It hit the minotaur square in his well defined abdomen. The beast roared and lashed his head back, cutting two great gashes in my walls, and slid back a couple of meters. When he looked down his eyes were burning red. He snorted twice more and scraped at the wooden floor with a foot, then backed to the end of the hall. I heard DJ’s gun gathering another charge.
This was out of hand.
“Enough!” I shouted and sprang to my feet. The rush of adrenalin had cleared my fog of memories.
The minotaur dropped his head and charged and DJ raised her gun.
In one quick, well-practiced motion, I straightened DJ’s arm, took the gun and, using her arm like a lever, pivoted her out of the way. Just as the minotaur met me, I dropped to the floor between his feet. I heard a tremendous crash, a clattering of debris, and then muffled snorting. I rolled over onto my butt. The big oaf was below me on the landing with his great, but empty head sticking through the wall. He yanked back three times before he pulled his head free, his horns adding yet more damage to the wall, and spun around. He snorted again, his breath so hot it fogged in the air around him.
DJ leapt between us and raised her small fists. “Jazz, run!”
I looked around DJ and met the minotaur’s eyes. “You’re fixing that, you know?”
The minotaur’s scowl softened then he looked over his shoulder at the huge hole, then he hung his massive head.
DJ spun around and stared at me in disbelief.
I held up a hand. “Help me up.”
“Okay, but you’ve got to explain,” she said and pulled me to my feet.
Normally I’d say, No I don’t, but I kept my mouth shut. I straightened the pleats of my mussed skirt then looked at the minotaur who was picking bits of broken wallboard off the floor. “Where’s the caretaker?”
The door to my immediate right crept open and a wizened old corpse slinked out. “I’ll need your tickets, please,” he said in a voice no louder than a whisper and dry as desert sand. He was wearing a curt black jacket and slacks, white shirt with perfect seams and a black vest with a small keystone pin. His shoes were polished to a mirror finish. His skin bore the texture of a body sometime dead—dried out and wrinkled with eyeless sockets—but one that had not begun to decay; more mummy than zombie though I still wasn’t sure which he was.
“What tickets?” DJ said looking ever more confused.
“It’s me, stinky,” I said.
“Oh,” the caretaker said in something of a croak. Dreadfully hard to tell, but it sounded like he was mocking me.
DJ glared at me with both a question and an accusation in her eyes.
I held up a hand. “I’ll explain everything,” I lied, “just let’s get all the introductions out of the way first.”
DJ looked at the old corpse in the butler’s attire. “Is this your father?”
“No,” I said, “the worse, I’m afraid, is yet to come.”
“So let’s get it over with,” DJ said.
“The proprietor,” the Caretaker said in a wheezing voice. He sounded like an out of tune accordion with a hole in its bellows and a sticking check valve. Seeming to run out of air, he stopped to draw in a slow, burdensome breath before continuing, “Is in his rooms.” A puff of dust accompanied the words leaving his black lips.
I looked at DJ, “No more putting it off, huh?”
DJ slowly shook her head. “Nope.”
“Okay then,” I said and turned to walk away but, with a creaking of dried joints, a preserved hand gripped my shoulder.
“The proprietor does not wish to be disturbed,” the Caretaker said, though he nearly ran out of breath toward the end reducing his quiet voice to barely audible.
I took his middle finger and drew it up intending to use it to pry his hand away. Instead the dammed thing broke off. Change of tactics. I spun my extended arm around like a windmill blade and pivoted, using my arm like a lever to break his grip. I nailed him with an open palm in the chest hard enough to land him on his butt. He looked up at me with those creepy eyeless sockets…man, I never did get used to that. His face didn’t move, making his reaction impossible to read. “There are many things the proprietor desires, and he’s not getting any of them.” I dropped the finger on his lap. “Sew that back on.” I walked away but stopped on the first step and looked back. The Caretaker was still on the floor staring straight ahead. “You remember who your captain is now.”
He eased his head around, his neck cracking and popping, looked over and gave me one slow nod.
I continued up.
“How does he see?” DJ asked on the stairs behind me.
I felt my shoulders rise up to my ears. “Beats the heck out of me.”
