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

14. The Hall of Mirrors

“Holy shit,” Marks said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“They’re chess openings,” Dee said.

Marks turned to look at her. “What?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Chess,” Marks said. “Random.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why not? You promised.”

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

“Same thing,” Dee said.

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

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

“I don’t know,” Dee said.

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

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

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

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

Dee stared. “What are you doing?”

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

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

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

Dee blinked. “What?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hush,” Marks said gently.

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

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

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

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

“What is it?” Marks asked.

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

Marks sat forward. “Are you sure?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Behind him, he heard Agnes: “Rude.”

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

13. The Myna Bird Room

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How do you know?” Dee asked.

Marks shrugged. “I’m guessing—”

Agnes barked a laugh and entered first position again.

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

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

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

“Is my father here?”

Agnes nodded enthusiastically. “Yes!”

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

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

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

Agnes nodded. “Yes!”

“Will you?”

“Yes!”

Marks turned. “What?”

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

Dee smiled. “Really?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

12. The Myna Bird Room

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

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

“Mawk, good to see you awk!”

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

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

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

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

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

“Sorry, fella,” she said.

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

“You see us, huh little guy?”

“Mawk, way out, I know, set me free!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Mawk! I know, set me free! Awk!”

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

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

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

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

“Ibex? Seriously?”

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

“Mawk! Ibex! Awk!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“So what do you do?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Mr. Marks,” she hissed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

11. The Spare Room

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

“Mr. Marks! Mr. Marks!”

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

“Oh … it’s the closet again.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Viper,” Agnes corrected.

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

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

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

“What’s your point?”

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

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

“Maybe.”

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

“Dee?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Wait!”

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

“Dammit,” Marks said, following.

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

10. The Dining Room

Marks stared at the wine glass. It was half-filled with dark red liquid, the carafe sitting on the crowded table right behind it. He’d been forced to walk on the table to get into the room, climbing into the chair facing the window. He felt trapped, his belly pushed up against the edge of the table, the room warm and filled with battling smells of food and booze, all of it somehow slightly off, as if it had just that moment tipped over from fresh to stale, on its way to rotten.

Music—softly muffled, as if being played in the next room—could be heard. It was a string quartet playing a slow, mournful tune, every note dragged out until there was almost no rhythm to it, no form. Yet he was certain, somehow, that it was the same song he’d been hearing, the same maddening cheesy pop song, just slowed down to an unrecognizable tempo.

The wine—he assumed it was wine—looked awful. Thick. Dry. The sort of wine that puckered your mouth and made you thirstier and thirstier the more you drank. He wanted to drink a glass fast, then refill it from the carafe and take his time with the second, enjoying the slow burn, the looseness, the warmth. He wanted to drink. He didn’t know why.

He looked at Dee, who was staring dubiously at a carved ham, glistening with glaze. He shouldn’t have allowed her to follow him. He’d known, on some level, what would happen—because it was what always happened with him. He knew things would go sideways. He wanted them to go sideways, to get lost. He was tired of the constant struggle, his damaged memory, his lack of funds. He was so tired. Walking into a buzzsaw was a quick and easy way to just let the hungry maw of the universe take him.

He should have told her to turn around. He should have turned her around. Kids don’t know any better.

And now he had to keep her safe and find their way. And for that he thought he could use a drink, and a drink would be the end of him.

He looked at Agnes. She was staring at the messy, laden table with what looked like genuine horror.

“It’s warm,” Dee said. Marks looked at her; she was touching the baked ham with one finger. She looked at him. “Someone cooked this, like, recently.”

Marks glanced down at his plate. The fish was bony, and looked only half-cooked. “Well, someone was eating here not too long ago,” he said.

“That is literally the worst thing you could have told me,” Agnes complained.

They sat with that for a moment in silence. The air felt hot, and Marks had an image of breathing gravy, thick and brown and hot, filling his lungs, choking him.

“If this disturbs you,” Marks said, “wait until we find the fucking kitchen. Whatever you do, don’t eat anything.”

“Don’t worry,” Dee said emphatically. Then she sobered. “Does this mean someone else is in here with us? Maybe my father?”

Marks scanned the table, trying to figure out how the food could appear simultaneously so delicious and so horrifying. Something about the greasy way everything shined, he decided. “Maybe. But places like this like to tease you, get you to chase things. They leave trails, breadcrumbs, red herrings. You pick one up, and it always seems just out of reach, tantalizing.”

“You,” Agnes said with a bright smile, “are the most depressing man I have ever met.”

Marks shrugged, thinking it certainly wasn’t the first time someone had expressed that thought, or similar thoughts. There had been a time when people thought of him as interesting, as amusing. When people had thought of him. But he couldn’t be sure; everything beyond a few days before was grainy, unreliable, corrupted.

“And anyway,” she continued, leaning back in her chair, “there’s only one door. The one behind us isn’t there any more.”

Marks didn’t look, but Dee twisted around in her seat to stare back at the way they’d come, which was now unbroken plaster and chair rail.

“Makes our next move easy, don’t you think? Unless you want to wait here and see if any servants arrive to clear the table and bring out the next course, which I’m sure will be delightful.”

“No,” Dee said, turning back and shaking her head. “Let’s not wait.”

“Snakes it is, then,” Marks declared, pulling the bag into his lap and digging through it for his notebook.

“A very specific type of snake,” Agnes said with a sniff. “Don’t you know your snakes?”

“I hate snakes,” Dee declared. “They slither and they hiss and they bite.”

Agnes smiled. “Sorry, dearie, no choice: No going back, only way is through the Viper room.”

Dee shook her head. “Uh, are you two blind? There’s a window.”

For a moment, everything was silent. Marks pushed the notebook back into the backpack and struggled up out of his chair and onto the table, knocking a gravy boat over and almost slipping and falling from the greasy deluge. He staggered over to the window, knocking plates and cutlery aside, and regarded the yellow drapes.

“They’ve got an animal printed on them,” he said. “Stags.”

“Stags are majestic animals,” Agnes said. “Stags—wait, we’ve seen a Stag carving.”

“The weird little bedroom,” Dee said. “With the closet full of coats.”

Marks knelt down, his pants getting soaked in a variety of sauces, and pushed the drapes aside, revealing a wide but normal-looking window. “The panes are smoked,” he said. “I can’t see through them.”

“There wasn’t a window in that room,” Dee said. “And Windows lead outside. It might be the way out.”

Marks grunted doubtfully. Shrugging the backpack into a more comfortable position, he put the heels of his hands against the top of the sash and pushed. At first it refused to move, then slowly, groaningly it rose upward, screeching in protest. A bright, white light burst into the room, making them all cover their eyes and look away.

“Can’t see a thing,” Marks said, squinting.

“That other room wasn’t so bright,” Dee said excitedly. “Maybe it leads somewhere else? Or outside! Maybe we’re wrong about the animal codes.”

“Maybe,” Marks said, still ducking and squinting. “One way to find out.”

“What if we can’t get back?”

Marks hesitated, then turned to look at them. “Listen, there’s one other thing I haven’t mentioned about places like this, these mazes.”

“Oh, dear,” Agnes said. “The Unmentionables. No one likes the Unmentionables.”

“There’s almost always a Trap Room.”

