Glitch. Part 12

I write of THE LABYRINTH not to encourage the foolish to conduct this ritual. I write this not to make fame or fortune for myself. I write this as a warning: because the labyrinth is real. And if you discover it, you'd better know what to do instead of running in blind.

So pay attention.

In a city, you will find a small cave. Maybe it'll be inside the earth, maybe it'll be on the edge of a cliff, and maybe it'll be on the rocks by a lake. You'll know this is the cave because, even though it'll be shallow and small, once you step into it the sky will darken outside, even at the hight of noon.

There will be a stone in the cave. It will be standing upright, and will look completely normal.

Now, don't stare at the stone. If you do, you'll be calling the labyrinth open.

If you do stare at the stone, you'll start to feel odd. The air will turn warm and toasty, and the colors in the room will go haywire. Your vision will blur and your eyes will feel weird, like when you're staring at an optical illusion.

If you break eye contact with the stone, everything will go back to normal.

But if you stare into the stone long enough, it'll turn black.

The stone has become an entrance to the labyrinth now. If you don't break eye contact with the stone, and if you move slowly into it, you will enter the labyrinth. But if you do, you will be unable to get out unless you have someone on the other end to help you.

If you see two blue lights in the stone, you should run. That means a stalker man has found you.

The stalker man can't hurt you as long as you don't step into the stone. If you do however, you'll be in danger. Your eyes will turn bright blue, and then...

It'll be too late.

There was a note from MrSparkle at the bottom of the message.

-yeah I know it's sort of sucky compared to the really good pastas out there. the spinoffs were great though. too bad no one can find them now. anyway hope this helps. look into the Theta-Pi series if you like the idea of this one, or this book called Arena, it's sorta a similar concept.

I took a deep breath. I calmly and quickly wrote a reply to MrSparkle thanking him for the story. I a.s.sured him it had been helpful.

I shut off the laptop, unplugged it, and looped the power cord around my elbow. I closed the laptop and put it and the cord back in the box under Greg's bed.

Then, I slowly entered my room, locked the door, and screamed at the wall for a few minutes.

The story was real.

The writing was c.r.a.p but it was real. The glowing eyes, the air, the darkened sky, I'd seen all of those.

But that story made the whole thing sound like f.u.c.king b.l.o.o.d.y Mary.

My throat got sore so I stopped screaming. Screaming was useless anyway. I wasn't some horror-movie chick. I collapsed onto a pile of clothes next to the bed.

The door to my closet has a mirror on it. I looked sideways at it. My eyes were still blue.

f.u.c.k it.

I got up and slid the closet door open. Unlike the rest of my room, the inside was bare of junk. The entire thing was empty, except for a blue toolbox at the bottom.

The toolbox was a heavy, Craftsman model, built like a small tank. It was the same kind my dad owned back home. He bought me the toolbox when I moved out, and presented it to me as a gift of one man to another. It was a thoughtful gesture from a person I loved, but Dad forgot I didn't even know how to use a screwdriver.

That was why I'd stuck a label on the box with the heading "emergency journalism equipment."

I thumbed the latches off and opened up the box. A set of compartments fanned open with oiled, mechanical silence. I lifted the compartments out. Most of them held bolts, screws, and tools. But at the very bottom...

I lifted out six containers of small, rattly stuff, and two trays of screwdrivers, wrenches and ratchets. When the last tray was lifted out, it revealed the bottom of the box: all the tools of my trade as a blogger.

Okay, most of it was c.r.a.p: fake moustaches, hair dye, a broken voice-recorder for interviews. But there was something I could use: an ancient, silver Motorolla flip phone.

The phone was banged up, the plastic scuffed grey. The SD card was gone. But when I powered it on, the battery was full-and there was a camera in it.

I also found four TTC tokens, a roll of quarters, a flashlight, and a red spiral notebook with half the pages ripped out. I grabbed a blue hoodie draped across my desk and tucked all the equipment in various pouches.

Last of all, I tore a sc.r.a.p of paper from my notebook and scratched out a note.

Greg-off to find monsters. Not back by midnight call 911. For serious.

-Sam I left the note on the kitchen table.

Outside, the afternoon waned. By the time I reached my destination, it'd be near dusk.

That didn't bother me; I wasn't afraid of night.

