“Why would…why would she be in the maze?” I asked.
“The witch put her there!” Auden answered, jumping up and down now as he glanced down the path leading to the dark green botanical nightmare.
“The witch?” I repeated.
It hit me, rather late, that Auden was playing a game. Just like the ones we used to play in the woods behind North Lane. The memory brought with it a harsh ache.
“Come on, Guses! We’ve got to find her!” he called out as he raced down the path.
I followed reluctantly, confining my trembling hands to my pockets. “Auden, wait!”
He paused by the entry, the hedges so tall they blocked out the light of the cloudless sky, all traces of warmth absent.
“Are you sure you want to go in there?” I whispered.
He nodded, unbothered by the dark gloom.
A quiet sigh escaped my throat and as I reached for his hand, I said, “You stick right by me, alright?”
We started forward, the soil beneath our feet a dark black void of fallen leaves and discarded twigs. It was soft, damp, as if it had recently been watered. But Mr Lenton had not been here this week, nor had it rained.
The hedges on either side of us were dark green, cut evenly to avoid stray vines. Not a single flower grew, though I heard Aunt Vera say that just weeks prior to Auden and I moving in, the hedges had been scattered with colourful flora. Mr Lentonwas working hard to regrow them, but it seemed not one single flower was ready to blossom.
We turned left when the path forward came to an end, Auden squealing with excitement. He kept repeating ‘find mumma, find mumma, find mumma,’ and I was starting to question how much of this really was just a game for him.
He’d been very young when our mother abandoned us. And although things did seem to improve for him once she was gone, perhaps our father and I did a disservice to him by not talking about her, by not explaining what had happened. But the truth was, not even I was certain what happened.
“Okay, which way now?” I asked once we reached a crossroads in the maze.
“Let’s go this way!” Auden declared confidently as he darted to the left, his fingers releasing from mine.
“Auden,” I said warningly. “Don’t get too far from me!”
He skipped ahead, but he remained in my line of sight, humming cheerfully as though we were on a fun adventure. Meanwhile, I was fighting off a panic attack.
You know that feeling, when you’re walking and you think you hear footsteps behind you, but when you turn around, there’s no one there? That was how I felt in this maze. Every time I turned, I was met with dark hedges and nothing more. But it didn’t feel as though we were alone.
By the fourth time I turned around to find nothing there, I rationalised that it was all in my head. But when I turned to resume my way forward, my heart stopped.
“Auden!”
The only path forward was to turn right, but there was no sign of Auden’s brown hair or maroon sweater. It was like he had been swallowed by the hedges. A fresh wave of nausea crashed over me, but I refused to stop searching. I had to find him.
I ran until I collided with his back, his body a statue staring into the darkness. Panting, I opened my mouth to scold him when my gaze landed on a figure half-submerged in an unfinished grave.
Shielding him from the grotesque sight, I pushed him behind me and squinted through the darkness to make sense of what I was seeing.
The moment I did, horror consumed me.
My mother’s body lay buried in the dirt, her white dress covered with blood, soil and earthworms feasting on the thin material.
Cockroaches poured from her parted lips, her lifeless eyes staring right at us as brown rats feasted on her exposed scalp. Mushrooms grew out of her nose, spreading along the grass and soil beneath her. Maggots and grave flies crawled along her pale flesh, the scent of rot poisoning the air.
“What….the hell…?” I breathed out, backing up a step only for my back to slam into a hedge. I looked around, searching for a way out, but the entry we had ventured through had disappeared, and we were trapped inside this green prison.
Vines slithered out from beneath the hedges, entangling themselves around my limbs as I fought to get away. I’d lost sight of Auden again, and my panic grew. Before I had a chance to scream his name, a vine lodged itself down my throat, vision blurring as I choked.
I watched, breathlessly, as my mother’s corpse crawled towards me, her black hole of a mouth opening wide in a blood curdling scream as she–
