"You made it back here all alone, did ya?"

Arthur heard Max's voice quite nearby but had yet to see the man (or anything else, for that matter), cast in darkness as he unwittingly was. Hands out, he Marco-Polo'd his way toward the sound.

"You've really fucked things over, haven't you, pal?"

The question and the rough manner in which it was asked startled Arthur. He'd just touched what he assumed was the bib of Max's overalls, taken hold of the buckles, and the man's breath and words flowed down from above in a noxious waterfall. "Are there any lights? C-can we turn them on?"

"Your lights went out a long time ago, you understand?"

Whatever that meant was lost on Arthur, who was only happy to have found his way through that grotesque labyrinth in the dark. Right hand staying put, he searched for a wall with his left, and when his fingers met solid plaster, he let go of Max altogether and pressed up against that wall as if it were a life preserver in a turbulent sea. Only then did he remember some of his purpose, his mind having been entirely consumed with wading through that Hadal Zone of pitch. "Shit, Ramona's waiting in the car. Max, I—I can't see anything. This would be a lot easier if I could—dammit, we need to cut the lease short on the rental."

"That so, now?"

Arthur closed his eyes. The darkness frustrated him too much, as did the insinuation in Max's voice, the one he was trying to ignore, the one that said I can see you, even if you can't see me . . . "Yes, yes. We need to get back to Chicago. There . . . there's been a family emergency. It's just, my mother. She's had a fall. Hospital, and the kids . . . it might not be too long for her." Why was he lying? He hated himself for the words gliding from his throat like a necklace of hair pulled from a drain.

"An emergency? Well, that's too bad, friend."

Friend? That word sat ill with Arthur, but he let it slide; Max's tone was more concerning than the words themselves. He was beginning to regret not turning back with Ramona. Forget the lease. Had he really cared enough about it to wander blind through a store full of preserved babies? What the hell could've compelled him? "You know, I'll contact Greg once I get home. We-we'll work something out. Not your problem, really."

He began to inch along the wall, back where he thought he'd come from, but a thick, hairy arm barred his way.

"But it is my problem, see. Because you're my problem. You're our problem. Giiii-NA!"

Bewildered, Arthur gagged at the waves of foul, fishy breath washing over him as Max bellowed for the Harlequin House bartender who, he could only assume, must be somewhere nearby. It'd taken too long for him to recognize that Max was more than just an irritation, that he was part of the wrongness of this place, and even as he stood there with his stomach bottoming out and animal fear settling in, he was struck by how few connections he and his family had made with any of the other human beings in Blackswallow Beach. Why hadn't it occurred to him before how odd it was that all the other vacationers kept to themselves? Why had he assumed the place was full of introverts and written that off as a quirk, an anomaly? Why hadn't he questioned the awkwardness of never being able to recall the names of those he'd met in local shops and eateries, or that his boys' friends had virtually disappeared after the first couple of weeks, or that in spite of never feeling unwelcome . . . he'd never quite felt welcome, either? Why was this only now sinking in? Had he been so concerned with himself, his daily tasks, checking his words and actions to avoid confrontation with his wife, evading deep thought by drinking and working on his lectures, fending off notions of impending lunacy in regards to that goddamned rat king, that the absolute weirdness of everything had seemed a tolerable footnote in an otherwise decent summer vacation?

He'd virtually ignored his family for the sake of his own comfort. Lilia's resentment: he couldn't blame her for it, but the shame it caused him was also unfair. Eleven years of her acceptance had vanished ten months ago, and he'd allowed that to destroy their peace. Well, he could no longer afford to be a coward. He was a man, after all, and a father, and his daughter was vulnerable and alone as were, he was now certain, his wife and sons. Determination surged through him. He might not be as burly as Max, but he was far more agile.

Ducking and slipping to the side, Arthur freed himself from Max's presence, but without his sight, he was entirely confused about which direction he'd come from and so ended up pushing through a door immediately to his right and shoving it closed behind him. Much to his relief, the door had a twist-lock on its handle, locked from the inside, and though Arthur was sure Max had keys, he figured he might now have a brief respite to think.

Unfortunately, proper thinking was going to be difficult.

Sweat trickled across Arthur's temples, into his collar. His shirt clung to him. His lack of sight was more than lights off—he knew that now. And he knew, too, exactly where he was. The bathroom. That weird, opulent bathroom with its sea green tiles and black glass walls, its triptych mirror and recessed lights and that bizarre painting of the bearded woman (perhaps he was grateful to be blinded in that moment after all). But he was trapped, too, unless the bathroom had some other exit, a window or vent he'd not noticed the first and only other time he'd been in the place. Trying to maintain equanimity, Arthur began to grope his way through the space, feeling along the familiar sink and walls, turning toward the stalls and entering each to press hands anywhere he could, stand on the toilets and explore near the ceiling for any hope of egress.

