Maze: The Waking of Grey Grimm Page 15

  “You need to turn around.”

  “But we’re almost out of gas,” Grey repeated, a lie that would hold up until they looked at the gauge, after which he would say that was broke, and then get punched in the face or stun-gunned.

  “Not my problem.”

  “Just let me call my dad,” Grey said. “He’ll pick us up.”

  He looked for a sign of recognition when he said that. My dad. It came by way of a sly smile on one side of the man’s mouth. Maybe they didn’t know who Grey was when the gate opened, but he did now. Instead of pulling the gates wide to make room for Rach’s car, he pointed at the highway.

  “Turn it around. Now.”

  Grey reached for his door. He was getting out, was going to talk to them. Have some mercy. They were from the city; they’d be stranded. They just needed to make a call. You know, talk to someone. This wasn’t what they thought it was.

  Rach popped her door open. The man slammed it closed. Gripping the frame with oversized hands, he bent down and looked inside the car. His cheeks had the texture of clay with childhood pockmarks. He didn’t bother looking at the dashboard where the gas gauge sat just below empty.

  “Back the car up, and don’t come back.”

  His words tumbled into the car. He didn’t pull back until Rach dropped into reverse. A curt nod, he took three steps back and watched them back up the rutted driveway. The woman watched from between the truck’s highbeams. The glare obscured her face, but it was unlikely she was smiling.

  Rach swerved onto the soft shoulder and jerked the car into the opposite lane before getting back between the lines. Her hands were shaking on the steering wheel. They drove in radio silence for a mile, only the sound of rubber grinding asphalt between them. Rach was squeezing the steering wheel, eyes flicking in the rearview then to Grey and back to the rearview before speaking.

  “Your dad is so in the Maze.”

  19

  Grey

  Before the Punch

  “YOU KNOW WHAT I DON’T get?” Rach said. “Why they were using phones.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, if they’re connected to the Maze, shouldn’t they have all the sensory upgrades. You know?” She sipped at the cold remains at the bottom of her coffee cup. “They should’ve been grabbing screen shots with a retinal lens.”

  “Maybe we should’ve asked.”

  “I’m just saying don’t you think that’s a little off.”

  He didn’t know what to think. According to his best guess, his dad had been heading for that driveway when his phone lost reception. There were no other houses or driveways for miles. Maybe whoever was beyond the gates owned it all. That would go along with illegal awareness leaping. It didn’t prove the Maze was back there.

  The invitations did.

  “What next?” Rach said.

  Grey looked over and frowned. Her lofty tone of hope was unexpected. In fact, it scared him a little. There was no going back to the front gate, not after that. And she was the one talking about dogs and doorbells. Now she wanted to know what next, as in you’re not giving up, are you?

  Grey’s pocket vibrated. He pulled the phone out and quickly tucked it between his legs.

  “Is that him?” Rach said.

  “Yeah.”

  “You should answer.”

  His dad rarely called his phone. He next left a message. The phone had buzzed three times since clay face ordered them to get the hell off their property. Now there were three messages.

  Grey didn’t listen to any of them.

  “What do you think he wants?” Rach said.

  Those people took pictures. They’d captured their faces and Rach’s license plate. Maybe they had all the sensory augments going, too. If they did, they had access to facial recognition databases or even the department of motor vehicles, if they were connected. It wouldn’t be hard to identify them. After that, they would make the connection to his dad.

  This was coming together, but not exactly like he thought because he had no plan. Just drive up and ring the doorbell was pretty much it. The city loomed ahead. The buildings hadn’t come over the horizon, but the haze was creeping toward them.

  “He knows,” Grey said.

  “How?”

  Grey turned a lazy stare on her.

  “What do you want to do?” she asked. “You can stay at our place. My mom knows what your dad’s like.”

  He’d been running all his life and could never outdistance his problems. Even when he managed to get some breathing room, found peace and equanimity in a boring moment, he managed to fuck it up. It was like he couldn’t stand swimming with the current. It was too easy to just drift along. Why not go against the current and make things interesting?

  Only this wasn’t interesting. And he was tired.

  He took his phone off silent and scrolled through the messages. Besides his dad’s waiting messages, there was a text from his mother.

  Where are you?

  With Rach, he answered.

  A minute passed. Your dad’s trying to reach you.

  Grey typed a message and deleted it. Typed another and deleted that one, too. There was only one way out of a tailspin. It wasn’t going home to Mom or hiding at Rach’s apartment. Even if they had enough gas money to keep on driving, his problems would come along for the ride. So why not just keep swimming into the current?

  “Come up with me,” he said.

  GREY STOPPED OUTSIDE the elevator. His dad waited outside his apartment door. Hands on his hips and a dad-pooch pushing against his belt, he blocked the hall.

  “You,” he said. “Get in here.”

  Two teenagers were on one end, a bowed-up dentist on the other. It was a showdown of teenage angst and failed parenting. He chopped his arm at the open door.

  “Now!”

  The dad-voice had been engaged. It reached deep into Grey and snatched the five-year-old still hiding inside to the front line. The legs cooled a few degrees. A year ago, it would have bullied his ass down the hall and sat him on the couch. Hell, maybe even a month.

