The Maze The Lost Labyrinth - By Jason Brannon Page 0,61

himself was hot on my heels. I ran, calling out for Connie, for God, for anyone within earshot who could show me the way out. No one answered my cries.

I ran to a part of the maze that was different from every other part I had been to thus far, and I had to stop for a brief second to marvel at the strangeness of it all.

Bull skulls were mounted on stakes and set at intervals along the path. Candles were ingeniously inserted into the hollowed out eye sockets. Small pools of dried wax puddled beneath the skulls.

Memories of my sins, like brittle leaves, were scattered about the dead landscape in the form of written notes.

“Liar.” “Deceiver.” “Backslider.”

I wanted to rake all of those leaves into a pile and set fire to them, hoping to start fresh in the spring. Yet I knew that wasn’t the way Nature worked. You didn’t get a second chance to live your life. The mistakes you made were as immutable and permanent as scars. I felt like I had been mutilated beyond recognition.

Although I hated myself for what I’d become, my priority was escaping this labyrinth. There was no telling what kind of horrible things Darrell Gene was doing by now. Motivated by the thought, I ran ahead and found myself in what looked and smelled like a slaughterhouse.

The nightmare began, amidst a blanketing of dark fog that gave even the sharpest edges of the slaughterhouse a soft, fuzzy appearance. I looked around for something with which to defend myself and spotted a corroded iron rack mounted to one wall that was loaded down with sledgehammers. No doubt these were the weapons of destruction in this place, and I wasted no time grabbing one. I looked around for any sign of a threat and held my breath that I might escape from this place unscathed. The hallways were quiet and shadowy, save for the buzzing of insect wings and the oppressive nothingness of silence as it settled on everything like a fine blanketing of snow.

Large stainless steel kettles used to de-hair animals and ready them for processing lined both walls. The de-hairing kettles were full of boiling water and partially bleached skulls which bobbed to the surface like fishing corks. Some were bull skulls. Some were human. I tried not to consider the implications of that.

Exhausted from my exploits, I dragged the sledgehammer along behind me, listening to the scraping sound the hammer made as it kissed the concrete floor. Clouds of steam roiled out of the kettles, materializing into strange shapes with bovine features; the slaughterhouse appeared to be haunted by the ghosts of long-dead cattle. The ghost cows marched single file down a sloping unlit path toward unknown darkness. One of them stopped to watch me and stared at me until I understood that it wanted me to follow. Somehow, I knew this wasn’t the end of the line for me. There was a deeper, darker place I was destined for. I was bound for the killing floor. The sledgehammer positively thrummed in my hands.

The killing floor stank of fresh blood, recently released bowels, and fear. There weren’t any cows awaiting a blow from my sledgehammer. Instead, there were shadowy figures chained up along both walls. They groaned and grunted and wept and cursed.

The sledgehammer felt alive in my hands as if it was excited by the prospect of a mass killing. I dropped the weapon in disgust, wanting nothing to do with this. All I wanted was to rescue my family from Darrell Gene Rankin.

“This isn’t a time to go soft.” I heard a familiar voice “Now, more than ever, you need to be strong. Resolute.”

“Connie.” I was glad to hear from her again.

“You’ve come a long way, Jamie, but this isn’t over yet. You’ve still got some difficult things to face.”

“More difficult than a three-headed dog that guards the gate to Hades? More difficult than a field full of razor-blade flowers? More difficult than running away from a bloodthirsty minotaur?”

“You’ve been through a lot. There’s no denying that. But this may be the most difficult thing you’ve faced.”

“I’m not killing anyone.”

“Not even if it meant saving your family.”

I gritted my teeth. “Never say never, right?”

“I told you this would be difficult.”

“I feel like I’m a pawn in somebody’s chess game.”

“There are consequences for everything you do. This maze is designed to reinforce that fact.”

“I don’t want to murder anyone.”

“Not murder. Maybe a form of suicide. I suppose it’s all in