Mastim's Curse

Chapter 37

Now that we have a knife, it's time to get unchained. It takes a slow carful hand to cut the hard leather bindings, and once the job is done, I feel like the tables are turned in our favor. We go through the door our deceased bounty hunter was going to take, me with the trap hanging from my left hand and the hunting knife in my right while Suzie keeps the bat at the ready.

Once again, a panel slides down and locks in place when we are through the door. I hate when they do that. Almost immediately, the sound of the barking dogs changes, like they're running toward us. Not dogs again... Killing dogs brings me no pleasure. They end up so close to us that Suzie yelps and starts to claw on the doorway panel in a panic. The loud barking gets my heart racing, but there are no dogs in sight. The sounds are coming from the other side of the wall where they're scratching furiously on the wood trying to get to us.

Suzie squeezes my arm. "I'm glad we didn't go that way."

"Me too."

We continue guardedly down the hallway. It's decorated with colorful graffiti also along with words of encouragement, such as 'You will die', and 'This is going to hurt'. The hall turns to the right, and then after a bit more, it turns right again before we come to a choice of doors with one going straight and the other on the left wall. Once we are closer, we can make out a message scrawled on the wall. It says, "Face Mecca and enter to meet God, or take the other path and suffer."

A riddle, just what we need with our lives on the line. I've just killed a man and now I have to push that out of my mind enough to solve a riddle. Riddles suck.

"It's a riddle," Suzie says.

"I got that much... Do you know what it means?"

"Not yet," she says.

I run my fingers over the letters. "I don't understand it, other than Mecca is east."

Suzie's lips move as if she is rehearsing an old forgotten song. Then she looks back the way we came. "That dead man back there may be meeting God right now."

She has a point. "True... Maybe we don't want to meet God today."

Her eyes float back to the scrawled letters. "To live is to suffer," Suzie mummers.

"What?"

"I studied Buddhism." She has that far away look on her face again. "To live is to suffer. It's one of the Noble Truths."

"That is especially true today," I say.

A nervous smile crosses her lips. "That's for sure. Well, if that's what this means, then taking the east door leads to our death and the other door leads to us suffering. I would rather suffer a little more than die."

While she's talking, I've noticed a few pieces of straw lying on the ground in front of the door to our left. Looking back shows that there is a few more leading back the way we came. So, this must be the way the straw was brought in and that means it's the way out.

I point at the straw. "Riddle or not, this is the path they brought the straw in by, which makes it the shortest way out."

She looks down at the ground and a frown creases her lips. "The shortest way may not be the best way, besides I think that door is facing east."

My sense of direction is all messed up. I'm not sure which way is east. Let me think... When we were outside, the sun was setting to my left facing the maze. I think through the turns we've taken... This could be east. I'm not sure. "Look, we have no idea why they wrote these words here, or what they mean, but we do know that they brought in the straw though this door, so that makes this the best way to go based on pure hard facts."

Without waiting for her to respond, I open the door with the straw a few inches and hear a metallic click from the other door.

Suzie reaches out and tries to open it the other door to no avail. "It's locked."

"Our choice is made then, let's go meet God." I open the door wider and we step through into the poorly lit hallway. "Forest Gump" is scrawled on the wall.

"What's that supposed to mean?" I say.

"Shrimp?" Suzie says. "A box of chocolate? Maybe we're in for a surprise."

I say, "This whole place is a surprise, a whole bunch of nasty ones." The floor is hard and uneven and after a few steps, I reach my arm out in front of Suzie to stop her. "Wait, something's wrong with the ground here." The firm, hollow sounding surface is strange yet somehow familiar.

Suzie bounces up and down. "It feels like a tread mill at the gym."

There is another click followed by a low rumble as a panel falls behind us sealing off the door we just passed through. That's expected, however, the sharp metal spikes protruding from it are new.

"That can't be good, let's get out of here."

"Yes... Quickly," Suzie says.

We start to move briskly away from the spiked wall when there's another mechanical click and the floor starts to move, pulling us back toward the spikes.

"Oh shit," Suzie says. "It is a treadmill. Forest Gump means run!"

"You're right. Run!" We take off running toward the open exit at the end of the hall. When we're about half way to the other side the treadmill picks up speed. We break into a sprint with me in the lead, but we're not fast enough and the treadmill slowly pulls us back toward the spikes. Suzie is much slower than me and is getting dangerously close to the spikes.

"Run faster Suzie," I yell.

"I can't," she cries.

The steel trap swings wildly in my hand as I'm just able to hold my own. I can't keep this pace up much longer.

Suzie yells. "We're going to die!" There's panic in her voice.

I'm panting heavily and sweat is pouring from every pore on my body while my lungs burn with the effort. The beating I took yesterday isn't helping as my body protests and I feel my side start to crap up. Deep down, the sour realization comes that this is it. The family curse is about to claim another victim.

Suzie is saying something and waving. With all the noise of treadmill, and with my own heartbeat pounding in my ears, I can barely make sense of her.

She gathers her breath and yells. "Drop the trap!"

Well, I don't need the trap anymore as I am about to die, and it is a nuisance, so I let it slip out of my grasp carful it's on the side away from Suzie. It drops to the treadmill's track surface with a loud clang and then is carried backward where it crashes and bangs against the wall. Then the chain connected to it is pulled into the crack between the wall and the moving track. The trap grinds heavily against the wall for a minute, and then with a loud clank of metal, the treadmill stops. I'm flung forward violently onto the track where I crash into a heap.

"Get off the track before it starts again," Suzie pleads.

I'm so exhausted that I feel like I'm going to vomit. I lie still on the treadmill until she comes and tries to pull me up.

"Get off the track. Then we can take a break." There's desperation in her voice.

"Fine," I say while getting to my knees. Sharp pain shoots down my right side from where it's cramping as soon as I move. Suzie helps me down the track and once we are both safely out of the treadmill trap, we collapse to the ground in the unlit passage. "Thanks, you saved our lives with that idea about the trap."

She is lying on her back breathing hard and looks over to give me a smile. "See, we make a good team."

I smile back. "Yes we do."

"I actually didn't think it would work," she says. "But I was desperate."

"Well, it did. See, together, we can make it out of here."