The Maze - the Lost Labyrinth

by Jason Brannon

  “A note?” Darrell Gene shuddered involuntarily as a chill raced across the back of his neck.

  “Yep. It was written on a little scrap of paper. Someone had dropped it into my mailbox.”

  “Your mailbox?”

  “Yeah, it seemed a little unorthodox, but I figured there must have been a good reason why the author of the note did things that way.”

  “And you came here based on that?”

  “That’s why I’m here.” Carl shifted from foot to foot impatiently.

  “But you have no idea who left the note?” Darrell Gene got the strangest sense of déjà vu.

  “No,” Carl said. “I came here because I know the Lord works in mysterious ways. I figured this must be one of them.”

  “Weird.” Darrell Gene thought this couldn’t be simple coincidence. “But it doesn’t prove anything. I’m sure you take it as a sign from Heaven that you’re meant to witness to me and lead me to God. It’s written in the stars or something like that. That’s the way you holy rollers think.”

  “I’m just doing what I feel in my heart. I’m sure you’re doing the same.”

  “I don’t think I am,” Darrell Gene said. “Somehow, I don’t think you’d like it very much if I did what was in my heart.”

  “Oh.” Carl took a step back. For the first time, it seemed like he saw Darrell Gene as more of a potential threat than a potential convert.

  “I’m sure you have a very specific idea about the kind of heart I have. You probably think it’s black and corrupted by sin.”

  “It’s not my place to judge,” Carl said. “That’s not why I’m here at all.”

  “No, it’s not your place to judge.”

  “I just came here to offer my friendship, to invite you to church. I meant no harm. Please don‘t assume that.”

  “I don’t assume anything about people, and I sure don’t trust ‘em. Just when you think you know a guy, he turns out to be a liar, a fraud, or a backstabber.”

  “I’m sure you’ve experienced a lot of things in your life that would lead you to believe that. But not everyone lives that way.”

  “I guess you’re referring to yourself.”

  “Not at all,” Carl replied. “I’ve got faults just like everyone else. But I try to live right. I try to become a better person every day.”

  “It sounds good in theory, but I’m not interested. Go tell it on the mountain or something. Just get out of my face.”

  “Do you attend church anywhere, Mr. Rankin?” Carl asked persistently.

  “Hello? Where have you been for the last five minutes? Haven’t you heard anything I’ve said. No, never been big on church, especially not after what happened to my family. Besides, I‘m not the kind of guy who fits in at a place like that. People take one look at me, and immediately the first thing they feel is pity. They think they need to take up a love offering or collect canned goods. They think I‘m a charity case or a danger to society. Take those people across the street for example.” Darrell Gene immediately realized he’d said too much.

  “The Burroughs? You wouldn’t find a sweeter bunch of people.”

  “I see the way they look at me. It’s like they think I’m a pervert or white trash or a criminal.”

  “They’re good folks,” Carl said. “I’m sure they don’t mean to come off the way they do.”

  “Well, if those are the kind of people that go to your church then I don’t want to hear about it. I definitely don‘t want to be part of a group like that.”

  “You’d fit in fine,” Carl insisted. “Everyone does. We welcome anyone who wants to be included. Why don’t you try it once and see? What could it hurt?”

  “Why don‘t you get a clue?” The world seemed to shift under Darrell Gene’s feet. He tried to think of an excuse that sounded plausible. “I’ve got to work this Sunday anyway.”

  “I know what it’s like to feel left out of things.” Carl ignored Darrell Gene‘s protest. “I used to be a shy, introverted guy who would barely speak two words to anyone. I’m still shy to a point, but the church is the one placed where I feel accepted, wanted, needed. The people there love me.”

  “I don’t need love,” Darrell Gene said. “I’ve made it all these years without.”

  “There are people praying for you,” Carl explained. “I firmly believe that. Otherwise, that note would have never made its way into my mailbox, and I wouldn’t be here now. I‘m praying for you too.”

