He dry-heaved.
“They came to me,” he said. “They said there was an experiment that was perfect for a parent and child... a willing parent and child, mind you. I did the hard work, just so you know. I went to the Sessions and made all the connections. I spent all of my money and yours, too, so don’t give me the puppy eyes. I spent it all and planned on doing the Maze myself. It just didn’t work out.”
He ran the water and sniffed back an acrid wad of saliva to spit.
“She didn’t have to do it, you know,” Henk said. “I didn’t plan that. You went in and then she followed, that was her doing. I didn’t trick her.”
Like I tricked you.
He could’ve followed Grey into the Maze. The people at the house made the offer and he accepted. They would do the rest. He wasn’t going to ask his son to participate. Grey would’ve, he was sure of it. But then he would have to follow. The experiment needed a parent. It didn’t say which one.
All he had to do was put the pieces together, act enraged when he discovered his son had gone out to the house, follow the script to act like he didn’t want them involved. He baited Grey to want more. And when he took the boat out, when he crashed it short of the cliff (which wasn’t part of the plan, but worked in their favor), they seeded his son with confusion and made him more suggestable.
More willing.
Deep down, he knew it would work. He knew his ex-wife would go after Grey, would accept their offer to enter the Maze to find him, where they would erase both of their memories and let them wander through countless lifetimes in search of each other. What the experiment was about, he didn’t know. Henk was promised a payout if one of them survived.
And that made it all the worse. Henk was a coward, the weakest of them all. When it came to facing the fear, he sent his son to battle and hid behind his ex-wife.
He still had nothing for it.
“Where’s the money?” He slipped on the tiles.
Grey finally moved. He walked to the glass wall. Rain was spitting waves behind him. Henk twisted the wedding ring off and threw it. It tinked off the glass.
“I raised you, you know. Where’s my reward?”
He reeked of bile. Blood streaked across the back of his hand. He stumbled forward.
“I deserve something.”
He inflated his lungs and reached deep for the source of parental power, the innate strength given to fathers to wield over their sons. He assumed the same unblinking stare his son was giving him. He turned the x-ray vision back on his progeny. Grey’s back was to the window.
The storm spat.
“You kept the money from me,” Henk growled. “I know you did.”
Grey slid his fingers under the white lapels of Henk’s lab coat. He bunched them into fists and held tight.
“I’ll give you what you’ve always wanted,” Grey said.
The plate-glass window—an inch thick, impenetrable, unbreakable—teetered outward. Slowly, it fell away. The storm howled against them, stinging pellets scouring Henk’s cheeks and poking his eyes. He leaned away, but Grey held tight.
His son’s heels hung over the edge.
The carpet soaked around their feet. Henk’s thighs turned to putty. The urge to vomit lodged in his throat. Grey pulled him closer to the edge. Henk flailed helplessly. His son was a pillar against the storm’s rage.
“I’ll give you,” Grey said, “what you deserve.”
And then he leaned back.
The unstoppable momentum of gravity pulled him into the sky. The white coat still balled tight, Henk went with him.
They fell like stones.
The rain stinging.
The concrete raced toward them. His scream bled into the gray wind. They struck the hood of an SUV. Henk hit the front end. His head snapped over the edge; a spray of plastic grill parts sprinkled on the pavement.
Henk inhaled deeply and desperately.
He scrambled across the bed, bunching the comforter over him, clutching a pillow. The air was fresh and new. He shook on the verge of tears. The taste of vomit lingered in his throat.
He wiped his eyes.
The room was the same—drawers open, clothes strewn about. And he was wearing the white lab coat. The wedding band, too.
The package was on the table, the flaps open, but Grey wasn’t waiting. Rain slapped the plate-glass wall. An inch thick, still in place. He didn’t move any closer to it, the memory of falling still vivid, the crushing edge of the SUV sharp against his skull.
A white card was taped in the exact spot where his son had been standing. It was cut and folded.
A symbol stared back.
“Hello, Henk.”
The coat whirled at his waist as he spun around. His heart danced in his chest. His lungs were still heavy and burning. An old woman was sitting at the table. She wasn’t there a second ago. Now she was hunched next to the open package. There was something familiar about her.
It was the eyes.
She stood up and slowly approached. She was smiling a smile that was more sorry than it was happy. She smoothed the wrinkles on his lapels. Her hair was pulled back over her head. Before her smile turned more angry than sorry, he recognized her.
It was the jagged scar near the hairline.
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TONY BERTAUSKI
My grandpa never graduated high school. He retired from a steel mill in the mid-70s. He was uneducated, but a voracious reader. As a kid, I'd go through his bookshelves of musty paperback novels, pulling Piers Anthony and Isaac Asimov off the shelf and promising to bring them back. I was fascinated by robots that could think and act like people. What happened when they died?
Writing is sort of a thought experiment to explore human nature and possibilities. What makes us human? What is true nature?
I'm also a big fan of plot twists.
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Maze: The Waking of Grey Grimm Page 31