Dee’s eyes were wide. He hated scaring her, hated piling on even more for the kid to worry about, but he felt he had a duty. If he was going to be leading her into each room, choosing their path, he had to be honest.

For her part, she hated being scared, and so her reaction seemed almost like anger. “What,” she said slowly, “is a trap room?”

His back didn’t like him crouching there on the table, and the smell of the rich food was making him sick. “It’s room you can’t get out of. A room without an exit. No doors, no windows. Or, no doors or windows that will open.”

“Jeez,” Agnes complained, climbing out of her seat. “How does that knowledge help in any way, Mr. Marks?”

He shrugged. “Just full disclosure. I’m pretty sure the internal mechanics will be straight—if there’s an animal code for the rooms, it will be consistent. But I might be wrong. And if I’m wrong, I just thought—”

“You thought you’d make sure we couldn’t say you hadn’t warned us,” Agnes muttered. “Real goddamn heroic, Marks. You’re a true gem.”

“Anyway. There’s a door, too. Snake, or Stag?”

“Viper,” Agnes said.

“Window,” Dee said. “Stag, whatever. Just in case. We got to try, in case that leads outside.”

Marks nodded. “Sure, okay, but … that’s not sunlight.”

“Stag,” she repeated.

He nodded. “Let’s go. Agnes first.”

He turned and waddled over to the window, and waited for her to walk over to him. He held out his hand. “Watch out, it’s slippery.”

“Because you made a mess,” she said crossly, then brightened. “But a gentleman!” She took his hand and let him help her swing a leg over the sill. She sat there for a moment, looking at him. “Let me do some scouting,” she said, and leaned out into the space beyond. A moment later she seemed to fall forward, disappearing into the light.

“Did she fall?” Dee asked. “Was she grabbed?”

Marks leaned forward. “Agnes!” he shouted. “Hey, Agnes! You okay?”

There was no response. It seemed to him that his voice didn’t echo or reverberate the way it should have; it was like it died in the room with them. He looked at Dee. “All for one and one for all, huh? We can’t leave her in there alone.”

Dee hesitated, remembering Marks’ words about the relative trustworthiness of Agnes and all the Agneses of the world, then nodded. She stood on the table and walked over, and he helped her swing herself over the sill. Instead of sitting she hung on the sill with both hands, looking at him. He realized she was terrified.

“Listen, Mister—”

She dropped, as if she’d lost her grip … or been snatched by something on the other side.

Awkwardly, hands getting slick with gravy, he levered one leg through the opening and then pulled himself through.

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

9. The Anteroom

It was, in a way, a relief. The foyer looked exactly the same as when they’d entered, with one crucial change: The front door wasn’t there. The wall was solid, and even a careful examination revealed no hidden cavities, no trick switches or anything. They were back in the room they’d started in, and he relaxed a little. It was a good sign.

“The door changed,” Dee said.

She was staring at the door they’d come in through. It had snapped shut behind them as if on springs, but they hadn’t paid it much attention because a momentary euphoria had swept through them: They were free! They’d found their way back to the entrance! By the time they realized there was no entrance to turn into an exit, the door had shut.

Marks took his notebook over to where the kid was standing. The room was exactly as he remembered it: Three interior doors, marked with a duck, a lion, and a newt. They’d gone through the Lion Door and found the library.

“What do you mean it’s changed?”

“The Lion Door? We went through before? It’s the one we just walked through. But that can’t be, can it?”

“Oh kid,” Agnes said, sounding tired. “This place? That’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

Marks opened the door and peered into the short hall that led to the library. It looked precisely as it had when they’d been in there a short while before. But she was right: This was the door they’d just come through, from the weird spare bedroom.

He shut the door, made some notes. As he wrote, he said “Let’s pause for a moment, have a bite and a sip of water, and think.”

Agnes said nothing. Dee looked impatient and terrified for one moment, then took a deep breath and nodded. They sat on the floor and Marks shared out a power bar and passed around a bottle of water.

“This is good news, you know,” he said.

Agnes smiled, leaning back on the palms of her hands. “I can’t wait to hear this.”

“It means it’s a real maze. A solveable maze. If you can find your way predictably back, it’s an honest maze, which means it has rules. It has a solution. It means it’s a Soul Battery instead of an Insanity Engine.”

Dee blinked at him. “What?”

Marks shrugged. “A Soul Battery I told you about: It’s designed to keep us running, so that we bleed all our energy, the energy we’d use up over a lifetime, trying to find the way out. That means there has to be a way out for us to look for. An Insanity Engine is different: It’s goal is to drive you insane. Much worse. Because the whole goal is just to drive you insane, so there are no rules, no patterns for you to grab onto. An Insanity Engine would just keep throwing new rooms at us, every door random. There would be no pattern, because patterns are comforting. They tell our brains that there’s a rhyme and a reason—we just need to figure it out.”

Dee shook her head slightly in confusion. “But this isn’t that.”

“This,” Marks said, smiling a little, “is designed to keep us expending energy, seeking the exit. Which means there has to be an exit, although that doesn’t mean the designers of this place are playing fair. It might be hidden, obscured, and time is definitely being warped—every moment we spend in here will be ten minutes, or one hour of time outside. It’s got to be more efficient for absorbing our energy. But the good news is, that means if we pay attention, we can figure it out. We can find our way through the maze.”

Agnes was smirking, staring at him. “Insanity Engine. Did you coin these marvelous terms yourself, or is there some sort of textbook of mystery mazes out there?”

Marks looked at his hands. “I’m making them up. But it doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

She nodded. “How do you know all this, Mr. Marks?”

He shrugged. “Honestly, I’ve forgotten so much of my life, I’m not sure. Except I’m sure of one thing: I’m the one who Pays the Price.” He looked down at his hands. “You know, your toilet backs up, what do you do? You call a plumber and they have to wade through the shit and the pisss—they pay the price for you. Some people in this world act as lightning rods. They can see a world no one else can, and so they pay the price no one else wants to.” He nodded. “I think that’s me.”

Agnes was suddenly smiling, familiarly.

“So, even though I only remember half my goddamn life,” he said, waving it away, “I think I’ve absorbed plenty of shit, because I’m the One who Pays the Price. And that means I know stuff that no one else knows.” He sighed. “Even if I don’t always remember it, precisely.”

There was a moment of silence. Dee sat on the dusty floor pulling at her tattered sneakers, which were coming apart and worn almost through on the bottom. “Mr. Marks?” she said, staring intently at her laces. “I don’t want you to pay my price.”

“Ah, hell,” Marks stood up and crossed over to her and knelt down. “Listen, I’m not here paying a price for you. I’m here to find your Dad. This is just the right thing to do. I get very few chances to do something right instead of just, you know, surviving. Hanging on. I get caught up in currents, and I just swim like mad until I find the shore. This time I dived in.”

She kept picking at her shoes. “Okay.”

He looked over at Agnes. “What do you think?”

She was sitting with her back against the wall where the front door had been, her legs stretched out in front of her. She smoothed down her narrow skirt. “Back to the library,” she said. “See what we might learn in those books.”

“You’re consistent.”

She shrugged. “It makes sense to me.” She smiled at her lap. “But I guess you’ll say that’s the, what did you call it, the ?soul battery’ thing. Keeping us busy, spinning wheels instead of finding our way.” She looked up, and Marks was struck by the flat beauty of her eyes: Grey, unblinking. “Although running from room to room without knowing anything about where we are sounds like a worse waste of time and energy.”

