Chapter 9: Caught in the trap

Water flowed through a crack in the wall. On the other side, Mike could hear the river. Placing his hands against the hard stone, he could feel the vibrations through it. Cupping his hands, he collected a mouthful of water and drank it. It was cold with a slight metallic taste, but Blue had informed him that it was safe enough to drink.

“Is it good?” Blue asked from her perch on his shoulder.

“It tastes like water,” Mike responded, sucking down huge mouthfuls. Wiping his mouth, he turned away from the wall. Blue had led him away from where the fairies had found him, citing safety concerns about the potential arrival of the minotaur. The river acted as a natural barrier, but Blue had informed him there was a single bridge that the minotaur could cross if it needed to.

In the distance, he heard the minotaur cry out. It sounded different from earlier, but Mike was no expert on monster shouts. If Mike had to venture a guess, it sounded like the minotaur had found a bag of gold, or a shiny new axe.

“Lucky boy,” he muttered to himself.

“What?” Blue asked.

“Oh. Nothing. Thinking out loud.” He contemplated the paths before him. There were three, and each one looked equally suspicious. Blue had informed him that they were in the inner circle in relation to the river, and that the passageways had been booby trapped. They had only walked for about ten minutes, and Blue had pointed out at least three traps that Mike could have triggered that would have killed him.

Mike leaned against a dry section of the wall, closing his eyes and letting the rhythmic vibrations of the river lull him into a meditative state. His clothes, dried by Blue with fairy magic, still retained a mystical warmth.

He had asked Blue about the traps. The Labyrinth wasn’t just a random maze, he had informed her, and the fact that someone would put in a giant maze with killer traps and a minotaur meant that the Labyrinth must have a secret or a treasure worth protecting. Blue had shrugged away his answers, being deliberately evasive. She also wouldn’t speak to the fact that she and the others were trapped, which was also a piece of the puzzle.

Why would a maze be designed to keep people out, but then never let them leave? His eyes closed, he sank deeper into a state of relaxation, tiny lights flickering behind his eyelids.

The world of darkness receded, chased away by glowing beams of light streaming through his windows. He walked through his house, humming a song to himself that he didn’t recognize. A large table had been set up in the family room, with an equally large game board.

“Every room has its purpose, every monster has its place,” he sang out loud, but it wasn’t his voice. It was Emily’s, but that wasn’t quite right either. It almost sounded like Emily’s voice mixed with Naia’s. The game board in front of him reminded him of Clue – it was a layout of his house. On the board, he saw that several pieces were scattered through the house. He picked up a sultry figurine that was standing in the fountain, immediately identifying Naia. Setting it back down, he picked up another one on the front porch. This one was Cecilia. Even Lily was there, her figurine currently in the back yard with Naia and Zel.

There were other pieces on the board, pieces he didn’t recognize. When he held them up, they were blurry, his vision unable to see any detail. Frowning, he stared at the board. Where was the Labyrinth?

He touched the spare bedroom, tracing his fingers over to the closet. The board shimmered beneath his touch, and unfolded another section, revealing the enormous structure somehow in the walls of his house. The pieces were on the board, standing in various locations. He found his own piece, picking it up to inspect it. Setting himself back down, he spotted the minotaur with a couple of other pieces.

Beth and Abella. Fuck. He set these back down. He saw the other fairies, their figures very tiny, and even Sofia. Her figurine scowled at him somehow. In the center of the Labyrinth was a pair of figurines. One was Tink, but the other one was blurry. Holding the piece in his hands, he tried to identify it by feel.

“Mike!” His eyes snapped open, and he stood up. Had that been a dream or a vision?

Green was hovering in front of him, glitter shedding off her wings.

“What is it?” He asked.

“I found one of your friends,” Green informed him. “She needs your help?”

“Who did you find?” Mike asked.

“The one with one eye.” Green’s face twisted up. “She is really mad.”

“Is she okay?”

“For now.” Green turned into a ball of light. “Follow follow!” She whizzed away, stopping at the entrance to the corridor on the right. Mike followed close behind, Blue sitting on his shoulder. Green moved at a pace consistent with a fast walk – she was easy to keep up with, but would zip farther ahead if Mike tried to catch up

Mike was already lost, but Green led him through a series of twists and turns that made it so that he knew he wouldn’t be able to find his way back to the river. He looked up, marveling at how his brain couldn’t even identify a landmark in the dark ceiling up above.

