William Bayer - Mirror Maze

After asking her to identify three more such areas, and finding her more tentative, he asked her what was wrong.

"It's easier when I'm down on the floor," she said. "I know the maze better there. I'm not used to analyzing it from above." He suggested she go down while he remained on the catwalks. Then he could walk above the places where the ceilings were opaque and call down his questions.

She agreed, shinned down the rope, then together they worked their way methodically through the maze, verbally mapping its invisible areas. She opened mirrors that were also doors, confirming the existence of each storage and backstage section. It was only when they reached the Great Hall that she became confused.

"No," she said when he asked her about a small area with an opaque ceiling off the Great Hall. "No, there's nothing there." "I'm standing right above it, Gelsey," Janek said. "There's a covered space, maybe five feet by five."

"Impossible." Her voice was agitated. "I knew this part very well."

They continued. When there were no other hard ceilinged areas she could not identify, he guided her back to the one off the Great Hall.

Again she insisted there could be nothing there.

"Maybe just more dead space," he offered.

"Maybe… " She didn't sound convinced.

His original notion was that the person Gelsey had seen, whom her father had dubbed "the Minotaur," had been standing on the catwalks. Then this person's image, caught somehow by one of the mirrors, had shown up reflected in the Great Hall. But now he wondered if there might not be a hidden room below, a place where a voyeur might have been concealed.

Gelsey had explained every covered space except for one.

He guided her around the space, urging her to search for a mirror that would open like a door. When she called to him that she could find nothing, it occurred to him that if he had been her father, and had wanted to create a secret chamber, he would not have placed the opening mechanism in its usual position five feet off the floor. He'd have put it where she wouldn't expect it, Janek thought, perhaps in an opposite position, very low.

He asked her to meet him at the bottom of the ladder. Then he climbed down to the floor.

When she greeted him she seemed disturbed.

"What's the matter?"

"I'm getting tired, that's all," she said.

"Want to do this some other time?"

"No. Let's see it through."

As she led him rapidly through the maze, he was again awed by its complexity. There was no possible way to know where he was in relation to the configurations of mirrors he had seen just minutes before from the catwalks. The reflections defeated any attempt to define real as opposed to illusionary space. Occasionally she led him through doors, shortcutting her way to the Great Hall. When, finally, she stopped before a series of sharply angled mirrors, he could only guess that they had arrived.

Gelsey was sweating.

"You all right?"

"I get like this when it rains."

"Is it still raining?" She shrugged. He looked around. "Are we near… where the bad stuff happened?"

She nodded, pointed across the Hall, then lowered her eyes.

"Were you always facing the same direction?"

"I don't remember. Anyway, it wouldn't make any difference. No matter which way you face down here, you see everything… reflected to infinity."

He detected weariness in her voice, almost, he thought, despair. He felt it would be wrong to push her further.

"Let's go back up."

She shook her head. "You're on to something." He didn't answer. "I feel you are."

He studied her. She looked stronger.

"Okay," he said, "I want you to press on these mirrors. Apply the usual pressure but not in the usual place. See if you can spring one open."

"You really think there's something behind?" "Let's find out," he said.

She shook her hands to loosen her fingers, like a safe cracker preparing to break into a vault. Then she began to explore the surface of the first mirror panel. When nothing happened, she moved to the second.

Janek observed that she was sweating again, that the stress was building up. Suddenly she stopped. She was crouched on the floor. She glanced up at him, eyes catching fire from the silvered glass.

"I feel something."

"A spring?"

"I think so." "All right," he said. "Remember, I'm here beside you.

Whenever you're ready… open it up."

She stared at him, then turned back to the mirror. But he felt she wasn't looking at herself, rather at something beyond its surface. Then she placed her fingers on the glass and pressed. The panel swung open. A small room was revealed.

At first they both recoiled. The room was dusty and the air that escaped was stale. Then, as Janek craned forward, he saw the props: a small stool, with a cloak folded neatly on top, and, on the floor beside the stool, a rubber mask. He reached for it, picked it up, unfolded it, stared at the image. It was a trashy fun-house monster mask with horns, the kind sold in novelty shops around Times Square.

Is this the Minotaur?" he asked, holding it up. Some of the face had rotted away. There was a hole in one of the cheeks and, because the rubber had lost resiliency, the horns hung soft.

"Yes!" There were tears in her eyes.

He handed it to her. She didn't want to take it.

"Don't be afraid of it," he told her. "It's just an old piece of rubber."

Even as he spoke he knew that the mask was a lot more than that-that it was all the terrors of her childhood, the source of her art and of her pain.

When they returned upstairs, Gelsey placed the mask on her coffee table, then stared at it. The rain, Janek saw, had tapered off.

" Dr. Z had a collection of masks," she said. "They were firm and beautiful, not like this. I'd look at them during sessions. They spoke of marvelous places-ancient African kingdoms, South Sea islands… "

"I think you should just throw it away," he said.

She shook her head. "I'll cut it up and use the pieces in my paintings.

Glue them to the canvas, then paint them over."

He liked that: destroy a personal demon by incorporating it into a work of art. It struck him as a healthy version of the use she'd made of the trophies she'd taken off marks, perhaps a civilized variation on the tribal practice of ingesting an enemy one had slain.

"Who wore it?" she asked suddenly.

He'd been dreading the question.

"Who do you think?"

"One of his buddies, I guess." She looked at Janek. "No?"

"I have another idea." He shrugged. "Of course I have no proof.

She looked around the room, at her many versions of Leering Man.

"My mother, wasn't it?" Janek didn't reply. "Yeah, it figures." He was surprised at how easily she seemed to accept the notion. "She let him do those things to me. Maybe even suggested them because she didn't want him to do them to her. Maybe she even got off on it."

Gelsey grinned; Janek recognized the smile of a person trying to disguise the deepest perplexity. "Ever hear of anything like that?"

He nodded. "It's a lot more common than you think."

She shook her head. "I wonder if Dr. Z knew. He told me he thought the secret was hidden in the maze. Well, now I found it. And, funny enough, I feel better for it. I'm almost… pleased." She paused, tried to smile again. "I guess I must have suspected it. Because, you see, I'm not all that surprised."

He studied her. She was a strong person, but not as strong as this.

"You're entitled to cry," he said.

"I've been doing a lot of that lately. Too much."

"Things are changing for you."

"True." "Go ahead," he said. "Let yourself really feel it. It'll be healthy for you if you do."

"The pain? Oh, I feel it!" She spoke bitterly. She glanced at him.