He sat down next to Dee, who was still morosely tugging at her shoes. “It’s all a waste of energy, that’s the point. Me and Dee have been here maybe a few hours, and I’ll bet a few days have gone by outside. Everything about this place is designed to keep us here as long as possible. That’s why I don’t trust the library. It’s so obviously a place we could spend weeks in, chasing clues.”

She threw her hands up as if exasperated. “All right. Duck or Newt.”

“Dee votes.”

He didn’t know why, but he thought it should be up to her. It was her father they were chasing. And he felt that tiny grit of doubt, that shard in your thoughts that maybe you were wrong, maybe you were missing something. And maybe someone else would subconsciously know it.

The girl sighed heavily and got to her feet. “Why don’t we open each door and see what’s what?” she said. “Like you said, old man, information. The more we have, the better decisions we can make.”

Marks smiled and looked at Agnes. For a split second he thought he saw something awful on her beautiful face: Anger, rage, hatred. Then she was smiling back, cheerful as she climbed to her feet, slender and somehow looking to him like she smelled nice. “She’s sharp as a tack, that one,” she said. “We gotta watch her.”

They walked over to the door with the lizard carved on it. For a moment they hesitated, until Marks leaned forward, took hold of the handle, and pulled it open. The three of them leaned back, as if expecting something to hit them in the face.

A cool breeze that smelled stale and damp drifted in. Marks stepped forward slowly and leaned into the doorway, thinking he didn’t know all the rules—if it was a door that would disappear after they stepped through, when did that happen? Would he be cut in half?

He saw a short hallway, just wide enough for someone to walk down. It went a few feet and then turned left. He smirked. They would have to commit. He couldn’t see where the hall led unless he walked down far enough, which would allow the door to either disappear, close and lock behind him, or remain.

They let the door close, turning to the one with the duck carving. Again, Marks stepped over and pulled the door open. For a moment they stood, staring.

“I can’t believe we just ate power bars,” Agnes said.

The room beyond the door was a small dining room. The floor and ceiling were of dark brown, highly-polished wood. The walls were smooth white plaster, broken by wood panels along the bottom crowned by a simple chair rail. The table filled most of the room, making it impossible to actually pull the chairs out far enough to sit in them. An ornate chandelier of pearls and gold and brass hung too low, nearly scraping the dishes on the table.

The table was set elaborately, with candles giving the room a warm, familiar feel. Marks thought the shadows on the wall could not possibly be thrown by the flames, that another light source entirely was responsible, and the warm, cozy feeling turned sour and oppressive in his eyes. The feast was fantastic; a heap of steaming roasts and delicacies. Marks felt like he was creating the dishes, as everything he thought of seemed to be the next plate, plates on plates, dishes on dishes.

At one end of the table, far across the room from the door, a plate was piled with food, steaming. A glass of wine had been poured. A fork, a piece of food (fish, scarlet with pepper sauce) speared upon its end, rested on the edge of the plate at a jaunty angle.

Marks noted a window behind thick, yellow drapes, and a standard-issue door, slightly ajar, on the opposite end, moving slightly as if a slight breeze was pushing against it.

“Everyone votes duck, right?” Marks said, and stepped through the door.

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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.

8. The Spare Room

The box rumbled to a stop and for a moment she panicked, because it was dark and hot and there didn’t seem to be any exit. She reached forward and the darkness in front of her was soft and yielding. The interior of the box had an insulated, closed-in feel, her breath sounding absorbed in her ears. She leaned forward and pushed her arm into the fabric, then screamed when something took hold of her wrist and yanked her forward.

For one horrible moment she thought she was being suffocated. The air had turned into heavy, dark fabric, crowding into her and pushing all the air aside. Then she was pulled out of it and Marks had her, holding her close, a finger to his lips.

“Quiet, okay? We got a minute to ourselves. You okay?”

She swallowed and nodded, eyes wide. He let go of her wrist and she took a deep breath. She’d been operating on a steady diet of anxiety and fear for weeks now, but this was the first time in her life, she thought, that she’d believed death to be imminent. She was shaking, but determined to keep her reaction from Marks.

She looked around. Behind her was a closet, filled with heavy fur coats, dusty and sagging. She wondered who put a tiny elevator—or whatever a dumwaiter was—in a closet? The rest of the room was just a simple bedroom, sparingly furnished: A bed, a night table, a lamp, and a single hardbacked chair. The bed was a simple cot with a thin, gray mattress, topped by a rough-looking red blanket, and looked slept in, mussed and sweaty. There was a book on the table, and there were four doors, all the same sort as most of the others, located in each direction, each complete with carved decorations in the upper center.

“Listen, we can’t trust her,” Marks said in a low voice, just above a whisper.

Dee scowled. She didn’t like Agnes either but Marks had scared her and she was angry with him. “Why not? She’s stuck here just like us.”

“Is she?” he looked around the tiny room. “She’s been pushing us pretty hard to do certain things. Stay in the library. Go through the Wolf door.” He looked back at her. “And when we walked into the lounge, there was a message on the fridge. Written in those letter magnets. And she marched right over and knocked them off. She didn’t want us to read it.”

Dee chewed her lip. “Might have been an accident. She might have been startled when whatever … was in it … suddenly jumped.”

Marks nodded. “Maybe. I think the message might have been from your Dad. I only saw the first word: warning.”

Behind them, she heard the dumwaiter screech back into life, rumbling back up to the lounge. “That could have been from anybody.”

He nodded. “Sure. Either way, I think she hid it from us on purpose. Just be careful with her, okay. She’s got her own agenda.”

She nodded. “Okay, old man.” She chewed her lip again. “You really think it was a message from Dad?”

He turned and looked at her while the dumwaiter rumbled and scraped. Seconds ticked by as he studied her, and she didn’t know how to react.

“I don’t know, kid,” he said. “I kind of hope so.”

The dumwaiter stopped. There was a moment of stillness and silence, and then a loud thump and a cry.

“Goodness! Hey! Hey! Where is everyone?”

Marks winked at Dee. “In here,” he called out. “Just push on through. You’re in a closet.”

Agnes emerged looking slightly disheveled. “I think that route has been closed. It kind of disappeared as I arrived, spitting me out onto the floor.” She patted her hair and smoothed her long skirt. “Whoever designed this place is rude, I can say that much. Now what do we have … oh. This is a sad little room, isn’t it?”

Marks thought sad was exactly right for the room they’d found themselves in. “It’s like a guest room,” Dee said, picking up the book and putting it down again. “Like that spare room you make up for people when they stay over.”

“We should search the place,” Agnes said, nodding her head. “You never know what might be hidden in the drawers.” She smiled, her round, pretty face lit up.

“Not a bad idea,” Marks conceded.

“Though we should be careful,” she added. “There’s no evidence this is a tame place, filled with tame things, after all.”

As they shifted everything, searching, Dee grimaced. “What’s the point of this place? Who would build a place like this, let people get trapped in it?”

“A madman,” Agnes said, pushing the coats in the closet apart and checking the pockets. “Who else? Someone likes to watch us scuttle about, endlessly, infinitely, tied to a pin and spinning about.” She paused and glanced over her shoulder. “The worst sort: A sadist.”

