. “There’s nothing in here except a bird,” she said. “We can’t even sit down on anything.”

Agnes shook her head. “As Dee said, going backwards seems wrong. One of these doors might be the way out!”

Marks sat down on the floor. “Five minutes. That’s all I’m suggesting. Come on, sit down, let’s think a little.” He looked at Agnes, who suddenly seemed like a slip of a girl, eighteen, nineteen years old. A kid. Beautiful. “We’re trapped in here together and I never asked: What’s your life like? What are you trying to get back to?”

Agnes blinked. “You’re asking me what my life is like?”

He nodded, pulling one of the water bottles from the bag and holding it out towards Dee, who took it. “Sure. We’re stuck in here. We’re working together to get out. What do you do? For a living?”

Agnes rolled her eyes. “I would say you’re the weirdest guy I’ve ever met, Mr. Marks, but I guess I have to wait and see who else I might meet in this lovely place until I make final awards. I’m … well, I’m boring, Mr. Marks. There’s nothing much to tell.” She sat down across from him in a cloud of mint, gracefully folding her legs under her in a way Marks found old-fashioned and charming.

“So what do you do?”

She sighed. “Things, Mr. Marks, I do things. As do we all, right? What do you do?”

“I used to write,” Marks said. “I wrote about strange stuff. Black magic, monsters, curses, genetic experiments—insane stuff. Insane stuff that really happened. It … it got me into trouble. I lost … me. I lost memories, I lost weeks and months.” He shrugged. “These days I investigate. I investigate insane things that really happen. People find me, they pay me to look into things other people think are crazy. For example, a young girl tells me her father went to an address, disappeared. An address where an old house that was never actually built stands. An old house that can’t be there.”

Agnes nodded. “What’re you paying him, kid? Because you might be in line for a refund, the way his investigation is going.”

“So what is it you do, Agnes?” Marks said, smiling. “When you’re not here.”

She looked back at him. They stared at each other for a long time. Then she stood up.

“You’re mean,” she said, striding over to the doors. “You’re a mean person, Mr. Marks. I’m going through the Tiger Door. You do what you want. Kid, you’re with a mean man and you should be careful.”

Dee shifted her weight, but Marks held up a hand and shook his head at her. Agnes stood in front of the door with the tiger carving for a moment, then whirled.

“This is really unfair,” she wailed. “I have been nothing but nice to you! I have helped! I am scared just like you!”

Dee’s elbow jammed into his ribs. He was suddenly and forcibly reminded of the money sewn into the lining of his coat. He wondered when it would become obviously useless to continue carrying it around.

“Mr. Marks,” she hissed.

Marks nodded. “You tired of playing this bullshit, or you want to go another round? Who is she?”

Agnes threw her hands up. “Who is who?”

“The woman you’re trying so hard to resemble.” He smiled. “It’s not your fault. You can probably see my past better than I can. My memory is for shit. So whoever this girl, this pretty young girl in the pencil skirt, whoever you’ve been working so hard to look like in tiny increments so we won’t notice the change, it isn’t working because I can’t remember her.” He waved at her. “So let’s put the bullshit aside, okay?”

Agnes looked at Dee, eyes wide, then back at Marks. Slowly, her posture relaxed, and her face sobered and seemed to harden. When she smiled, it was uneven, a smirk.

“Very well,” she said, her voice flatter. “You are interesting, Mr. Marks.”

“Mawk!” the bird chirped. “Mister Mawk!”

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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.

11. The Spare Room

He fell, the light vanished, and then he was sprawled on the floor in near-total darkness, the air muffled and insulated. He’d barely managed to sit up straight when Dee crashed down onto him, knocking the wind out of him.

“Mr. Marks! Mr. Marks!”

“It’s … okay …” he managed to wheeze. “I’m … here.”

“Oh … it’s the closet again.”

Marks sat up and felt the soft furs against his face. He stood up, breathing hard, and allowed himself a moment to get his breath back. Then he fumbled his way forward, emerging into the disappointing bedroom they’d been in before. Agnes was seated on the bed, leaning back slightly, looking, Marks thought, beautiful. Had she redone her makeup? He stared for a moment, uncertain, but she seemed … more put together. Prettier, somehow.

“Took you long enough,” she said. “I was almost about to start reading that book. Looks dreadful. Then I wondered if you maybe ditched me, which was kind of a depressing thought. That maybe you’d let me go through the window and then you’d taken the door.”

Marks shook his head. “Like I just said to Dee: All for one, and one for all.”

“That’s sweet,” Agnes said, looking down at her hands. “But also not at all what you said before.”

Marks nodded. “Deandra’s a better person than me.”

Agnes raised one manicured eyebrow. “Anyway, here we are again. It is the same room, isn’t it? Or is it maybe a different room that just looks the same?”

“Same room,” Dee said promptly, pointing at the night table. “See where the dust is messed up? I picked up that book and put it down, just like that.”

Agnes looked at the table for a moment, pursing her lips. Then she looked up at them and smiled. “Well then! Same room. Very simple.” She looked over at the doors. “Mr. Marks, I believe you made a record of the doors last time—any differences?”

Marks dropped the backpack and knelt to rummage in it. “That’s a great suggestion,” he said. “We need to stay on top of things like that. Only way we’ll figure a way out.”

“Mr. Marks, you’re far too relaxed about this, you know,” Agnes said. “And you accepted this place far too quickly, you ask me. Almost as if you knew all about it. As if this place was familiar to you.”

Marks nodded absently, studying his notes. “Maybe it is!”

Agnes looked at Dee. Dee looked from her to Marks and back.

He looked over at the doors. “Nothing’s changed. Ape, lizard, some sort of bird, and the snake.”

“Viper,” Agnes corrected.

“Viper. We know the Ape Door takes you to the foyer,” he said thoughtfully, pacing slowly in front of the doors.

“I can hear voices again,” Dee said quietly.

They all froze. Sure enough, they could hear the muffled voices through one of the doors. Marks gestured for quiet and crept from door to door, listening with his ear against each one. Finally he turned and shook his head. “I can’t tell. Look, in the foyer there are only three choices: The library, the dining room, and the Newt Door we haven’t tried yet.” He spread out his notebook on the bed and gestured at it. “The library offers up the Wolf Door—the others we’ve been to. The Dining Room offers the Viper, but we can go through that one here.”

“What’s your point?”

“No point yet. Just talking out loud. We can go back over old routes, or strike out in a new direction. Either might be profitable.”

“Anyone ever tell you you talk like a lawyer?”

“Maybe.”

Agnes sighed and rolled her eyes, dangling one shoe from her foot. Marks thought she looked adorable, as if she’d been carefully posed for maximum attractiveness. Something about her suddenly tugged at his soft, glassy memories, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. “Jeebs,” she said, waving at the doors. “Whatever you think, oh fearless leader.”

“Dee?”

The girl frowned, studying the doors. “I hate going back where we been, you know? I say the bird.”

“That’s right kid,” Agnes said with a laugh like musical notes. “Give ?em the bird!”

Marks gathered up his backpack and notebook. “Let’s go.”

Agnes slid off the bed and they gathered in front of the door with the ominous bird carved on it. Marks leaned forward, turned the knob, and pushed it open. Again, a short hallway led to another doorway—but they could suddenly hear the voices much more clearly.

“Come on!” Agnes shouted, pushing forward. “Before they make a run for it!”

“Wait!”

Marks reached for her but she was already running down the hall. Dee took off after her, spinning around halfway down the hall. “It might be Dad!” she shouted with a shrug.

“Dammit,” Marks said, following.

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