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

36. The Concert Hall

For a moment he was frozen and his mind seemed on the verge of some sort of epiphany, some connection. He saw Agnes—not as she’d appeared since his arrival, but somehow different, more real. He saw her in disarray, in a panic, her face stretched in a mask of horror as she stared at him, her hair tangled, her face streaked with dirt, her blouse torn.

And then she was gone and he was in motion, racing forward. “Dee!”

He forced himself to stop and think, and he realized there were only two possible choices. She’d either tried to go back, to retreat, or she’d gone through the one door that led somewhere they hadn’t yet been: Camel. They’d seen the Spare Room, the Underground, and the Hall of Mirrors—he didn’t think for one moment that she’d purposefully step off the path, purposefully get caught up in the gears of that Black House again. And he didn’t think anyone would have the intestinal fortitude to go back into that vast, empty darkness they’d just escaped from. Unless—

Unless they were going to end themselves. Unless they were going to throw themselves over the side of the path and sail into that darkness, become one with it.

He rejected the idea. Dee was in mourning, she was in shock. She wasn’t suicidal, she wasn’t a quitter. He’d never known someone so young who just kept going like she did. He opened the door with the camel carving and stepped through, finding the familiar brief hallway and the second door. He pushed it open, heart pounding, and stepped through, shouting. “Dee!”

His voice echoed hollowly and he was aware he was in another huge, open space. It was a theater, the ceiling soaring above in a gilded dome, each square panel a faded painting, the colors muted. He turned and found a door still behind him, marked with the Ibex carving, and thought acidly that the place was working hard to sow doubt; a closed retreat choked off choice, making the way forward seem certain.

He was standing on a deep pile green carpet, the aisle stretching forward in the dim light towards the stage, where a string quartet’s instruments had been set up: Two violins and a viola sitting on simple wooden folding chairs, and a cello propped up by a stand. Music stands stood in front of each spot. A spotlight lit up the instruments, while the rest of the concert hall was bathed in gloom.

He could hear her sobbing. Behind that, muffled as if through very thick walls, the crunching noise of the place collapsing. As he stood very still he could feel the vibrations through his feet. The possibility that the noise and vibration was another trick, another illusion designed to herd them like in the New Rooms was real, but he doubted it. The place collapsing seemed perfectly in line with the rest of his experience.

He crept down the aisle, and realized he was kicking up dust as he walked. The whole place was covered in a thick layer of dry grime, and within a few steps he was choking on it. He walked down to the stage and then turned, shielding his eyes from the spotlight and scanning the seats, searching for her. She was sitting three rows from the very top, under the balcony, bent over with her head in her lap.

He didn’t go near her. He stayed down near the stage and gave her some time, looking around. There were four doors he could see: The ibex leading back to the surgery, a fly, a jellyfish, and one at the very back marked with a traditional glowing EXIT sign. He stared at the exit for a moment; it was unusual, but they’d seen the occasional change in the door patterns before and it hadn’t meant anything, really. And ultimately, all it meant here was that they had three choices—three obvious choices—of rooms they hadn’t been to before.

Marks stared at the sign and wondered if it was really that easy, or if they were supposed to think it was that easy, or if they were supposed to ignore it because it was too easy. His head swam, and he decided to look for the chess pieces instead. A Queen, if they were on the right path.

He eyed the rows and rows of seats and felt tired. A small wooden carving could be anywhere in a room like this—and it seemed like the Black House, as he’d come to think of it, was cheating more as they got further along the path, hiding the clues more thoroughly, in less obvious ways. With a sigh, he started searching, choosing the seat on the aisle in the first row and checking under it, putting his fingers into the hinges, pressing down on the cushion.

Then he moved on to the next seat in the row.

He was on the fifth row when Dee stood up, scrubbed her face, and began searching her own seat. They worked in silence, then, quietly moving from spot to spot. Every noise they made was captured and augmented by the acoustics of the space, and yet the air had an insulated quality to it, as if they were sealed inside something. As they worked more and more dust filled the air, hanging in it and scratching their throats and making them cough. They could hear each other’s breaths and grunts as they worked over the low rumble of the Collapse.

They moved on to the next bank of seats. Marks took off his jacket, sweat pouring, the dust getting caked onto him. His mouth was dry and he felt giddy and lightheaded. When his hand brushed something on the floor under a seat in the fifteenth row, he almost moved on to the next seat mechanically before his sluggish brain kicked in and stopped him.

He knelt on the dusty floor and leaned down, pushing his hand under the seat. Just as his hand closed around the small carving, he heard Dee gasp.

“Found it!” she shouted.

He stared at the tiny wooden carving, vaguely feminine, the tiny crown just a few pointed ridges on the head. He stood up and turned to look over at Dee, who stood holding something aloft in her hand. He raised his own in response, and for a moment they just stared at each other. Slowly, they walked down the aisles and met in front of the stage again, holding up the carvings they’d found.

“King,” Marks said.

“Queen.”

They traded the pieces, fondling them in their hands, and then handed them back again.

“What’s that mean?” Dee asked. She sounded exhausted.

Marks shook his head. “Hell if I know.” He pushed his damp hair out of his face. “This place is messing with us again, right? Trying to stick with its own rules, but in a way that makes us doubt what we’re doing. So, following that, we’re on the right track and this is just the last room on it. This is where we’re supposed to be.”

Dee looked around. “Shit, of course it would be some creepy empty theater. I feel like there’s ghosts in all those seats, watchin’ us.”

Marks turned and set the Queen on the edge of the stage. “So I guess we still have to figure out what our next move is.”

Dee nodded, setting the King next to the Queen with careful attention, an almost gentle movement of her hand. She stared at the pair. “So, where do we go?”

Marks looked back at the doors. “Jellyfish. Exit. Fly. One of these things is not like the others.”

“Maybe on purpose,” Dee said. “What about backstage?”

Marks blinked, then turned to look at the stage again. A tattered red curtain hung along the back, and there were, of course, left and right exits that led behind it. “Well, shit,” he said. “Let’s take a look.”

They walked to the side of the stage and found a set of sagging old plywood steps that creaked and groaned under them as they climbed them. The grinding, snapping noise of the Collapse was louder, Marks, thought, and the constant vibration under his feet was palpable even when he wasn’t concentrating on it. Whether it was an illusion or not, whether it was designed to instill panic in them and keep them moving or if it was the real end of everything that was and had been their world, it was becoming too loud to ignore.

On stage they kicked up huge new clouds of dust, walking directly to the right side of the stage and ducking behind the curtain. To their disappointment, however, all they found was a blank wall, with just a narrow channel between the curtain and the wall to walk down to the other side. When they emerged back onto the stage, Marks mused on the essentially dramatic nature of the Black House: It was all sets, all props, all bullshit. It had taken pieces of their subconscious and fashioned them into a place that seemed real but was all just fakery.

They wandered over to the instruments, covered in a thick line of dust. Dee reached out and touched one of the violins, and a string snapped with a loud snap. She snatched her hand away and thrust it into her mouth, stepping back with a grunt.

Marks didn’t try to touch anything, but he walked over to the music stands and leaned in to examine the sheet music. He paused, then leaned closer and blew the layer of dust off, squinting. He stared at the music for a long time; it was actually not musical notation. It was something called tablature, and he was suddenly aware that he understood this because he once played guitar, as a hobby. Tablature was a simplified system of notation, and he could read it perfectly well.

After a moment he straightened up, and studied the hall around them.

“Come on,” he said. “I know which way to go.”

He leaned forward and slid the first sheet from the nearest stand and held it in his hand, studying it.

Dee frowned. “What door? How do you know?”

He continued to stare at the music for a few moments, and when he turned to look at her, she was startled to see his eyes shining with sudden tears.

“The Exit,” he said with a horrible, warped smile. “Of course. So obvious you doubt yourself.”

“How do you know?” she repeated.

He shrugged, gesturing at the sheet music and turning towards the steps. “Because I know this song.”

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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.

35. The Incision Room

The hallway ended, as always, at a door, which appeared to be similar in every way to all the other doors: Dark wood, the ibex carved into it, a brass handle polished from frequent use. He pulled it open.

The coppery-fish smell of blood stopped him in his tracks.

It was a surgery. At one time the tiles might have been a shining white and a clinical blue, but they had faded into a uniform sort of yellow, the color of pus and infection. The carts of instruments had been overturned and bent. The operating table in the center of the room was an explosion of blood, soaked through with little rivers of it dripping onto the floor. Several instruments were scattered directly around it, as if dropped in surprise.

“Stay behind me a moment,” he whispered, putting out his hand protectively.

Bloodied instruments were scattered everywhere, and pools of blood jellied on the floor. The single bulb lighting the room was flickering, obviously on its last reserves of filament. Its weak light made the blood appear darker than it really was, almost ruby.

