Welcome To Your Secrets

“Welcome To Your Secrets” the golden panel on one of the labyrinth’s iron gates read in elegant writing.

To Clara, it read like a dangerously tempting warning.

Whoever made the panel must have known exactly how to stir up whoever was too phlegmatic to try their luck at first glance. Secrets were always tempting in the sense that they were able to wake that one way too curious—perhaps nosy would be a more fitting word—part that hides in every person. The fact that it promised not just any secrets, but Clara’s very own, only piqued her curiosity even more. Where would they be hidden? In the labyrinth’s very center, a place only a few, whose curiosity and determination didn’t falter, reached? Or perhaps in some of the confusing dead ends, where motivation and hope often died?

Pushing the gates open seemed like the only right decision. What did it cost anyways? There probably wouldn’t be much to surprise her in there. She had spent enough hours introspecting during the silent hours of the morning to know pretty much all there was to know about herself. Things that she liked, things that she didn’t, things she could never admit to anyone, things she considered admitting one day… She had explored her depths quite a lot; enough to be able to map them out almost in their entirety, in her opinion.

And so the gates opened, and Clara ventured in between the tall hedges.

There wasn’t much to say about the labyrinth on its own: it looked exactly like any generic labyrinth one could imagine. The grass she was walking on was fresh and green and the hedges were tall and neatly cut. The only thing that confused her was how cold it was despite the sun shining brightly over her head. Its beams weren’t enough to keep her warm; neither was the large sweater she was wearing. Pulling the fabric of its sleeves over her hands was an unfruitful attempt at blocking the silent wind.

While she was walking through the labyrinth’s green corridors, a memory from Clara’s high school days came back to her. More precisely, it was the memory of the last time she had been to a labyrinth. A few years back during her junior year of high school, her group of friends had decided to visit a corn maze for Halloween. They had gotten bored of their yearly ritual of just watching old horror movies while eating themselves full of candy until they got heartburn and wanted to do something different. That Halloween was spent chasing each other between tall corn plants, sharing a few terrible low-quality plastic masks they had bought at the dollar store, and ended with them passing out in the living room of her parent’s house. Clara smiled to herself: her high school years hadn’t been all sunshine and rainbows, making this one of her happiest memories from that time.

Right as she thought about that one evening in the corn maze, Clara noticed something hanging from one of the hedge’s freshly cut branches. It was black and white and… Shoot, she couldn’t tell what it was from the distance. Fabric? It sure looked like it could be…

Was this the first secret of her she’d find here?

Curious, she quickened her pace and took a hold of the piece of fabric. She almost flinched as she moved it to shake off a few leaves and branches that had gotten stuck and took a good look at what it was. That object was none other than the Ghostface mask she had worn at the Halloween corn maze all these years ago. The feeling of cheap plastic was unmistakable, and the “Good luck and be happy” one of her friends had written on the side of the mouth with a permanent marker was there—a little faded away but undoubtedly there. How could it be here? The mask had gotten lost when she moved away for college and she had never been able to find it again. Why would it be here out of all places?

Utterly confused and disturbed, Clare decided to keep the mask with her and keep walking on. Perhaps she could find answers to her questions on her way to the center… If there were any at all.

Were the secrets promised by the gates just random objects of sentimental value she had lost over the years? What else could she find there?

The answer came rather quickly in the shape of a light green frog sitting at the roots of one of the hedges. It was Mr. Frog, the stuffed animal that, according to her mother, had been gifted to her shortly after her birth. As a child, she slept with it for many years, until one day she brought it with her to school to introduce him to her friends when she was seven years old. A girl from her class took it from her and threw it on the school’s roof, claiming that Clara was a baby for sleeping with a stuffy at their age and mocked her in front of the other children. It was the beginning of a few years of bullying that only eased up when she left for middle school and got to meet new people, not without leaving some scars on her that had confused her about who she was for a good number of years. Why do they hate me? Why am I the way I am? Why can’t I be someone that fits with them?

Clara winced. It was a painful time in her life, one long gone, but that sometimes lingered in her thoughts and dreams, making her unsure whether or not she had gotten entirely over it.

Nonetheless, Mr. Frog was a friend she had loved dearly in her younger years. She had been missing him ever since he got thrown onto that roof. Leaving him here to be forgotten would be complete and utter stupidity. Clara crouched down to pick him up—but to no avail. He was stuck to the ground as if someone had sown him into the grass for him to stay there. For what reason? Was he also a secret? How different was he from the Ghostface mask that she had been able to take from its branch so easily?

Clara tried to rip him away from the hedge a few more times, but it was useless. With a sigh, she resigned herself to let him rest here. Perhaps there was a good reason for him to be sentenced to stay here? She guessed she would never know. She stood back up with a heavy sigh and turned away. Sometimes things just don’t go the way one wants them to; some memories must stay back.

The more she walked through the labyrinth’s green corridors, the more it seemed like it would never have an end. There were only a few dead ends (with no secrets hidden in them, unfortunately), which took away from the fun and excitement that Clara had felt at the idea of guessing where she had to go.  

At the corner of one of the hedges waited a stack of pictures, a stack Clara knew all too well. These were pictures she had taken herself when she was twenty-one years old, a few years after discovering she might have something for photography. They were the witnesses of too many hours spent playing around with a Polaroid she had bought with a part of her birthday money. The ones laying on the grass were the ones she had selected to send in for a photography contest, but… Clara had ultimately decided against it. Something about these pictures was just too… Too personal. She couldn’t exactly explain why, but these shots—among them her hair captured in an angle that made the sunlight highlight it just right, the scar she had had from an accident when she was nine, the corner of her bed where Mr. Frog used to sit—just seemed to be too revealing of her to be shown to other people at that time. Now that she was older, she regretted not daring to participate and try her luck. Who knows what kind of things it could have brought to her? Well, it was too late to dwell over it.