  That stopped Darrell Gene where he stood. “I want you to go away.”

  Although he didn’t want to admit it, something stirred inside him, and reacted to what Carl was saying. More than anything else, he wanted to shut the door and leave this nut job standing out in the cold, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Not even when he heard the microwave cursing from the kitchen and ordering him to close the door.

  Carl held up both hands. “I understand. I don’t want to try and pressure you into anything. I think I’ve said enough for now. I can go now and come back some other time that’s more convenient.”

  “That might be for the best,” Darrell Gene admitted. “My head feels a little muddled.”

  “Conviction sometimes works that way. Why don’t I stop by later on in the week?”

  “Just go!” Darrell Gene shut the door in Carl’s face. “Now!”

  “It’s all a big lie,” the appliances told him once the door was closed again. “If God is love, then why did He allow your family to fall apart?”

  It was a fair question. “You tell me,” Darrell Gene said. “You seem to be a regular fount of information.”

  “I would think the answer to be an obvious one. Your life certainly hasn’t been filled with a lot of love.”

  “No, it hasn’t.”

  “So you know we’re telling you the truth. We’re leveling with you, not trying to fill you with a bunch of false hope.”

  “But the things I’m doing---they’re helping you. Isn’t that right? Tormenting the family across the street hasn’t changed my life one little bit.”

  “Not yet.”

  Darrell Gene’s head snapped up at the implied promise. “What do you mean?”

  “Just trust us. You wouldn’t question us, now would you?”

  Darrell Gene tried to sort out the truth in his head and heart.

  “I’ll let you know.”

  Chapter 17

  Angels and demons faced each other on Darrell Gene’s kitchen table, and the tension was as thick as a blanket. Sabers were held high, and wings were aflutter as both armies prepared for battle. Darrell Gene surveyed his handiwork as he used a whetstone to sharpen his pocket knife. He ran the blade along the rough surface until he was satisfied that it was ready. He had done this very thing a hundred times or more when he was preparing to cut something, and although the task was menial, he found it calming in a mundane sort of way. The rhythm of the steel scraping against the rock, the steady motion of his arm pushing the knife along and then pulling it back toward him soothed him. The process was almost as calming as actually using the knife to create shape and semblance where there was none.

  As a test, he ran the blade along one forearm and watched in satisfaction as the knife shaved the hair without so much as a snag. “Perfect.”

  He carefully selected a fresh block of wood and began to carve.

  He had never been much of a churchgoer, but all the recent talk about God and redemption had roused a certain curiosity in him. He remembered his grandmother telling him stories from the Bible. He forgot most of them as quickly as he heard them, but a few fascinated him and were with him even now. The writing on the wall, the burning bush, and Saul and the Witch of Endor were exciting stories, but none intrigued him so much as the account of the war in Heaven. Angel fighting against angel in a battle that saw one-third of the Heavenly Host cast out. There was just something about the idea of a celestial war of good versus evil that made him continually question which side he was on. Deep down, he wanted to be good
and do the right thing. Unfortunately, it never seemed to work out that way.

  Every time he thought about war in Heaven, he envisioned the way the skies must have looked, stained with the blood of seraphim and full of falling stars. In that ever-playing movie in his mind, the air was rife with lazy, floating feathers and the screams of the damned. Somewhere in the distance, a war trumpet sounded and God’s faithful armies rallied to defend the Eternal City. Had there been any witnesses to this event, it might have looked like a meteor shower as the rebels were thrown out and hurled toward the Earth. The thought gave him chills.

  Years ago when the voices started, he began carving a collection of angels out of blocks of oak to depict the event. He had wooden likenesses of Michael and Lucifer, of course, along with dozens of other angels with names like Uriel, Nathaniel, Azazel, and Ashtoth. Some of them waved swords. Other brandished morning stars. Some bore an uncanny likeness to various birds of prey as their talons were bared and ready to rip the enemy to shreds.