At the top of the steps we saw a repeat of the second floor, a hall with a pair of doors to either side and one door dead ahead. This hall was darker than the one below as the mallow lights were out and the only window was behind us. I felt DJ draw closer to me. Partly because she couldn’t see as well in the dark as my damaged (some might say enhanced) eyes could, but partly too because I sensed that she sensed that she was about to experience something truly evil. And she was right.
“Jazz?” she asked and I felt her stop behind me in the hall.
“Yeah?” I turned around. She was looking back at the stairs but nothing was there.
“Those…those…I mean, they work for you?”
I smiled uncomfortably as I wrestled my mind for the words. “More like they’re indentured to me. And I’m well aware that they’re deferred species.”
“I was going to say monsters.”
“Good,” I said and nodded. “Come on.”
At the end of the hall we faced a nine panel door that was made of actual real dead tree wood, stained a darker shade than the four faux wooden doors we passed along the hall. The door could have been in a museum, except there were no museums dedicated to Earth as its memory had been wiped from most everyone at the beginning of the occupation. It was old and in pristine condition except that someone, namely me, had very crudely carved, Here Be a Monster, Keep Out, in its surface.
I searched above the trim with my fingers until I found the key hidden there. The doors of Mirth were embedded with magically induced sentience and responded to their users. No one here knew how to use a key, let alone to look for one in our old hiding places. Under welcome mats and flowerpots would work just as well, except there were none of those either.
When I unlocked the door the sound of the latch pulling free of its hasp echoed eerily in the empty hall and I was again reminded of my first encounter with this man. My time spent with him involved lots of long passageways and creepy doors. I set my hand on the doorknob but couldn’t seem to will it to turn.
I didn’t realize my hand was shaking until DJ set her hers on mine. When our eyes met I felt like our usual roles had switched, I was full of uncertainty and she a reckless kind of confidence. She smiled the kind of reassuring smile where the lips lengthen but that leave the teeth covered, and then she turned my hand.
I pushed the door open and glanced in. Two small tables were set to either side of the door. Atop each a brass oil lamp glowed with the light of a flickering flame. I picked one of the lamps up by its handle and raised the wick. The flame fluttered and danced then steadied as it grew brighter. I raised the lamp higher, allowing more of the light to spill inside.
The room had a high ceiling with the tin tiles like the foyer, and was paneled with dark wood. Three tall windows, two on the long wall and one on the end, were shuttered and had their shades drawn, keeping the room in dreary darkness except for slivers of light that crept through the seams of the shutters and the flickering light from the oil lamps.
DJ picked up the other lamp and raised it to her relatively lower eye height. The room was large, the size of a generous studio apartment, but one that lacked any kind of kitchen or closet or bathroom, and sat virtually empty. The only furniture was an old leather wingback chair that faced the single s
huttered window. To either side of the chair stood two refrigerator-sized cabinets painted black. From one of the cabinets came a regular sucking of moist air that, after a brief pause, was followed by a squeaky release of air. This pattern repeated over and over and was interspersed with a steady tick that was too loud and too slow to be a clock. Aside from must and stale air, there was the smell of pine based cleaner, wax, something medicinal, like witch hazel, and the distinct stench of moth balls and I hated the smell of moth balls.
“You are here,” a computer generated voice said causing DJ to gasp and stiffen; her eyes fixed on the back of the chair. “I said you would come.” The synthetic voice was situated somewhere between the old, first generation digital answering machines and Stephen Hawking.
“Oh yes, you knew I would eventually come to my own house, you are so clever,” I said hoping I’d managed to conceal the trepidation that threatened to overwhelm me and send me scurrying back down the steps and out of the building.
I looked at DJ, then back at the still open door, and DJ gave me a little push toward the chair. I took in one more deep breath, readying myself for the coming parley. I felt weak for feeling so anxious, I wasn’t sixteen anymore, and I shouldn’t let that creepo get to me. But he still did and I suspected always would. Strong childhood impressions tend to stick with you, even after you’ve outgrown them.
“Go on,” DJ said flicking her fingers at me as if she were shooing a rabbit from