by Brian Harmon
He glanced back toward the arcade, unsure what to do next, and caught a glimpse of the blond boy from the restaurant. He was running into the mirror maze.
Eric hurried after him, but by the time he stepped through the doorway, the boy was already gone again. Only his own reflections greeted him.
Chapter Three
He was staring at hundreds of reflections of himself, from practically every conceivable angle. Reflections of his reflections…reflections of reflections of reflections…endlessly repeating corridors of Erics stretching away for eternity… And none of them were doing him any favors.
He couldn’t help but be reminded that he wasn’t the most physically fit person that fate could’ve chose to do these things. It was impossible to miss how big his gut had gotten these past few years. He seemed to be getting a second chin, too. And was it just the angle, or had his ass expanded considerably in recent months?
It was utterly unflattering, to say the least.
But worse than his obvious lack of physical fitness was a sudden realization that he appeared much older than he remembered looking the last time he really examined himself in the bathroom mirror. His eyebrows had grown bushy. His cheeks had sagged a bit. He seemed to have his father’s weighted eyes.
What the hell happened to him? And when did it happen?
It wasn’t that he cared all that much about how he looked, of course… He didn’t need washboard abs or bulging biceps any more than Karen needed to be a size zero. She was drop dead gorgeous just the way she was and if he was good enough for a beauty like her then he was simply good enough. He just hadn’t realized until right now that he looked…well…like that. And that… And all of that…
It was a little embarrassing. He really needed to get back into shape. Especially since he couldn’t seem to stop finding his way into situations like these. The last thing he needed was to twist an ankle or, god forbid, have a heart attack just when his life depended on an immediate hundred-yard sprint.
Maybe he’d get on that tomorrow…
Now that his ego was firmly in check, he pushed onward, making his way deeper into the maze.
He passed a pair of giggling girls and then a boy who looked like he was already on a mind-bending sugar rush. He literally bounced off the mirrors as he raced past, ricocheting around corners like a pinball and demonstrating the importance of shatterproof mirrors.
Somewhere nearby, a girl was shouting for someone named Hunter. Hunter was either long gone or hiding, because he wasn’t answering her.
The boy from the restaurant was nowhere to be seen.
After a minute or two, Eric emerged from a doorway and found himself in the arcade again. He didn’t see the boy among the games, and since he’d just come from there, he turned and ventured back into the maze for another look. A moment later, he was back in the party room, where he started.
It was well-designed for children, he thought, easy enough to find your way out of, almost impossible to get lost in, but tricky enough that you might not end up where you intended. He probably would’ve loved this when he was a kid, but right now it was only complicating things.
He wandered in again and this time emerged near the back corner of the playland, overlooking a padded set of steps and the ball pit. Children were running past him, noisily crawling through the tunnels overhead and thrashing around in the colorful sea of balls.
The boy seemed to be long gone.
Still not wanting to go into the playland, he turned and walked back into the maze one last time. He made his way past three little boys who were all screaming and running in circles, pretending to be hopelessly lost in the endless labyrinth of mirrors, and then he turned the corner toward what he thought was the doorway leading out into the party room.
It was here that he caught his first glimpse of the clown.
Not a cartoonish, plaster statue, but a real clown. He was dressed in an old, green sport coat and sloppy, brown pants with a goofy-looking tie and a dirty, black hat. His face was a ghastly white, with a wide, red smear for a mouth, and there were dark circles around his eyes. He was at the end of the short corridor, visible for only a second before he disappeared around the next corner.
Eric stopped dead in his tracks, too startled to continue for a moment.
There weren’t any real clowns here. There were only the lifeless decorations and employees in clown noses. And even if someone had hired a real clown for the party, he wouldn’t have looked anything like what he’d just seen.
That wasn’t the face of a friendly clown. It was the face of childhood nightmares.
And then there was the way their eyes met for the brief instant that he was visible, almost as if the clown knew he was there…almost as if he intended to be seen…
He started forward again, faster now, determined to catch up. But when he turned the corner, he found himself back in the arcade again.
The clown was nowhere to be seen.
Maybe he’d only imagined the whole thing.
His cell phone buzzed in his pocket, alerting him to a new text message from Isabelle.
DEFINITELY NOT YOUR IMAGINATION, she told him. I ACTUALLY FELT HIM. HE HAD SOME KIND OF PRESENCE
“Really?”
I DON’T KNOW IF IT WAS A PHYSICAL PRESENCE, BUT WHATEVER YOU SAW DEFINITELY HAD SOME KIND OF ENERGY. AND IT WAS DEFINITELY NOT ONE I RECOGNIZE
“The one you said you felt under all the spiritual energy? The one you said was dark?”
IT HAS TO BE WHAT’S CAUSING THE BUILDUP OF SPIRITUAL ENERGY
Eric let this sink in for a second. Isabelle couldn’t feel ordinary people when they were around him. She also couldn’t feel most of the monsters he encountered. She couldn’t even always sense a ghost, in spite of being able to feel spiritual energy. That meant whatever he’d just seen was definitely not an ordinary man in clown makeup. He…no, it…was something much, much darker.