“Duck!” Blue shrieked in his ear. Mike threw himself flat, and a large stone on a rope swung where his head had been. He was going to stand up when he heard the creaking of a second rope. Crouching down, he moved forward, the second rock crashing into the first one. His ears rang, and the pile of rubble buried the passageway behind him under a few feet of stone.

‘Holy shit,” he muttered.

‘You’re telling me.” Blue squeezed out from under his collar, where he had crushed her. Her chitinous shell readjusted itself, her wings tucking back beneath them. She smoothed out her antenna, and rubbed her left shoulder.

“Sorry.” Mike stood up. “I’m glad you saw it in time.”

“Part of that is thanks to you,” she said, her antenna twitching playfully. “My senses haven’t been this sharp in years!”

“Have you guys really been stuck here that long?” Mike asked.

“A woman named Emily banished us to the Labyrinth over a misunderstanding,” Blue told him. “She thought we did a bad thing, and told us we could live here or leave the house.”

“And you chose to live here?” Mike looked around. “Why not go live and be free?”

“Fairies like us are almost extinct, you know.” They had started walking again, and Blue spoke softly into his ear from her perch on his shoulder. “The human world isn’t as friendly as it used to be. Our fields and forests got torn up, and fairies learned long ago never to trust humans.”

“You trusted me.” Mike pointed out.

Blue shrugged. “We had been down here for quite some time and figured if you weren’t the Caretaker, then something had happened to the House. We could smell Naia’s magic coming off of you.” Her voice then lowered to a whisper. “It also didn’t help that we were all so horny.”

“Well, if we get out of here, we can discuss your current living arrangement. I want to hear more about this ‘bad thing’ some time.”

“Step around that,” Blue told him, pointing at the floor. Mike knelt down, finally seeing the seam in the stone from up close. He was able to scoot by easily, wondering what sort of trap that would have set off. They continued walking, and Mike noticed the trap frequency had increased dramatically.

“I have no idea how the others made it through here,” Mike said.

“They didn’t come this way,” Green told him from up ahead. “This is a short cut, so the number of traps is really high.”

“A short cut to where?” Mike asked. Neither of the fairies answered.

Their pace slowed dramatically with the appearance of trip wires and pitfalls painted to look just like an ordinary floor. Mike nearly fell in one of these, but a quick thinking Green bounced herself off of him hard enough in the chest that he tipped back onto the path instead of falling forward. The way forward was perilous, and Mike moved only a few steps at a time at the fairy’s insistence. It had been a long time since the minotaur had called out, which made him nervous. If he were to come across the beast now, it would become a battle of luck as he ran away.

“Whoa.” They came to a three way intersection and Mike stopped to survey the other two paths. Whoever had come through here before him had set off several traps down the other corridors. Spikes from the ground and wall were evident everywhere, and a few piles of rock could be seen in the distance. Mike followed Green, who was moving a bit faster now.

“Most of the traps have been sprung already,” Green told him. “Except for a couple of the nastier ones, so watch your step.”

“What could be nastier than spikes?” Mike wondered aloud. To answer him, Green flew ahead and grabbed onto a small wire near the floor, pulling it backward. Jets of fire filled the hallway for several yards. The whole area became hot enough that Mike broke into a sweat.

“You made your point,” he announced. Green’s twinkling light hovered by his face, doing lazy figure eights.

“The fire jets are the worst,” Blue told him. “Even if you trip the trap, you can’t get out of the way. There’s one part of the Labyrinth where there aren’t any traps except for that one. It’s a giant pressure plate that takes up the whole floor for about ten feet, so you can’t avoid it. It scorches everything for a couple hundred feet in either direction.”

“It pisses off the minotaur when it goes off,” Green added with a smile on her face. “It leaves scorch marks that he has to remove, otherwise people will realize that one is there.”

“How often do you guys set that one off?” Mike asked.

“About once a year.” Blue giggled. “Then we all jump out when he shows and yell ‘Happy Birthday!’.”

