Chapter Ten
Kasper
She’s perfect.
Gwendolyn stood before me, the fear in her eyes from earlier was now replaced with mischief and menace, causing my need for her to grow.
I felt drawn to her in ways I didn’t care to try and explain.
I felt alive for the first time in hundreds of years.
I saw and felt the way the stalks that made up the maze reached for her, swirled around her, caressed her.
It was captivating, she was captivating, like I said, perfect.
“I did my research,” she began, her voice smooth and confident, all tendrils of the fear it once held gone.
“About the school, about the maze. Some pieces didn’t fit but looking at you, feeling the maze, I'm starting to put it all together.” She pursed her lips and I could see the way everything was coming together in her mind, putting it all together now that she wasn’t playing the victim.
“It took a while, it took old newspaper clippings and then obituaries and some whisperings in online chats about what happens here. About what this place is, I ignored most of it, thinking no way. But they were right, weren’t they?
About the school, about some of the students. ”
“Yes.” Magnificent little creature she was to behold and I was enamored.
“What were you, or better yet, what are you?” She cocked her head to the side in assessment.
“I’m a ghost now, and keeper of this maze, but during life, I was a warlock.” I grinned when she showed me not even a sliver of fear. Perfect.
“So you can explain it to me then, what happens here. Someone dies here every Hallows’ Eve, it’s you, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Am I the next victim?”
“At first, I thought so,” the words spilled out, “but in order for you to understand, you must first understand how the maze came to be, and what exactly the maze is.” I watched her and her silence, and let the winds of memory sweep through me, pulling me back to the night I died. I told her my ending and my beginning.
The air had been thick with anticipation, the school bustling with preparations for the Hallows’ Eve festivities.
The maze had been constructed on land steeped in history, a burial ground where the past still lingered close to the surface, where creatures murdered the innocent, and the school covered it up, but the ground remembered.
I’d been filled with youthful arrogance, convinced that my magic could shield me from the ordinary issues that plagued the world, but as I accepted a dare, and ignored the warnings my body gave, I succumbed to something I had never expected: illness.
Pneumonia, they would have called it now, but back then, it was just another reminder of our vulnerability. I remember staggering through the paths, my breath shallow, my body betraying me, the mind numbing cold I felt until I felt nothing at all.
I had been drawn to the maze, the vibrant colors of its decorations beckoning me, the dare a classmate whispered that I couldn’t spend the night alone in a maze without chickening out ate at me until my ego demanded that I accept it.
As my body became a victim to the sickness, I felt the earth and ground consume me, twisting, and seeping into my very soul as we became one.
The maze welcomed my despair and my helplessness, absorbing the last of my essence and powers as I gasped for life, the warmth of my magic fading into the cold embrace of death.
In those final moments, as I slipped away, I felt the maze awaken as it pulled the last flicker of life from me as it intertwined with my dying breath, weaving my magic into its very fabric.
The ground, once a resting place for the unfairly departed, demanded a price for the sins that were committed.
As such, we became one.
I blinked, the memory retreating like shadows at dawn.
Now, as I stood before the unmoving Gwendolyn, I continued to explain to her the truth of my existence as I knew it.
“I was what you would consider in this day and age a good warlock.” My voice was low and steady.
“As my magic infiltrated the soil and the maze, we were both reborn, into this. The maze, it calls to those who have no hope for repentance. It sees into the depths of your soul and flushes out all that is good, and all that is light. Those who have none perish within its walls, and I have a purpose in death that I didn’t have in life.
There are some creatures that are far too dangerous to consider letting free. ”
I saw the flicker of understanding in her eyes, the same spark that ignited my obsession.
“But it welcomed you.” If I had a heart, it would be racing.
“It was never its intention to kill you, I realized that when it didn’t break your legs and snap your fingers as you ran from me.
It's choosing you, inviting you, Gwendolyn.” I smiled adoringly at her.
“Likeness craves likeness, my love, and the maze and I have found our second keeper.”