He remembered that little boy who walked up while he and Karen were standing beside the cake table, the one who said he was afraid of the clown and pointed toward this mirror maze…
Was it the same clown he just saw?
It was no wonder the boy was scared.
He needed to talk to Karen.
SHE’S NOT GOING TO BE HAPPY
She never was when these things came up. And he didn’t blame her. He wasn’t exactly thrilled, himself. It usually meant putting himself in considerable danger. But she was going to be especially unhappy about this one.
He walked around the maze and back to the party room.
Karen was still standing with her mother and sister, a prisoner of their endless, snooty chattering. She never enjoyed family get-togethers anyway. And right now she had work to do. She should be bustling about the place, overseeing the final decorations, making sure everything was on schedule.
And by the look on her face, it was taking every ounce of will power she had not to go Lizzy Borden on them both.
She was facing him as he crossed the room. She saw him coming, saw his expression, caught his, “I need to talk to you” gesture, and happily excused herself from the conversation.
He turned and led her away from prying ears.
“My hero,” she whispered.
“If only,” he replied.
But she didn’t seem to be listening to him. “I swear to God I’m going to strangle that woman one of these days.”
“Which one?”
She gave a snort of a laugh and then shook her head. “My mother thinks I should’ve made a gluten-free cake. Can you believe that? For an eight-year-old.”
Eric wrinkled his nose. “Even I know that’s a terrible idea.”
“I’m not sure that woman even knows what gluten is.”
“Evil stuff, I’ve heard. Some kind of toxic sludge they pump out of Satan’s personal septic system. Only idiots eat that stuff these days.”
“I swear, it’s amazing I survived childhood.”
“We need to talk,” he insisted.
“Did you find someone to ask about the soda?”
“What? Oh. Yeah.” He’d already forgotten about the soda. “Someone’s supposed to be getting it now.”
“Good.” She looked out over the party room, surveying her work. “Decorations are almost done. Once the refreshments are out I think we’ll be ready to go. Hopefully everything keeps running smoothly. Not that it matters. My mom’s just going to find something to nitpick about no matter what I do.”
“Yeah about that… We’ve got a problem.”
She turned and looked at him, her eyes narrowing. It was the way she looked at him when she knew he had bad news for her. “What kind of problem?”
“The weird kind of problem.”
As Isabelle predicted, she wasn’t at all happy about it. In fact, she looked positively furious. “What?”
“There’s something wrong about this place. Isabelle feels it, too.”
She leaned close to him and whispered, “Are you kidding me? Here? Now?”
“She says there’s a ton of spiritual energy in this building. Some kind of dark energy, too.”
She crowded even closer to him and jabbed at him with her finger. “This cannot happen now! Do you hear me?”
Eric stared back at her. “I don’t schedule these things, you know.”
The three boys who were fleeing the zombie apocalypse a while ago sped past them, still screaming in pretend terror. He was impressed with their attention span. He couldn’t keep his students on any task for more than a few minutes.
“Why would it be here?” asked Karen. “It doesn’t make sense. I mean, do these things just follow you around now?”
“It feels like it sometimes.”
She glanced back at her mother and sister. “Are you sure this isn’t about your stupid clown phobia?”
“It’s not a phobia,” he growled. “And I already told you, Isabelle feels it, too. Something really messed up is going on. She’s never wrong about these things.”
She looked at the playland, frustrated. There were more kids here than there were before. And a lot more were on the way. “This party starts in less than fifteen minutes. You know that.”
“I know. But there’s something going on in this building. It might not be safe.”
She turned and jabbed him with her finger again. “I absolutely cannot cancel this party. Do you understand me?”
Eric didn’t shrink away from her. Instead, he leaned closer and said, “This is a lot more serious than a stupid party! You know what these things are like!”
Karen glared at him. She wanted to argue with him. She wanted to yell at him. But in the end, she just wilted a little and looked over at the playland again.
She did know what these things were like. Five times the weird had called to him before today. Five times he’d faced terrible dangers. Although every time was different, they were always perilous. They always dragged him in at the last possible moment. And they always involved monsters of some kind. And not just the human kind…
“I don’t know what’s going on here yet,” Eric continued, “but if I find out that these kids are in the slightest danger, I’m ending this party. I’ll pull the fire alarm if I have to. Hell, I’ll set a real fire if it gets these kids to safety.”
Karen sighed. “I know. Dammit!”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. But I can’t just call off this party without a good reason, you know.”
“I know.”
“A believable reason.”
“Right. I get it. ‘Troll in the dungeon’ isn’t going to cut it.”
“Not by a long shot.”
It wasn’t just her reputation as the party planner. She was extremely proud of her talents, but she did it for the love of the work, not for profit. It was the simple reality of the matter. No parent would cancel their child’s birthday party without a damn good reason. Especially just as it was starting.
And no self-respecting business was going to let them cancel the party at the last minute, either. Not without solid proof. That was a matter of reputation.
