The clatter of breaking glass destroyed the serenity of the empty school. Immediately, wind howled through the hole in the window and blew papers off the teacher’s desk. Jacob reached through the hole, careful of the jagged edge, and unlocked the window. He clambered through, happy to get out of the bitter wind, Fred right behind him.

The two hunkered down and surveyed the room before Fred stood up and gave their companions outside a thumbs up. Fred and Jacob watched their friends walk through the thick snow and back towards the car.

“Been a while,” Jacob said. Almost six years had passed since Jacob and Fred had taken their seventh grade English class in the very room they stood in.

“We’re not here to walk down memory lane. Come on.” Fred got up and Jacob followed him out the door and down the hall.

No, they weren’t there to bask in the memories of their youth. They walked through the deserted school because of a spark of memory and a bet.

The Maze. A simple enough name that accurately described the winding hallways in the middle school they had all attended. Jacob hadn’t been alone in his fear of the place. At the time almost every student, stuck in a new school, had feared those long twisting hallways.

“And here it is,” Fred said with a gesture to the entrance. The bulk of the classrooms for the school were located in The Maze. When they were younger, Jacob had been rather vocal about his fear of the place.

“You know the deal.” Fred turned to Jacob as he spoke. “You go through to the library, grab a book, and come back here. Nothing to it.”

Fred had always been a guy who didn’t seem to be afraid of anything. From the day Jacob had met him in kindergarten, Fred had been allowed to watch anything he wanted, including horror movies. At no point did he admit a fear of The Maze, and in truth, Jacob thought he probably didn’t fear it. A strong build and near constant weight lifting gave him the muscle that removed most fear of even people such as would-be killers. Jacob envied Fred, and always had.

“Okay.” Jacob hid the fear in his voice as best he could, and hoped Fred didn’t notice any of it. Jacob cursed himself for accepting the stupid bet, and even more so for mentioning the middle school when they’d all been talking earlier.

But then, another part of Jacob almost wanted to go through with it. After all, he wasn’t the little kid he’d been before. Just two months earlier he had turned nineteen, and dammit, a stupid little maze in a middle school shouldn’t get the best of him. The fifty dollars wasn’t the real reason he turned around and walked over the threshold.

The same whitewashed stone bricks greeted him that he’d grown to loathe. Of course, unlike in his youth, now he had to walk through it in the dark. Thankfully each classroom had a window in its door. The white snow helped light up the night, and granted him enough light to see by as he walked down the constrictive hall. He glanced back at Fred, who smiled at him from the entrance, but in the nonexistent lighting, Jacob saw only the dark silhouette of a person with their arms folded across their chest.

He reached the first intersection, where he had an option of left or right. From what he could remember, both paths would get him to the library, but past that, he couldn’t recall which would do so fastest. Jacob chose right, and continued, this hall even darker from a lack of doors.

The hall wasn’t straight, as he recalled, and twisted to the left. Up ahead a few doors greeted him and thankfully gave him a bit of light to see by. He heard that old familiar voice of fear telling him not to look behind him. It told him what might lurk in the darkness. He felt the eyes burn into his back, and heard the deep, almost growling breaths of something. Puffs of cloudy breath shot from Jacob’s mouth as his heart picked up and he stopped. He couldn’t help himself. He turned around.

The hall was empty. The dark stretch he’d walked through didn’t hold a monster with bright red eyes. Of course, the creature is never actually behind the person. They just think it is, and so they turn and look, comforted by their isolation until they turn back, and then see what they’d been afraid of from the start.

This time Jacob didn’t allow the thought to be taken seriously. When he turned back, he stared at the same hall, lit just a little by two doors, and saw the movement in the darkness as it ducked around the corner at the end of the hall.

“No, you didn’t,” Jacob whispered to himself. If Fred had heard Jacob’s thoughts, he would’ve laughed at him. Jacob deserved to be laughed at for his cowardice. Since Fred wasn’t there, Jacob scolded himself, and started walking again. It didn’t take him long to hit the next intersection, once again two paths to choose from, and from what he remembered, he needed to go right again.

But his memories didn’t serve him. Up ahead he stared at a glass door and out into the school’s parking lot. The black asphalt was hidden beneath the white snow that still drifted and danced through the air. He paused in front of the door to stare out into the night. He listened to the gusting wind and rattling windows.

When he made it back to the intersection he chose the other path, and walked until he hit a stretch with no doors that looked oddly familiar. Up ahead, another intersection, and when he glanced down it he saw at the end of one of the halls a dark shape leaning against the wall, and past it, the front hall of the school. Jacob ducked to the side so as not to alert Fred, and turned back around.

