Mazes and Monsters Read Online Free Page A

just as the giant produce trucks came pulling up; all the time planning strategies for the game. This was exactly what he had wanted to do with his life.
    Sometimes he varied the route of his early-morning run, several times going out to the forbidden caverns that lay to the east. They didn’t look so ominous from the outside. If it weren’t for the iron chain that had been bolted into the stones outside the main entrance, and the green and white sign that said DANGEROUS CAVERNS KEEP OUT , you would think they were just some picturesque caves under a hill. They looked like a tourist attraction. But he had heard they extended for miles under the ground, and were filled with bottomless lakes and black pools, stalactites and stalagmites, endless turns, and tiny, hidden rooms where a person could be lost forever. Worst of all, they were pitch-dark. Sometimes, running by, Daniel had a little thrill of curiosity; just to see. He supposed everybody had that feeling once in a while. It was probably what had inspired those two students to explore the caves so long ago, the students who had died.
    He simply had no concept of death. Sometimes, driving in a car when he knew he’d had too much to drink at a party, he was aware of danger, but it never occurred to him that he might be killed, even though people often were. You got killed in a war. Everybody knew that. Or someday, when you were middle-aged, the pollution of foul chemicals could give you cancer. But not now. Now he felt immortal. All the terrors of disease and unexpected death were for later, for other people.

CHAPTER 4
    Feeling very new, young, frightened, and shy, Robbie Wheeling began his first day as an entering Freshman at Grant University. Back home in Greenwich, Connecticut, he’d been a star of sorts: captain of the high school swimming team, managing editor of the yearbook, popular and secure. Now he was a stranger in a strange place. The dorm he’d been assigned to, Hollis East, seemed huge, and his single room was bare and ugly. There was a lumpy single bed, a scratched wooden desk with a matching chair, a lamp that looked like it came from the Salvation Army, and a wooden bookshelf with graffiti on it. One closet. He’d been issued a key to the lock on his door, to guard all these possessions and whatever he’d brought from home. He dropped the last of his things: his duffel bag and the large carton containing his stereo equipment, and went to look out the window. Being a Freshman, the lowliest of the low, he was assigned a room at the rear of the dorm that looked out on a parking lot. There was his little tan Fiat Spider convertible, his graduation present from his parents, parked along with an assortment of cars belonging to the people he hoped he’d eventually meet, one small motorcycle, and a jumble of bicycles, all carefully chained and locked. Behind him, through his partly open door, he could hear girls’ voices and the stamp of feet along the hall. He wondered what it would be like to live in a coed dorm. Was there a lot of sex, or what? The thought of endless adventures cheered him up a little, and he began to unpack.
    He was eighteen years old, six feet tall, with the long, smooth muscles of a swimmer, and a face that was so handsome it was almost beautiful. Green eyes with a thick fringe of dark lashes, fair hair, and dimples. He’d never had any problem getting girls, but he thought now, here in this strange place, that he would like to find one person, fall in love, have a real relationship. He’d never had that, and it seemed to be time. Maybe he could make it last for his entire Freshman year, or at least through the winter. He thought of a girl sitting on his bed, studying, snow falling cozily outside the window, and the room didn’t look so grim anymore. Women. He would have to remember to call them women. They were in college now.
    Robbie was glad to be away from home at last. There was nothing there at all for him, never had been,