OUR NEW BUILDING IS CARPETED. Our new building is doored. I point out these changes to Willow, who is thoroughly underwhelmed.
The first door handle we encounter is locked. How refreshingly mundane.
Though this building is quite similar to the last, it features frequent fire extinguishers, vending machines, and even some tacky, stock landscape paintings hanging from the walls. I catch Willow casting me sidelong glances and realize that I’m grinning. I don’t stop.
“So what are we looking for?” I ask.
Willow frowns. “You’re sure you didn’t hit your head earlier, right?”
“An elevator ... a stairwell ... a glowing green exit sign?”
“Exit signs are red,” Willow murmurs, “and we’re looking for the way out.”
“Which will take the form of...?” I jiggle another door handle as we walk by. Locked.
Willow points at an upcoming fork, and I see blue light spilling from the right hand passage.
“Oh!” I shout, swooping by her. “Oh, you’re awesome! You’re wonderful! My hero! That took no time at all!”
Willow doesn’t share my enthusiasm. She maintains her steady pace ... and a few seconds later, it’s clear why.
This isn’t the way out. It’s moonlight, shining through the glass panes of a second bridge.
I imagine that my disappointment is palpable, that Willow can feel it oozing off of me as she sidles up alongside and gazes at the world below.
Like the last bridge, this one is also suspended fifteen feet above street level. While this road is also devoid of life, at least the decor has changed: a yellow newspaper bin chained to a lamppost, tread marks tattooed to the pavement, a squat white building opposite with a columned neo-classical façade.
The night sky is darker now. The moon’s been obscured behind a porridge of grey clouds, a canopy illuminated by the street lamps below. It looks like rain.
This bridge feels older than the last—a more antiquated design. Glass panes coat the left and right walls, but the ceiling overhead is opaque and made of black-painted metal. Its design feels blockier, and somehow more enclosing.
I place my palms against the cool glass, stare hungrily at the outside world. I don’t look back at Willow, though I see her standing quietly at my shoulder in the window’s reflection. She takes off the cowboy hat she’s been wearing all this time and settles it back atop my head. My reflection looks ridiculous.
“You okay, Lone Star?”
I sigh. When I speak, it’s to the window’s faint reflection of her already translucent self. “You asked me how many bridges I’d crossed. There’s more to come, hey?”
Her reflection nods.
“We can’t just exit through this building?”
She shakes her head.
“Gonna tell me why?”
She shakes her head again.
I turn around and plaster another grin on my face, though perhaps not as genuine as the one I’d worn moments ago. “Well, then I suppose we should mosey along.”
Willow smiles. “After you, partner.”
Our new building is still doored, thank god. It still shows signs of habitation. I grip every door handle I come across. My pace increases after every unsuccessful knob.
The paintings of the last building have been replaced with decorative mirrors, and I witness my reflection’s faux smile slowly melt into a grimace as we continue walking and walking and walking. Gone are the vending machines, though we do encounter our first water fountain and a photocopier sitting silently against a wall.
This building re-adopts the linoleum floors of the office-esque maze I began this nightmare in. My shoes fall back into their familiar squeak against the tiles. Willow’s footsteps are silent.
She’s still not very talkative, but then neither am I. Once, she glances back to ask if I need a respite. I shake my head. My watch now reads thirteen-to-something. Has it only been seven minutes since I last checked, or have hours passed?
We soon find yet another bridge. Drizzle speckles the glass’s exterior and the first fat drops slide down around us. Eager to escape the maze, I don’t loiter to admire the view, so I’m caught off guard when Willow stops abruptly in the bridge’s centre. I pass right through her insubstantial form, only to turn back and see her standing still.
I look back, to see Willow doing the same: she stands with her back towards me, staring down the corridor we’ve just come from.
My neck prickles. “Did we take a wrong—” Willow, apparently listening for something, stabs a hand into the air to cut off my sentence.
I hear nothing but the steady drip of raindrops against glass panes.
“Oh crap,” Willow hisses, then whirls around to face me. “Run!”
Willow grabs my hand and tugs. It’s the strangest sensation I’ve ever felt—someone I can’t feel, with tangible weight behind her fingers, propelling me forward. She hauls me across the bridge and only lets go when we reach the far side. She doesn’t stop there. Instead, she begins racing down the hallway of our new building.
I follow briskly. Infected by her fear, I barely register their porch-blue walls as we turn corners seemingly at random. I’m panicked by the panic in Willow’s eyes whenever she glances back, but there’s nothing there when I peer over my shoulder.
And then I hear it. The sound of water, dripping. Somehow, it’s followed us from the bridge and down the gauntlet of hallways we’re running. Clip, clip, clip.
But no, I realize, the sound is sharper. Not dripping. It’s something clattering across linoleum. It’s a sound that doesn’t belong in hotels, or office buildings, or the downtown of any urban core.
It sounds like hooves.
Willow is fast, faster than I would have given her credit for. She’s an arm’s length in front of me, then two. Soon, I’m barely turning corners in time to see her disappearing around another up ahead. I can’t tell if she still knows where she’s going, or if she’s simply fleeing the sounds of pursuit, but I’m not sure if I care.
“Wait,” I pant, as a stitch threatens to tear open my side. “Willow, wait!”
I open my mouth to shout at her, to ask her to slow down, but then shut it again. Are we running from something? What if it hears my voice?
Willow’s footsteps still don’t make a sound. Oh god. I’m going to lose her.
The hooves—I’m convinced they’re hooves—clip clop across the linoleum somewhere behind me. The sound isn’t fast so much as persistent.
I can’t shake them. It sounds close enough to grab me now. I glance over my shoulder as I spin into a new hallway, but can’t see my pursuer.
Then I turn a corner and Willow isn’t there. I stop. The sound of hooves does not.