A shining trail of blood lead from the table to one of four exits, swinging, glass-paned hospital doors, each bearing a typical carving: Stag, hippo, unicorn, and camel. Marks examined the swath of red liquid leading to the Hippo door that he knew led to the Hall of Mirrors, noting the sheer amount of it and thinking that something that could bleed so much and still walk must be huge, monstrous.

The doors marked giraffe and stag had once featured small signs that had been torn off, leaving ragged corners as evidence. The camel door’s remnant showed a clear letter “S.” Marks wondered if it had once read “surgery.”

“Bishop,” Dee said in a quiet, unhappy voice. “If this is the path, we should find a bishop in here.”

Marks contemplated searching through the gore unhappily. He had a strong sense that the blood, were he to touch it, would be warm. Fresh. And it would bring up the obvious question—obvious to him, at least—of whose blood it was, and whether either Dee or himself might be scheduled for a visit with whatever horrific doctor had created this mess.

The noise of the place’s slow collapse buzzed all around them, vibrating in the floor, in their bones. He’d forgotten about it during their long, silent trek through the wall. For a moment Marks expected Agnes and Dennis to come dancing in, to continue their program of torment and hilarity. But nothing happened. The growing buzzsaw of destruction remained a steady distraction, the blood dripped, and their time got shorter and shorter.

They searched. Gingerly, at first, trying not to touch the gore, trying to keep their clothes clear of it. Then more desperately, smearing the blood, sliding in it, splashing it around. Marks wondered if this was an elaborate trap: They were shrunken down, now, and even if they turned back the dark place they’d just barely made it through would be an impossibility without a new source of light. And a source of water. Even if they could still make their way back to the pantry and the kitchen, would they remain microscopic in size?

There was no avoiding it: Before long they were both filthy. The smell of blood and the sensation of it made them both wretch, and Marks became convinced this was part of the plan, to make them both as miserable as possible. Which meant they might be getting close to the way out, which meant things were going to be heading downhill fast from this new low point.

He was sweating again, and aside from being very aware of what he must smell like, he could feel the itchy presence of the cash still sewn into his jacket. It suddenly felt heavy and useless, and he wondered why he hadn’t thought to just toss it away.

“Fuck,” Dee said, for a moment sounding just like the distrustful, moody kid he’d met in a motel bar … was it just a few days ago? It felt like they’d been in the Black House for months. “If we both starting puking, Marks, shit’s going to get real.”

Marks swallowed back bile as he investigated the horrifying contents of a small trash bin in a shadowed corner of the surgery. It was filled with soiled sponges, rags, and viscera, and his own stomach kept threatening to rise up through his throat and strangle him as he sifted the contents. The urge to just assume they were still on the right trail and move on was growing, but he fought against it. Cutting corners would just risk being trapped in the place even longer.

“Marks!”

He leaped up and turned. Dee was standing in front of the wall opposite the four exits. He quickly crossed over to her, trying to wipe his bloody hands off on anything he could find. She pointed at the wall and Marks realized for the first time that there was a small door there, about three feet wide and three feet tall. It was made of metal that had been painted the same color as the wall, making it hard to see, and had a punch-out for a tag or small sign towards the top. There had once been a handle, evidenced by two screw holes, but someone had removed it.

“Is that a damn morgue whatever you call it?”

Marks nodded. “Cold chamber. Looks like it.”

They both stared at it in silence for a moment.

“Okay, so it’s obvious, right, that there’s a dead body in there in some sort of horrifying state of rot,”
Dee said slowly, “and that the Bishop piece is inside said body, right?”

Marks sighed. “Yep.”

She looked sideways up at him. “I will choose you for it.”

Marks smiled. “Odds and evens?”

She nodded, grim.

“Forget it,” he said. “I got us into this, I’ll carve it out of whatever we find in there.”

He looked around and located a bone chisel. Wiping it off on his trousers, he took it to the chamber and ran his chapped, painful fingers around the seam until he found a spot he thought he might get some purchase. Working patiently he set the edge of the chisel into place and worked it under the lip, coaxing the drawer out millimeter by millimeter until he could worm fingers between the drawer and the slot. Grabbing hold, he pulled the heavy drawer out, backing up as he did so.

The figure on the slab was human, covered with a white sheet that had soaked up blood from the various incisions inflicted on it. One hand had slipped from under the sheet, and Marks stared at the dark skin for a moment before turning suddenly.

“Listen,” he said, licking his lips and wishing fervently for booze, any sort. He could taste it, the sharp, chemical wash of cheap whiskey, the antiseptic, nauseous flavor of vodka, the fizzy stale bread of beer. It flooded his mouth as if the recipe was locked inside his saliva, ready to produce alcohol when he was under stress. “Listen—”

He paused, uncertain what to say. His mind raced through the possibilities, but he knew Dee was too smart. He watched her expression go from expectant to irritated to worried, and then watched it collapse, her face hollowing out, her eyes suddenly wet.

“Oh fuck,” she said, softly.

He leaned forward and put his hands on her shoulders. Was it the first time he’d touched her? He wasn’t certain, but it felt like it. He pushed down on her gently, as if to hold her in place, stop her from moving.

“Listen,” he said. “I want you to go to the other side of the room—”

Her eyes widened and she raised her arms, looking at the blood on her hands. Then she spun around, looking at the mess everywhere. “Oh my god,” she said in a strangled voice. “Oh my fucking god!”

“Hey!”

He spun her back around forcefully and shook her. “Listen to me! I want you to go to the other side of the room. I want you to turn around. I want you to stay that way until I say otherwise. Do you hear me? Dee! Do you hear me?”

She was shaking her head, tears running down her face. “No, no, no, no, no,” she wailed softly. Her eyes flicked over his shoulder to the slab. “Daddy!”

He shook her again, then took her by the chin and moved her head, forcing her to look back at him. His fingers left smears of blood on her face. “Dee,” he said softly, breathing hard. “Dee, listen. Go. Turn around. Don’t look until I tell you.”

She shook her head. “You don’t know—”

“Dee,” he said, and she stopped speaking. “Of course we know. This place … it’s obvious.”

She was breathing in painful little gasps. “You don’t have—”

“Yes,” he said. “I do. You know I do. We have to know, or else we’ll get lost. We have to be sure we’re on the path.”

For a moment they stared at each other, him leaning down, hands on her shoulders, her looking up, chin quivering, tears dropping from her eyes. The noise of destruction seemed louder than ever, like a million termites consuming a house, amplified a thousand times.

Slowly, she nodded.

He almost fell as the tension drained from him. “Good,” he said, trying to catch his breath, trying to slow his heart. “Good girl. Go on. Don’t turn until I say.”

Slowly, still nodding, she turned and walked away. He waited until she was on the other side of the operating table, facing the wall. Shaking, he turned back to the body on the slab. He reached out and picked up the crisp white corner of the sheet, holding it gingerly between his thumb and forefinger. He glanced over to be sure she wasn’t looking, and lifted the sheet.

He recognized Dennis instantly. His face was splattered in his own blood, but was otherwise untouched, and he looked exactly like the entity that had fooled Dee earlier. The eyes were open, and stared blankly at the ceiling.

“This fucking place,” Marks whispered.

A wave of dizziness swept through him, and he imagined he could hear the song Agnes kept humming.

And she said, “Aw, it’s you.”

He shook the words and notes out of his head and peeled the sheet back, revealing Dennis’ naked body. Marks quickly glanced at Dee; she was still turned away.

Dennis had been cut open with a standard autopsy Y-incision. The flesh had been put back in place, but not stitched up.

“Goddamn you,” Marks whispered, heart pounding. “I am going to spend the rest of my life learning how to burn this place. Whatever it is. Wherever it is.”

He hadn’t taken it seriously. At first he’d assumed it was a place of chaos, a prank, a place designed to keep him running. Even when he’d lost Dee and spent—weeks?—in the maze searching for her, he hadn’t quite realized where they were. It wasn’t a puzzle box. Or a Soul Engine. Or an Insanity Box. It was a meat grinder that enjoyed playing with its food.

“I’m sorry,” he said to the dead man he’d never met, not really. “I’m so sorry. But I’m going to get her out of here.”

He reached out and took hold of a flap of flesh and began to peel.

The bishop carving was where the heart had once been. It sat, pristine, in the chest cavity, a small piece of wood that had only the most surreal and basic resemblance to a bishop. He didn’t reach for it, or touch it. He stared at it for several pounding heartbeats and then gently replaced the flap, then the sheet. Slowly, so as not to jostle the body, he pushed the slab back into the chamber.

For a few moments he stood leaning with his forehead pressed against the wall, just breathing.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay, you can turn around now. We’re still on the path.”

When she made no reply, he turned his head, then froze. Dee was gone.

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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.

34. The Mousehole

“So,” Dee said after a long period of silence, “why does she—Agnes—keep asking you if you remember her?”

Marks didn’t answer right away. They were … he wasn’t sure where they were. It felt different from everything else they’d encountered, less defined somehow. They’d stepped into the dark maw of the mousehole, he’d fished his flashlight from the backpack, and they’d started walking. At first they’d been in a tunnel, rough-hewn, like something had chewed it into existence. He’d been aware of the ceiling and walls of the tunnel.