Too much time passed without noise or interruption, enough so that he was able to make a thorough search. Though his desperation didn't calm, Arthur kept in the back of his thoughts the strangeness of his solitude, but once he'd made his way around the entire room, he understood that Max had known he'd be unable to go anywhere. Arthur was trapped.

Unless . . .

The only thing he hadn't touched was that painting. The hideous floor-to-ceiling painting of that unnerving woman whose eyes had followed him, made him so uncomfortable, as if she'd known his secrets . . . but she couldn't see him now, could she? Or more correctly, he couldn't see her, and so he'd not know whether she watched him. Arthur went to it with little hope and yet the concurrent sense that if anything at all were to be meaningful in that bathroom, it would be that horrid painting. And indeed, as he stood blind before it, took hold of either side of its frame and first pulled, then pushed, then at last twisted the thing toward the left, he found the artwork shifted aside to reveal an opening in the wall behind it.

Arthur felt as if he were in one of the old mystery novels he'd read as a boy and almost gleefully slipped behind the painting to find himself moving through what was, as far as his hands and feet could tell, a level concrete tunnel. No stairs or sudden dips accosted him, though he scootched along cautiously, slowly, feeling his way.

Once he'd begun the journey, there was no going back, not merely because he did not want to turn around but because he was propelled onward by something other than his own desire, and even as the seconds and moments began to blur, to drag, to flatten entirely so that Arthur had no sense of them at all anymore, he knew only that he must progress. There were no moments of clear demarcation, no sudden enlightenments, though somehow everything changed. The solid walls Arthur had been able to press just by reaching out his arms were at some point no longer solid but something spongy, viscid, fluid, and then absent altogether, while the firm ground also gave way so gradually that some indefinite amount of time passed before the man realized he was no longer walking but wafting, swimming almost, moving through a liquesced ambience though suffering none of the impairments he should have been were he in water. His perception of these changes and of his unmooring were not sudden and so did not concern him as they might have otherwise; instead, he began to marvel at the speckles of pale blue and silver that frequented his vision, the glimmers that worked toward his irises from the corners of his eyes, the returning sight that completed its arc the moment the man became aware that he no longer resided in a subterranean pool but in a dimly-lit room.

Shadows darkened everything beyond the circle of poor light in which Arthur once more found himself on firm ground. How he'd arrived in this place, he could not say, a blind dream's transition having passed between leaving the bathroom and finding himself here, but he was surrounded by easels, the tall sort, the ones that stand higher than the artist who uses them, and on each was a beautiful painting of the town or the beach or the meadows beyond the sands. Arthur recognized his wife's initials—LC—in the bottom right corner of each, her signature.

"Quite the artist, isn't she?"

Arthur jumped at Max's voice, and as pleased as he was to have regained his sight, he could see nothing beyond the circle of easels surrounding him. He'd gotten nowhere, he suddenly realized. Nowhere at all except where he'd been expected to go.

"Max! God dammit, where are you?" He spun a fruitless circle.

"You don't see the real genius until you're up close, though, do yeh?"

"What the hell is this?"

"Go on then, get closer."

"Where's my wife?"

"Do what I fucking say! Look at the fucking paintings or I'll tear off your arms!" The command was roared with a force Arthur hadn't known Max could muster.

Everything was too weird to question the veracity of Max's threats. Arthur didn't want to listen to anything he was told to do, but he accepted the route of playing along for the moment if it'd quell any rage that might keep him from getting out of this situation. So he turned to one of his wife's works of the ocean, one painted from, it appeared, the deck of their rental home, and he drew nearer it, listening to Max bark "closer!" until his forehead nearly grazed the canvas. Even so, nothing stood out to him, not for a moment or so, and he was about to ask what it was he should be looking for beyond his wife's normal talents when all of a sudden a golden scintillation caught his attention. Narrowing his eyes, Arthur noticed Lilia had painted a tiny piece of jewelry down on the beach, what resembled a necklace with, if he looked close enough, a charm in the shape of a little golden person . . .

He stood back so sharply he pulled a muscle in his shoulder. A fluke. It was just a strange coincidence. Had . . . had nothing to do with anything.

"Look at them all!" Max demanded from his unknown position.

Trembling, now, Arthur did as he was told, more from a terrible curiosity than from any fear of the man in the shadows, and as he made his way around the circle, he found that each painting contained a version of the necklace, always almost hidden but surely there, placed purposely. He found himself looking at every painting a second time, a third, before realizing he was doing so and at last shaking his head, glancing wildly into the gloom surrounding him. "You did this! You put these here! Lilia didn't know. But I saw it the minute I met you—your damned earring—you knew, and hell if I know how you did, but you do! What is all of this? What do you people want?"

