I stepped off the bus, the smell of rain hung in the air and frost stuck to the grass. I hadn’t realized how late it would be getting here as the bus had several delays due to something going wrong mechanically. I pulled my sweater tighter around me, shivering slightly, though it wasn’t just the weather that made my skin prickle. A strange sensation that I couldn’t place coursed through me, an urge, something known whispered and tugged at the corners of my mind.
“Wendy!” A familiar voice broke through my thoughts and I turned to see Clara, my cousin and best friend, waving enthusiastically. She rushed toward me, her auburn hair sashaying behind her.
“Hey! I’m so glad you made it!” Clara enveloped me in a warm hug, she was the yin to my yang. Her energy was always a stark contrast to my quieter demeanor. “It’s been forever since we’ve had a Halloween together! I’m so glad you came here to make this happen. I have so many ideas!”
I managed a smile. Although I’m pretty sure it came out like a grimace and an uneasiness gnawed at me, a flicker, no awarningof something I didn’t understand. “Yeah, I'm excited tobe here,” I forced the words out as I followed her toward her car that would take us to her campus. To Bartholomew University.
The ride wasn’t more than 15 minutes but Clara talked so fast that I swore I knew far too much about people I’d never even met even their sex lives. I was ready to crawl out the window, but the world seemed to quiet as we found our way on campus, even Clara’s voice faded into nothing.
We drove past a building that was mainly stone. Gargoyles seemed to arm the entrances, their gothic architecture was stunning and I couldn’t look away. I swore I saw one blink and I couldn’t shake this feeling that they were alive, but I couldn’t linger on that thought as I was drawn to something that lay behind the buildings.
A maze.
Its tall hedges seemed to sway slightly in the breeze, and it felt…inviting.
“Oh look!” Clara pointed at a flyer. “They’re having a haunted tour tonight! We should go, you’ll love it.” Her eyes twinkled mischievously and I almost immediately regretted my decision in telling her that sounded fun. My gaze was still fixed on the maze in the distance even though we had now parked the car and were walking further away from it and toward Clara's dorm room.
But it seemed to beckon me, pulling at the strings of something, curiosity maybe? And I couldn’t help but ask, “What’s with the maze?”
Clara looked over at me, confused until she followed my gaze. “Oh! That old thing. You know, the usual. That it’s haunted, some student got lost in there and died years ago.” She shrugged.“I don’t know much more about it, just that we aren’t supposed to go there.” It was her first year here, so I couldn’t begrudge her for not knowing.
“Right…so it’s not part of the haunted tour then?” I asked but already knowing the answer, a shiver ran down my spine. I could feel it in my bones, the call of the maze.
After we deposited my stuff in her room, we made our way back outside, and night had officially begun to fall. Lanterns flickered to life around us, casting shadows. Clara pulled me toward the area on the quad where the tour was set to start, her enthusiasm was infectious but my heart raced with something unsettling. A thread I couldn’t see seemed to pull me in a different direction, opposite of the one Clara was taking me in.
“Clara…I don’t, I don’t know about this,” I hesitated, the overwhelming feeling of being watched creeped over me.
“Come on Wendy, this will be fun,I promise.”She tugged on my arm leading me toward a group of others but once I took a step further away from where my body was aching to go, the air shifted. It grew thick with an otherworldly tension. A strange whisper seemed to vibrate through me, whispering to me in the rustle of leaves.
“Did you hear that?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
“Hear what?” Clara replied, her laughter fading as she gazed around.
“Never mind.” I shook my head, trying to shake all of this off and chalk it up to the long journey to get here, but the pull intensified. A soft voice that I was trying to ignore was winding through my thoughts, and wrapped around my heart and tugged.
“Gwendolyn…”
The name,my name, floated through the air. I stopped, my breath hitched in my throat. “Did you hear that?”
Clara turned back at me and frowned. “Hear what?”
I turned to her, my panic rising. “I don’t know…but something, something called my name.”
Clara rolled her eyes at me. “Stop being weird, you’re just being paranoid. It’s All Hallows’ Eve, you’re just feeding off the day.”
She pulled me along as a few other students filtered from the shadows and it was only then that I realized the tour had already begun and the guide was rambling on about one thing or another. We ventured deeper into the campus and further away from the maze and I felt like the air was becoming thinner.
“Gwendolyn…” The voice was clearer now, and it wrapped around me.
“Clara…I…I need to go,” I faltered. “I need to go.”
“What? Don’t be silly.” Clara tugged at my arm, but I didn’t care, I had to go.
I had to go to the maze.
Chapter Three
Gwendolyn