  Not anymore.

  “Let’s do this out here,” Grey said.

  “What did you say?” His dad took a step. “What did you... get down here, you shit. Get down here!”

  A door opened halfway between them. Mrs. Nichols peeked out, her robe revealing fuzzy pajama bottoms that matched her slippers. She looked in both directions, a casual observer caught in a gunfight but too fascinated to find cover.

  Grey started the walk, slow and even. He greeted Mrs. Nichols with a smile.

  “Rachel, go home,” his dad said.

  “She’s coming inside.”

  Grey stepped into his dad to screen her. He was almost half a foot taller than his old man, with eighteen-year-old muscles to back him up. His old man had dad-power, a special skill that made children brush their teeth and do their chores. But that universal power was dimming. They touched bellies as Rach snuck into the apartment behind Grey.

  His dad took a moment to explain things to Mrs. Nichols, said it was fine, you know how kids are these days. They never listen.

  Or listen to the wrong things.

  His dad’s cell phone was in three different pieces. His footsteps were as measured as his words. He shut the door gently and propped his thin arms on his hips again.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Grey stood a half step in front of Rach. Suddenly, this seemed like a bad idea. He was certain he could pin his dad to the ground if it came to that, but he didn’t factor in the instinctual dad-rage that kicks in when the young bull steps up.

  “Answer me!” He kicked a chair and raked a stack of paper off the table. “You followed me, is that what you did? You followed me and... what?”

  “What were you doing out there?” Grey said.

  “I gave you a home, gave you food and clothing and you rape my privacy, you savage! I have to install security cameras on my own son for real?” Hands on hip
s, he paced. His breath scratched its way in and out. “Answer me!”

  Grey slammed the invitation on the counter with an open palm. The flaps hinged open, but the symbol was still apparent. His dad stared, eyes flickering to the refrigerator and back. Then he laughed.

  “Is that what you think?”

  “What else is it?”

  “A game? You think I was driving out there for that game?”

  “Then what is it?” Grey slapped the invitation over and over. His dad watched his tantrum peak. The more heated Grey became, the calmer his dad appeared.

  “The Maze is a poor man’s desperation,” his dad said. “Nothing more.”

  “There were some sick motherfuckers that met us at the gate and turned us around. What are you doing?”

  “You wouldn’t understand. You’re a kid.” His slender finger darted at Grey. “And you betrayed me.”

  “I betrayed you?” The top of Grey’s head was about to explode. “What are you doing?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “It doesn’t matter!” His dad’s delicate fingers curled into fists. “What I was doing depended on confidentiality and not my son dragging his girlfriend to their front door. What I was doing is over because of you.”

  He took a strong step in their direction. Grey braced for his old man’s rage then watched him go to the refrigerator and wipe everything off. He picked up the second invitation off the floor, the one Grey left on the freezer, and tore it into pieces.

  “Done! Everything I worked for is done because you had to stick your nose in it, Grey. Couldn’t let me have a moment, could you?” Spit bubbled in the corners of his mouth, lips pulled over perfect teeth. “All my money, gone. Wasted. Because of you. Because of you!”

  “Your money?” Grey snapped. “That was my money you wasted. My college fund, my savings. You took it; you spent it. That was my money, you say it! Who betrayed who, Dad? Huh? Say it, that was my money!”

  His dad stiffened. A flash-frozen expression of shock snuffed out his rage.

  “Yeah, I know you spent my money,” Grey said. “It doesn’t take a genius. You put Maze invitations on the refrigerator, leave bank statements on the table, tape your passwords underneath your keyboard. My college fund went to zero when you went on that month-long vacation. Or, more specifically, the Sessions.”

  His dad looked at the kitchen table, his bedroom and rested on the floor as he recounted all the carelessness. Of course Grey was snooping. He’d just had no idea to what extent. Until now.

  “I know what you do, always. Your emails, your weed. Your porn. You scatter breadcrumbs like a child. The respirator gear.” Grey pointed at the bathroom. “You were practicing for the tank, weren’t you? You were getting used to long-term submersion, the way it felt to breathe underwater. Why else would you keep it in the bathroom? It’s like you want to be caught. And then you blame me.”

  His dad rubbed his mouth, still staring at the floor. A trapdoor had just swallowed all his plans. Maybe his dad was just a glutton and the Sessions was just a month on a tropical island. Maybe this was his last attempt to make it up, win the Maze and start a new life.

  He shuffled to the giant glass wall that overlooked the bright city. “Get out.”

  “Tell me what you were doing.”

  “Get out of my apartment.”

  The iron grip of guilt or shame or hopelessness that was just there moments ago vanished. He spun around, grabbed Grey by the throat, and slammed him against the window. An inch of glass was between him and a nine-story plunge. Grey seized his dad’s shirt, bunching it in both hands. Rach shouted, pulling at their arms. His dad leaned in until their noses were almost touching. Minty breath mingled with his lotioned hands.

  “Get out of my life,” he hissed.

  He shoved Grey into Rach.

  The secrets were exposed. The empty bank accounts, bankrupt morals and bottomless self-doubt. And his dad had more to hide. That was what was behind the rage and panic. These secrets were out. But there was more.