Slowly, though, the space had widened out, and now he had a sense of being in an immense cavern, pitch black. The path was illuminated for a few feet in front of them and few feet behind, but the light of the flashlight, which turned into a small lantern when slid into the open position, didn’t reach very far. The path might be just a narrow lane elevated over a bottomless chasm.

The moment he thought it, he was convinced that was exactly what was happening.

“Stay in the center,” he said quietly. “Don’t wander to the edge.”

“Gee, that’s encouraging,” Dee said.

Their voices echoed distantly, and the air, which had been almost unbearably hot in the pantry, had turned cold.

“So,” Dee said. “Agnes?”

Marks nodded. “She’s like your Dad—this place made her in the image of someone I used to know.”

“Who?”

He shook his head. “I can’t remember. I can tell it’s someone … important. Someone that should be messing with me, making me really sad and upset. But I can’t quite see her.”

“And you ain’t trying too hard, huh?”

He smiled thinly in the darkness. “No. I’m not sure I see the upside of remembering her. Not while I’m in here.”

They walked on in silence. Somewhere, very far away, there was a screeching cry, like a bird of prey’s call. But incredibly distant. They both stopped and looked up and around. But the light of the flashlight was too feeble; all they could see was darkness.

“Water’s gone,” Marks said.

They’d rested, sitting in the dim glow of the small lantern, feasting on the crumbs and dregs left in his bag. Around them the sound of wind was hollow and constant, a soft reminder of the huge space all around them. He looked around at the darkness and considered tossing the empty plastic bottle into it to see if there were any audible clues as to what might be found out there, but reconsidered, thinking that they might come across another water supply and want the bottle.

They’d been walking for a long time, though he wasn’t sure how long. Dee’s phone battery had died, and he didn’t have a watch. They were stuck in a formless, timeless void, shrunk down to—what? Atomic scale? Quantum? Were they getting smaller and smaller with each step? All of those possibilities seemed perfectly valid.

“It’s cold,” Dee complained, hugging herself.

Marks shrugged off his jacket and held it out to her. The girl hesitated, then nodded, taking it and pulling it on. He thought briefly of the money sewn into the lining, and then dismissed it. He wasn’t sure money would ever matter again.

“Come on,” he said. “We should get moving before the batteries in the flashlight start to go.”

“Jesus hell,” Dee said, getting to her feet. “Don’t say that.”

They walked.

They made a shelter of sorts; Mark unfolded the shovel and jammed the blade into the soft dirt of the path, and they hung his jacket on the handle, stretched it out and anchored it on the other end with the backpack. It wasn’t much, but it felt better than sleeping out in the open, surrounded by darkness. When they were settled, Marks turned off the flashlight.

The darkness was immediate and complete. The world, small as it had become, vanished completely. Marks clutched the flashlight tightly and pushed it deep into his pocket. There would be no morning, no sunrise, no other light source. If they lost the flashlight, they were doomed.

He closed his eyes and opened them and there was no difference.

“Marks?” Dee said softly. “You there? You still there?”

“I’m here.”

There was at least the sound of the wind, some kind of proof that the world still existed, that there was something out there. Marks lay quietly, trying to feign sleep for Dee’s sake, trying to project a calm acceptance, a confidence maybe that there would be light again, that this was just temporary. Dee had grown quiet, plodding along without any of the chatter or energy he’d grown used to. He was worried they wouldn’t get through this fast enough to save her.

He lay there and listened to the black wind.

“Mr. Marks.”

He nodded. “Might as well call me Phil,” he said. “Seems kind of silly to call me mister like I’m your teacher.”

“Never gonna happen.”

“All right. What?”

They walked a few more steps before she responded. “What if we never get out of here? What if this is a Trap Room?”

He nodded again. The thought had occurred to him. They’d camped out twice now, the rest of their lives just walking in the tiny pool of light afforded by the flashlight. He didn’t know how long they’d slept, or how long they’d walked. He decided to call it two days.

“Then we die here, kid.”

They walked.

“There’s no bishop,” Dee said after a while. “If we’re on the right path, there should be a bishop.”

Marks nodded. He thought the flashlight was dimmer. It definitely was. When they’d started their trek in the total pitch blackness it had been bright enough to see a few feet ahead of them. Now it was barely more than a foot, just enough to take a step. He thought it wouldn’t be long before it faded completely, leaving them alone in the most intense blackness he’d ever experienced. He realized it had never even occurred to him to buy extra batteries.

“I don’t think we’re in a room, technically,” he said. “I think we’re … in-between rooms. In-between all the actual spaces. I think when we shrunk down, we kept shrinking, and we’re in the wall. Like, literally, in the wall.”

“Well, it ain’t crazier than anything else that’s happened,” Dee said. There were a few moments of silence. “But we’ve been here a long time.”

And it’s getting dark, he thought.

“Tell me about your Dad,” he said, wanting to distract them both. “What he’s really like.”

She didn’t respond right away. When she did, she spoke in a low, dense voice. “He’s really like he was here, actually. Kind of serious all the time. Restless. Always moving. He’s got this sadness in him, like he knows he’s wasted time, made mistakes, and can’t ever forget it. But he’s silly sometimes. Has this really, really lame sense of humor.” She sighed, and Marks thought it was the most relaxed sound she’d made since arriving at the Black House. “A lot of fart jokes.”

“I think I’d like him.”

“You will,” she said pointedly. “Hey, Marks—how’d you get into all this shit, anyway? All this weird stuff?”

He squinted in the dimming light, which was going much faster than he’d expected. Was there some faint outline ahead? Something resolving out of the darkness? It might be an artifact, a trick of the light. “You know what? I remember this. I never forgot it. Or I did, but only for a really short time. Maybe it’s because it was so far in the past, it was burned in better. Or maybe it’s because it’s so fundamental to who I became.”

As he spoke, the light grew steadily weaker, the path in front of them harder to make out.

“It was an email. Or a bunch of emails. There was a kid in school, high school, who died. Some bizarre disease, something super rare. He was sixteen and he just died, and it was a shock. All of us in school went to his funeral. We didn’t know how to dress, how to act. And the worst part was, the kid? Who died? Total asshole. Everyone fucking hated him.”

“Why?”

Marks grimaced. There was something up ahead, but he couldn’t make it out. He decided not to call attention to it until he knew what it was.

“He was one of those guys who was just mean. Nothing nice to say to or about anyone. Everyone was dumb. Everyone was lame. He’d heard your music before, long ago when it was still fresh and exciting. He’d read all the books and heard all the jokes and anything you did was just tired and boring. And he had money.”

Dee snorted. “Money. Marks, you coulda just said that.”

“So he dies, and everyone pretends to be broken up about it, but we’re all just kind of okay with this guy being dead. And then my friend calls me one day and says he saw him. At the mall. Eating a cheeseburger in the food court by himself. He says he looked right at him, and the dead kid winked and got up and walked away.”

A few more steps, a little darker. “So?” Dee finally asked. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. I never found out. That’s what drove me to this. I never did the legwork, I never investigated, and to this day I don’t know if my friend was crazy, or if that kid didn’t die, or if it was a ghost. And it bothered me. Still does. And I slowly became incapable of letting anything like that slide.”

“Marks, that’s a real crap origin story. You ever get famous, I advise you to dirty that up a little.” He could see her, dimly, turn to look back at him. “We’re going dark, ain’t we?”

“Afraid so.”

“Shit.”

“There’s something up ahead, though,” he said, slowly, hesitant. “I can’t exactly make it out. Might be a door.”

“Might be?”

He shrugged. He could barely make out the faint outlines of the path, much less something looming up a few dozen feet ahead of them. “All right, it’s absolutely a door. Feel better?”

“No.”

The flashlight went out.

It was a slow, majestic fade, a sudden decline from bare illumination into total blackness. Marks froze where he was. He widened his eyes.

“Dee?”

“Here.”

“Don’t move for a moment.”

“You think you gotta tell me that?”

“Let’s see if our eyes adjust at all. Maybe there’s a tiny amount of light that might help.”

“Okay.”

He stood. He could hear the faint whine and wheeze of the wind, he could hear Dee breathing and swallowing. He could hear himself doing the same. But there was nothing visual. After a few minutes, he held his hand up near his face. Touched his nose. And couldn’t see it at all.

“Not working,” Dee said, her voice shaky.

He shut his eyes. “Then we walk.”

“But we can’t see. We might wander off course. Fall of an edge. Be lost—”

“Listen,” he said, kneeling down and sweeping his hand around. He found a small pebble and picked it up. He stood, took a deep breath, and threw the pebble as hard as he could in the direction he was still fairly certain was in front of them. There was a distinct plink of impact.

“That’s the door,” he said. He saw no reason to be careful in his language. If it wasn’t a door there would be plenty of time for them to come to terms with the fact later. “We take a few steps, we throw a rock, we orient. It’s like Sonar.”