“Yeah, but who? And why?”

Marks was lifting the thin mattress, gingerly, like he expected a swarm of bugs to emerge. “Souls,” he said.

“Um … what?”

He shrugged, letting the mattress drop. “Souls. Or energy, you like that better. We all have a spark to us, right? It burns bright for a while and then it dies down, and eventually goes out, or moves on. That’s energy, however else you want to look at it. Wherever you go, kid, you leak energy, you leave it behind. When you work on something, you’re putting your energy into that, you can focus it. And when you’re gone, sometimes there’s an echo. That’s a ghost. That’s you smearing so much of yourself in one place it lingers. A place like this? It’s a machine. It’s got us spinning around, putting our energy into it, into the machine. The longer we spin around in here trying to get out, the more of our energy it extracts.”

Dee stopped searching the drawers of the little night stand to stare at him. “That’s evil shit right there,” she said. “How do you know that?”

“He doesn’t,” Agnes snapped. “He’s just trying to scare us. And sound smart.”

Marks looked at Dee. “You scared?”

“Yes.”

“You should be.”

They gave up searching and stood in the middle of the room, looking at the doors.

“Rabbit,” Marks said. “And newt—we’ve seen that one before.”

“Viper,” Agnes said.

“Ape,” Dee added.

Marks was scribbling in his notebook. “This place is big. We’re not seeing a lot of repetition.”

“Or there’s no meaning to any of it,” Agnes said. She gestured back at the closet. “We’ve got doors that disappear, for example.”

“Maybe the rooms move,” Dee said.

Marks paused. “Actually, maybe. But until we have some evidence of that, we can’t include it in the data.”

“He’s quite formal,” Agnes said. “The data.”

“Wait!” Marks said suddenly. “Quiet!”

They all fell silent. The quiet was immediate and seemed total, monolithic. Then, suddenly, a distant sound.

“Is that a voice?” Dee asked.

“Holy shit,” Agnes whispered. “It is!”

Marks waved them down. “Knowing what I know about bizarre-architecture soul batteries,” he said, “it’s us, from like five minutes in the future. Going to lock us in a temporal loop until we die.”

Agnes looked at him and studied him for a moment, pursing her lips. “Well, we can’t stay here,” Agnes said, looking around in distaste. “The library had books—not that you were interested in learning anything, and the lounge might have had something to eat. This place has a copy of Lost Horizon and a bed you couldn’t pay me to sleep on. And we’re not sleeping on it together.”

“And fur coats,” Dee said, “even though it’s hot as hell in here.”

“Shut up!” Marks hissed.

They stood for a moment. The voice was muffled.

“Anyone make it out?” Marks asked in a whisper.

“Which door is coming from?” Agnes whispered back.

They couldn’t tell. Dee went and pressed her ear against each door, but shook her head in dismay.

“Well, we can’t go back, so it’s one of these four,” Marks said.

“Newt,” Agnes said. “We’ve seen it twice, so maybe the place is trying to tell us something.”

“That’s a reason to not go newt,” Dee complained.

“What do you think, kid?” Marks asked.

Agnes scowled, her pretty face turning dark. “So I don’t get a vote?”

Marks didn’t look at her. “You can go anywhere you want. We’re sticking together. Come along, or go your own way.”

Dee stomped her foot on the ground. “Stop it! We’re all stuck here. She comes with us, old man. Or you can go off on your own.”

He frowned, but after a moment he nodded, looking down at his worn, thin shoes. “All right, boss. All right.” He sighed. “I vote ape. I like apes.”

Agnes and Marks looked at each other. Agnes smiled and turned away. “Apes it is.”

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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.

7. The Queer Lounge

“Oh, lord,” Agnes breathed as they stepped through the door. “This is disappointing.”

It was like a teacher’s lounge or employee break room. An ancient, hand-cranked Victrola played a tinny, jazzy tune, all clarinets and the hiss and pop of vinyl. There were no windows and no apparent source of light, but it was almost painfully bright, making the trio squint and shield their eyes for a moment.

There was a small kitchenette with a gurgling coffee maker and a large yellow refrigerator that had been chained shut, brightly-colored letter magnets clinging to the doors, a pile of the letters, chewed up and damaged, scattered on the floor. On top of the fridge he noticed with a feeling of dread three pawns had been balanced on the edge.

This, he thought, is starting to feel like a countdown. And he suspected whatever it was counting down to would not be pleasant.

Next to the kitchen, remarkably, was a dumwaiter. A small card table (where a game had been recently abandoned, cards and plastic chips scattered everywhere) sat in the middle of the room next to a dilapidated old couch. There were ashtrays on the table with cigarettes burning in them. On the floor next to the table was a small trampoline.

Across the room was a door, similar to all the others. Next to it was a shiny metal elevator door, with a single button set in the wall.

As they stood there, looking around, the music ended. The Victrola automatically lifted the old needle and started playing it again, clarinets and cymbals, tinny and distant. Marks startled: The tune was familiar. In fact, it was the same tune that Agnes had been humming in the library, the song about making love at midnight.

Agnes walked over and nudged the trampoline with one tiny foot. “Okay,” she said. “This is … odd.”

“Door stayed this time,” Dee said. Marks turned and studied the door they’d just come through. It appeared as solid and permanent as ever. He leaned in to inspect the carving.

“Still a Lion,” he said thoughtfully. He leaned forward and opened it, peering through. “Still the library,” he added.

Agnes stepped over to the fridge and plucked several of the letter magnets from its surface. As she did so, the appliance suddenly moved, something inside it growling and banging against the door hard enough to make it walk forward a half inch. She leaped back, crying out and tossing the magnets into the air. Dee stepped back towards Marks as he turned back, shutting the library door behind them, and he put a hand on her shoulder.

“All right,” Marks said. “Maybe we don’t linger here too long.”

“Maybe that’s why it did that,” Dee said. “To hurry us up.”

He nodded without looking at her. “You’re smart, kid.”

Agnes spun, a cloud of her perfume slowly covering the rotten smell that permeated the air in the lounge, mating with it and producing something entirely worse. “Maybe we should pay attention? Mr. Marks, I don’t know about you, but I have been in this place entirely too long and wouldn’t mind getting to somewhere else.”

Marks pushed his hands into his pockets and walked around the table. “Someone was just here. It’s like they heard us coming, and fled.”

Agnes folded her arms over her chest and began walking as well, matching his pace as she looked around. “Maybe they work for this place? This looks like an employee lounge.”

“Somewhere we’re not supposed to be?” Dee asked, staring down at the plastic magnets.

Agnes turned and pursed her lips. “You too … you’re kind of not worried about being here. Or not worried enough.”

Marks shrugged. “I’ve seen stranger things,” he said. “I’ve been to stranger places.” He looked up at the ceiling. “So far. This place has plenty of potential for getting much stranger than anything else, I’ll say that.”

Dee walked over to the Victrola and stared down at the spinning record. “I’m just here for my father,” she said. “If I can’t find him, it doesn’t matter.”

Marks glanced up and looked at Agnes, raising his eyebrows and nodding, as if to say see what I’m dealing with? Agnes nodded back, but didn’t say anything.

