Maze: The Waking of Grey Grimm

by Tony Bertauski

  Grey told her where they were going. She shook her head and bit down on some nasty thoughts. They made the drive in silence. Only the radio had something to say.

  He’d been researching. In the mornings, he said goodbye to his mother to catch the bus. When it dropped him off, he passed the school and walked another six blocks to the library. All research was done on public computers. Not one search through his phone or laptop. He knew what had happened that night at the lake.

  Just didn’t know why Rach couldn’t remember.

  What happens when you learn that memories can’t be trusted? What if it’s deeper than that? What if everything is a lie and the rabbit hole is bottomless? There is no reality and there never was? This is just a dream.

  Identity just an illusion.

  He needed her to know the truth. The other questions could come after that. If he was the only one on the crazy train, then he was going over a cliff alone.

  He’d taken a car out to the landing earlier that week but never got out of the car. He and the driver watched a man and his wife drop a boat into the water. Grey asked the driver if he saw what Grey was seeing. The guy, a little confused, agreed.

  Then they left.

  How do we know reality? I can’t just tell her. She must experience it, must see that her memories are false. If she accepts that, she’ll be treading on thin ice.

  Even Grey felt it crackle.

  “Now what?” she said.

  “Park there.”

  They sat in the car and watched a pontoon boat chug past the dock, fishing rods bending at the rear.

  “We dropped in at dusk. Remember?”

  She nodded, eyelids heavy. Eyes bored.

  “We crossed the lake, heading due west. We saw the house on top of a cliff. It was dark—”

  “Insane,” she muttered. “We crossed the lake in a johnboat.”

  “Tell me what you remember.”

  “You know what happened. I’m not telling you again.”

  He got out of the car. It smelled like dying fish and sour beer. Jet skis bounced past the shore, rooster tails behind them. Grey stopped at the top of the ramp. Water slid over the slimy concrete.

  Rach sat in the car until he waved. They weren’t leaving unless she got out. Or left him behind. That was a possibility he hadn’t considered.

  Reluctantly, she met him at the ramp.

  “One last time,” he said, “tell me what happened. I’ll never ask again. Swear to God.”

  Shoulders slumped, she recited, “I backed the trailer down the ramp. You were driving when a boat plowed through the no-wake and tossed you on—”

  She pointed. Brow furrowed, she looked around, trying to finish her thoughts, to make them come true, but the harder she tried, the more the thread unraveled.

  “Hit what?” he said.

  “There was a post right there. It... it...”

  “We hit something on the other side of the lake, Rach. A post or tree just below the surface, we hit it full throttle. That’s why the dent was so long. That’s why your grandpa doesn’t believe you. The dent doesn’t match your story.”

  She wandered closer. The water lapped her shoes. Her eyes were locked on the post she remembered, the way the johnboat was launched onto it and tipped, the cooler dumping out their fish. It was old and rotten, the remnant of a dilapidated dock.

  “It was there,” she said. “Someone took it out.”

  “No one took it out, Rach. It was never there.”

  She was shaking her head, wrestling with the memory and the reality. She touched her forehead, where an ache was beginning to bloom. Grey felt it, too.

  “They did something to us.” He put a jump drive in her hand. “Watch the videos I downloaded. Don’t go online, okay. Just watch and then call me. I think I know what they did to us.”

  She looked at the jump drive. It wasn’t going to be an easy leap. But he needed her to do it. Because he couldn’t ride the crazy train alone.

  She looked up. “If this is true, why do you remember and not me?”

  Why did they mess with her memories and not his? Why did they keep him until morning? Why did the woman in the white dress lecture him?

  “I don’t know.”

  THIS WASN’T LIKE HER.

  When something confronted Rach, she didn’t back off. If she was wrong, she apologized. If not, then get out of the way.

  This time, she did neither.

  He thought she’d settle after a day or two, laugh it off, tell him he was insane, whatever. But she knew something was off. Something deep down was messed up and she got a glimpse of it. She was wrong about her memories, but there was too much at risk to admit it.

  There was no answer to his texts. No answering his calls. Did she even plug the jump drive in and look at the videos?

  He approached her at school. “Let it go already,” she said. “I don’t care about it, the lake or that house. Neither should you. Can we move on?”

  She slammed her locker. They stared for a long second. Her library glasses slid to the end of her nose. Her eyeliner was smudged. The coffee clique rounded the corner and she turned to follow.

  “Get the latte,” Grey said. “The vente or vagina or whatever they call it.”

  She lifted a middle finger.

  He stayed by her locker and thought about posting a note to beg her to watch the videos. Maybe she did and that was the end of it. Instead, he shot her a text.

  Sorry.

  The worst part was losing her. He’d already screwed things up when he’d kissed her and then convinced her to give the girlfriend-boyfriend thing a try. Of course, he’d almost got her killed, there was that. Now she was drifting off and he was standing by her locker all alone.

  When the weekend arrived, he did what every loner did—sat in his room. He used to whittle away weekends online, gaming or otherwise. Now it all seemed pointless. Who cared if jonnymcpothead69 won? There was no money in it. There was just teabagging your opponent. None of it made any sense.