“How the hell?” Jacob whispered as he once again walked down the hall and ended at the same intersection. “That way, you moron.” He shook his head as he walked through the darkness, which continued on for far longer than he felt comfortable with. He didn’t think there was such a long stretch with no doors in The Maze, but apparently he was wrong. And then, when a door finally appeared in the distance and lit his way, he stopped short. Up ahead, he stared at a staircase. There hadn’t been a staircase in The Maze when he was younger.

The cold seemed to wrap tightly around him. If they had changed the place this much, then maybe the library wasn’t even in The Maze any more. At the very least, he’d go try the other path and see where that led. Perhaps, as highly unlikely as it seemed, his memory was just off. Maybe he’d never walked down that hall before and simply thought he had.

Once again Jacob had to turn back and walk down the same hall. He passed through the darkness. Somewhere, deep within the school, a door slammed shut. Jacob didn’t scream. He stopped and stared into the darkness. It had to be Fred, or worst case, a possible security guard who’d discovered Fred.

When Jacob started walking again, he noticed the shift in temperature. The air definitely felt colder, along with a soft breeze. When he hit the intersection, he felt the wind grow stronger, clearly coming from the hall that ended with the glass door. Curious more than fearful, Jacob walked down the hall, and saw the open door. Someone had propped it open, and snow blew into the school.

The open door didn’t seem like the type of joke Fred would play. Jacob retreated from the door, fearful that his second thought really was the truth and a security guard prowled the premise in search of intruders.

Jacob’s run began to slow as he reached the intersection, and then stopped altogether. Two paths should’ve greeted him, but didn’t. He stared at a four-way intersection, not the three-way he’d previously walked through.

For more than a minute Jacob stood in the middle of this newly developed area, his heart pounding loudly in his ear. Sweat poured down his face and instantly froze against his body. Things had grown just a little too odd for Jacob. Pride be damned. He wanted out.

Only then did he notice the lack of a breeze against his back. Jacob turned around and ran to the exit. He delved into a long dark passageway and saw a door at the end of it that illuminated a staircase.

This time a deep rumbling echoed all around him, like stone grating against stone. It lasted for a full minute, louder with each passing second, and it was impossible to pinpoint where it was coming from. When it stopped, the silence sounded even louder and more disturbing than the grating had been. Jacob wanted to scream, but if he did and Fred heard him, what torment awaited Jacob when he emerged and realized that everything was just as it should be?

On his way back once again, Jacob glanced over his shoulder at the staircase, and saw the shape walking up it. The scene happened so fast; Jacob once again questioned whether he’d seen anything at all. It had looked like a giant dog, but lower to the ground, its legs jutted out from its sides, and it moved in a quick, jerky motion. It looked like a nightmare made real. It wasn’t real. But still, it made Jacob stop and stare.

“You don’t have time for this.” Jacob liked the sound of his own voice. It seemed to ground him in reality. “Fred is probably laughing his ass off at you right now and how long you’re taking.” Jacob didn’t doubt that one bit, but then he had no time limit, and the place was called The Maze for a reason.

A three-way intersection greeted him, just as it should, and Jacob walked back to the entrance. He walked until he reached the first intersection, and he looked down a long hall that seemed to have no end, and certainly didn’t end in an entrance that Fred should be standing next to. Darkness extended down that doorless corridor, and it touched something deep down in Jacob’s thoughts. He looked back the way he’d come, and the hall that twisted to the right for a stretch with no doors. He looked at his third option, this one well-lit with doors, but still endless from all he could see.

While lost in thought, he’d taken a wrong turn; that was all. That had to be all.

As he was about to walk down the well-lit hall, a gust of wind slammed into Jacob. He turned to the long dark stretch of nothing and felt the constant stream of bitter wind. He shivered violently, his arms and legs already beginning to grow numb. He couldn’t stay in here much longer.

Even though the wind suggested freedom, Jacob couldn’t bring himself to walk into that darkness. He stayed with his chosen path, and walked down the well-lit hall. After a few minutes of walking, he slowed and stared up at the ceiling.

He could hear it rattling and felt the constant stream of air pouring out of it. He saw a vent covered in ice. Jacob even saw little flakes of snow drifting through the icy grating. The floor was sprinkled with snow. Apparently there was some kind of break in the vents that allowed the snow and wind from outside to get into the school.