“The dumwaiter has a stag on it,” he said, fishing through his bag and removing the notebook. “One of the doors in the library had a stag.”

“Elevator has a wolf,” Agnes said. Marks and Dee walked over to it. Etched into the metal was the same wolf that had been carved on one of the doors in the library. “We saw a wolf, too.”

“How big is this place?” Dee asked, and she suddenly sounded afraid. Marks hesitated, wondering what the right answer would be. He didn’t know kids. He’d never had any—had he?—and didn’t remember being one. And he wanted to answer before Agnes did.

“Bigger than you think,” he said, pointing. “The door in the back has a bear carved on it. We haven’t seen a bear yet. That’s at least eight rooms already—in how long?”

“Forty minutes,” Dee said, pulling out her phone.

“Thirteen hours,” Agnes said.

Marks glanced at his own phone, cheap and with about five dollars in data left on it. “Three hours,” he said. He smiled. “Well, great. Time doesn’t work right in here either.”

Agnes studied him, walking in a slow circle around him, her heels clicking on the vinyl floor. “You’re an odd duck, Mr. Marks. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you weren’t in the least bit surprised to find yourself here, in this situation.”

He shrugged. “It happens. You poke into the margins, you’ll wind up in the margins, sometimes.” He looked not at Agnes, but at Dee, and smiled. He felt more comfortable and more at ease in the margins. He belonged there. “The key is to remember that nothing has really changed: You have to do the work in front of you to keep moving.” He looked at Agnes and held her eyes. “And I’d say you don’t seem so worried yourself, Miss DeLay.”

There was a moment of silence, quickly broken by another muffled noise from the fridge, which rocked on its footings from some inner violence.

“So, uh,” Dee said slowly, “which door?”

“I still say wolf, kid,” Agnes said. “We’ve seen the library. Stags are always bad ideas, right? And bears … I dunno. Bears are savage. Don’t think they’re just bumbling about looking for honey and belly-rubs.” She pursed her lips. “Or, if we can get back to the library, I still say it might be worth spending time there. The whole history of this place might be in there. A map maybe. It can’t be just dictionaries.”

Marks looked around, making notes. “I doubt the animal symbols are that literal. And libraries in places like this are honey traps: Filled with useless knowledge. Designed to tease you with possibilities—endless cross-references that send you hunting down tomes on the top shelves, always feeling like you’re about to crack everything, find the answers, and then you realize you’ve been in there for two weeks and you’re starving to death.”

Agnes smiled. “Places like this, huh? Been in a lot of bizarre maze-like houses where doors disappear?”

He waved vaguely in the air. “Not per se, no, but I have a general experience in this kind of place. Besides, it doesn’t matter what door we choose. We don’t have enough information to make any sort of informed guess. We need to data, and to get data we have to go through some doors. Establish paths. We know we can go back and forth between the library and this queer … lounge.” He paused, chewing his lip. He glanced at Agnes, then at Dee. “I vote for stag.”

Agnes threw her hands up. “Seriously. You want us to crawl into a dumwaiter. Which isn’t big enough for all of us, so we’ll have to go down one at a time. Which isn’t designed for our weight, so will probably snap and send us plummeting to our deaths. What did you say you did for a living, Mr. Marks? Was it by any chance getting women and children killed?”

Marks stood up and slung the backpack over his shoulder. “Sometimes,” he said quietly.

Dee stared at him. “What?”

“Come on.” He walked over to the dumwaiter, which was a door in the wall, about four feet off the floor, perhaps three by three. A wooden lever sprouted from the wall next to it. He pulled open the door, revealing a simple wooden box, a few feet deep. “I’m first.”

“Wait!” Dee ran over to him, grabbing onto his arm. “You’re just going to leave me?”

“Gee, thanks, kid,” Agnes said with a snort. “He’s the one just admitted he’s gotten people killed. I’m a nice person, really, you’ll see.”

Marks looked at Agnes and then down at Dee. “Listen, there aren’t any good choices, right?”

Dee shook her head. “Send her. She goes down first.”

“Gee, thanks, kid,” Agnes sighed. “You’re a gem, a breath of fresh air. Glad to know that after getting trapped here I’ve been saved by some conch-bearing Lord of the Flies bitch.”

“Shut up,” Marks snapped. “She’s fucking terrified.” He stood up and climbed into the dumwaiter. “Don’t worry,” he said, reaching awkwardly around to pull the lever. Immediately there was a hollow thud in the wall, and a mechanical noise like chains being rubbed together filled the room with a dull vibration. The box jerked into motion, and Marks sank slowly into the depths. Dee watched, her face blank, eyes wide.

“Come on, kid,” Agnes said. “I’m not going to cook you.” She waited a beat. “There’s no oven in here.”

The dumwaiter stopped. For a moment they both stared, frozen. Then, dim and muffled, they could hear Marks.

“It’s okay! It’s just a room!”

The dumwaiter lurched back into motion. Dee and Agnes looked at each other, both more disturbed by the silent rise of the contraption than they wanted to admit. When the empty box reappeared, Dee sprang for it.

“No, by all means, save yourself,” Agnes said sourly, pulling out a chair and sitting down. As Dee watched her, Agnes picked up a cigar still burning in the ashtray. “I’m sure whoever was here moments ago won’t be back presently to chop me into pieces.”

Dee just stared, leaning out to pull the lever again. The box shuddered, and started its way down. Agnes stared at her as she sank, slowly swallowed up by the square of the dumwaiter’s cabinet, darkness rushing into the box to close in around her.

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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.

6. The Anteroom

They found themselves in a large foyer, a square, silent space with an old, scratched-up wooden floor that creaked dangerously under their feet and thick, peeling yellow wallpaper everywhere. A single hatrack stood in the corner behind the door, and a small secretary hunched against the wall to their right, a dusty lace doily on top.

There were three doors, all imposing wooden portals of dark, nearly black wood, stained and varnished to an incredible shine. They appeared to be larger than standard doors; taller and wider, less rectangular, and each one featured an elaborate carving on the top panel. Directly in front of them the door featured a duck, paddling in a pond. The nearest door on their left was decorated with a lizard of some kind, small and low to the ground. The third door featured a lion, prowling majestically.

It was incredibly quiet. Marks could hear the floor complain and groan as they shifted their weight, and Dee’s sudden, sharp breathing. He felt like a fool, allowing her to stowaway. He should have turned her around and sent her back—he should have brought her back to the motel himself, and come back again.

He should have contacted her family somehow, let them know where she was.

He stepped over to the secretary, a cheap wooden piece with some drawers and shallow shelves, the sort of place you dropped keys and mail on your way into a house. A small wooden carving sat on the dusty doily. He picked it up and held it up, a roughly humanoid, armless thing polished by a million tense fingers. Green felt had been attached to its underside.

“A pawn,” Dee said. “From a chess set.”

Marks grunted and put it down where he’d found it.

“Well?” she asked, smiling. “Which door, old man?”

Marks realized she thought this was an adventure. Whether she thought her father might be here, or a clue to his whereabouts might be found, or some other piece of information, she didn’t think anything bad could possibly happen. He stepped up to the nearest door and ran his fingers over the intricate carving. A newt, he thought. It was a newt.

He sighed. “Let’s go home. Let’s do this in the daylight. I don’t know why I felt such a need to do this at night, immediately.”