Mike laughed. “You three are a riot.”

“It passes the time,” Green said. “Especially because she won’t let us leave.”

“She who?” Again, silence from both of them. “Why won’t you tell me who is running the Labyrinth.”

“Because we can’t,” Blue whispered. “It’s part of the Labyrinth’s magic.”

“I don’t understand why it matters who runs the Labyrinth,” Mike said.

“She doesn’t want people to know she is here.” Blue told him. “She’s protecting something important. It’s why she is down here.”

Mike mulled over the possibilities. “Is the Labyrinth separate from the house, or an extension of it?” He asked, thinking about the vision he had.

“We don’t know,” Green told him.

“We ended up here by accident,” Blue added. “At the house. Emily let us stay because she liked how we sparkled.”

“But she changed.”

“And it wasn’t a good change.”

“After the thing with Garrett.” Mike said. “When he attacked the house.”

“No.” All of the sparkle had gone out of Blue’s voice. “This was way after.”

“So what happened?”

The fairies were quiet. Mike was about to ask again, but they turned a corner, entering a chamber full of columns covered in thick, leafy vines. In the middle of the room, something large was hanging from ceiling, vines wrapped around a figure that slowly spun in place. The creature rotated slowly until her face came into view. Her eye narrowed.

“It’s about fucking time,” Sofia said.

Dana looked at herself in the mirror. She felt the same, or at least she thought she did. Touching the ceramic sink below the mirror, she realized that she couldn’t tell if it was hot or cold. This had been true of everything else she had encountered so far, a strange numbness that only applied to temperature.

Her sense of touch had been muted, but her sense of smell had received a boost. Even now, she could smell the corpse of her landlady in the basement, and Daryl’s breath in her bedroom. Daryl the necromancer had let her out of the basement to roam about, announcing that he intended to take a nap. He had warned Dana that any attempt to flee would permanently ruin her chances of returning to the Afterlife, and he would do worse things to her if he ever caught her. His driver, a bulky man in a suit, stood guard in the driveway. He had motor oil on his jacket from retrieving her broken bike and casually throwing it in the garage.

She didn’t know what to do or think. Her emotions were similar to sitting through Alex’s funeral. She knew they were there, but they were being tossed into the void quicker than she could feel them. Wandering from room to room, she thought about what Daryl had told her.

Mike apparently had something that Daryl thought he wanted. All Dana had to do was to go in his house and either get Mike to let Daryl in, or figure out what Mike was hiding and bring it to Daryl. She had asked what it was he was looking for, but Daryl informed her that she would know it when she saw it. He had also tasked her with creating a cover story, a reason for showing up unannounced. No matter what she had asked him, he either shrugged or changed the subject.

“Lazy fucker,” she muttered under her breath. Wandering through the house, she found herself staring out the door, looking at the back of the driver. He somehow made standing guard look casual, and the few neighbors who passed by didn’t seem to notice.

Dana let herself out, crossing over to the garage. She stepped into her home, wondering if it was the last time she would ever do so. Was it even her home now? After all, she was dead.

She walked over to her toolbox, searching for the boxcutter she kept there after a failed job stocking boxes at night. With a little digging, she found it. Moving quickly, she slashed the back of her forearm, digging the blade in deep.

Nothing happened. She didn’t even bleed, and it didn’t hurt. She had been convinced that Daryl had drugged her, and now she was left with a nasty looking wound on her left arm.

“Fuck,” she muttered, storming up the stairs to her room. It wasn’t until she was upstairs that she realized that the motorcycle on the garage floor was missing its motor. Leaning over the railing, she surveyed the mess below.

Behind her, the clock chimed. Rolling her eyes, she walked toward it, sitting on her bed and staring it down.

“What?” She hissed. “What the fuck do you want?”

The clock was silent. Frustrated, she stood up and looked out the window to see if the zombie goon had heard it, and was coming inside. Mr. Tall and Stupid remained at his post, surveying the street. When Dana turned back around, the clock was gone. Instead, a large, ornate typewriter had appeared on her desk.

“Yeah, sure, this helps me,” she muttered, standing up and staring at it. “So are you an autobot or a decepticon?”