“Okay,” Dee said. She sounded doubtful. He knelt and found another pebble. “Listen for it, then walk towards the sound. Just take a few steps. The fewer steps you take, the more likely you won’t get off track. I’m right behind you.”

He threw the stone. He took three steps and heard Dee doing the same. He wasn’t going to let something like twenty feet be the end of them. Not now.

They repeated the process nine or ten times, and then Dee grunted. “Just walked into a wall.”

Marks stepped forward until he bumped into it as well. “All right,” he said. “If it’s a door it’s not very wide. Don’t move to your left or right. Lean, but don’t step, yes? Try to find the door handle. Or anything. But don’t move your feet.”

They searched. The sound of their hands against the stone in the perfect pitch blackness was horrifying, a dry, itchy sound accented by their desperate, unhappy breathing.

“Found it!” Dee shouted. Before he could react, he heard the click of a latch, and then light, white and blinding, flooded into the space. He stumbled back to let her open the door all the way, shielding his tender eyes. The doorway framed the usual drywalled hallway, with the usual bend after a few dozen feet. The familiarity of it was so welcome he almost laughed.

She stepped into it without hesitation, turning to smile back at him. “Come on!” she said, looking dirty and thin. “Things are gonna start going our way now. I can feel it.”

He nodded, following her. He stepped into the hallway, eyes stinging from the light, and then turned to look behind them. The path, as he’d suspected, was just wide enough for two people, and dropped off to a deadly edge, nothing but blackness on either side. He paused for a moment, contemplating, and then turned to follow, pulling the door shut behind him.

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33. The Pantry

“If I were the author of this journey,” Agnes said as she squeezed into the space, “this would not have been my next move.”

It was a small closet filled with nonperishables—boxes of pasta of all kinds, from fancifully curled to plain old straight spaghetti, boxes of cereals, sugary and shaped like desserts with capering cartoon characters neither Dee or Marks could remember on their fronts, and bags of flour, some of which appear ravaged by mice. The door back to the kitchen didn’t disappear; it remained and the kitchen could be glimpsed whenever it opened. The four of them filled the space neatly, making movement difficult.

On the shelf at Marks’ eye level were a pair of cans, shaped like a tuna can. One had a red label displaying a fanciful bicycle, the other a blue label displaying an ibex, striped antlers extended far beyond what was typically found in nature. Each had a small white envelope taped to it with the words EAT ME written on it in black marker.

He turned slowly, forcing Agnes, Dennis, and Dee to rearrange themselves to stay out of his way. After a moment, he lunged forward and plucked something off the shelf. He held it up to Dee.

She smiled. “Knight,” she said.

“On the path. Except one thing. No exit.”

She stared back, then pointed silently. Marks followed her arm and saw a prominent mouse hole. He looked back at her. “You’re serious?”

Dee shrugged. “It make less sense than anything else we’ve seen? And you read that book, right? Eat me, drink me, all that jazz. Alice.”

Marks sighed and reached out, picking up the red can. It was heavier than he’d expected. He tore the envelope off and opened it, discovering an old fashioned can opener inside. He picked up the blue can, which felt light, like it had nothing inside it at all, and found the same. He looked at Agnes and Dennis, who stared back at him, grinning.

“We’re seriously supposed to eat one of these?”

Agnes shrugged. “Or both?”

Marks rolled his eyes and turned to Dee. “Which one?”

She pondered. “We could each eat a different one.”

Marks shook his head. “That could be disaster. Whatever happens, we need to stick together and have the same experience.”

She pursed her lips. “Blue. It’s got an animal on it.”

“An ibex.”

“Whatever that is.” Dee hesitated. “That a real animal?”

Marks nodded. “And we’ve seen it on a door before. In that room with the creepy black bird.”

She nodded back once, firmly. “That’s it then.”

Marks took a deep breath. “All right. Same time. Whatever happens, happens to both of us.”

Agnes jumped a little, clapping her hands together in delight. Marks took one of the can openers and awkwardly worked the blue can.

“Jesus, I hope this isn’t deviled ibex or something even worse,” Dee said. She thought if the place was taking details from their brains, it might have rummaged around for her least favorite foods, or things that made her gag just thinking about them, and put that in there.

When he had the top of the can sliced through, he peeled it back using the slot on the can opener, thinking that he hadn’t seen an old-school opener like this is a very long time. The can contained a pinkish paste, and the pantry, already hot and crowded, filled with an awful smell.

“That’s … sweaty socks,” Dee said, her face collapsing into a mask of disgust.

Marks shook his head. “Old puke and sawdust,” he said.

Agnes elbowed Dennis in the side. “They’re actually going to eat it!”

Marks scooped some of the goop out of the can with his fingers, then extended the can towards Dee. She leaned away form it, then steadied herself and scooped some out into her hand. Eyes watering, she looked at Marks. He nodded, and they simultaneously jammed the stuff into their mouths.

Dee’s face instantly collapsed even further. “Oh, god,” she moaned.

Marks smiled as he swallowed, finding dark humor in the horror of the situation, and then froze. Simultaneously, Dee jerked and stiffened, her expression transforming into one of intense alarm.

“Mr. Marks!”

He opened his mouth to reply, and the world tilted and shifted in a way he’d never experienced before. Air seemed to rush past him, and the can became rapidly heavier and heavier, as if its mass was somehow increasing. Gravity pulled him one way and then another, and everything blurred as if he was moving very quickly, rocketing through the air. The noise became a roar in his ears, and for a few seconds he couldn’t reliably tell where down was.

Then, suddenly, everything went still.

Breathing hard, he stumbled and fell backwards onto his ass. He looked around and spotted Dee immediately; she was standing far away, but seemed fine. For a moment he thought they’d been transported, somehow, to a completely different room; it was a huge space, cold and soaring, with no ceiling in sight. The floor was rough and pitted, with deep chasms forming a complex pattern around him.

He climbed to his feet and Dee came running over to him. “Marks!” she shouted, her voice sounding thin. “Marks, what happened?”

He turned and looked around. In the distance, he could see a doorway of a sort. It was rounded and rough, the edges unfinished. There was no door, just an opening in the wall. As Dee caught up with him, instinctively taking his hand, he leaned forward slightly.

“Look!”

Marks turned and followed Dee’s outstretched hand. In the distance was an odd structure, a cylindrical tank or building, clad in fraying blue paper. The roof appeared to be bent upwards. After a moment, he looked at Dee.

“We’ve shrunk,” he said. She nodded.

“We’ve shrunk. Like Alice.”

For a moment he indulged in a mental exercise wondering what would have happened if they’d eaten the red can. Nothing good, he assumed. He turned to look at the mousehole, now a perfectly accessible portal to whatever lay beyond. He looked back at Dee.

“You feel okay?” he said, kneeling down and unslinging his backpack. For one second his brain stuttered over the mechanics of not just himself but everything he was wearing and carrying shrinking proportionally, then he had the notebook out and updated the map to reflect the new reality, adding some tiny, spidery notes to explain the mechanics of their current situation.

“Fine,” Dee said. “Freaked out. But fine.”

Marks nodded, re-packing everything. “Agnes tried to make us think twice about eating that … stuff, so I figure we’re on the right track.”

“Where’d Agnes and … him go?”

Marks looked around again. “I don’t know. I’m afraid we’re not done with them, though. They keep disappearing and coming back.”

“So,” Dee said, nodding. “We go through the mousehole?”

“We go through the mousehole,” Marks agreed, standing up. “And we hope.”

“Hope what?”

He settled the backpack into a more comfortable position. “That there’s no mouse.”

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32. The Kitchen

“Someone’s been busy here,” Agnes said.

It was a big room, filled with rows and rows of shelves, several large stoves, and a large wooden country-style table. It looked like a food-fight had been fought recently; egg yolks dripped off the walls, bags of flour had burst open and been scattered all over the place, all the blenders were running, and the table was covered with chopped vegetables, various liquids, pots, pans and other instruments of culinary delight. The floor was blue and white tile, and was covered in flour, milk, and, apparently, chocolate syrup.

Marks noted that along one wall was a rack of knives, some of which looked just a little too….long to have any use in the kitchen. Several had wickedly curved blades that were serrated.

“Something’s gone pretty damn rotten in here,” Dee said, making a face. Behind her. Dennis, now taller than he’d originally been, his skin stretched taut over his face as if it hadn’t kept pace with the rest of him, made the same face.

Marks also thought it was very warm, owing to the ovens, which were uniformly turned to about 400 degrees. There was a coat rack along the back wall that offered a selection of chef’s hats, including one that resembled nothing more than the pointed headgear of a Catholic bishop. Next to that was a narrow door marked PANTRY. There were three other doors he could see: a swinging in/out door next to the pantry featuring the octopus he knew led to the Old Room, a wooden door with the familiar carving of a stag, and a window.