One of the easels to Arthur's left retreated into the dark as a massive arm shoved it aside. Into the light stepped an absolutely enormous man bulging with muscle beneath his meager spandex tank and shorts, sagging striped socks and untied boots. His arms and legs appeared stuffed with varying melons vying for precedence; his pectorals pushed outward so far a sheet of paper couldn't have fit between them; veins throbbed unhealthily in the bull neck resting beneath the head, the only part still recognizable as the hardware store's owner.

"Max?"

The mustached man took three thundering strides to reach Arthur, who managed to stand his ground. "Vero Maximus," the man bellowed, that overwhelming piscatory stench washing across his victim once more. "And it's about damn time it's your turn, you cowardly fucking prick!"

Even blind Arthur hadn't entirely feared the old version of Max, but this gigantic creature . . .

Arthur attempted a feint but Vero Maximus anticipated him, quickly had the smaller man turned about, upper arms in his grasp, back to his rock-hard chest. Arthur struggled but knew there was no way he was getting out of that vice grip. He'd never felt so powerless in his life.

"Giiii-NA!"

Is he still waiting on that woman? Arthur thought amidst all the other chaos. What does she have to do with anything?

"You don't know how long I've hated your fucking face," Max rumbled in Arthur's ear.

"I'd assume since you first saw me."

"Don't make fucking jokes!"

Arthur ground his teeth as Max moved his left arm a way it wasn't supposed to be moved. Water filled his eyes, but he withheld sound, and when he'd blinked away the liquid, he wondered whether he was beginning to hallucinate. Over all of the easels that held Lilia's artwork, hair crawled in erratic motion, as if he watched some stop-motion film, until the entire space was coated in a thick pilose carpeting. Mounds of the stuff encircled Arthur and his captor, all of it a brownish-black, curled and gleaming, right up to their feet, and through a gap in the little hills stepped a woman.

Gina.

Though . . . not exactly Gina. This woman looked like her—must be the bartender at Harlequin House—but like Max, she'd changed. She was the very picture of that bearded woman in the painting back in the bathroom at Martin's Hardware, draped in a voluptuous red dress, breasts thrusting from the bodice, glittering eyes on him (and there wasn't a doubt in his mind that they'd follow him wherever he moved). Her mustache and beard were black and thick, shining like the surrounding milieu, and as she approached Arthur, she refused to break eye contact with him.

"Go on then, Gina. Do what you need to do so I can have my fun."

Arthur gulped at the speculation of whatever Max meant by "fun."

"Please," he tried, hoping a woman might be more sympathetic than a man, "my daughter is alone—I need to make sure she's all right."

Gina pressed her body entirely up against Arthur. Her beard brushed his chin, filled his mouth as he finished speaking. "Don't you worry. We'll take very good care of her."

"N-no," Arthur tried to insist, nowhere to go but wanting to be anywhere else, "that's not what I—I need to f-find my wife—I—"

"You never told her," Gina perplexingly stated, stepping back slightly.

"N-never told her what?"

Cocking her bearded head to one side, Gina offered a lopsided grin beneath her mustache. "That you knew, Ar-thur," she sing-songed his name. "You knew it wasn't her, that it was the other all along. Said you were too drunk to tell the difference, didn't you? Liar!" Gina tamed the rage of her accusation with a giggle and a playful lick across Arthur's shaking lips gripping his chin as he tried to turn aside. "But you knew it wasn't your wife all along, and you kept at it . . . because you liked it."

Arthur's mouth went dry. "No! How do—you're wrong! It was so long—such a long time ago, a-and I was—I didn't know!"

"You knew." Gina nodded, took one of Arthur's hands and shoved it between her legs. "Because of her beard, remember?" She giggled again. "That bitch wife likes prim and trim, not wild and chaos. You knew."

With what little control of his arm he had, Arthur yanked his hand from Gina's grip, but his movement upset Max, who folded his offending limb back at such an angle that it popped from its shoulder socket. Arthur howled at the unexpected severity of the pain; for a moment everything spun fireworks. He heard Gina's voice.

"And worse—you loved her. Gave her the trinket, told her you'd always love the mother of his daughter, remember? Remember? But you were too ashamed to tell them so, you coward." Her voice was full of tears, and she scraped her nails across his face before adding, "Fucking tear him apart Vero. Make it hurt."

Just as Arthur's vision was beginning to clear, as he could make out the retreating figure of the woman named Gina who definitely was not just Gina, who was channeling someone he'd thought of too much and yet apparently not enough, who he couldn't have done right by because he'd been too wronged by, another unbearable fissure tore through his back as his other arm was torn out of place. Elbows quickly followed, then wrists, and fingers joint by joint, and by the time Vero Maximus had placed Arthur upon the hirsute ground and begun bending his knees backward, long past the time the sheer agony should've caused any human being under normal circumstances to pass out into merciful oblivion, the man became aware, even then, of some foreign figure's arrival and new work at his broken body, cutting and snipping and reshaping, stringing him up and gutting him in order to make of him some freakish new delight.