The typewriter dinged at her, shifting back and forth. A few keys hammered the blank roller, and Dana rolled her eyes. She pulled a piece of notebook paper from under her desk and stuck it in the back. Immediately, the typewriter spooled itself, pulling the paper through.

“You’re a magic clock that can’t even provide its own paper,” Dana muttered. “I don’t suppose you can bring me back to life?”

The paper had finished spooling, and two keys hammered against the paper. She didn’t have to lift it free to read it.

No

“Oh, great. Awesome.” She watched the typewriter move again. In the back of her mind, she felt like she should feel surprise or shock seeing such an event, but she just couldn’t be bothered to care. She didn’t know how much of that was being a zombie, and how much of it was being denied an eternity with Alex.

What happened?

“That man who came for me killed me, that’s what happened.” Dana held up her ruined arm. “I’m dead, and he wants me to go to the house where you came from and steal something or con the owner into letting me in.”

Several seconds passed, and the typewriter started moving again.

You should go there. You can get help.

“Oh really? Who’s gonna help me? You? The guy who lives there?”

Someone will help, it told her. This man will not help you.

“What do you know, you’re just a magic clock. Speaking of which, what are you exactly? Why did you come here?”

I needed fixing, the clock told her.

“Why did I have to fix you?” Dana stood up and walked over to her dresser. She opened up her drawers and began pulling out clothes. “I bet Mike could have hired someone. Dude seems like he has plenty of money.”

It had to be you. The typewriter paused for several seconds, then spooled the paper up to make room for more text, dinging as it reset itself. You had the spark.

“I had the spark?”

You are dead now. I’m sorry.

“You’re gonna be sorry when I toss you out that window.” Dana spread out her clothes, picking a pair of low cut jeans and a tank top. “And why did I have to fix you? What are you exactly?”

I am a mimic, the typewriter answered. My heart was broken. I could no longer transform.

“I didn’t see a heart when I was in there,” Dana muttered. “You were all busted gears. And what the fuck is a mimic?”

My heart changes to match my appearance. And mimics are creatures that mimic things.

“Gee, that explains everything.” Dana picked out a jacket to go over her tank top. “I don’t suppose you know what Daryl wants from the house?”

I don’t. And you should not help him. Help Mike.

“I’ve got my own problems.”

I will help you.

“Help me how? You’re a fucking typewriter.”

I am whatever I need to be. I can change shape when nobody is looking.

“What about when I was inside you? I could still see you, and you grew legs or something.”

That was different, the typewriter wrote. Watch.

Dana jumped when the typewriter grew a pair of long, metallic arms with razor blades at the end. It whipped them back and forth for emphasis, then retracted them. Dana squinted her eyes, but couldn’t see the seam where they had disappeared.

“How is that not transforming?” Dana asked.

Not transforming. Part of the form. Hidden when I change. The typewriter stood up on a pair of metal legs. Legs were already here.

“No deal. I refuse.” Dana looked back out the window. It looked like the driver was staring into the sun. “I’m just going to do what he asks. No offense, but I want to see Alex again.”

I understand. The typewriter sat quietly for several moments, then started typing again. Take me to Mike. Use me to get in the house.

“That ... would work, actually.” Dana frowned. “You would do that for me?”

I owe you. Turn around. The typewriter spat out the paper with a final ding. Dana picked it up and closed her eyes instead. She could hear the strange shifting of wood on metal, and opened her eyes to see that the typewriter was now an ornate desk clock. Picking it up, she inspected the surface, looking for hidden limbs.

“Are you really in there?” Dana asked. In response, an unseen flap opened, and a cuckoo bird jumped out at her, announcing the top of the hour. “Okay. Well, I guess we are just waiting for sleeping beauty to wake up.”

The clock chimed again.

“Are you going to keep staring at me or what?” Mike had watched Sofia swing away from him and back again, still unmoving. He wasn’t entirely certain whether to laugh or not, but two things had suddenly occurred to him.

The first thing that he realized was that the vines had restrained Sofia in such a way that her arms had been pulled up behind her. Her breasts had pushed hard enough against the fabric of her blouse that, in conjunction with the tightness of the vines, the fabric had split, revealing an enormous amount of cleavage.

The second was how pissed at her he was.