  He thought about eventually using the carvings as chess pieces even though he had no idea how to play the game. For now, however, he was content to set them up in opposition and let his mind fill in the blanks. Darrell Gene had a very bloody imagination, and soon he discovered that he didn‘t have enough carvings for all of the destruction he had in mind.

  The one he worked on now was a wingless angel, a rebel who had been deplumed and cast out of Heaven because of his disobedience and allegiance to Lucifer. A misfit just like him. As Darrell Gene let the knife do its work, he found himself empathizing with the wooden figure, imagining the way it must have felt to be part of a group one moment and then painfully alone the next. It wasn’t such a difficult thing to envision. He had gone through it time and time again, moving from job to job, trying to fit in but failing miserably. In the end, he was a lot like this wingless angel, robbed of his true purpose, his true calling. The angel, unable to fly anymore, wasn’t even an angel in the truest sense of the word. Darrell Gene, likewise, scarcely felt human.

  He wanted to fly, to be free of the constraints of this earth, but there was a deadly soul-condemning price for that kind of freedom. Lucifer’s army had been thrown of out Heaven for that kind of freedom. Of course, Darrell Gene already felt like an outcast and would have gladly paid any price to feel differently. If only he had half of the power that the fallen had...

  Darrell Gene was confused. He’d never really had to make any hard decisions in life; doing bad things had always been an easy way out. He wasn’t good at this sort of thing and wished it would just all go away, but he knew it wasn’t that simple. Hoping to clear his mind, Darrell Gene positioned all of his wooden angels on the chess board and moved them around in formation as he mulled his options over in his mind.

  He could always let things remain like they were, but that wasn’t a desirable prospect because he hated his life. That led to choice number two which involved giving Carl Beckett’s suggestion a try. Yet, he didn’t trust Christians of any kind.

  How was he supposed to make any decisions when the messages were so mixed?

  “Why don’t you let us decide for you?” The wingless angel startled Darrell Gene. “Let us battle it out on the playing field and see who wins. See which idea feels stronger.”

  It seemed like a strange way to choose which path to take on the road of life. He’d never tried to plot the course of his future with the help of a board game.

  “I suppose you and the other rebels are going to represent the choice you‘ve offered me. You’ll want me to continue down this path.”

  The wingless angel nodded.

  “And the others, the faithful angels, will represent a return to the church. They’ll advocate giving God one more opportunity to change my life.”

  “They will,” the rebel said. “But I think you’ll find that they don’t stand much of a chance.”

  “Why should I let you decide my fate? Why can’t I make up my own mind?”

  The wingless angel smiled. “You’ve done a bang up job so far with your life. Or am I overlooking the obvious?”

  Darrell Gene resisted the urge to smash the sarcastic little wood carving into splinters. He didn’t like hearing the truth, at least not when it was coming from a wingless fallen angel.

  “You obviously made wise choices yourself. Getting thrown out of Heaven is no easy feat.”

  “Easier than you might imagine,” the angel said. “And remember, I’m not here to focus on me. I’m here to help you.”

  “Fine,” Darrell Gene said. “We’ll do it your way.”

  The wingless angel nodded, bowed humbly, then raised his sword. All of the rebels raised their swords in unison too. Darrell Gene watched as the wooden angels rallied and prepared to fight. This felt like something right out of the Book of Revelation, and he couldn’t help thinking of the verse that described the war in Heaven. He whispered it as the opposing forces faced off:

  “And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels---.”

  This was the battle Darrell Gene had dreamed of watching his entire life. It was one he’d been fighting his entire life, ever since the day that his father had stopped believing in God. Somewhere, deep inside, had always been the urge to do good, to follow the truth. But he’d always repressed it, opting instead for the easy way out. He’d chosen the same path his father had chosen after his mother left them for Jasper Simmons.

  He’d listened to voices all his life and followed them. What he didn’t realize was that sometimes the loudest voice wasn’t always the one he should heed.

