skulls for eyes. He had seen this world, and the only explanation he could think of was that somehow, while his mind wandered in sleep, he had caught a glimpse through the eyes of some closely parallel Griffin already lost in the maze, and now hanging as a sheet, holding together a wall, or fueling a fire.
The confrontation with the skull-eyed creature had not gone well in the dream. Griffin had died. At the time he had chalked it up to a fear of Jess eventually losing her battle with the disease that ate her up. His subconscious had anthropomorphized the cancer, and had substituted him for Jess. He had designed the tattoo as a way of refusing that outcome. He had substituted the weird dragon skull of the creature with a normal human skull, and the human-sized, ocular-implant skulls with smaller skulls in the tattoo, no larger than marbles. The entire piece sat on a table near a candle, indicating his and Jess’s victory over the disease.
But now here he was, going through the maze again, Jess had already succumbed to the disease, and an entire town was poised to plummet into a cosmic abyss if he failed. Skull-Eyes had taken Jess, and now had taken his daughter. He’d found love again—he believed—with Helena, and this creature, this whole damn world, threatened that, too.
In the dream he had lost the fight.
This time it would be different. He had an ATV, a jerry can of extra gas on the back, a pistol, a knife, a weird javelin in a backpack and a twisted version of himself as an ally. Maybe. It wasn’t much, especially with darkness coming in less than two hours. But maybe it would be enough to avoid an outcome millions of other Griffins had failed to avoid.
The ATV bounced over the uneven path. Griffin refused to look too closely at it. He knew if he did, he would see that the rounded cobbles between the gritty dirt under the gently falling snow were yet more of the skulls. His skulls.
Rounding a corner to the right, the next lane had something new. Spaced evenly every fifty feet were tall gray street lamps like Griffin had seen in Boston. The old kind he associated with the seventies and early eighties—long curving arms ending in flatish sodium lamps, shaped loosely like a cobra’s head.
The lamps were not lit. Hanging from the first four poles were dead black cats, tied on to the poles by white string, which was knotted in several places. The dead felines dangled from a rear leg or from their tails. The fur looked matted and old.
The fifth pole had something else hanging from it. A human body, hung from a noose around its neck. The corpse was on fire, and swaying slightly back and forth, with large snowflakes landing on the licking flames.
The smell was overwhelming, and smoke from the blaze was pushed down by the air current above the labyrinth. Griffin held his breath and raced the quad under the corpse as quickly as he could. He approached one of the massive towers of flesh. Like a sweeping tidal wave had crashed into the side of the structure, long strands of stretched flesh arced up and over walls, and into the next alley. The one ahead had such a gentle slope he could probably ride it to the top of the wall.
He contemplated the path. It would give him a better view of the whole labyrinth, and possibly point him in the right direction. But he decided against it. He’d save that as an escape option, once he had Avalon. Besides, he was pretty sure the burning bodies were for him, lighting his way, like sign posts, deeper into the abyss.
That decision made, he sped up, taking turns as fast as he dared, and driving ever deeper into the heart of the maze. On the straightaways, he brought the quad close to its top speed. The jolting of the low PSI tires on the cobbles under the snow nearly rattled the rib cage out of him.
After another thirty two burning bodies, he exited the endless lanes and entered a huge circular clearing, a couple hundred yards across. Several other alleys led to this central
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