The vent ignored, Jacob continued on. The hall he was in wound around, the doors unusually close together to keep the area perfectly lit. Jacob paused to look in one of the windows. He saw a small, cluttered office and a window. And behind a desk, he stared at what looked like a teacher, reclined in his seat, his icy eyes wide open. His mouth had pulled back into a frozen grimace. The man was dead.

Jacob’s back slammed into the wall in a vain attempt to get away from the door. “It can’t be,” he said louder than he’d intended, and heard his own voice echo through the halls. Slowly, he moved closer to the window, and stared at the man, still behind the desk, still frozen, and still dead.

The next room looked just like the first, only minus the dead body. From what he could see, there wasn’t anyone in the office. Nor was there anyone in the one after that, or the one after that. Jacob turned back around to move to the first window. He stared at an empty office like all the others. Confused, he moved down one, and saw the same thing. He tried every window he could, but had lost sight of the frozen corpse, if indeed there ever was one.

His stomach felt like it was filled with cement. He continued walking until the hall jutted to the right and into darkness once again. Another vent rattled up above, though Jacob couldn’t see it. He felt the rush of cold air when he passed under it. The rattling intensified, as if something crawled around inside the vent. Jacob’s mind granted him the image of what that thing might be, and try as he might, he couldn’t dispel it.

The rumbling returned, this time louder. Up ahead, a few doors granted Jacob some light to see by, but only briefly before the gloom returned. He paused while the entire building seemed to shake from the roar, or was it merely a loud growl? Did a creature make this sound?

Jacob opened his mouth to say something in response, but didn’t have the voice to speak. Up ahead he could see it once again moving around inside the darkness. A large shape hunkered low to the ground. The image sparked memories from nightmares long ago, but were they nightmares? Jacob questioned if he’d seen this very thing one late night he’d spent at the school, when he’d walked through the halls after some of the lights had been turned off. Had he looked over his shoulder and seen something as it moved out of sight around a corner?

Suddenly he thought the rumbling originated from up ahead, and he listened to it echo down the narrow halls. He listened to a hungry stomach call out for its next meal. Jacob couldn’t take this anymore. He felt dizzy and weak from the cold. He wanted to just rest for a while.

Instead, he ran back the way he’d come. He plunged into the darkness he’d passed through and emerged into the hall filled with doors. The windows flew by him so fast, and through them Jacob could swear he saw faces in each, but the images were gone before he could really take them in. He hit the intersection that should take him back to Fred, and once again saw only darkness with a steady breeze. The chance at freedom was more than he could take. Jacob ran for it.

From behind him something pounded on the ground. He envisioned giant paws as they struck the lightly carpeted floor. He saw a creature so wide it barely fit through the halls, but it did, and charged at him, carried by thick, muscular legs that jutted out from its sides. He saw a mouth almost as big as him open up in eager anticipation.

And then, there was no breeze and there was no darkness. There was only an entrance to the front hall up ahead and Fred with his back against the wall. But the boom of feet remained, and Jacob swore he could feel the hot blasts of breath against his back.

Fred pushed off the wall, the word, “Finally,” on his lips when his expression froze, but by that point Jacob was already barreling into him. Both collapsed on the ground, but Jacob didn’t remain there. As numb as his arms and legs felt, he didn’t let that slow him as he scrambled to his feet and ran down the hall.

“What the hell?” Fred called out from behind him, but Jacob wasn’t listening. He reached the classroom they’d entered through, Fred forgotten until the scream cut through the school. It was so loud Jacob couldn’t help but pause for just a second and stare back the way he’d come.

The scream faded into a gurgling cry, and then vanished completely.

The hole in the window wasn’t big enough for him to get through, but Jacob didn’t bother to slow down in order to open it. What glass remained in the frame tore through his coat and stung his skin. His foot caught on the windowsill when he leapt, and Jacob plunged face first into the three feet of powdery snow on the ground.

He bled in at least four different places. His body felt colder than it had ever been before, and he could still hear that scream. Maybe Fred was just messing with him, the scream a joke to frighten Jacob further.

Painfully, Jacob picked himself up. The others waited for them in the car. Jacob didn’t know how much time had passed. He’d go over there and tell them he’d lost the bet. He’d tell them he chickened out, and that Fred had decided to go in himself. They’d wait for Fred to come out.

Jacob heard the scream again in his mind. He heard the pounding feet and felt the hot breath. He saw the image from his youth, of the shape as it ducked behind a corner. Deep down Jacob had always known it was there.

They would wait a long time.

Fred wasn’t coming out.