I want to tell you about the bleeding maze at the center of our town. People who aren’t from around here don’t know anything about it. It’s not referenced on any website or in any travel book, and most of us like it that way. We don’t share the knowledge of its existence with just anyone because it’s a very personal thing, the maze. We all have longstanding relationships with it that began at a young age. See, when kids in our town turn eighteen, we force them to enter it, like our parents did to us and their parents did to them. Inside the maze we have unique experiences, formative experiences.

“I got it from my girlfriend,” the boy says. “Ex-girlfriend.” Color rises in his light brown cheeks. “Wow, that makes it sound bad.” I shift in the unforgiving molded plastic chair, fighting a sigh and winning—just. My face feels awkward, as though my sympathetic-interviewer expression is about to tilt and slide off. I glance toward the window, but the glass gives nothing back. Outside the study room are tables littered with stray books, students with earbuds sprouting from their skulls, and the cramped rows of bound periodicals in the library basement. A fluorescent tube flickers in one corner.

My friend Austin’s distress was apparent to me before I even reached our table. His twitchy mannerisms and his mask of worry troubled me a great deal, since I knew the tragedies he’d recently endured. He was stationed in the corner, where the only light source was the dwarfish lamp on the table. This meek, fever-yellow glow made every furrow in Austin’s brow seem gorge-deep and hazed his flesh in a ghoulish pallor. I extended my hand. “Happy Christmas,” I said, hoping that my somewhat saccharine tone might lift Austin’s spirits. He gave my hand a limp shake and bade me to sit.

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Nathan Ballingrud is the author of Wounds: Six Stories from the Border of Hell, and North American Lake Monsters. He is a two-time winner of the Shirley Jackson Award, and has been shortlisted for the World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and Bram Stoker awards. His novella “The Visible Filth” was adapted into the movie Wounds, written and directed by Babak Anvari; and North American Lake Monsters is in development as an anthology series at Hulu. He lives in Asheville, NC.