“I don’t really know what’s going on yet,” he said. “I’m going to find out. If we need to get everyone out of here, I’ll think of a way.”
Karen sighed again. “Get to it, then. Hurry up and save the day.”
“I’m going to need Holly,” he said calmly. “She’ll be able to tell me what I’m up against.”
Her eyes flashed wide. “No. Uh-uh. I need Holly.”
“For what?”
“For everything! She’s my assistant!”
“How the hell am I supposed to know what to do without Holly’s divination?”
“That’s not my problem,” she whispered angrily. “Do whatever you did before you picked her up in that sleazy bar.”
Eric clenched his teeth. He wanted to argue with her, but he wasn’t going to win this one. He’d touched a nerve.
It had nothing to do with needing Holly. She could handle it all on her own for no longer than he needed her. The truth was that she couldn’t stand the thought of people at this party—specifically her judgmental mother and sister---finding out that her sweet, redheaded assistant in the pretty clown makeup was a witch.
Eric thought it was rather shallow of her, to be perfectly honest. Karen never could warm up to the idea of witchcraft, even though Holly’s spells had saved his life multiple times now.
On the one hand, he supposed he didn’t blame her. There was bound to be someone at a party this size that wouldn’t approve of a self-proclaimed witch serving cake at an eight-year-old child’s birthday party. (Especially when you added in that she also used to be a stripper…) And keeping Holly’s past history as a witch, an exotic dancer and a teenage runaway secret probably did protect her from a lot of unnecessary scrutiny. But he still believed that she deserved better than to just pretend that she was someone she wasn’t.
“You figure it out on your own,” she snapped. “And do it quietly. If you embarrass me today, I swear to God…”
“Right. Wouldn’t want to make you look like a bad hostess by getting eaten by a monster or something.”
She glared at him again and started to turn away, but then she grabbed his sleeve and added, “And don’t you dare get up to any more shenanigans, either!”
“‘Shenanigans’?”
But she was already walking away.
He didn’t need her to explain what she meant. He knew perfectly well what she was referring to. Last time this sort of thing happened, he’d come home with lipstick on his face. It wasn’t what it looked like. Really. But he was pretty sure she might’ve killed him if Isabelle hadn’t immediately called and come to his aid, insisting that she was with him the whole time and assuring her that nothing unseemly had happened.
She was still pretty pissed off, though…
His cell phone rang in his pocket. It was Isabelle again.
“I’d care if you got eaten by a monster,” she told him.
“I know you would.”
“So would she.”
“I know. Thanks.” Isabelle and Holly both came to his defense over that lipstick business, managing to convince her that the “other woman” was dangerously psychotic and that his “playing along” with her twisted games was the only thing that allowed him to save the day. And it was the only thing that kept her from killing him. (Isabelle’s assertion that the woman had met an unpleasant, but well-deserved fate had also helped.) “So what do we do now?”
“Keep looking for that boy, I guess.”
He looked toward the playland and sighed. He was way outside his comfort zone here.
“At least it’s a happy atmosphere there. It’s kind of depressing over here.”
“Is it? Where are you?”
“I’m not sure, honestly. Some city. It’s rainy and dreary and cold and everybody I’ve seen outside looks really unhappy for some reason.”
“Huh.”
“I know, right? I�
�m not sticking around here long. Hopefully the next place I end up is more cheerful.”
She traveled from one place to another with the use of a mysterious doorway. She had no idea why it was there or how it worked, but it seemed that she was the only one who could use it. The catch was that it was extremely unpleasant to walk through, even painful. She’d described it as being something like an electric shock. It wasn’t the worst experience she could imagine, but she also wasn’t overly keen to jump back through it once she’d arrived somewhere new.
“By the way, while you were talking to Karen, I called Holly and let her know what was going on. She said she’ll try and help you out. Somehow.”
Eric nodded. “Thanks, but I doubt Karen will let her out of her sight now.”
“At least she’s trying.”
“That’s true.”
As he watched the children run around inside the playland, the blond-haired boy emerged from the entrance and ran toward the arcade.
Chapter Four
He glanced around to make sure no one was looking at him. He felt like a creep. Who wouldn’t? He was essentially stalking this kid, trying to get him alone. How bad would this look if someone noticed him? How suspicious was he? But he couldn’t afford to spend the whole day looking for him, either. This was important. If that boy was telling the truth, then there may be children somewhere who needed his help. He couldn’t let something like that go. Not as long as there was even a sliver of a chance.
He followed the boy into the arcade where the sounds of screaming children gave way to the chaos of blaring games. Music from a dozen different sources assaulted his ears, a strange mixture of simple cartoon melodies, hard rock music and circus tunes, all unevenly punctuated with a cycling, underlying base beat and frequent, random guitar solos. And on top of all of that was a constant, inaudible murmuring of overlapping voices all begging him to stop and play.
He’d already lost sight of the boy. Fast on his feet, like any healthy child, he was more than a match for any thirty-three-year-old who couldn’t leave a mirror maze feeling good about himself. But he couldn’t have gone far. Aside from the restaurant, there was nowhere else to go but back the way he came.
