No Escape by Julie Moffett

 

Chapter Sixteen

 

Lexi Carmichael

 

I ran after Dad. We scrambled through the maze, making sure at each fork we were going the right way. After about a minute, the screaming stopped, but we could hear people close by talking. We sped around a corner and found Oscar talking with my mom. For some reason, Oscar’s face was beet red.

“Are you all right, Clarissa?” My dad pulled her into his arms and examined her worriedly.

“I’m fine, Winston. Sorry to frighten you.”

Thankfully, Mom looked unhurt, if not a bit disheveled. Her hair had lost its perfect coiffure and wait…was her sweater on inside out?

“I tried to go through a spot in the hedge by the path over there.” Mom waved her arm at the hedge behind me. “I thought it looked a little thin and there might be an opening. That’s when I felt something crawling on my leg. It was an enormous lizard. I swatted at it to get it off me, and that’s when it happened.”

“What happened?” I asked as Tito came running around the corner.

“Mein Gott.” His hands were curled into fists, and he looked ready to fight. “Is everyone okay?”

“All good,” I assured him. “A lizard crawled on my mom’s leg.” I turned to Mom. “Did it bite you?”

“No. I tried to brush it off, but it ran beneath my sweater. I screamed, pulled off my sweater, and that’s when Oscar arrived.”

We all turned toward Oscar, whose face had deepened from red to burgundy. “I sincerely apologize, Mrs. Carmichael. I was completely unaware of, ah, your state of undress.”

Tito coughed, probably to cover a snicker, but Mom waved a hand. “Oh, please, Oscar. We’re family now. So, you’ve seen my bra. All essentials were covered. No worries.”

My dad seemed more amused than upset. I winced as Oscar’s face turned a new shade of purple. Clearly, he was mortified. Poor guy. First his daughter-in-law vomits off a castle balcony with him, then said daughter-in-law’s mother flashes him. Ugh. I’m not an expert on family dynamics, but even I knew things were not trending in my favor. Still, I wasn’t sure who’d had it worse so far—me or Oscar.

I blew out a breath, pushing that aside for later. I had no time to worry about family drama right now. Time was slipping away faster than I liked, and I still had no idea how to find that golden disc. If we were going to solve this puzzle, we need to regroup and discover what, if anything, everyone had found.

Since everyone was here but Mia, we started calling her name to get her to join us. Within a couple of minutes, she appeared, looking confused.

“What’s going on?” she asked. “Are we having a meeting?”

“We are,” I said. “I need to know what everyone has found so far.”

Everyone took turns repeating what they had found, mostly nothing. We all agreed the maze was disorienting, with lots of intersections, meandering paths, and dead ends. Mia and my dad had each seen a marble statue but found nothing of apparent significance about the statue or its location in the maze. Most of us had seen the large stones with the Roman numerals.

“I think the Roman numeral stones are important,” I said. “From what you’ve reported, we’ve found Roman numeral stones from one to ten, and we’re missing only the stones with the numerals seven and eight. Let’s see if we can find them. But hurry. We’ve been in the maze almost fifty minutes now.”

I turned to Dad. “Could you find your way outside the maze again and this time circle it in its entirety to see if there’s a hidden entrance that cannot be accessed from inside the maze?”

“You think there’s another entrance to the maze from outside of it?” Dad asked.

“It’s worth checking out. In fifteen minutes, I’m going to shout again. Everyone, follow the sound of my voice, and we’ll meet up and compare notes. If anyone finds something significant before that, call out and we’ll know to come right away. Also, don’t just look for a clue. It could be a special scent, sound, or an odd look to the foliage that may cover up a hidden door. Go!”

Everyone shot into the maze in different directions. I headed in a direction I didn’t think I’d been before. I went down several paths that had already been searched by someone else and found exactly zero. Desperation set in.

“Lexi?” my dad yelled somewhere over my right shoulder.

“What?”

“Just wanted you to know I got out of the maze and am circling it. Haven’t found an entrance from out here yet.”

“Keep looking.”

I started jogging through multiple intersections where all the possible paths had been explored already. When I came upon an intersection where three paths converged, I spotted another large stone with the Roman numeral VII on it. I stood beside it and started yelling. “I found stone seven. Come toward the sound of my voice as quickly as you can. Dad, if you can hear me, finish circling the maze and then join us as quickly as possible.”

I kept shouting until everyone had found me. When we were assembled, I pointed to the stone under my foot. “I’ve found the stone with the seven on it. That means the stone with the eight is the only one we’re missing. Did anyone notice a relationship between the numbers and where they were found in the maze?”

“Keeping that type of perspective was quite difficult due to the curving, convoluted nature of the maze,” Dad said. “But it seems to me the earlier numbers were closer to the entrance we came in at, and the later numbers were closer to the exit where I found the stone marker with the X. By the way, I found no exits other than the one marked with the X.”

“That may be an indicator there’s some part of the maze we’ve missed,” I said. “Dad, go back to the exit where the X marker is and shout when you arrive. Tito, go back to where the nine stone is and call out. My guess is that the stone with eight should be triangulated between those. I’ll stay here at the seven stone marker. Everyone else, fan out and look for anything else out of the ordinary.”

A few minutes later, Tito called. “Lexi, I’m at the nine stone.” Another minute later, my dad shouted he’d made it to the X stone marker. If I triangulated their voices with my location, the stone with VIII should be somewhere in the middle and straight ahead of me. I headed quickly down the path, tracing an arc along one of the seemingly infinite number of similar curves.

I found nothing. The VIII stone remained elusive.

I stopped in the middle of the path, unsure what to do next, when I heard a slight whispering sound. The breeze picked up slightly, and I lost it. I circled the area once more, standing downwind and straining my ears. At last, I heard it again, slightly louder as the wafting breeze carried the sound to me more clearly.

It sounded like a trickle of running water.

“Has anyone seen a fountain or heard water running?” I shouted.

“Not me,” Mom shouted back. “Did you find something?”

“Maybe,” I yelled. I tried to push forward on the hedge where I could hear the sound, but it was too thick and dense.

I needed some help, and fast. “Everyone, come toward my voice again. Now.”