THE BRIDGE WILLOW FOUND has rails running underneath it. The bridge itself is empty, save for Willow and me, a blue-backed plastic chair with steel legs, and a gumball machine. The glass around us is composed of multicoloured panes, lending the world a motley appearance. Though I cannot see the sun, its reflection glints off the windows of the buildings around us.
“But it was raining,” I protest. “And midnight. Or something.”
Willow shrugs, as unhelpful as ever.
The sun is high and the day is hot. This glass tube feels like a greenhouse, and beads of sweat sprout on the spritely moustache growing on my upper lip.
Mere hours earlier, the city looked like it was basking in a cool spring, but now the day exemplifies summertime. I take off my windbreaker and tie it around my waist.
“You’ve lost your hat,” Willow says.
She’s right. Somewhere in my mad dash away from the ‘Minotaur’ I’ve misplaced my Stetson. I rub a hand through my greasy hair and take stock of my dirty, wrinkly t-shirt. I point outside to distract Willow from my disheveled appearance.
The building that this bridge leads to is, thankfully, different than any I’ve yet encountered. It’s several storeys tall and layered like a cake—the exterior of each floor is markedly distinct.
The building’s top floor features decorative stonework jigsawing around each of its arched windows. Its third storey features a squared pilaster façade spaced every few metres. Glass panes dominate the building’s second-floor exterior, separated with metal beams that splay out in all directions like spider legs. And, on the ground floor, dark grey stonework overshadows shop fronts and doorways.
“Look,” I say, “Once we cross this bridge, we can get out!”
Willow points behind us in response, to the building we just left, and the entrance clearly visible from here. “Didn’t have much luck finding that one, though, did you?”
It’s true. “What are these buildings? Mazes? They have the most bizarre layouts I’ve ever seen.”
Willow puts a hand on my shoulder and I’m surprised by the sadness in her wide eyes. “I’m sorry,” she says. “No one finds this path easy.”
“You’ve led others.”
“Three, personally. And the road changes every time. Many more besides you have come here and been led by others. Some never have a guide.”
“You didn’t answer my question as to what these buildings actually are.”
I expect another shrug, but instead, Willow sucks her teeth in deep contemplation and stares at the ceiling for a moment. Then she says, “Think of this city like a snow globe.”
“Because we’re on a bridge encased in glass?”
“Not quite. Imagine a snow globe with a little house in it. Now imagine we’re in that house. We’re running around the hallways, checking the rooms, looking for a way out, and whenever we look outside, we can see the snow-filled world outside of our window.
“What we can’t see is that this ‘world’ is confined to a small space, and that outside of it, our snow globe is in another, bigger house, and outside of that house, is another world, and so on and so forth—”
“So, we are in a lab? This is just some room, inside of another room, inside of a facility meant to—what? Test human endurance?”
“I—no. Is that what I said? No, we’re in a snow globe.”
“That still doesn’t answer my question.” I stamp my foot. “Where are we physically? In space? Under the ocean? A secret bunker buried beneath the Nevada?”
“We’re on a bridge.”
I throw my hands up in frustration and stomp three paces away.
My mood is suddenly dark—a stark contrast against the sunny streets. Lonely trees jut from the sanctioned holes in the sidewalk in front of the building we’re about to enter, their branches upraised like praying hands towards the sun I only see second-hand. To my left, a set of street lights flick from red to green and a pedestrian walk sign switches to a forbidding red hand.
“Well, I know where we aren’t,” I say. “A real city. There are still no people.”
Broad daylight. Not a single soul in sight. Willow tilts her head, and she too contemplates the street below.
“No people,” I repeat.
A sudden frenzy takes me, a panic at being the only person in the universe—not including ghosts, of course. I lift the chair from where it rests, metal legs pointed skyward over my head, and prepare to send it careening through the glass.
Why didn’t I do this sooner? It’s only fifteen feet. All I have to do is smash the window, make a dash for freedom, and escape this crazy ‘snow globe’ that I’m caged in.
But Willow touches my arm, and her grip is tense and painful. I can feel her hand shaking as her nails dig into my skin. She points, with her other hand, below us. “I said I had something to show you,” she says, her voice low. “So please, stop.”
I trace the line of her finger and see a figure sitting below us.
Something lurks in the shadow beneath the bridge.
It’s large. Too large. Like a troll, hunched in the shadows. I can barely see it, tucked away in the darkness beneath the bridge, but I can see breath fogging in front of its face, despite the summer day. And then its head moves, and I know it’s looking up at me.
Chair still suspended overhead, I back slowly away from the glass, out of sight of whatever is staring up from below. And I remember the sound of hooves chasing me through labyrinthine halls.
I exhale slowly and place the chair down. Willow quietly says, “In case you thought we were alone.”
“What is it?” I whisper, still not fully believing in monsters. “The Minotaur?”
Willow doesn’t confirm my suspicions one way or another. Instead she says, “He’s another denizen of the labyrinth. The same as you.”
Willow points again, but this time her finger aims down the street. “Watch,” she says.
So I do. I wait and I watch, out of sight of the creature hunkered beneath the bridge. I watch the tracks that run out from underneath this bridge. As I do, I notice something moving in the distance.
A snake? No—a train.
