They say the maze is haunted by echoes of its dead. You stand and watch the chitinous beast which waits patiently through every moment of every day at the maze’s entrance. No one has entered the maze today, so you still can. In your hand are the three coins the guard-beast demands — one copper, one silver, one gold. On your back you carry a bag filled with food, water, bandages, dry clothes, everything else you could think of which might be needed on a journey.
You don’t know what you’ve failed to pack because you don’t know what you will face within the maze. There is the city, the maze, and the beyond. None who enter the maze return to the city.
You’ve stood here three times before and watched and waited. One of those times a young woman ran through the streets, thrust her coins into the guard’s claw and scurried into the maze as soon as its gates had parted enough for her to pass. You’d wondered then what had hastened her steps. You wonder today if you will meet her echo inside.
No one you know has ever gone into the maze. Your father Raoul did but that doesn’t count; he left for the beyond before you were born so you never truly knew him.
Your mother died last month, two days before the first time you came to watch the gate. She lay on her deathbed and the last words she spoke to you were these: “Why did you leave me, Raoul?”
“I’m sorry, Fatima,” you replied as if you were your lost father. “I am here for you now.”
She shook her head. “It can’t be you. I am dreaming.” And she closed her eyes and slept and woke no more.
The city is gray and brown, filled with a million people who live gray lives. They say that there is one building tall enough that if you stand on its roof you can see the peak of a green hill in the beyond, with trees dotting its peak like the ones everyone reads about in books. They say that no one who catches a glimpse of that verdant peak can resist challenging the maze for their freedom.
The morning after your mother died you went to that building and you went to its roof and you stood at every corner. But all you could see was the walls of the city and the lattice covering of the maze.
You jingle the coins in your hand and step into the street. There is still time to change your mind and go back to the empty home you live in. You could find a wife and with her raise children. Children who could live and work and dream of the beyond, all inside the walls of the city.
You reach the other side of the street. The beast at the gate has no eyes, but you know it is sensing your approach, smelling the metal coins being warmed in your hand.
It reaches out a clawed appendage and you give it first the copper coin, then the silver, then the gold. Its claw moves and the coins are gone though you don’t know where the beast put them. It turns and with the same claw reaches into a slot in the wall by the maze’s gate. Slowly the gate parts.
Even now, you could turn back. But you know you won’t because you climbed to the roof and looked for the green hill even knowing that everyone who does so leaves the city. You knew then what your decision would be one day. Today.
You cross the threshold of the maze and don’t look back even as you hear the gate creaking shut. They say the maze is haunted by echoes of its dead but all you see is its gray walls. You pick a direction, left, and start to walk and then you run and as you run you wonder if you will come face to face with an echo whose visage looks enough like yours to confuse a dying woman. And if you do, will it be your father’s face or your own?
Michael Haynes is an avid short fiction reader and writer with nearly 100 published stories, most in the speculative fiction genres. He lives in Colorado and has more hobbies than he really has time for, enjoying travel, going to concerts, photography, cooking, geocaching, hiking, board games, and so on. His debut short fiction collection is AT THE INTERSECTION OF LOVE AND DEATH. Learn more at his website michaelhaynes.info.
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