“Maybe because my Dad might be in here?” she said, her voice rising a little. “Tied up in the basement. Or … or worse. Or maybe there’s a note. Or a—come on!”

She dashed for the next door, the door with the Lion carved on it, and was through before Marks could intervene. He followed as quickly as he could, pushing the surprisingly light door inward and stepping through. There was a short, barren hallway of rough, unfinished drywall. It made a sharp turn to the right a few feet in, and then there was another door. He pushed the second door and stepped through, then paused, sensing a sudden change in the atmosphere. He looked up. He was in an immense room with an impossibly high ceiling.

Dee had stopped a few steps ahead of him, and was perfectly still.

The room was filled with rows upon rows of books on shelves, terribly high, disappearing into the shadows that collected like clouds at the ceiling. The books all looked ancient, crumbling old leather bindings—in fact some appeared to actually be dust, destroyed by time. In the aisles between the shelves were huge reading tables, solid oak, looking like they’d been carved from a single tree each. On each one were three reading lamps, the shades a soothing green color that the place a strange, otherworldly feel.

A rolling ladder rested against one of the shelves.

“Kid,” he said, his voice echoing distantly. “Don’t move. Stay in sight.”

“How—how is this fucking possible?”

He thought, like I said: sideways but didn’t say it. Instead he held out his hand, his eyes dancing over the impossibility of this huge room. “Take my hand, kid. We’re going back.”

She didn’t complain. She stepped backwards, as if afraid that taking her eyes off the room, and felt behind her until she found his hand. He pulled her gently towards him and then turned, and froze.

“Kid, we got problems.”

Sideways.

The door was gone.

Dee spun and looked up at him. “Shit, Marks, how is that possible?”

He sighed and let go of her hand. “Like I was saying: The scariest thing about the universe is that anything is possible. Forget possible. Possible doesn’t mean anything. Possible will get us both killed. Or trapped in here forever.”

She stared up at him, horrified, her expression implying that she saw, for the first time, that she was with a madman.

“Instead, be practical. We walked through a door.” He glanced sideways at her. “Or, more accurately, you barged through a door after I suggested we not do that thing, and I followed you because I am old and worn down and soft at heart.” He sighed. “So, we came through a door. There must be another door.”

She frowned, breathing hard. “Must? Why must?”

“Okay, must is too strong. Should be is better. Come on. I don’t remember much, but I’m pretty sure we got to find our way, not stand here until the lights go out.”

He turned and surveyed the place again. She stepped forward to stand next to him, looking around. “The lights are going out? Old man, tell me the frickin’ lights are not going to go out in here.”

“Come on.”

He started walking, and after a moment she followed. The aisle was wide, and there was plenty of room to slip past the tables. A thick coating of dust was on everything, and was kicked up from the floor as they walked. The floor was of a polished white stone, and every footstep rang out and echoed.

One table had been used more recently; it was still dusty, but there were smeary marks in the dust, handprints, trails of objects that had been pushed along the surface. Marks squinted at two small objects buried in the fine, gray dust: Two more pawns, from the same chess set, the same green felt bottoms and the same blond wood.

“How do you know this is the way?”

He turned to look at her and kept going, shrugging. “I don’t. When you don’t know the way, any way is just as good. After—”

Dee suddenly put a hand up. “Listen!” she whispered.

Marks went still and listened. Somewhere nearby, a woman was half-humming, half-singing a song. The tune was familiar to him, maddeningly so. Something about adultery, he thought. Something about cocktails.

He looked at Dee and then they started walking, following the sound. The voice was sweet, on-key, and Marks thought he liked it, listening to it. There was a comforting sense of normalcy to hearing someone hum an old hit song.

They turned a corner into another aisle and there she was: Young without being youthful, somehow; smooth-skinned and lithe, attractive in a made-up, brittle way, brunette curls and athletic build encased in an expensive and expensively tailored suit, the skirt stopping just above her shapely knees. She was walking along the shelves, hands clasped behind her back. She turned, suddenly, and froze, staring at them. Her face was unlined, roundly pretty, her eyes distant and humorless.

She rushed towards them. “Thank god,” she said, grabbing onto both their arms. “I was beginning to worry no one else was coming! That I was in here all alone! Thank god for you two!”

Marks nodded, eyes watering. She was wearing perfume—gallons of it, from what he could tell, a sweet citrusy scent that enveloped them all like a cloud and clung to them like mist. He imagined the smell had its own weight, pulling at his clothes as it sank into the fibers. Dee looked at him and wrinkled her nose.

“I’m Phil,” he said, his throat tight from trying to choke back coughs. “Philip K. Marks. This is Dee.”

She hugged them both closer. “Mr. Marks! Ms. Dee! I have never been happier to see anyone in my life. I’m Agnes DeLay. So good to meet you. Tell me you know how to get out of here!”

Marks blinked. Agnes was more energy than he was used to dealing with. He wanted nothing more than to get her to stop touching him. “How long have you been here?”

She released them both and took a step backwards. “Oh, my, so long. I very nearly gave up. I very nearly just climbed to the top of one of these shelves and jumped.”

“Has … has anyone else come through here?”

She turned and looked at him, then at Dee. She softened a little, and stepped closer, kneeling down and looking at the girl. “I’m sorry, dear. I haven’t seen anyone.” She stood up. “Until there was you. Mr. Marks, please tell me you know a way out of here? And maybe you have something to eat?”

Marks shrugged the backpack off his shoulder and set it down. Crouching, he unzipped it and pulled out one of the energy bars they’d brought, along with a bottle of water. He handed them over. Agnes trilled suddenly in delight and grabbed them.

“Oh, you are a god, Mr. Marks.”

He sighed, glancing at Dee, who regarded Agnes as one might a wild animal. “Your phone work at all?”

Agnes was chewing loudly, the wrapper from the bar on the floor by her feet. For some reason he couldn’t explain, it bothered him, so he leaned forward and picked it up.

“No,” she said. “It works, mind you, it’s powered-on, but there’s no signal.” She swallowed. “Nada.”

Marks nodded, looking around. “So, how big is this place? How many rooms?”

She shrugged. “I thought you’d know.”

“You—how did you end up here?”

“Same way you did, Mr. Marks—I walked through that door, and that door disappeared.” She brightened, waving the uneaten portion of the bar at him. “Maybe if we hang around where the door was, we can dash back through when the next person comes!”

Marks pulled the backpack onto his shoulder and stood up, his back protesting. “That could take a long time. I think that time would be better spent looking for another exit.”

She nodded, handing him the bottle of water, unopened. “Very wise, I suppose. At first I thought, there is so much knowledge here, don’t you think? All these books. Maybe the answers are hidden in here. A map! A guidebook! Architectural plans!” She was smiling brightly. The she deflated. “Turns out, they’re all dictionaries, as far as I can tell.”

He shook his head. “Come on.”

“Why don’t we wait for the door to show up again?” Dee asked, falling into step next to him.

Marks sighed. “Because when a place takes a door away from you, it’s on purpose.”

She chewed on that and walked in silence for a while. Agnes followed them, looking around, her high heels clicking loudly on the floor.