Clara picked one of the pictures up to look at it. In hindsight, it probably wouldn’t have been enough to win her any kind of contest, but still, she could’ve-

Where was the Ghostface mask?

Clara looked at her now empty hand. What? She had been holding onto it just a few moments ago, she was sure of that. For a second, she considered walking back to see if she had dropped it on her way, but… Something in her told her she was near the end; was backtracking right now the right decision? It was just cheap plastic stuck on cheap fabric after all; maybe she could replace it with one of these pictures she had thrown in the fire not so long ago…

An eerie feeling settled in her gut. Something… No, this entire situation was wrong. What was going on? All Clara had encountered were things that reminded her of memorable events of her past; things that she didn’t have anymore, that only existed in her memory. Who brought them here and why?

Suddenly, it hit Clara out of nowhere: what in the world was she even doing here? How had she gotten to this labyrinth in the first place? The last thing she could remember clearly was getting ready to go to sleep in her bathroom and going back downstairs to her living room to make sure all the windows were closed… And the next moment, she was standing in front of iron gates, absorbed and interested by a stupid metal panel. Could this be some sort of trap? Or perhaps a cruel joke to remind her of the things she missed? Which one of these would she find in the center? Was it… Even worth finding out? Would she regret it?

Clara was about to stand up and run to find the exit when the hedges to her right suddenly opened as if the light that beamed from behind had ripped them apart. Clara squinted and held her hand up to her eyes. It took a few seconds for her eyes to get adjusted to the sunlight shining directly into her face, but once they did, she understood what had just happened.

She had reached the center. Or perhaps, the center had opened to her.

Clara let the pictures slip from her hands and turned to the opening, her heart beating so fast she thought it might just give up from exhaustion, and stood there frozen, not knowing what decision she was about to make. Leave? Go in? Stick to her initial idea and find the exit? Stand there until she found the exact perfect decision?

But there was no such thing as a perfect decision; so, without letting herself overthink too much, Clara stepped through the hedges.

The center of the labyrinth was mostly just like the rest of it, except that the grass was covered in daisies and that the hedges framing it were taller—and by that she meant significantly taller, probably a good few meters or so. (How had she not noticed that from afar? Perhaps she was too absorbed in finding her past belongings to pay attention…) But the most noticeable part was a pedestal made from what seemed to be deep black marble standing right in the middle of the place. It was quite high: Clara estimated that it probably reached her a little over her belly button. She could see that something had been placed on top of it, though she couldn't recognize exactly what it was.

“Well, there’s just one way to know which one of my things that one is,” Clara thought to herself as she carefully walked up to the pedestal, steps hesitant and slowed by the fear that wrenched her stomach. What could be resting on there? Another past belonging of hers that once meant everything? What could it be this time? Would she regret remembering whatever memory was tied to it?

But it was nothing like what she was imagining.

Atop the pedestal lay a book.

Just a simple book, one she had never seen before, resting on a black velvet cushion. It was quite a thick one, probably about the size of a dictionary, with a hard pine green cover. Nothing out of the ordinary, it seemed—until Clara got to read the title that was imprinted on the front in big, white letters.

Everything You Don’t Know About Yourself

Clara Thea Fischer

Shivers ran down Clara’s spine.

She picked the book up and turned it around. There was nothing else written on it, except for “Book 12” imprinted at the top of the book’s spine. Was this the twelfth volume? Did this mean that there were eleven other ones of this kind? Twelve books filled with things she didn’t know about herself… That just seemed like way too much. She certainly was young and there were plenty of things she was yet to find out, but…

Everything You Don’t Know About Yourself…

Everything she didn’t know about herself… At least one entire book of it, written by someone she didn’t know but clearly knew her enough to write twelve volumes about her. Who in the world could it have been?

Clara let her fingertips run on the cover. The green fabric was a little rough and caved in where the title was imprinted. The goosebumps on her back didn’t relent; rather, they seemed to be screaming that something was awfully wrong with this whole thing.

Still, Clara opened the book and, by doing that, discovered perhaps the strangest thing the labyrinth had to offer.

The writing was small and packed, but that was just inconvenient at most. What really struck her was that the book was written in a strange language Clara just couldn’t read. She could almost understand it, almost guess what the words could mean, but it was so close to normal readable English that nothing on the pages made sense. Not a single word. The only things she could understand were the numbers used to list every paragraph and the sheer amount of these printed in front of every block of writing was enough to make her head spin.

What could this mean? What did this mean? What was the entire purpose of this? Why couldn’t she read a book written about her, perhaps even destined to be read by her if she read the title right? What was going on? Just how many things could one not know about themselves?

“Beware.”

Clara jumped, instinctively shut the book close, and turned around.

The voice that had spoken up belonged to a young girl, but not just any. It was Clara in her younger years, probably from around the time when she graduated high school. Except… Something was off. Overall, Clara recognized herself: these were her eyes, her mouth, her aquiline nose; her hair was put up in that awful half updo she used to love; the clothes she was wearing were signature of that horrible taste she used to have; but there was something different, and Clara just couldn’t put her finger on what exactly it was. Yet, it was so blatant that Clara had the urge to run away from the eerie feeling it gave her.

“There are things you must not know.”

Clara only had time to blink; and there she was again, standing in front of the iron gates.