“I haven’t decided yet,” he told her. “You lied to me.”

Sofia rolled her eye. “Of course I lied to you. You were only going to get in the way if you came with us.”

“And yet, here you are. I don’t know if Abella or Tink are even alive, and I believe the blame lies solely on your shoulders.” Mike walked closer to her, contemplating the thick foliage that had pinned her in place. “As for getting in the way, it looks like I made it this far without your help. I’m busy trying to save your ass so that we can get out of here and stop a coven of assholes from breaking through the Geas.”

“The house is under attack?” Sofia asked.

“Yes. Yes it is. I left the others up there to deal with it so that I could come down here and find Tink so that she can show me how to turn on the house’s defenses.”

“Which is something she needs her goggles to do. Or rather, you will need her goggles.” Sofia frowned. “Years ago, Emily tried to make amends with Tink by giving her those goggles. It was after an incident involving some guy who broke in, I don’t know the full details. Those goggles, when worn by the Caretaker, can be used to activate the house’s defenses once every twenty four hours. I thought it was a terrible idea at the time, but Emily and I weren’t exactly on speaking terms at that point.”

“I’m hardly on speaking terms with you right now!” Mike was near enough now that he could see how she had been tied up. So many vines currently held her in place that he wasn’t sure which one to cut first. He didn’t need her face planting on the stone beneath. “It occurred to me, on my very long walk into the forest and back, that you have been particularly nasty to me.” Identifying a vine, he grabbed it with one hand only to cry out when the vine tried to curl around him. Drawing his dagger, he sliced cleanly through it. “Shit, that startled me!”

“Now you know why I’m stuck.” Sofia cast her gaze toward the floor. Mike saw the hilt of her collapsible sword. “I tried to cut myself free, but there were too many of them. My sword is sharp, but not sharp enough, apparently. The few that grabbed me lifted me up into a whole tangle of these things.”

“Right.” Mike contemplated the structure of the vines again. If he wasn’t careful, he could end up getting grabbed. He would have to cut selectively.

“I wish our positions were switched,” Sofia grumbled.

“Oh. I’m sorry. Would you like someone smarter to come along? Seriously, what’s your problem with me?” Mike selected another vine, slicing cleanly through. This vine retracted into the darkness like an elastic band, the other half dangling pitifully off of Sofia.

“I wasn’t being rude,” Sofia muttered. “It’s my gift. If our positions were switched, I could have you out in a couple of minutes.”

“Your gift?”

“Do you know why a cyclops only has one eye? We gave up the other for the ability to see the future. We were tricked, and the only future we got to see was our own deaths.” Sofia let out a sigh. “However, after centuries of living with this curse, the magic has evolved some. Some interesting variations sprung up. Being able to see the death’s of others was highly uncommon, but was a great moneymaker. My variation is one of the closest to what should have happened?”

“You can see the future?” Mike asked.

“Only about thirty seconds in, but not always. Something has to trigger it. My death, for one. I have seen myself die hundreds of times. Extreme emotional or physical sensations, like a bucket of ice water being dumped on me, or pain. All those things.”

“All the traps that were set off.” Mike looked back at the door to the Labyrinth. You set them all off, didn’t you?”

“I was running from the minotaur. Tink got caught in a cage, and when he got near, I tried to lure him away.”

“How did Tink get caught in a cage?”

Sofia shook her head. “It was such a simple trap. A stone pedestal in the middle of the room had her goggles on it. She got excited and ran up, only for the goggles to vanish and a cage to drop down and trap her. I haven’t heard so many swear words before.”

“And you didn’t see it coming?”

“It wasn’t my own death or pain. That is part of my issue with you.”

“What did I do?”

“Not just you. Humans. You are obsessed with future sight, magical items, and the like. The main reason I am even in that library is that your kind wiped out my tribe so many years ago. I thought that I could get past it, but every new Caretaker eventually comes to me wanting to advance themselves, to become stronger. Emily certainly did it toward the end, and I knew you would be no different.”

“Why, because I wanted to help Tink get her goggles back?”

“I caught you fucking in my library. Not the best first impression.”

“So you’re mad at me and not Tink?” Mike cut another vine.

“Tink is a goblin. That’s different.”