  Darrell Gene tried to block out all the voices temporarily until the impending battle was finished. He didn’t want to be biased. He didn’t want to influence the outcome of the fight. Still, it was difficult. He thought of all the things he had done to the family across the street. In response, the rebel angels strained and pulled against an unseen tether, eager to wage war.

  He thought of his father, and the church, and the life he had he had until his mother ruined it. He thought of all the Sundays they had attended services together, the nights of prayer meeting, the fellowship dinners. That life seemed so far away; it felt like someone else’s life. In some ways, it was. Darrell Gene was a different person now, but he knew it didn’t have to be that way.

  He thought of Carl Beckett and the warmth and gentleness that radiated from the man. He thought of the promises of love and friendship. He thought of the possibility of a new life and a new way of looking at things.

  It couldn't be that easy, could it?

  In response to those thoughts, Heaven’s faithful on the opposite side of the chess board prayed and meditated with their eyes closed as they readied themselves to fight.

  This wasn’t just some medieval board game that was about to take place. This wasn’t a battle for supremacy of Heaven, either-that had happened millennia ago. The war that was about to wage on Darrell Gene Rankin’s kitchen table was a war of the soul. It was one that would decide his fate and cement his future, and Darrell Gene was scared to death.

  His palms were sweaty and his brow was beaded with perspiration. He chewed his thumbnail nervously as his life hung in the balance. It was time to let the battle begin.

  With firm resolve, Darrell Gene released all of the holds in his mind, and watched as the two opposing wills clashed. The chess board was messy with sawdust and wood splinters. The rebels and the saints fought for Darrell’s life. Sabers clashed. Talons ripped through angelic flesh. Wings were ripped away. Battle axes mowed down opponents as if they were little more than blades of dead grass.

  And blood covered the table.

  Angel blood.

  Darrell Gene watched it all with rapt fascination and fear. Although this is the way he’d chosen to determine which road he would travel, it filled him with dread to see that the rebels were winning.

  “You should have known it would end this way.” The wingless angel brought his
sword down on the head of a saint.

  The comment filled Darrell Gene with an inexplicable anger, and without warning, he pushed away from the table in a rage and made a forceful swipe with his hand, clearing the kitchen table of figurines. The wooden characters clattered to the floor; most of them broke on impact.

  The wingless angel had been splintered in half. His mouth, however, still worked.

  “You’ll always feel the pull of the flesh,” the angel said. “It’ll never go away. You‘re one of us. Stop denying that fact.”

  Darrell Gene silenced him with his foot and pressed down with all of his weight until there was little more than sawdust and splinters under his shoe.

  He felt better.

  But only a little.

  Chapter 18

  The battle with Cerberus left me feeling drained, light-headed, and sick, and Midnight didn’t fare much better. He had more than enough wounds to lick; Cerberus had bitten him in more places than I realized. The three-headed dog had injured me extensively too. Two of my ribs felt bruised, possibly even broken. My shoulder felt like it might have been dislocated, and my skin was on fire from the numerous bites. More than anything else, I wanted to lie down and rest, but there wasn’t time for that.

  “Your next test awaits up ahead.” Asterion vanished into an open tunnel. “This is not a place of leisure.”

  I looked at Midnight and sighed. “I’m not sure I can go on.”

  I tried to lift my head off of the ground, but it felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. My eyelids felt heavy too.

  Midnight barked and got to his feet, urging me to stop whining and stand up. With a considerable amount of effort and a lot of groaning, I did so.

  “I guess we should see where this leads. After all, the minotaur says so. I wonder if it would make any difference if I pointed out that he didn‘t say Simon Says.”

  Midnight barked again and led the way into darkness. Although I would have felt better with a million-candle spotlight and an automatic weapon, I felt a certain amount of safety with Midnight at my side. He hadn’t deserted me yet, and I can safely say that I wouldn’t have defeated Cerberus without his help.