Paul walked along the side of the house toward the back, flashlight beam swallowed up by the brightness overhead. He held a pistol, safety on, and tried not to remember everything he’d seen and felt and tasted the last time he’d held a gun. His ears ached from noiselessness. Even the ghosts had gone quiet. All of them. Even Cassandra Somers. He still felt faint hints of their existences, vague sixth sense notions, but only from a great distance. Whatever had held the unquiet dead in whispers for the past weeks had finally cowed them into utter silence.

He stepped on a dry twig and froze. Swore at himself. Kept walking.

The hedge maze backing the mansion didn’t have ‘dead ends’ per se. Four ‘rooms’ served as turnabouts where the labyrinth would have otherwise required them. The ‘rooms,’ walled in green leaves and furnished in benches, chairs, and tables of wrought iron, existed primarily to bypass the need for dead ends. The carefully designed hedge labyrinth needed to be unicursal; though nobody had ever explained to Paul the reasons why.

One such room sat a mere ten paces from the southern entrance, a stone-floored space now dominated by a memorial statue to Razz, nee Tyrell Meeks. Two footpaths criss-crossed the distance between the entrance to the maze and the entrance to the memorial chamber. Flashlight under pistol, Paul leaned around one angle and then another, searching for signs of the Mask.

Nothing.

Letting go of a held breath, Paul backtracked.

Something rustled from deeper inside the labyrinth. Paul stopped. Waited.

Leaves murmured in the wind. 

Paul turned back toward the mansion. He peered over at its corner angles, searching for Victor beneath the bright floodlights. He remained alone. Pursing his lips, he wondered if he ought to wait or just continue the patrol. With a glance overshoulder at the labyrinthine green, he decided to continue—

Branches cracked somewhere inside the labyrinth. Something (he knew what) broke through thick foliage, tore through bush-brush walls. The movement crashed on for several seconds before abruptly ceasing.

Void silence fell. Paul’s breath broke it, echoing in his ears.

They’d known the Mask would come that night. The knowledge changed nothing.

be careful, doc, the Speaker hissed, a sizzling whisper crossing his consciousness unbidden. I’d hate to have to watch you bleed out.

Even after a year dealing with the invasive entity on-and-off and on-and-off again, Paul still felt the immediate impulse to respond aloud. He restrained himself. Instead, he crouched low, placed his flashlight gingerly on the ground, and fumbled his cellphone out of his pocket. Eyes flicking between the phone-face and the maze entrance, Paul thumbed through a couple menus and called Victor. As the line trilled, he left the phone on the ground and retrieved the torch.

tngg—a sound echoed, steel against stone.

tng-tng-tng-tng

The floodlight cascade faded into dimness just beyond the labyrinth entryway. Paul ventured forth flashlight-under-pistol, each step a long breath, hot sweat, hairs prickling on the back of his neck. be careful doc, the Speaker repeated, almost mocking. The bare-bright revealed the pedestal of Razz’s monument.

The Mask stood behind it, slapping the flat of Its knife against the side of the stone slab. It stared at him, seeing him long before he saw It.

“Vic!” Paul shouted. And again, longer: “Viiiic!”

The Mask moved. Paul squeezed the trigger. The gun barked. But the Mask hadn’t moved the way Paul had presumed—the bullet whizzed into nowhere, the Mask slinking back into the dark. Before Paul could align another shot, It had melted from form to silhouette to a mere shade within shadows.

More branches and twigs snapped and shattered. Brush ripped. Paul followed the noise with the barrel of his sidearm, the beam of his flashlight. When the sound stopped, Paul stared into the darkness at its source, waiting.

“Paul!” Victor shouted, voice echoing with distance. When he repeated the call a second later, he’d gotten closer—but still ten or twelve seconds away.

Paul stepped back.

too late.

The hand burst through a wall of brush and grabbed Paul’s arm. It pulled him into the thicket and through leaves and prickers and branches. His shirt tore. Red lines tracked his skin. He closed his eyes reflexively, twigs sharping and jabbing his face. He fired a bullet, aiming with hope alone. Of course it hit nothing.

On the other side of bramble chaos, Paul found anguish. As the world spun and twisted in dark and dim, a blade sunk into him. The edge cut muscle fiber, the tip pierced softmeat. Cold pain and hot blood sealed the knife inside the wound. Paul fired his gun again, missing, and crashed into a wall—not a wall—a body, the Mask. 

He lashed out wildly, his existence a confusion of impulse and agony, reflex and adrenaline. His flashlight smashed into whatever skull waited beneath the Mask; Paul felt the reverberation through his every inch. He felt it when the gun made contact, too. The Mask made no noise, no sound to indicate injury. Even as Paul clubbed the monster again, It remained unmoved. 

now, the Speaker whispered. let me in, let me in. give me control and I’ll show you what I can do.

Paul felt the barrel of his pistol press against something hard. At the same time, the Mask wrenched Its knife free of his body. More biological wiring snapped and untethered. A sudden spill of claret stained Paul’s shirt. Shouting unintelligible panic-pain, Paul squeezed the trigger. At point-blank, the Mask’s body muffled some of the gun-cry. It staggered back, a faintly audible grunt escaping It. 

Paul stumbled backward, firing again.

“Over here!” Victor shouted, only feet away.

A shotgun blast burst the night. A sheet of suppressive pellet-fire blew through hedges. Paul felt Victor take him by the arm. Following the other man’s example, Paul fired another couple rounds half-blindly into the dim. The Mask made no noise, no sound to indicate injury. Clumsily, their weights unbalanced against each other, Paul and Victor retreated into the floodlight brightness.

The point had been to get chased by the Mask. But they’d known the greater risks.

“Come on,” Victor muttered, gaze switching between Paul’s face and the maze entrance every second. He carried his shotgun one-handed, his flashlight dropped somewhere unimportant. As they lurched, struggling with weight and balance to retreat, Victor shouted, “Deirdre!” over his shoulder.

The back door slammed open. Paul saw Deirdre as a blur framed by threshold.

“Shit,” Victor muttered. “Shit.”

Midnight quiet had replaced the shriek and cavalcade.

Where had the Mask gone?