As she walked to the door, another memory stirred. Hadn’t Malcolm said something about how she would hate him next time? He had, yes. The night with the riding crop kisses, he’d given her permission to love him since next time they met she would hate him. Now that was laughable, utterly laughable. She couldn’t hate Malcolm. Another mind game. She was growing fond of them.
Mona slowly opened the back room door. It was dark inside. Completely dark. The sun had set and no light shown through the skylight. No light at all. Strange. There should have been some ambient light in the room from the street lamps and the moon. But no, the room was pitch black. The door shut behind her and she leaned her back against it, afraid of taking another step in the dark lest she trip and fall.
"Malcolm?”
He didn’t answer her call.
Something else was off. Usually the room smelled of nothing but clean dust, the scent of old books, old theaters, old paint. After a night with Malcolm it smelled of cigar smoke and sex. But now it smelled like an animal had been in here. A large animal. Was that the wine’s doing? A breeze blew past her, warm like a sea breeze. Her nose twitched. There was that scent again. A kind of animal musk. The smell troubled her nose. It didn’t belong in here. She fumbled for the doorknob behind her and felt a string tied to it. She followed the string with her fingers and found it extended far into the room. Now she understood the darkness—she was to follow the string where it led. There was an old myth about the labyrinth, a thread to guide a girl… Who was the girl, again? Ariadne? She’d been out of school too long to say for certain. But she knew the string was to guide her through the labyrinth. She took a steadying breath and stepped forward, thread in hand. Malcolm certainly went all out for these assignations. No wonder two months could pass between their liaisons. It would take anyone that long to put these sorts of scenes together. Perhaps he’d majored in theater at university.
She giggled a little drunkenly at the thought. Oh no, not laughing already. It would likely hurt Malcolm’s feelings if she laughed at this production of his. She must be very solemn. Following the string in her hand, Mona felt herself walking toward the center of the back room. She sensed walls on either side of her. Malcolm had constructed a whole set for tonight. How flattering it was he went to so much trouble when she would have met him in a seedy motel had he asked it of her. Of course he went to all this trouble to please himself, not her, but she couldn’t deny she enjoyed that he took their assignations so seriously.
Ahead of her she caught a glimpse of light, red and flickering. The thread led her to turn a corner and she saw a fat white candle alight on the floor in the middle of a blank hallway. She picked up the candle in its holder and raised it. The candle illuminated only the few feet around her, and she saw nothing ahead but the white thread she held. The walls on either side of her were narrow. They looked and felt like stone to her. But that was highly unlikely. It wouldn’t take long to build a maze out of large sheets of plywood, but a stone maze would take weeks. He was either a very good set designer or she had been drugged.
Considering how light she felt, how fluttery and faint, she figured it was the latter. Malcolm had spiked the wine with some drug or other, one that made her very susceptible to the power of suggestion and also made her care not one whit that he’d drugged her.
Tomorrow, however, she’d be furious at him.
For now, she followed the thread. At the end of the hall she met another corridor. The string told her to go right, but she was more curious to see what was left. She turned her head and saw an enormous shadow move at the end of the hall. She jumped back with a gasp, nearly dropping the candle.
The shadow disappeared into the darkness. It had seemed far too tall, too wide to be human. Was this the Minotaur?
No. Not possible. Shapes were distorted when thrown into shadow, she reminded herself. The drugs had done this to her mind. Surely it was nothing. Her eyes were playing games with her too.
Mona glanced behind her and narrowed her eyes. Nothing. She saw nothing. But she heard something.
A growl.
A deep, low, animal growl, like a large dog or wolf.
"Malcolm?” she called out again. It made her feel safer to say his name.
He made no reply, no answer at all.
But he wouldn’t, would he? Not until the game was over.
She chided herself for giving into fear. This was nothing but a Halloween haunted house. That’s all. He’d set up a painted plywood maze in the large back room while she was out at the Degas exhibit. He’d covered the skylight. He’d put a string on the doorknob and when she found her way to the end of it, she would find Malcolm, naked, reclining on the bed and wearing a silly bull’s mask. He’d throw her onto the bed, probably put her on her hands and knees, and then he’d mount her from behind like a bull on a cow. That’s all. No reason for her to feel such fear. She blamed the wine for her overreaction—the wine, and whatever Malcolm had put into it.
Carefully she started forward again. The candle flame sent dancing shadows everywhere and they did nothing to help steady her head or clear her vision. She focused on the white thread in her hand. This was her life line. It would take her to Malcolm or take her back out again. Nothing bad would happen as long as she had this candle and this silk thread in her hands.
She came to a corner and turned. At the intersection where one hall met the other, she saw a hooded person, cloaked and wearing a cowl. Mona screamed and threw herself back against the wall. The figure was gone. She hadn’t seen where it had come from or where it had disappeared, but disappeared it had. She thought it had worn red.
Distant music echoed through the halls.
It wasn’t like the sprightly flute music of the nymphs and the satyr. She heard low rumbling drums. Chanting. She couldn’t make out any of the words of the chant, but the voices sounded female. She was certain the creature in the red cloak had been male. She’d only seen it for a split second, but its bulk had filled every inch of the corridor. Its shoulders were twice as broad as hers, its height towering. Something told her it hadn’t seen her.
"It.”
The Minotaur.
Calm down, she told herself. The shadowy figure wasn’t an "it.” The "Minotaur” was either Malcolm in a costume or one of his many compatriots. He seemed to have a bevy of play partners for his erotic adventures. Any one of them could have donned a cloak to frighten her, that was all.
She followed the cord a few more steps and the music grew louder. She was nearing the end. The thread led her through another turn in the maze and there she smelled that animal scent again. It was strong in her nostrils and strangely pleasant. A smell like raw nature, like a horse might smell after a long dusty trail ride.