Marks froze, suddenly realizing he was looking at a window. Outside, it looked like a beautiful day, tree limbs swaying in sunshine. He stared at it, suddenly excited and nervous. Could it be? Was it possible that it was that simple, just open the window and climb down a tree, hitch a ride home? He crossed to the window as if in a dream, knowing it was impossible that escape would be so simple, so straightforward, but unable to let go of the possibility.

When he was close, however, he saw it: one pane of glass, thicker at the bottom than the top from age, had been etched with a portrait of a wolf, similar to the carving on the elevator doors that had brought them to the Waiting Room trap. The glass vibrated slightly as the crashing, crunching noise of the maze collapsing around them continued to buzz, a little louder, he thought, than before.

Deflated, he turned and looked around the kitchen again.

“All I see are places we’ve been,” Dee said. “Wolf, Stag, Octopus. It’s a dead end.”

“Look for a … what’s next? If you’re setting a chessboard?”

“A rook,” Dee said. “A castle. But—”

“If it’s here, we’re on the right track,” Marks said. “Let’s start there.”

“Or we’re wrong about the chess pieces,” Dee said, looking around.

They searched. Everything in the kitchen was rancid, rotten, and well past its sell date, making the search a disgusting adventure. Dee attempted to keep herself relatively clean, picking through ingredients and utensils carefully, sometimes picking up a wooden spoon or other implement to help her shift the mess around. Marks didn’t let such niceties slow him down; he rolled up his sleeves and swept his hands through the gooey, room-temperature stuff, shoving mounds of flour and sugar and puddles of gravy aside energetically, eager to get on with it.

The activity seemed to crank up the stench of food gone over, choking the warm air with the damp smell of rot and decay. Dee breathed through her mouth. Marks pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and held it up to his face, filtering the foul air.

Dennis and Agnes stood together, bored, their arms wrapped around themselves as they watched with barely-concealed disdain.

Finally, Dee and Marks, sweating and covered, despite Dee’s efforts, in nearly equal amounts of food, stood and contemplated the ovens.

“It makes perfect sense,” Marks said, wiping his face. “This place loves to torture you in big ways and small.”

He reached forward and touched the handle on the door of one oven, then snatched his hand back, hissing through his teeth. For a moment he was seized with an incoherent fury, angry that every single step along the way was made as difficult as possible, each subsequent room worse in small ways than the ones before, and now the pressure to keep moving, to be quick, to not think and just run as the whole tiny little universe destroyed itself in order to reset for the next guests who would arrive, confused, to be tortured and tricked, their lives sucked away from them.

He’d been through a lot, and seen incredible—and horrible—things, much of which was lost to him. But he resented this place more than any other. He resented everything about it, and for one moment he allowed all of that rage to fill him.

Then he took a deep breath, wrapped his handkerchief around his hand, and opened the ovens, one by one, moving quickly. The rook was in the third one, apparently made of some sort of dough and baked to a shiny, buttery shellac-like finish.

“All right,” Dee said. “So we might still be on the right track, but we still have just three choices that all lead places we’ve been and don’t want to go back to.”

Marks nodded, looking around.

“I used to love to cook,” Agnes said suddenly. “Do you remember, Phil?”

Phil. Marks froze again. She’d never called him by his first name before. It was always Muddled Marks or Myopic Marks. Something about her voice, the sound of his name, filled him with ice and horror.

“Do you remember me yet, Phil?”

Did he want to? He could feel her on the tip of his brain, just beyond the places where his memory illuminated things, just beyond his reach. Like a dark curtain between him and everything that had gone before. But he also had a sense that if he put effort into it, real effort, he might be able to reach through the curtain, just a little bit, a tiny bit, and pull her through into the light.

But he didn’t want to. As much as his lost memory frustrated him, he knew one thing about it: Most of it should stay lost.

Agnes began to hum again. The same song, the same melody, somehow pegged to the rhythm of the distant noise of destruction and chaos, the rumbling churning noise of the place collapsing onto itself. The notes stabbed into Marks and he knew the song, Agnes, they were linked with him. Behind that distant curtain, they waited for him, and he was terrified.

He tore his eyes away from her. She’d become almost inhuman, her features and the lines of her body and face longer and more graceful than was possible. It hurt to look at her. She was like some example of human evolution from centuries in the future. He looked around the room desperately, from the eggs hardening on the walls to the globs of curdled cream on the floor. And he realized, with a flood of relieved excitement, that there was a fourth door.

“The pantry,” he said, his voice a croak.

Dee frowned, turning to look at the door. “The damn pantry, now? This place makes no damn sense.” She walked over to the small wooden door and examined it. “No carving,” she said. “No animal.”

Marks stepped close to the door, eyes dancing over its surface. Between Agnes’ humming and the distant noise, he wanted to just move, just get out in front of everything and stay in motion. But she was right. Every door so far had been marked. The animal carvings had served as guideposts, and the only reason he had any sense of where they’d been or where they might be going, the only reason his hand-drawn map made any sense, was because of those signposts. He wanted to just crash through the door and keep moving, but he knew she was right to be dubious. They might easily find themselves in another Trap Room.

“Come on,” he said, his voice tight, taking hold of the pantry door handle. He turned to look back at Dee. Behind her, Agnes and Dennis stepped forward together, their faces eager with anticipation, as if they were excited to see what happened next. He focused on Dee.

“This is part of it. The trick. This place, it establishes rules and patterns, then breaks them. Just to increase your sense of disorientation. So that the obvious route lies open for you but you hesitate, because it doesn’t match the pattern exactly.”

“Or,” Agnes said softly, “it really is a trick.”

He shook his head. “It can’t be.” He let go of the handle and knelt down before her. “Listen, kid, I’m responsible for you. I’ve got to get you out of this place, and we’re running out of time. Come on and trust me.”

She didn’t seem persuaded, but after a moment she shrugged. “I don’t have any better ideas.”

He nodded, taking hold of the handle again. He’d take 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.

31. The Ballroom

“You sure we ain’t gonna die?”

Marks shook his head. “No. But we had to eat something. You notice it was all our favorites? Sort of mashed together? Having two people here at once is seriously messing with this place’s wiring.”

“I don’t know,” Dee said. “How’s that food stay fresh? I kind of feel sick. I think we got poisoned. Why would we trust the food this place sets out in that creepy Dining Room?”

“If the end goal was to poison us,” Marks said, “there would be easier ways.”

Dee considered that, looking around. “Looking at this room, I figure we’re going to be strangled in the dark, maybe, and not poisoned.”

Marks nodded, watching Agnes and Dennis carefully as the pair seemed to wander randomly among the dusty, rotting tables. He didn’t think either one was a direct threat to them, in the sense of attacking them in some way, but he also didn’t doubt the place had more surprises in store for them. Dennis climbed up onto the bandstand, and then turned and gallantly helped Agnes up as well. A cloud of dust kicked up into the air where they walked.

“Pawn over the doorway,” Marks said, pointing. “So, one in the Anteroom, two in the Library, three in the Lounge, and one here. Makes seven.”

Dee nodded. “That looks like a chessboard, too,” she said, pointing at the dancefloor. “You think they actually had parties in this creepy place?”

Marks shrugged. “Agnes said yes, and that it wasn’t always like this. Who knows. Who knows how much she and Dennis are even real beings, with independent thought and action, instead of puppets set here to distract and annoy.”

Agnes had seated herself at the grand piano, its polished black surface dulled by dust and scratches. She cracked her knuckled theatrically, looked over at them, and smiled. Then she began playing. The piano was horribly out of tune, each note somehow positioned perfectly between keys, resulting in a discordant and horrifying noise that felt like fishing line being pulled through his eardum … and yet the tune was recognizable.

“Shit,” Dee said, pulling a face. “I know that song. I mean, it’s the Halloween, horror-movie oh-shit-we-took-a-wrong-turn-into-Insanity-Cove-population-one version, but I’ve heard this song. Old, right? About married people stepping out and boning?”

Marks matched her expression. “Close enough.”

Dee pointed at him. “They are pulling that 100% from you, old man. No way they found that song rummaging around in my karma.”

Dennis, or the slightly stretched, inaccurate simulation of Dennis that the apparition had become, started an off-beat clapping that somehow made the song even more horrible, which Marks would not have believed to be possible.

“Uh, that’s our cue to get the hell out of this room, like, pronto.”

Marks nodded. “In here, the room we haven’t been to yet is the Octopus, which is also where the pawn was positioned, so the choice seems obvious.”

They both stood for a moment, not moving. The music curdled around them and thickened the air.

“Too easy?” Dee asked.

“Too easy.”

He chewed his lip for a moment. When he looked over at Agnes and Dennis on the bandstand, she raised one hand from the keyboard and waved at him while tinkling out a sour arpeggio that fell like tiny lead pellets at her feet. The pair just followed them now, not making any attempt to interfere or speak to them. It was somehow worse.

“Come on,” he said. “At least maybe there won’t be music.”

