To Best the Boys(46)

“Which door?” Beryll yells to Lawrence.

“Follow Germaine,” I reply in a deep voice.

He obeys and tags after three kids who are going for it too, and Seleni and I trail the lot of them until suddenly it’s my turn, and I’m charging through the doorway into Caldon-knows-what.

The moment we enter, the hedge shivers and ripples, and I don’t have to spin around to know that the door behind us has just dissipated. I look anyway and find I’m correct. There’s no exit—only forward. The feasibility of such a thing is beyond me, but it doesn’t matter—there’s no time. I turn back and see Lute stopped on a narrow path that shoots thirteen feet ahead before it splits into a cross-section going two opposite directions. The back of Rubin’s blue tunic is just disappearing around the left curve, and the three boys we followed through are heading for the right.

Lawrence grabs Beryll’s sleeve. “Wait!” He points at the bushes the tall hedges are created from.

They’re Sleeping Man-Traps, one touch of which will leave a grown man passed out cold for a solid five hours. Da and I regularly use the poison in sleeping aids for patients—but having it here? I look around. This isn’t just about getting through this section the fastest—it’s about getting through it at all.

“Sleeping weeds,” Lawrence says. “They’ll knock you out.”

Lute nods as his face flashes recognition. “Don’t touch the sides, boys.” Then points at Lawrence. “Want to lead the way, kid?”

Lawrence firms his jaw and starts forward on the path just as three more boys erupt from the disappearing door behind us. With little more than a shout of “Move!” they hustle through and head for where Rubin disappeared. Except the moment they turn the corner to enter that path, the hedge shifts and closes around them and another section opens to our right. As if growing and shriveling.

“What the?” Sam looks at Will.

Lawrence ignores them and hurries us to the only path now available. But the moment we take it, the hedge closes behind us, same as it did to the others.

Two more paths promptly open, and Lawrence looks at the group.

“Go left this time.” Beryll takes the lead, but before we reach the path, the vines cave in and force us to go right again.

“I think we’re making a circle,” Sam shouts.

“We need to move faster then.” Will steps into one of three openings that have just appeared, and the rest of us barely make it in before it regrows.

“There’s too many options!” Lawrence says.

“Just keep moving!” Seleni shoves Lawrence onto a path in front of us, but something’s niggling at me. It’s not just that there are too many options . . .

The poisoned hedges are starting to shift faster. I look up at the starry night sky. Then back at the path as a new opening emerges. The niggling gets stronger.

I watch another route sprout open at the same time the entire hedge in front of us ripples and seems to grow larger. Which is when I see it.

The paths are growing narrower.

I yell at the group—to tell them it’s shrinking—to say we only have a short time to figure this out. But it’s unnecessary. The moment we turn the new corner, the hedge narrows again, and the boys’ expressions say they see it too.

Beryll looks at Lute. “Any ideas? What if—?” His voice cuts off as his eyes grow round at something to the right of us. He lets out a soft whimper.

Lute and I turn just as a series of shrieks starts up through the Labyrinth, beyond our hedge corridor. But it’s the thing Beryll’s staring at that about rips my spine from my skin.

An impossible mirage materializes to the side of us—it’s of Beryll’s father. Beside him stands what appears to be Beryll as a small child trying to get the man’s attention. Except the mirage alters, and Beryll’s father suddenly becomes a basilisk monster that stalks toward us—toward Beryll in real life. In the maze.

I jump back as Seleni gasps and Lawrence lets out a scream. Except the air now ripples around me, and suddenly my mum is in front of me, lying dead in a grave with dirt being thrown on top of her. I retreat and shake my head. What is going on? Why am I seeing this? Except just like Beryll’s, the image is changing and I am the one in a grave, with an older version of Vincent standing over me, and he’s mumbling something about me having become the pliable wife who got him to the positions of fame he needed.

My eyes water as the scene alters—even as I’m aware that more screams have picked up—not just from Beryll but from others in my group also as maybe they’re seeing their own horrors. The vision in front of me changes to a scene where I’m waiting with dinner in hand as Vincent tells our children to stop stressing him out. He comes over and puts his hands on my face, and right before he kisses me, his face and eyes turn into those of a ghoul.

I lean over and vomit onto the grass at my feet.

When I look up, no one else is watching. Seleni is screaming at her vision of Beryll kissing another woman. Lute is weeping as a mirage in front of him shows Ben standing alone at Lute’s and his mum’s graves. I can’t see what Sam and Will are looking at, but from their gaping expressions, they’re drowning at sea.

What did Holm do to us? Maybe the fog he disappeared into had a mind-altering compound. Either way . . .

I force my gaze past the boys—through their visions to the shrubs. We have to get out of here. We have to move.