“Of course, I can’t be certain they’re all dictionaries. The books, I mean. I’ve only gone through a few shelves worth. Maybe I just happen to be in the dictionary section. The dictionary wing. If there are other kinds of books here, you do have to wonder what might be in them,” she said. “All sort of things, I’d assume. Arcane knowledge. Lost arts. That sort of stuff.”

“Props,” Marks said. “More likely.”

“Props?” She repeated, sounding incredulous. “Seriously? You’re cynical. That’s the problem. Don’t listen to him, kid. He’s cynical.”

Dee veered off and marched over to the stacks. Marks opened his mouth to complain, but bit back the words. Agnes glanced from Dee to him and smiled, shrugging in a way Marks thought meant kids! what can you do.

“Nope,” Dee said. “They’re all dictionaries.”

Marks frowned. “All of the books?”

“All of them—at least, the ones I can see.”

“Dictionaries!” Agnes said, sounding almost angry. “I’m sorry. I assumed—I assumed—that a library would be full of more interesting things. Things that might ignite the imagination. Not a bunch of … a bunch of … dictionaries.”

Marks stared at her as Dee returned. He had a feeling she was about to end her sentence with a different word, but changed at the last moment.

They were approaching the rear wall, and it seemed to Marks like the ceiling was getting lower as they got closer to it, like the room was shrinking. Along the back wall were three doors, all like the first ones they’d encountered: Slightly differently-shaped, dark, varnished wood, a detailed carving in the center panel. The animals featured were all different, though: A stag, a wolf, and a bird of some sort. Dee walked up to the door and peered at it.

“What animal is that, anyway?”

“Quail,” Agnes said, leaning up to inspect the higher shelves of the nearest bookshelf.

Dee shrugged. “All right, Quail.”

Marks dropped the backpack again. “All right, we’ve seen six doors, each with a distinct picture.” He opened the backpack and rooted around, extracting a small notebook and pen. He opened the book to a fresh page and began writing.

“What’s that?” Agnes asked, turning from the shelves.

“Notes,” he said, scribbling. “We opened the door with the Lion. If we see another Lion, I wonder if it will lead us back here.”

“Like a maze,” Dee said.

“Exactly like a maze.” He looked up and grinned at her. “I told you: Sideways.”

He reflected on the strange cheer he felt. He’d been morose for so long, scraping along on spare change and dumpster diving, alone. And then one decent job had given him a few thousand dollars. And now he was strangely enjoying himself, enjoying being with people, enjoying having a puzzle to work out. He knew it was inappropriate—maybe a little crazy—but he thought he might be happy.

Dee sat down on the floor next to him. “You’re acting like this shit is normal.”

He shook his head. “Normal for me. Normal for me is not normal.”

She digested that.

“Still no interest in the infinite knowledge this place seems to offer?” Agnes said. “Or do we just choose a door at random? In which case, the Wolf door, certainly. Stags are always the symbols of doom, you know, in legends and such, and who in their right mind follows a Quail? A wolf is a noble beast. You can trust a wolf. As long as he isn’t too hungry.”

“How long have you been here, Agnes?” Marks asked. “You read any of the dictionaries?”

She leaned back against the shelf again. “Too intimidating. I was never much for books myself. Plenty of brains, but very little discipline. Flighty. Brain constantly going and going. You know the type. Luckily I discovered tight sweaters and flirtation in school, or else lord knows where I’d be.” She smiled at Dee. “Don’t listen, puppy. Study hard, become a scientist, invent a way out of this dreadful place. What is this dreadful place, Mr. Marks? I ask since you seem strangely calm and cool about finding yourself trapped here.”

“He came purposefully,” Dee said, sounding grim. “To help me find my father.”

“Nice guy,” Agnes said, closing her eyes and settling back against the shelves as if to take a nap. “But an idiot.”

“Maybe so, Miss DeLay,” Marks said, standing up and stuffing the notebook back into his backpack. “I’m halfway dead, totally broke, and I’ve forgotten most of my life. I drank too much and poked my nose into places I shouldn’t have, and lost everything I assume I once had.” He turned and smiled at her. “But you’re here too, so you must not be very bright either.”

Agnes snorted a laugh, opening her eyes and joining them as they walked closer to the doors. They stood, should to shoulder, and looked from door to door. Aside from the animals carved on them, there was no difference.

“So,” Dee asked. “Which one?”

“Wolf,” Agnes said immediately. “Already solved that one for you.”

Marks rubbed his chin. “No,” he said. “Quail.”

Agnes shook her head. “I’m telling you, if you want to get out of here, the Wolf.”

Marks stepped forward and pulled the Quail door open, revealing a dark, forbidding space. “We’re not trying to get out, Miss DeLay,” he said. “We’re trying to find her father.”

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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.

5. City Hall

Grissom looked up over his glasses. “You look good, Philly. Old. Shit, fucking old, but not as wetbrained as you were. Fit, kind of.”

Marks nodded. “I feel old. And I’ve been dry for a long time.” He paused, looked at his shoes, then forced himself to look back at Grissom. “Anything … anything I should apologize for, Gene?”

Grissom grinned. He was one of those men who came into his own when he’d grown old and gray. He was tall and thin, with a prominent nose and weak eyes that he’d compensated for with thick, black-rimmed glasses. As a kid he’d looked like a bird of some kind. As a man of sixty, he looked like a repository of wisdom. “No, Phil. Nothing personal. What can I do you for?”

Marks shifted uncomfortably. He hated missing so much of his life. He hated always groping in the dark, unsure, uncertain of the reception that awaited him.

“I have an address,” he said. “I’m just looking for anything you know about it. Anything unusual.”

Grissom smiled. “Nothing changes, huh, Phil?” He gestured around. “I’m in a cubical now, not an office. You remember my old office? I used to think it was so goddamn small. Now I’ve got half the space and no fucking ceiling, and I’m grateful for it. Local government ain’t what it used to be, huh? What’s the address?”

Marks slid a piece of notepaper over the desk. “It’s an apartment building. Low-rent, but not controlled. Seems like the landlord keeps the rents low on purpose, voluntarily, trying to attract the unemployed, the recently paroled, the desperate.”

Grissom glanced at the address. “The desperate, huh? Philly, you never change.”

“Compliment?”

Grissom laughed. “All right. I’ll dig up what I can. You sure got a way of convincing people to do what you want, huh, Philly? Always did. I’ll see what’s out there as far as tax records, all the usual stuff goes. I assume this is on the house as usual?”

Marks’ smile was faint. “I figured we’d look at it as payback for old times sake.”

Grissom’s return smile was stiff. “You look at it any way you like.”

.o0o.

“So what’s all this bullshit mean?”

Marks watched Dee stuff French fries into her mouth. He figured if her goal had been to grift him out of some free meals, mission accomplished. The diner was empty and silent except for the low music playing in the air, so low it was practically a hint of music, a homeopathic suggestion of music stemming from a single dissolved note.

He tapped the manila folder on the table between them. “Well, everything’s legal. The property’s owned and the taxes are paid by an LLC filed outside the country. Taxes get paid every three months. I haven’t been able to get much on the company, but that would likely take more time and money than we have. But—there isn’t supposed to be a building there.”

She cocked her head chewing. “What does that mean?”

“There’s no record of any permits being pulled on the lot. The taxes are for unimproved property. There’s every sign in the world that that address is just empty space. There can’t be a building there.”

“But there is.”