  Not after the lake.

  What do they want?

  He loaded a jump drive. Before entering the password, he looked out front. His mother was in the kitchen. Popcorn was dancing on the stove. She had a night off, which meant lying on the couch and talking to the television, telling characters not to open a door or repeating their lines until she fell asleep.

  He left the door halfway open. She was twice as likely to come knocking if he closed it. He lay on the bed, laptop pointed away from the door, sound muted, and opened the jump drive. Thumbnail icons lined up. He’d been through them a hundred times.

  Had Rach even seen them once?

  There was no doubting what he researched. They might as well be documentaries. The first file was named History of the Punch.

  Computer-aided alternate reality was first achieved with the insertion of a three-inch surgical steel needle into the middle of the forehead. This required an implanted stent for repeated access, which left an obvious port for everyone to see.

  The needle accessed the frontal lobe, essentially networking the brain—what some referred to as an elegant organic computer—with servers. The five senses were hijacked, the awareness teleported to an animated reality, one in which the user couldn’t distinguish between dream and flesh.

  Grey knew all about the Foreverland incident, backward and forward. He was obsessed with the tropical island where boys were told they were in an accident, that their parents sent them there to be healed only to be lured into taking the needle and eventually erased from their bodies.

  Grey often wondered what it was like to be one of those boys, waking up confused. Some of them were saved, but they were never normal again. The needle was illegal after that. But technology like that wasn’t going to just go away. Heroin and meth were still a thing despite drug dealers clogging prisons and addicts overdosing. Because people wanted it.

  So innovation prevailed.

  The needle diameter was reduced to a tenth of a mi
llimeter. Stents were not required. A trip into the needle went undetected. With the aid of the punch, the proper location was accurately located for the needle’s insertion. Thoughts could be accessed; the senses expanded. Memories downloaded or uploaded.

  Or changed.

  Universities were proving the technique was effective for treating trauma victims of abuse or the horrors of unfortunate events. Legalization was close, according to reports. Means of monitoring the use of such technology was required to avoid another Foreverland.

  But people wanted it.

  He watched the insertion of one of these new age horsehair needles. There was no blood as it was pushed into the forehead. The participant’s eyes were closed. Soon, they began the dance of REM, seeing dreams that came not from the imagination but whatever was on the other end of the needle.

  Grey touched his forehead. It was still sensitive, slightly sore. They were able to relocate recent memories, reformat and upload new ones. They created a new scenario of a boat hitting a rotting pillar at the boat landing instead of racing toward the cliff.

  But why just Rach?

  “Hey.” His dad stood in the bedroom. “You all right?”

  Grey slammed the laptop shut. The door was still ajar.

  His dad was wearing dark blue scrubs, fresh from the office. He looked down and grinned. “Had a late emergency, thought I’d stop by on my way home.”

  A late night affair wasn’t out of the question, a little doctor-patient role play in the dentist chair, maybe. But this wasn’t on the way to his apartment. It was in the opposite direction.

  “What do you want?”

  “Truce.” He put up his hands. “Your mother let me in. We thought it would be good if you and I cleared the air, talked a little. How have you been?”

  “You mean since you deleted me? Fair to horseshit. You?”

  His dad stepped over dirty clothes, looked around the room but didn’t say anything. He put his hands on his hips, glanced at the door and said, “I know about the boat.”

  Grey stared for a moment, waiting for more. His dad glared down. He didn’t look angry. His lips weren’t pulled across his teeth; his forehead wasn’t tight. In fact, he looked like a man he’d never seen before.

  Concerned.

  Grey put the laptop down and gently closed the door. Mom was on the couch, the television splashing her face.

  “What were you thinking?” his dad hissed.

  “How do you know about it?”

  “How do you think? You could’ve died out there. You would’ve if they didn’t save you. Listen, I don’t want anything to happen to you. We haven’t always gotten along, I get that. Part of that’s my fault.”

  All of it’s your fault, Grey thought. But he knew that road went both ways.

  “I could’ve been a better dad. A better person.”

  He sat on the pillows. The bed squeaked under his weight. He was nodding, thinking. Agreeing with himself.

  “What are you doing at that house?” Grey asked.

  “You know what I’m doing.”

  “It’s my money you’re using. I should have a say.”

  “I’ll get you through college, don’t worry about that.”

  “I’ll tell Mom what you’ve done.”

  “You haven’t yet.” His eyes sparkled. “Why not?”

  He called his bluff. Grey wasn’t going to tell her for a thousand reasons. He didn’t want to put her through it, sure. But more than that, he wanted to know what was happening out there. He wasn’t welcome to go to the house alone, that much was obvious. He hoped, maybe, his dad would take him. It would be different if he did.

  “I’d rather you not tell her,” he said, “but I understand if you do. I’ve hurt you two enough already. I got us into this mess. I’ll get us out.”

  He looked at the floor, elbows on knees.

  “You’re going into the Maze,” Grey said. “Admit it.”

  Maze money wasn’t what it used to be. In the beginning, it made the family rich, win or lose. That was when it was straightforward, a big production people could torrent. Now the money wasn’t always a jackpot. But it still paid a lot of bills.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing,” his dad said. “None of us do, Minnow.”