Dee sighed, following him towards the door. “Dude, there isn’t any music here.”

They opened the Octopus door, walked down the brief hall, and found themselves in a dim, aged-looking room where the air seemed to be made of dust, everything faded and worn smooth with age. The room had the weight of time hanging everywhere, a dense feeling of uncounted days.

It was a simple room, but filled with debris. The walls were cluttered with paintings, etches, portraits, and mirrors. Not an inch of wall space was bare. There were no windows, but something warm and delicious was being cooked somewhere; amidst the dust and age the room smelled wonderful. Several large free-standing wardrobes crowded in from the edges, some with more paintings and mirrors hung on their sides and doors.

The floor was just as crowded as the walls with tables, chairs, trunks, and boxes. In one corner stood a stuffed bear, posed with one claw raised, its jaws stretched wide. A huge model sailing ship resides on one of several coffee tables, resplendent with bright white sails and carefully applied paint. A bearskin rug was rolled up in another corner, and an Iron Maiden leaned against a scratched and scuffed Hope Chest, lost in shadow.

Hidden amongst all the paintings and bric-a-brac are four exits: A pair of swinging doors marked with a familiar stag, a stairway leading downward with a floor tile marked with the bear, and two more doors on the east and north walls, marked with a viper and a kangaroo.

“Not the first room,” Agnes suddenly sang out from behind them. “But certainly one of the earliest! Now it’s become a sort of storage room, sadly—past follies and failures shunted aside, out of the way … at least until someone plays some mischief. Sometimes, I’d swear the paths to this room get changed, making it difficult to find even if you know the way.”

“Uh huh,” Marks said. “Shut up.”

“Rude.” She grinned. “Still trying to place me, Poor Myopoic Marks?”

Marks felt a cold shiver pass through him, something buried deep in his memories reaching up and massaging his brain. He closed his eyes for a moment and wished fervently for a bourbon, neat, with a water back and some bar nuts.

“Come on,” Marks said, opening his eyes and fighting back a wave of exhaustion. “If we’re on the right track there’s one last pawn in here.”

They checked the doors. When the Kangaroo didn’t immediately offer up the pawn, they were disappointed.

“Might be lost in all this junk,” Dee offered.

Marks nodded. Then didn’t move. “Christ, there’s a lot of shit in here.”

They started searching. Dennis and Agnes mimicked them, picking up various things and tossing them aside randomly, sometimes snatching things right out of their hands and playing Keep Away. Marks and Dee exchanged exasperated looks, but said nothing, and continued to search.

After nearly an hour, Marks stopped and stretched, arching his back and trying to work a sizzling pain out of it. He looked around, dismayed at the sheer amount of stuff to search through, and then paused, listening. There was a new noise, a rhythmic thumping. It was low volume and easy to miss, but he could feel it in the floor boards as well.

He thought it might be another trick, another illusion designed to spook them and keep them running instead of thinking. But Agnes and Dennis weren’t drawing attention to it, and it seemed odd in this place where every room was different, where every room represented its own little puzzle, to see a trick repeated—especially a trick that he’d clearly already seen through and dismissed.

Tricks on tricks, he thought.

He didn’t say anything, and bent back to sorting through the piles of stuff, opening boxes and searching through their bizarre contents. Comic books he remembered, somehow, having as a child—he couldn’t remember someone he’d met a year ago, but he could somehow remember comic books. shoes, never in pairs, always oddballs, seeming new. Dolls without heads. One box was filled with tiny, bleached-white bones, from a rodent of some sort.

Through all his searching, he was aware of the vibrations under his feet, buzzing up through his legs. After another long moment of standing still and contemplating it, he lay down on the floor with a grunt and pressed his ears against the floor, listening. It sounding like a construction site piledriver in the distance, a steady beat of impact.

“Found it!”

Marks sat up and looked around. Dee had climbed up on top of one of the wardrobes, somehow, and triumphantly held up a small white carving, similar to the other seven they’d found so far.

“That’s a relief,” he said as she climbed down. “If we didn’t find it, I wasn’t sure what our next move was going to be.”

“Yaaayyy!” Agnes trilled, clapping her hands. “I am so happy for you, Dear Dour Dee!”

Dee scowled at her, then beamed at Marks. A moment later she looked down at her feet. “What’s that?”

Marks nodded. “I know, I noticed it too.”

“That,” Agnes said, spinning as if being twirled by an invisible dance partner, “is the House shutting down.”

Dee looked at Marks. “Shutting down?”

He shook his head, pursing his lips as if to dismiss whatever Agnes was saying.

“You’ve been here too long,” Agnes said. “You’re almost done. So the place is resetting.”

A shot of panic went through Marks. On some deep level he realized this made sense, somehow he knew it made sense. The Black House shaped itself around those it lured in. It had shaped itself around Dee and him, taking pieces of them for decoration and function. And now they were close to being stranded there, close to having their entire lives absorbed by this dark, beating heart, and so it was destroying itself to reset for the next victim.

It was destroying itself.

“Marks,” Dee said softly. “What is it? What does it mean?”

He looked at her, and forced a thin, weak smile onto his face, shifting his gaze to the Kangaroo door, which he thought was obviously their next step. “It just means we have to move a little faster, kid.”

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30. A New Room

Like Agnes, Marks thought, Dennis had changed. Molted. Warped. He was still the same man they’d encountered in the Waiting Room, still recognizable as the man Dee had asserted was her father. But he was a rougher version of that man. He was taller, thinner, and his clothes fit poorly, as if they hadn’t shifted with his body and were now too small. His hair was longer and unkempt. Like Agnes, he stood in the doorway behind Dee, smiling.

Dee suddenly pulled back and hit him on the shoulder. “You left me,” she said, her voice dull and flat.

He nodded, swallowing thickly. “I know. I’m sorry. I thought … I thought you were okay.”

She hit him again, and then again. “You left me!” she said again, her voice hitching, and then she was crying, tears streaming down her face. “You were supposed to know! All about this place!”

He didn’t try to stop her or defend himself. “I know, kid, I know, I’m sorry. But I found you.”

She stopped hitting him, and stood there for a moment looking exhausted and impossibly young. Behind her, Dennis’ smile was disturbing: His eyes fixed on them, wide and leering, his smile vacant.

“How’d you find me?”

He shrugged. “I thought like this demented place for a moment. I asked myself, what’s it been trying to do to us? Get us lost, keep us spinning. This maze,” he looked around, “kept us spinning for a long time.”

She nodded, and he leaned forward and put his hands on her shoulders. “Listen, I think I’ve figured something out.”

She dragged an arm across her face, nodding. “Okay.”

“This place, it’s personalized, you know? It’s supposed to pick up details from your life, from your mind, and use them. All the stuff we see here, all the weird rooms, somehow it comes from us.”

She frowned.

“But because it’s two of us,” he went on, “because it’s two people instead of one, and because my mind is so fucked up and weird, it got all screwy. It picked up random things from both of us, and mine are all warped beyond recognition. But some of it just from you. Like the chess pieces.”

She nodded. “The pawns,” she said. “The Queen. We’ve seen those.”

“And her and him,” he added. “Supposed to confuse us. But some it—like the chess pieces—can guide us. I think. There’s a pattern to them.”

Somewhere distant, he became aware of the buzzing, cracking noise again, a storm of violence slowly heading their way. Even though he knew it was an illusion, designed to spook them, to keep them moving in the wrong direction, it still sizzled on his nerves and made it difficult to stay calm, to stay still. Move move move it seemed to communicated directly to his underbrain, that primitive part of him that connected him to his most ancient single-celled ancestors.

“I think if we follow the pattern the right way, it’ll lead us out of here.”

She sniffled and nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. A pattern. Chess from me. What about you?” Her eyes flickered over his shoulder to Agnes. “What’s it taking from you?”

He sighed. “I have an idea, but I can’t remember what it means,” he said. “I’m still working on that part.”

She nodded again. “Okay.” She turned to look over her shoulder, then looked past Marks at Agnes again. “So, they’re like, not real people, right?”

Marks nodded. “Figments. Fakers.”

“Can we tie them up and leave them here? Or knock them out so they stop following us?”

Marks smiled. The noise of the approaching storm was loud enough to feel in the floor joists. “Probably not, actually, but we can always try, sure.” He turned to look at Agnes, who was leaning against the doorway with her hands folded in front of her, looking young and fresh and innocent, smiling slightly. A flicker of recognition went through his thoughts, but was gone almost immediately. “I wouldn’t mind getting rid of her for a little while.”

He looked back at Dee and they both smiled. It was surprising, he thought, how much better he felt having her back, having another real, actual person to bounce off of. The thought made him sober. Dee frowned a moment later.

“You’re thinking, how do we know we’re real?”

He nodded, then pulled a hand over his face. “New rule,” he said. “Don’t split up again.” He turned to look at Agnes again. She winked at him.