“So you’re a racist then. Racist against humans.”

“Like your kind has any room to talk. You’ve wiped out so many different creatures, magical or otherwise, and you can’t even look past the color of your own skin ... hey, why did you stop cutting?” Mike had stepped back, crossing his arms across his chest.

“Honestly? Because you’re being a bitch.” Mike stared away from her, trying to ignore the rising heat in his face. “I’m sorry about what happened in the Library. If I had known someone lived there, it wouldn’t have happened. The only reason we were there was because I was trying to help someone else, and I’m not sorry for that.

“And you are right. Humans, as a whole, are giant pieces of shit. We do horrible things, and we probably always will. But you know what? Not everybody is a piece of shit. If I wanted to, I could sell this place, move far, far away and never have to deal with its problems. But I won’t. Why? Because I actually fucking care.” Sighing, Mike sliced another vine away. “I even care about you, despite your shitty fucking attitude.”

Sofia had gone quiet, her own face turning red. Mike could hear her breathing change, a subtle shift that made him think that the vines might be squeezing her too hard. He reached behind her, carefully sliding the dagger beneath a pair of vines that were squeezing her ribs. The moment he sliced them, Sofia’s whole body swung forward, pushing up against Mike.

“Mmm, gah!” Mike’s face was not only buried between Sofia’s breasts, but now the vines clutching her reached for him, pulling him tightly against her. He fought back, shoving hard against Sofia in an attempt to get himself free. He managed to push himself free, but the only part of Sofia he was able to push against that was vine free was her ample chest. The vines tried to pull him off his feet, but he cut himself free, stepping several feet back from Sofia. The vines settled, wrapping once more against her.

Sofia was breathing even harder now, her mouth open. Worried, Mike moved closer, but he could tell the vines weren’t restricting her breathing. Puzzled, he noticed that her cheeks had gone very red.

“Are you okay?” Mike asked. Sofia remained silent, so he repeated himself.

“It’s my breasts,” she said.

“What about them?” They were threatening to break free, her flesh overflowing through the split in her shirt.

“They’re really sensitive right now.”

Uh oh. Mike scanned the sky, half expecting a mandragora pod, or something similar. He wasn’t in the mood to fuck himself silly for the next several hours. “Is the plant doing something to you?”

Sofia didn’t say, but she was squirming now.

“Hey! Is the plant doing something to you?” Seeing that she wasn’t paying attention, he grabbed Sofia by the chin, forcing her to look him in the eyes. “Tell me what’s wrong!”

“Fucking human,” she muttered.

“One eyed bitch.” He looked for another vine to cut, but saw that Sofia was rocking herself in a specific pattern. Circling behind her, he saw that when her body had swung forward, the only vines keeping her from hanging completely vertical had wrapped themselves between her legs, spreading out over her hips. Every time Sofia swung forward even slightly, most of her weight was concentrated on the thick leafy vegetation that had wedged itself between her legs.

He saw the problem now. Looking at where she was suspended, it occurred to him that he could try and cut that part of her free first. At the same time, she didn’t seem to be complaining, and it would be safer to cut some of the other vines first.

“Hey.” Mike looked at Green, who was gently circling overhead. This may take a bit. Can you go watch the halls and warn us if the minotaur is coming?”

Green hovered in place, transforming into a fairy long enough to give him a salute, then flew away. Mike watched the fairy go, then let out a sigh. If she had been bigger, he would have put her in charge of cutting the cyclops free so he could watch the hall.^[a]

Mike sliced one of the other vines, moving away when it reached for him. Sofia’s body shifted her weight even harder onto the offending vine, and she let out a moan.

“Ok, let me take care of this one,” he told her. He touched the edge of the blade to the vine.

“Wait.”

“Excuse me?” Mike asked. He moved to where he could see her better. Her eye was closed, and she was breathing shallowly through her mouth.

“Don’t. Not yet.” Sofia opened her eye, and he saw that it was shimmering with an inner light. Was she seeing her future? “That one needs to come later.”

“Oh boy,” Blue whispered in his ear. Mike startled – he had forgotten the fairy was still on his shoulder. “Can you smell that?”

Mike sniffed the air. It still smelled of smoke and stone. “Nope.”