  A chill gripped Grey. Not because his dad sounded like he was about to weep. He’d called him Minnow. That was his nickname when he was little. Load the game, Minnow, he would say, before your mom wakes up. He couldn’t remember the last time he heard him say that. He couldn’t remember the last time he saw his dad struggling.

  “Let me help you,” Grey said.

  “No. This is my situation.”

  “Dad, I can help, I swear. I know how the Maze works.” Grey sat next to him. His dad shook his head and paused to say something before shaking it again. He took a deep breath and shuddered.

  “Only if you don’t go back,” he said. “You understand what I’m saying? I’ll let you help if you promise not to go back to the lake house. They’ll let me in as long as you stay away, son. Don’t mess this up. It’s my last chance.”

  He was worn out. The stress had smacked him around and drained him. It added a decade of wrinkles. Grey hardly recognized him. He was a far cry from the days of Minnow.

  “Look.” Grey opened the laptop. “I’ve got a thousand videos on tanking. There are tutorials on how to awareness leap, how to relax into the drop. If you’re still having problems going under water, there’s a whole section on—”

  “There’s another way.” His dad looked at his forehead.

  Grey frowned. “What?”

  “They say it doesn’t hurt, that it’s automatic, just sucks you right into the game. You can even do it from home. I need to find out more, but I think that might be the way in.”

  He still had the dad-smell, the manly musk that reminded Grey he was safe, that his dad was there to take care of things. He was the one that stopped the monsters under the bed. He had the answers to nightmares that kept him awake. As long as his dad was in the house, there was no need to worry.

  At least when he was Minnow.

  “Hey, creep.”

  Grey spun on the bed and, for the second time, slammed the laptop shut. Rach was leaning into his room, her hand on the doorknob. He hadn’t heard the door open.

  “Your mom let me in,” she said.

  Grey leaped off the bed. His mother was talking to the television. He pulled Rach into the room and closed the door. This conversation wasn’t for his mother.

  He noticed she was relaxed. His dad always made her edgy. She didn’t smile as much or talk when he was around. He sometimes wondered if his dad had done something that she just wouldn’t admit, something she thought was better to bury than air out.

  “You all right?” she said.

  The bed was empty.

  The pillow wasn’t even dented. Grey picked up the laptop like a full-grown man might be hiding beneath it. He looked under the bed.

  “He was just here, Rach. When you walked into the room...”

  “Who?”

  He rubbed his face. It was getting hard to breathe. His forehead was numb, the sides of his head tingling. He paced back and forth, struggling for air.

  “How could you not see him?” he said.

  “Grey, I—”

  He grabbed her arms and squeezed too hard. She twisted out of his grip and pushed him against the wall. She watched him slide to the floor. He was afraid he would keep sliding and never hit bottom.

  “No,” he muttered. “No, no, no...”

  He touched her. She was real. He could feel her, he could see her and smell her and touch her, and that meant she was real. He didn’t touch his dad. But I smelled him. I saw him and talked to him.

  “Are you real?” he said.

  “What?”

  “Are you real, Rach? Are you really here?”

  She didn’t know how to answer that. She only had false memories that she believed. They’d planted a fake scenario, makin
g her believe she never crossed the lake. She just had wrong memories.

  He was talking to his.

  31

  Grey

  Before the Punch

  RACH’S FINGERS WERE like twigs, the kind that might snap if she cracked her knuckles. Grey had laced his fingers with hers before leaving the apartment. She promised not to let go. Squeezing like a man hanging from a ledge, he was afraid he might break them.

  He hadn’t slept in a while.

  The floor would dissolve when he would close his eyes, the bed would rotate and the sheets would twist into serpents. He would jump out of bed, sometimes scream into his pillow, and pull on his hair to bring the world back to normal.

  He had refused to come out of his room and would only answer his mom through the door. Maybe that was her on the other side of the door, her voice calling out, asking if he was hungry, if he was all right.

  Maybe it wasn’t.

  Rach was all he had now. She was the only one he could trust. His dad, the ghost, the make-believe person he’d had a conversation with, the hallucination that had called him Minnow, disappeared when she arrived. When Rach was in the room, the floor would stop rotating and the walls would quit melting. The sheets were sheets. She would sit on the bed while he paced, and asked questions he didn’t hear.

  When she was gone, the fun house was back.

  His mom was starting to worry. He played off sick that week, pretending to sleep when she was home. That wasn’t going to last. And she was still asking about his dad. At least, he thought it was her asking. He couldn’t face another ghost parent of his imagination.

  Grey still hadn’t talked to his dad. That was the worst part. It wasn’t the threat to his sanity, not the convincing presence of someone that wasn’t there. It was that the ghost dad that came to visit him wasn’t real. He never was. The caring, listening sort of dad, the support kind of man never existed. Grey really wanted him to be real.

  The dad he always wanted.

  “I just... I need to see him, talk to him,” he had told Rach. “He can make things right.”

  “How?”

  Part of Grey hoped the hallucination was more of a vision, that maybe his dad had changed. One look was all he needed. He wanted to believe the hallucination.