“Well,” he said, raising his voice over the sizzling noise. “I’m not sure, kid,” he admitted. “The best I can come up with is to pay attention. Both our people appear to have … drifted from their original physical appearance. If I start looking weird to you, don’t shrug it off.”

Dee cocked one eyebrow. “But if you’re a Figment, Marks, then you’d be lying to me right now!”

“Not necessarily!” Agnes shouted over the buzzsaw noise brightly. “The fun of it, Dear Dim Dee, is to sometimes tell the truth, sometimes point you in the right direction. Then I can be all hurt and sad when you don’t take my advice.”

“Who are you supposed to be?” Marks said quietly, not looking at her. He felt like the memory was right there. Right under the surface, tantalizing. He wondered if Agnes had been changing because the memory was coming closer, getting sharper. But then he couldn’t believe he’d ever known anyone as breathtakingly beautiful as this woman.

Memory, he thought, sometimes warped how people looked. Cleaned up the negative, put a little movie magic on the lens.

Dee shook herself. “Trust,” she said, holding out her hand as if sealing a business deal. “I’m already lost, right? Shit, can’t go much further wrong. So, we trust each other until we got reason not to.”

Marks took her hand. He was surprised at how small and delicate it felt in his, and a wave of agonizing self-loathing swept through him again. He’d brought her here. And then he’d left her.

“Trust,” he said.

“Okay,” she said, pushing her hair, which had become a mess that resisted any efforts to control it. “So, what do we do?”

Marks dropped the backpack to the floor and fished out the notebook. “All right, we saw chess pieces in six rooms so far,” he said. “The Anteroom—one pawn, the Library—two pawns, the Queer Lounge—three pawns, the Ballroom—”

“There’s a ballroom?”

“Yes!” Agnes cheered. “It’s marvelous!”

“—one pawn, and Underground—Queen. So what’s missing?”

Dee thought for a moment. “They’re all white, right?”

Marks nodded.

“One pawn—there should be eight. Then the Rook, the Knight, and the King.”

Marks pointed at her. “Got a feeling the King might be where we want to end up.”

Dee smiled. “All right, so we go up the ladder, right, like it’s a board? Pawns first, then we look for the Rook. But if we already know where the Queen is, why not just try to cut back there?”

“I can’t say for certain, but this place kind of has a clockwork feel to me. Like we need to go through rooms in a certain order,” he said, looking down at the map he’d drawn and re-drawn several times. “So if I’m right about that, we’d go Anteroom, Library, Lounge, Ballroom, and then—” he pointed at the little square he’d marked with a large capital O. “The Octopus room, whatever that is. It’s the only room leading from the Ballroom we haven’t been in.”

“Then what?”

He shrugged, closing the notebook. “If there’s a pawn in that room, we know we’re on the right track. Then we look for, what, the Rook?”

Dee nodded. “What if we go through a door, no Rook, but we can’t go back?”

“Then we circle around and try again,” he said. He paused for a moment, studying her face. “Look, I know, it’s exhausting. It’s meant to be exhausting. But the key is, we have to just keep working the puzzle until we make it out. It’s the only way. There are rules, but it’s their rules, and we have to follow them.”

She took a deep breath. “Okay.” She looked down at her shoes. “Listen … thanks. For coming after me.”

He nodded and looked away, but said nothing.

“What now?”

He took a deep breath, looking around. The buzzing, crunching noise and shouting voices seemed like it was in the next room, but Marks was determined to prove it couldn’t scare him any more, couldn’t force him to make a mistake. “First things first: We have to figure out how to get out of here again!”

“Shit, I’m sorry!” Dee shouted. “He tricked me!”

Marks looked past her at Dennis, who smiled, his gums blood red, his teeth somehow yellowed.

“Don’t worry about them,” Marks yelled. “They’re just figments, right!”

Dee nodded. Marks turned to grin back at Agnes, and was startled to find her glaring at him, her beautiful face folded into a mask of rage.

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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.

29. The Broker’s Office

The office was just as he remembered it: Simple, bland, beige. The Broker, still handsome in a generic way that made Marks think of computer algorithms designed to generate handsome, was sitting behind the simple metal desk, hands steepled in front of him, suit respectable but not expensive or flashy. The carpet was nice but not luxurious. The air felt cool but smelled neutral.

Marks twisted around. The door he’d stepped through a few days before was open, and through it he could see the empty offices of Passus, Inc.

He looked back at The Broker and opened his mouth, but then couldn’t find any words.

“Surely,” The Broker said in a bluff, cheerful way, raising his light brown eyebrows, “you are used to unexpected topographies and impossible architectures by now, Mr. Marks?”

The Broker of Health and Happiness seemed amused, and that sparked a small flame of resentment in Marks’ belly. “You … The Black House, it’s yours?”

“Passus operates the facility, actually,” The Broker said. “We are a collective. I am merely a cog in the bureaucracy, you understand. I don’t own, operate, or benefit from any of our work here. I merely facilitate.”

Marks realized he was still kneeling with his palms on the floor. He climbed to his feet, momentarily feeling every ache and every pulled muscle. There were a lot of them.

“Listen,” Marks said, stepping closer to the desk. “There’s a girl. She’s—”

“Deandra,” The Broker said. “Deandra Dennings, yes.” He nodded, a muted smile on his face, encouraging Marks.

“You know she’s in there,” Marks said, something short-circuiting in his brain.

“Why, of course,” The Broker said, the slightest hint of a frown drooping over his features. “That is why you are here. We accept her!”

Marks swallowed something huge and made of broken glass. “Accept her?”

The Broker’s expression came perilously close to being an actual frown. “In lieu of yourself, yes, we accept her. This operation,” he stood, suddenly, revealing himself to be of average height and build, “we are in the business of bringing our clients health and happiness. Success. But everything comes at a price, Mr. Marks—yes, we know your name now. Our freelancers provide vessels for other people’s miseries, yes, and we provide them with financial incentives—that is one aspect of our business. There are other costs, other overhead, other infrastructure. The transference of misery from one human being to another is an immensely expensive business, and not solely in terms of money.”

He pointed at Marks. “You cost us quite a bit of trouble and expense with your deception, Mr. Marks. You were to be processed at the—what did you call it? The Black House—I quite like that!—as a consequence. Instead, we will process Ms. Dennings, who is, after all, a legacy!” He paused to cock his head slightly. “As we assumed you intended?”

Marks just stared.

The Broker’s expression became alarmed. “Oh my. This is a disaster.”

Marks put his hands down on the desk and leaned forward. “Yes. Get her out of there. She’s innocent. Blameless. She shouldn’t be in there at all.”

She should be back at the Starlight, he thought, waiting forever for me to return, slowly realizing that yet another adult had let her down and abandoned her. And yet that was a better fate than being trapped forever in a metaphysical meat grinder, being transformed into someone else’s health and happiness.

“I’m afraid,” The Broker said, then paused to spin and reclaim his seat. He settled himself and rolled his head on his shoulders before looking Marks in the eye. “I’m afraid it isn’t that simple. As you might imagine, the, er, Black House is a complex machine. Many moving parts. We cannot simply stop its operation, or simply pull someone out. The consequences of such an action would be dire. All we can do is what we did with you: Create and offer a way out. You had to find that exit, we couldn’t interfere or place it in your path.”

Marks felt his heart beating a desperate, unhappily heavy rhythm in his chest. “Then you can do the same for Dee.”

The Broker’s expression was one that Marks had seen on many faces when he’d attempted to beg extensions on debts, advances on payments, or other extraordinary kindnesses: Pained lack of interest. “I am afraid that is impossible, Mr. Marks. The Black House has been calibrated for a guest. It must process a guest.”

Marks nodded. He felt like he’d always known this would the response, as if this was some epic, scripted event he’d been rehearsing for years. “Then swap me for her. Take her out, put me in.”

“As I said, we cannot simply remove someone.” He looked down at his hands. “I can offer only one possible solution, Mr. Marks. We can send you back, and you can search for the exit again. When you find it—if you find it—you can send Ms. Dennings through, and remain behind to satisfy your debt to Passus.”

Marks thought furiously. “Can you send me directly back to her? To the spot she’s in right now?”

The Broker brightened, sensing agreement. “Yes, I believe we could. Or very close.”

“Can you give me the path to the exit?”

The Broker’s broadly handsome face fell again. “I’m afraid not; the processing requires the effort you see, the—”

Marks cut him off with a gesture. “Fucking hell,” he hissed.

The Broker stiffened and sat back. “Might I remind you, Mr. Marks, that we are in this terrible situation because you sought to defraud the company. You posed as a candidate for a freelance position. You assigned miseries to another man without his consent. The fact that he accepted this voluntarily later does not remove the stain of dishonor from you.”

Marks felt the tiny flame of anger growing inside him, and his grip on the desk became white-knuckled. “You lure people into a Soul Engine that consumes and destroys them so you can make rich people’s lives better by making poor people’s lives worse and you’re lecturing me on morals?”