It crawls along the tracks, growing ever closer. The train is coloured white, red, and grey, and two metal arms feel their way along a series of cables overhead. A light rail transit system. Nothing new, or extraordinary, save that I haven’t seen anything like it in the maze thus far. And then I notice—
“There’s no conductor,” I whisper.
Willow nods. We stand and watch the ghost train as it rushes beneath us. I strain to catch sight of someone—a driver, a passenger, a would-be boarder (though the train never stops). I still don’t see a soul.
Then Willow crosses the bridge and I follow, my anger snuffed in the wake of this strangeness.
Our new building immediately disorients me, so thank god for Willow’s guidance. From the moment we step off the bridge, we seem to be walking on the walls.
A cork paneled ceiling runs to our right, a linoleum floor to our left. Then the hallway corkscrews sickeningly—the walls, ceiling, and floor all twist around this corridor as we walk.
One moment, I feel like I’m on solid ground, but in the next I’m stepping over artwork hung on the “wall” underfoot. I hesitate at the first painting in my path, a distorted portrait of someone I don’t recognize. Willow treads on it without checking her stride. Supposing that she knows best, I follow suit.
My guilt vanishes after the first few paintings, and then I discover perverse pleasure in defacing art that I don’t understand. I even take exaggerated care to scrape my heels across a painting of multicoloured squares and another of people melting into shades of green.
I keep my gaze lowered and focused on the art, lest I suffer another bout of vertigo from this twisting hallway.
I look up from my defacement to see Willow looking back at me, a crooked smile on her lips. I realize, suddenly, that the painting she is standing on doesn’t display her footprints at all. I then remember her silent footfalls. I remember that she’s a ghost. Which means—I look back—all the defacement’s been my own.
“There’s another bridge ahead,” Willow says. “And I have one more thing to show you.”
I skirt around the last few paintings on the floor.
This bridge has glass walls and a pyramid-shaped skylight in its centre. It looks out over a city street very similar to the last, though we’ve left the train tracks behind. I stare at the zebra striped crosswalks and the cracking pavement. All devoid of people, once again.
Willow tells me to look behind us. The corridor we’ve just left looks normal now, and I can’t comprehend the illusion. But Willow shakes her head and redirects my gaze outside, to the building that houses the hallway we’ve just emerged from. The building isn’t there.
A dusty yellow plot, with the first signs of a building’s foundations, lie directly below the corridor we’ve just left. A crater bites deep into the earth, waiting to be filled with subterranean parkades or concrete basement levels. A web of stiff orange plastic separates the building-to-be from the sidewalks and streets surrounding it—a gesture that strikes me as unnecessary, given the lack of pedestrians.
“I can’t explain it,” Willow says. “At least, I can’t explain it any better than I can explain where we are. Not to your satisfaction. Now, look across the street. A block to the south, there’s another bridge.”
I do as she says. The bridge in question is massive. It’s no longer than the one we’re standing on, but it’s three times taller—three separate bridges stacked on top of each other.
As I gaze across the block, I’m suddenly aware of a figure standing on the bottom layer. It seems to be staring back at me.
“Oh shit!” I shout, stumbling away from the glass.
Apparently startled by me as well, the other figure does the same. “Willow,” I hiss. “Look! The Minotaur!”
Willow says nothing. She’s watching me. I lift a hand to show her, in case she can’t see this other person ... and then I notice that the other figure, still sitting on the ground like I am, does the same. I lift my other hand. My doppelgänger copies the action.
“It’s us,” Willow says. She points up, to one of the higher bridges, and there I notice the second figure. She’s significantly harder to spot—she’s almost completely translucent—but sure enough, this figure mimics Willow’s actions exactly.
“What the fuck?” I ask. Then I rephrase, “Another illusion?”
Willow snorts. “What makes you think any of this is illusory? There you are. There I am. We’re staring at us, staring back at us.”
“I don’t understand. Never mind twisting hallways and snow globe cities and ghosts, for that matter. That ... other you, must be thirty feet above us. But the other me is directly across. If it’s us, why are we standing on different levels?”
Willow waves a dismissive hand. “Different angles, looking at the same thing.”
“This isn’t a mirror,” I say, my voice rising again. “We’re separated by more than perspective!”
Willow doesn’t rise to my shout. Instead, she reaches out and takes my hand. My doppelgänger, and hers, both reach out and clasp the air beside them.
“I don’t understand,” I repeat.
We stand like that, for a time. Though I don’t admit it, I’m suddenly very happy for my guide. I’m clearly out of my depth. I feel her fingers press into the wound on my palm, and I’m reminded of the copper slide and my flight from imagined hooves.
“I’m holding your hand,” I say.
Willow laughs. “Your first time?”
“No, that’s not what—” my tongue trips on itself, “You—I mean, earlier, you put your hand on my shoulder. You hugged me. And now we’re holding hands. But before, when I—”
At a loss for words, I demonstrate my problem by sticking my arm through her stomach
“Ah, I see.” Willow unhooks her hand from mine, and then sticks her index finger through my shoulder. “Don’t worry. My ghostly powers are still intact. I can turn them on and off, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“It’s no harder than being in two places at once.”
I’m too tired of riddles to ask anymore, so I don’t protest when Willow takes my hand again and leads me down the length of the bridge.
She’s smiling and, despite myself, I smile back.
I look across the street and watch our doppelgängers walk across their respective bridges, on their separate storeys, each with their arms outstretched, holding hands with no one.