Just stars that ran in perfect lines.

"It's getting worse. We can't save him."

The sun set on Lake Ontario. Wind blew through my hair and ruffled the sleeves of my dark red hoodie. I held my phone up to the sky, and the departing clouds. I clicked the camera.

No stars.

I snapped the phone shut. I wanted to toss it. I wanted to give up and go home. Instead, I looked around the park to see if I'd missed something.

The park was one of those small, no-name ones. It stretched about half a kilometer-starting at some tennis cages and going up to a parking lot north of here. On one side of the park, traffic surged over the aging, high-flying Gardiner. On the other, dirty water quietly lapped at dirty sand.

The park was mostly just flat turf, with brown gra.s.s turning green. There were picnic-benches on one side, gouged with names and swear-words, and a swingset with two of the four swings falling off their rusted chains.

It was aggravating.

I stood in thought. The wind blew harder. The swings creaked in their rusty chains. On the sh.o.r.e, a flock of seagulls screeched. Their white wings flapped. Yellow stick-legs stepped out a quick, complicated dance for food.

It was so aggravating.

I pocketed the phone in my hoodie, and my fingers. .h.i.t the earring I brought with me. I rubbed the metal absently. My legs ached and I'd gone too long without Advil for my hand.

I'd do one more kilometre.

Along the sh.o.r.e, a man in bright red running shorts sprinted down the waves. His feet made wet slaps on the sand.

My hunch for searching the lakesh.o.r.e had come from the labyrinth story. The story mentioned cliffs, underground, and caves near lakes. Not counting the subway system, the GTA only had the sh.o.r.e of a lake.

But for eight kilometres, I'd walked along the sh.o.r.e. At every kilometre, I raised my phone to the sky. I never saw stars.

I walked north, keeping a distance from the lake. The seagulls followed me a few meters away.

I couldn't search the entire lakesh.o.r.e, I realized. Not in a human lifetime at least. I had to go back to work tomorrow.

I smirked.

My eyes had changed colour with no explanation. And I had to go to work tomorrow.

I laughed. There was a little too much crazy in it; the seagulls shrieked. They pumped their wings and coasted the wind back to the swing sets.

I'd landed in some sort of interdimensional conspiracy involving monsters and computer geeks. And I had to go to work tomorrow.

"Oh boy!" I cackled. "Oh man!"

Maybe the monsters would wait for me. Maybe I could negotiate a weekend-only plan with them. Maybe I could get a doctor's note exempting me from supernatural activities. It worked for swim cla.s.s in junior high.

I wiped my eyes and kept walking. As I walked, I checked the phone.

Every time I'd hold it up, squint in the light of the setting sun, and hold the camera b.u.t.ton until it made the chick-chock shutter sound.

Every time the photo showed a normal, pixelated sky.

Maybe using two-year old internet legends as a guide wasn't the practical idea I needed.

I snapped the pictures anyway.

I pa.s.sed the parking lot marking the end of the no-name park. I continued on unowned, untamed lakefront. Near the end of the kilometre, I found a ream of rocks.

The rocks included all sizes from thumb-sized pebbles to boulders bigger than my oven. They cut across my path, rising to about the height of my waist.

They came from a small cliff about thirty meters up. The cliff was artificial, probably raised to accommodate the small street pa.s.sing across it.

It looked like the city had tried to keep the cliff stable by putting up some concrete barriers and wrapping black mesh around it to prevent erosion. But the mesh had torn. I saw frayed black strands where the flow of rocks began. From there, the stones spilled across my path, and into the lake.

"He's not coming around."

Something silver glinted at the head of the rocks.

I squinted. The object was square, but it didn't look like paper or a poster. It looked solid.

I took a few steps forward.

"Give him another."

I planted a foot on the rocks and pushed myself onto them. They s.h.i.+fted beneath my weight. My legs shook as I rose.

I took another good look at the square thing.

It looked a lot like a laptop.

My laptop.

I wobbled closer and closer. The stones creaked.

I couldn't believe it.

I looked at the sky. It seemed normal. I held up my phone and took a picture-still normal sky.

I took a few steps further. It was definitely my laptop. I saw the c.r.a.ppy Type R sticker I'd pasted to the front-joking that it made the computer go faster.