  “You were tanking,” Grey said. “Practicing awareness leaping, admit it.”

  His dad said nothing.

  “You strapped on a sensory suit and dropped into a tank. Your senses were transformed, your awareness pulled into an alternate reality where a new universe awaited. You came home stinking of it. You think I’m an idiot?”

  His dad turned his hollow stare back out the window. Perhaps he was rethinking everything—the Sessions, the marriage. His son. If it would all go away, he would be happy; if he could just create a new reality, escape into another universe, then he could start a new life. He could be happy again. At least for a weekend.

  “You couldn’t do it, could you?” Grey said. “You failed to drop in the tank, so you bought the respirator to practice. But the tub ain’t like the tank, is it? It doesn’t have the same claustrophobic feel, doesn’t have the walls, the finality.”

  The Internet was filled with failed attempts. Tanking wasn’t scuba diving. The long-term respirator for awareness leaping fit deeper into the mouth. Even if the user didn’t have a gag reflex, there was the coffin-like experience, the tightness of being buried alive.

  Users would thrash against the glass, claw at the cable attached to their backs, ripped the respirator out as they were winched to the surface, crying as they hung over the edge. Some of them were frightened, caught in a reaction they couldn’t escape. Deep down, though, they all wept because they couldn’t do it. They knew they wouldn’t be able to awareness leap.

  And they wanted it more than anything.

  They hated this world. They wanted out. Wanted a dream that felt warm and fuzzy. And if they had a taste of a new universe before the panic set in, if they visited a new reality that made them happy for just a moment before failure ripped it away, they went full-on manic. They would never escape who they are.

  And this world is dull and lonely.

  “Where were you leaping?” Rach asked. “If you weren’t joining the Maze, where were you going?”

  “He was training, Rach. That’s what that place on the lake is. You get invited, they train you for the leap, then commit you to the Maze. Isn’t that right?”

  “You’re just a kid.” His voice leaked out.

  “Then tell me. You’re my dad, tell me what you’re doing. Maybe I can help.”

  “Not everything is a game, son. Sometimes it’s life and death.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He rubbed his chin, contemplating thoughts that seemed to evaporate just beyond the window. He dropped his hand and casually, as if he suddenly needed a nap, started for the bedroom.

  “Close the door behind you and don’t come back. I’ll tell your mother that we’re done now, she can deal with you. I’m a shitty dad; you’re a shitty kid. I’ll take responsibility for both of us. Just get out.”

  “I’ll get you back in there,” Grey said. “I can tell them it was an accident, that I didn’t mean to go out there.”

  Grey grabbed his arm. His dad yanked away. This was all a mistake. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. They were supposed to get things off their minds, air out the dirty laundry then sit down and fix things.

  “Don’t do this,” Grey said.

  “I didn’t. You did.”

  “Let’s figure them out.”

  “What you did is final. They terminated my access. I’m finished. Because of you. So you win, Grey. You and your mother. I’m a piece of shit that spent your money, ruined your childhood. That’s that. Nothing can be fixed or changed. Ever.”

  Grey wanted to say it wasn’t true. There were fond memories of them in the distance, of late nights watching movies and being perched on his shoulders. They were faded and fragmented, but they were there, the building blocks of a relationship that fell apart. They had to mean something.

  So why didn’t he say that?

  Because that distant life was covered in a muck of shit tha
t hurt. Hurt him. Hurt his mother. The man that locked himself in the bedroom deserved this life. He built it. Who was Grey to take it away?

  That’s that.

  20

  Grey

  Before the Punch

  MOM LEANED INTO THE room with a toothbrush, white foam in the corners of her mouth. “Not going to your dad’s?”

  “No.”

  She waited. “What’s up?”

  Her radar was picking up trouble. Her instincts for misfortune were finely tuned. You look for trouble, a therapist once told her. If you look for it, you’ll find it. She never went back to her. Instead, she visited a psychic that read her past lives—thousands of them—where she’d done terrible things and was now balancing the karmic scales.

  His mom had bought that one.

  She just had to hold on until this life was over, pay her debts and hope for something better the next time around. If you believed that sort of thing.

  “He’s not feeling well,” Grey said.

  That was close to the truth. He didn’t say his dad was sick, even though that was dead on true—sick in the head and sick in the heart.

  “He’s not returning my texts,” Mom said. “Or calls.”

  “You surprised?”

  She nodded with the x-ray vision beaming through him, a spotlight in search of the truth. Grey gave her his full attention, let her look, hoping she wouldn’t see. She didn’t need to know about the bottomed-out college fund or his dad’s state of mind. She didn’t believe her opinion of him could get lower.

  The truth was hidden for her protection.

  Maybe his dad would change his mind, call him one day and invite him over. Grey was accustomed to the absentee-dad thing, but what if he got access to the Maze again? Grey wanted that. The college fund would be worth it.

  I am a selfish shit because the nut doesn’t fall far from the tree.

  His mother finished brushing her teeth at the kitchen sink, gave final instructions to clean up, don’t make a mess, don’t do drugs and see you in the morning. She tied the bandana around her neck and was off to work.