He nodded. “And that’s where I come in. Like I said, weird shit, it pulls me in, every time.”

She took a long swallow of soda. She was impressed. And something was swelling inside her, an emotion she couldn’t quite articulate. She’d assumed she was totally doomed; her mother was dead, her father had disappeared, she was hanging around a motel scrounging for scraps. She thought she knew how that story ended; she’d seen enough TV. And this strange man was saving her from it.

Marks thought she still looked skinny, like someone hadn’t been taking care of her. And she ate like someone who’d learned, like he had, that there was no guarantee of another meal coming in a few hours. “So what do we do?”

Marks smiled and nodded, glancing down. “I go there. See what’s what.”

“Why can’t I come?” she said, looking down into the shopping cart as she pushed. “What, I’m just gonna sit out in the parking lot, wait for you to come back?”

Marks sighed, scanning the shelves. “You can’t come because the things I do always go sideways. Always.” She thought he sounded happy. When she’d first seen him in the bar he’d been heavy, leaden, like a guy trapped under water but trying to run. Now he seemed lighter, more fluid, like he’d switched to swimming. “I once looked into a house someone was trying to sell because they couldn’t figure out what the problem was, and found a vampire trapped in the basement. I took a job following some guy’s wife once because he thought she was having an affair, and found out she was a clone, being used as … as something else.” He grimaced. “Point is, kid, things go sideways all the time, and if the floor’s gonna drop out from under this thing, I want you somewhere else.”

She turned to study him from the side, chewing her lips. After a moment she looked back at the shopping cart. “You sure you need all this stuff?”

“Did you hear the word vampire? I’d rather have a folding shovel and not need it than need one and not have it. Like I said: Sideways. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but you can’t get into weird scrapes every single time like I do and then pretend it doesn’t happen.”

She nodded. The cart held the folding shovel, something she hadn’t imagined existed. It also held a roll of strong nylon rope, a battery-powered lantern and a flashlight, a multi-tool, a backpack, some matches, and two bottles of water and a handful of energy bars. It looked like he was going camping.

For Marks, the act of shopping felt subversive, insane. It had been a long time since he’d been able to just purchase the things he needed. Like the small, enclosed universe of his motel room, it felt luxurious and decadent even as he weighed each purchase in his mind, going over the pros and cons, the necessity of each one.

He pushed his hands into his pockets, contemplating largess, and smiling without realizing it.

“So, I just sit around the parking lot and wait?”

Marks dropped the bags on the table and took the backpack out, began filling it with his purchases. The walk from the bus stop with the bags had been longer than he remembered, and he was tired and grimy and sweaty. “Look, I might be back in a few hours. It might turn out to be a paperwork mistake. I might just find leads that send us somewhere else. I don’t know.”

She nodded. When he’d zipped up the backpack, he glanced up. She was standing in the kitchenette with her arms wrapped around herself, staring moodily at the floor. He sighed, and dug into his pocket, pulling out the remaining cash and counting it. He dropped it on the table.

“Hand me a knife.”

She didn’t move for a moment, then turned and opened one of the drawers, pulling out a butter knife and handing it to him. He sat down and worked the loose stitches of the lining with the knife until he was able to pull a slim pile of banknotes from within. He added it to the pile.

“That’s about a grand,” he said, standing up and peeling a few bills from the top. “I’m going to pre-pay a week’s rent. The rest you can use for food or whatever. Stay here and wait for me, you’ll be fine.”

He slung the backpack over his shoulder. He hesitated. She looked unhappy and alone, too-skinny and wearing the same clothes she’d had on when he met her. He didn’t know what else to do; he could either stay there and try to help her directly or he could look for her father. There wasn’t another choice. He didn’t have any experience of the sort of relationships that could be brought to bear on this. He didn’t have any relationships, just old grudges and debts he could occasionally parlay into assistance.

“If I’m not back in a week,” he said, slowly, pausing to actually contemplate the possibility. The strong possibility, he corrected himself. “Take whatever’s left and go back to your people. An aunt, an uncle. Anyone.”

She looked up suddenly, horrified. She scanned memories of heavyset women in floral dresses, heavyset men in loose-fitting suits, all of them at the hospital and the funeral, strangers. All of them somehow conveying the fact that she was somehow infected by her parents, a worrisome artifact of their shared genetic code. The idea of putting herself in their power was terrible. “My people?”

He shrugged. “Just a precaution.”

She seemed on the verge of tears. “You’re gonna leave me here alone.”

He swallowed. “You can’t come. Look, I’ll check things out. I’ll probably be back tomorrow, give you the full report. But you can’t come, even so. You see that, right? Look, I’m not sure what being the adult means. I don’t feel old, or wise. But I know on some instinctual level that part of it means you can’t come.” He shrugged the back over one shoulder and picked up his jacket. “So you stay here. Eat three meals a day. Don’t let anyone in. And I’ll be back to let you know what’s inside that house.”

She nodded, her eyes shining, her arms wrapped around herself. He hesitated, then turned and marched out the door. He felt like he was failing, somehow, like he was leaving her to certain doom. But he was the one heading into the unknown. She would spend a few hours eating pizza and watching TV, he told himself. Or he’d come back to a note that boiled down to thanks for the seven hundred bucks, asshole and that would be that.

.o0o.

Buses were running on late night schedules, so he waited a long time for one to arrive. He felt dirty as he rode, the backpack occupying the seat next to him, but city buses were the great camouflage of the world. No one noticed him, a middle-aged man with a scum of beard, wearing a suit that hadn’t been fresh in a very long time, his face pale and bloated and shadowed from poor nutritional choices and lack of sleep, carrying a bulging backpack. He was just one particle of desperation in a quantum system of desperation, indistinguishable.

It looked like a two-story, detached house that hadn’t been renovated in a long time. The old siding was dark green and looked mossy, moldy. The roof line was complex, with a lot of dormers and crazy angles. The yard was a jungle of tall, overgrown weeds, and it was surrounded by a low stone wall. It sat on the corner next to an empty lot, and seemed perfectly normal. A prominent FOR RENT sign had been affixed to the wall. It was dark and looked like no one was home, had been home for a long time, had ever been home.

Pushing through the wild growth that obscured the pavers leading from the sidewalk to the front door, Marks heard a scrape and turned to find Dee right behind him. He stared at her in surprise for a moment and then smiled. She smiled back.

“You ain’t the only one can ride a bus, Marks.”

“All right,” he said. Marks found his reaction impossible to describe, even to himself using his own peculiar inner language, but it landed positive. He was relieved, he thought, to have her there, because part of him had worried about her on her own, and even if she truly wasn’t safer with him, he’d grown used to having someone to talk to, a presence by his side. Selfish, he thought, but that’s how he felt. And there was no chance of getting rid of her now, anyway.

They walked up onto the sagging, rotten porch. It was peeling gray paint and a spongy give that seemed threatening, as if its bounce was a threat, subtle and grim. He looked at Dee and nodded.

“Remember: Sideways.”

She nodded back.

He examined the door. It was weathered and aged like the rest of the house, except for the fittings: The knob and knocker and hinges were bright, polished brass, as if they’d been installed the day before. He reached for the knocker, then frowned, leaning in. After a second’s delay, Dee stepped up and pushed the door inward. It slid silently on its hinges, darkness beckoning.

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