The Broker spread his hands. “Mr. Marks, I am uninterested in your feeble grasp of the laws of the universe. Since educating you on the true meaning of morality is impossible, let us concentrate on what is possible: Re-inserting you into the Black House so you can help Ms. Dennings escape. Are we agreed, then? I cannot guarantee you will find the way—but if you do successfully find the exit, you may set Ms. Dennings free and we will accept your processing alone.”

Marks closed his eyes and nodded. Knowing more didn’t make him feel better. Knowing that people like him and Dee—and Dee’s father—were processed in order to provide the raw materials for a place like Passus made him want to shoot himself in the head rather than live in a universe that allowed such things.

Or made him want to return and burn Passus to the ground. The anger was still there, but for the moment he had to ignore it and save Dee, who had done nothing to deserve any of it. He had at least done something.

“Okay,” he said. “I agree.”

The Broker smiled. “Very good! I will process the paperwork. In the mean time, be my guest.”

He gestured over Marks’ shoulder. The door behind him no longer led to the empty offices of Passus, but showed the familiar new drywall of the New Rooms. Without looking back at the Broker, Marks turned and walked over to it. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath of the air-conditioned, scentless air of the Passus offices, and stepped through.

“Marks!”

He opened his eyes. Agnes stood in front of him, smiling. He turned slightly. Dee was a few feet away, staring at him, wide-eyed. She looked skinny and rough, exhausted, her hair a mess, her face blotchy and tearstained. They stared at each other for a moment, and marks was amazed to find a surge of relief so powerful he had to swallow back a cry.

She took a hesitant step forward, then launched herself at him, crashing into him and hugging him hard.

“You came for me,” she said, quiet. “I can’t believe you came back for me.”

Marks nodded, hugging her back. Then he glanced up, and froze.

Dee felt it. “He’s always there,” she said without letting go.

Marks stared at Dennis, who lurked in the far doorway.

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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.

28. A New Room

She was always there.

Agnes had, mercifully, stopped speaking to him. But that had been replaced with a silent following. She was always just in the room, always in the doorway he’d just passed through. Always watching, a hint of a smile. Her perfume was always in the air. It didn’t matter how fast or slow he walked. If he turned around just before walking through a door, she was in the other doorway. The moment he passed into the next room smelling of damp joint compound and drywall dust, she was right behind him, watching. A hint of a smile. Perfume.

Sometimes she hummed the same damn song she’d been humming, seemingly since he’d arrived.

The rooms themselves didn’t appear to have changed. He found broken glass in several, and score marks on the walls, evidence of their attempts to mark their route and avoid doubling back on their own path—or evidence of someone’s attempts to do so. He didn’t know if the rooms he passed through maintained their state after he left, though they seemed to. Or if they did, how long they did, or if other people were also trapped in the Black House.

He wondered if Dee had figured this out, if she knew Dennis was her own personal Agnes, her own personal figment designed to distract her and steer her wrong. If so, she might leave Marks clues as to her route, or be on her own, trying to find her way back. He had to think like Dee. He paused for a second, contemplating the command from on high to think like a young black girl who’d lost her parents and who was now trapped in a strange, maze-like hell.

Figment. Distraction. He stopped moving. He turned to regard Agnes, who hovered in the doorway he’d just come through, a wraith smelling of Peppermint again. He wondered if her shifting scent meant anything, or if it was just more evidence of his ruined memory.

The House wanted him to move. Everything so far—aside from the Waiting Room—had been designed to keep him moving. Move, move, move—and when they’d slowed down or showed any signs of hesitation, there had been noises or events that had kept them moving. He’d known this and still fallen for it.

If he wanted to find Dee, he thought, his best bet was to sit down and let her find him.

He shrugged off his backpack, much lighter now than it had been, and sat down in the middle of the floor. He was tired anyway. He was hungry and thirsty and his feet ached. He was an old man, older perhaps than he realized, what with all those years missing. He closed his eyes and immediately was aware of the buzzing, crunching noise, low and distant, but suddenly there. There to spook him, to make him surge up in panic and start running blind again.

He kept his eyes closed. He shifted his weight.

For a long while she left him alone. The urge to open his eyes just to see what Agnes was up was powerful, and he had to keep distracting himself, distracting himself from the distraction. He could smell her. He knew when she had wandered close, because her scent became stronger, and he knew when she moved away. He forced himself to examine his gray, murky memories, the vast wasteland of the last few years, seeking clues, bits and pieces of lost moments. He concentrated on Agnes, ironically, to distract himself from Agnes: Who did she resemble? Had there actually been an Agnes, a pretty brunette with a penchant for peppermint? Had he lost her? Hurt her? Had she hurt him? There was a reason the House had dressed itself as her for him. She was supposed to have had the same effect on him as Dennis had on Dee.

“Are you sleeping?”

He squeezed his eyes shut tighter. She would, he thought, try to get him up again, try to prompt him into moving, running blind.

“Meditating? Oh, goodness, tell me you’re not about to burst into tears. I cannot bear weeping men.”

He said nothing.

“You’re not … giving up? Oh, moronic Mr. Marks, I should hope not. You are so close.” He could hear her creeping closer, her scent growing stronger, filling his head like a pink and white mist, somehow alluring, erotic, compelling. Then she was whispering in his ear and her breath was surprisingly hot against his ear. “So close. You have been indefatigable, really. Your commitment to that disappointing Dee is laudable—certainly she did nothing to deserve your affection, and let’s face it, my many-faceted Marks, you’re a doll to put so much energy into her salvation. She doesn’t deserve you, dearie.”

Her voice was silk. He felt a bead of sweat roll down his forehead.

“But you can’t give up now. Is she selfish? Yes. Silly? Yes. But she’s just a girl, Moral, Well-Meaning Marks. Just a child. And you sent her on her way, alone, unprotected. All you had to do was stay with her. Now she’s lost, and it is, I’m afraid, your fault.”

He squeezed his eyes tighter. After a moment he heard a feminine sniff of frustration, and sensed her sitting down next to him. He could imagine her skirts, which had bloomed outward over time, settling around her, like a cloud.

“People have died in here,” she said softly, sounding sad, pained. “I am sorry to say it. I do try to avoid that, I really do, though you won’t believe it. Oh, I know your opinion of me. It’s not a fair opinion, of course, although I understand why you feel that way. We all have our roles to play—yours is to protect and defend the innocent, those who lack your knowledge and experience. Mine is to protect this place. But I do not wish harm on anyone, truly. But it has happened. People give up. They sit down, they stop moving. I’ve seen it before, My Mournful Marks.”

Her attempts to get him moving were proof, he thought, that he should not do so.

Dimly, he became aware of another sound: The now-familiar sizzle of the distant grinding noise, the shouting voices. It was distant and dim, but still caused a sudden flame of anxiety bordering on fear in his belly. Something about the noise was ominous, tickling some ancient fight-or-flight instinct.

“That sounds scary,” Agnes cooed.

He parsed his options furiously while his primitive underbrain demanded he run, run immediately. Heart pounding, he forced himself to remain sitting there as the noise grew in volume, seemingly just a room or two away, some horrible thing come to devour him.

“At this point,” Agnes shouted, “you’re wondering—because you people are always wondering this at this stage of the game—if that’s the real danger of this place, something come to consume you in some terrible way. That maybe I’ve been trying to help you all this time, trying to keep you safe in my own way by guiding you away from this, this doom coming.”

With effort, he kept his eyes closed. The noise seemed to worm into his brain and massage the precise nerve endings that inspired terror and panic.

Then his eyes popped open. He caught Agnes smiling, a wide, crazy grin she immediately turned off—but he’d seen it. And he knew, or thought he did, another piece of the puzzle: This noise, this awful implied violence wasn’t there simply to keep him moving, was it? It was there to herd him. To keep him moving, yes, but in a specific direction. Away from something.

He climbed to his feet. His legs felt prickly and asleep, and he wondered how long he’d been sitting—surely not for long? Staggering on numb legs, he steered himself around Agnes, who’d adopted a tense, concerned expression, and started moving towards the noise.

“I wouldn’t—”

He ignored her and barreled through the door, dragging the backpack behind him as he crashed into the next room, the grinding, tearing noise louder, like a machine ripping down walls and crunching the plywood subfloor into mulch as it rolled. He didn’t slow down. He oriented himself as best he could and chose the doorway that appeared to lead closer to the noise, and crashed through it. Then he did it again.

In the fifth room, the noise was so loud he could feel it vibrating inside him, shifting his organs. The voices had resolved into screams of agony and horror. The room shook with the force of it, and crossing to the next doorway took physical effort, as if an invisible force was pushing against him. He pushed himself through, stumbling with his eyes half closed as he struggled against the unseen wind. He almost fell forward through into the next room, into near-silence. He crashed to his knees and knelt there for a moment, gasping for breath and staring at the floor, ears ringing, body buzzing.

He looked up and froze in shock.

“Hello again, Mr. Marks,” said The Broker.

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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.

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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