But as it turned out, it didn't end that way at all.

The night began the same as always. Halloween night that year was on Tuesday, so the crowds were thinner than they had been on the previous Saturday, which was a very good thing. There had been so many people coming through the maze on the Saturday that it was practically impossible to scare anyone. They came in a thick swarm that never ended from start to finish. There were plenty of times that night that I found myself pinned against a bulkhead just trying to stay out of everybody's way.

But the Halloween night crowd was the kind we monsters liked, small groups of 12 or so with plenty of space in between. Lots of screaming on their parts; tons of good scares on ours. One poor woman in my maze, which was appropriately called "The Factory of Fears," got so scared that she passed out and had to be carried out of the maze by paramedics, or so I was told at first break. All in all it was a pretty decent, albeit typical night of Shipwreck.

But then, around 11, the guests quit coming. Instead, a whole parade of monsters from other parts of the top of the long maze shuffled past me, apparently heading toward the break room a couple of decks below. They were followed closely the maze supervisor, Brian Unger, whose face was a study in concern and urgency. I tried to ask him what the heck was going on, but all he said was for me to follow him with no other explanation than that.

Obviously, I was burning with curiosity when I got to the break room, a large, brightly lit meeting room at the aft of the ship. Nearly everyone from the Factory of Fears and the neighboring maze called The Engine Room were already there. It was from my breaker (breakers being monsters given the minor authority of supervising breaks during the show) Diana that I learned what was going on.

"One of the monsters was attacked by some guy with a knife," she said gravely.

"What?" I asked. "Was he hurt?"

She solemnly shook her head. Apparently a thin Hispanic man wearing white face make-up had somehow gotten a folding pocketknife through the security metal detectors. He pulled it out and swung it at one of the monsters, nicking a wall, and then chased him down the hall before vanishing around a corner.

It wasn't just a story, because another monster had seen it happen. Once they reported it to security, the event was shut down and the mazes were cleared. But not everyone had heard about what was going on. Brian told Diana that there were still a cluster of monsters at the end of the Factory of Fears who hadn't been told. Diana was young -- no more than twenty -- but she took her role of responsibility very seriously. She said she didn't know if Unger was going to get them, so she told me she was going below decks to bring them out herself. No one else said a word, but I couldn't let her go alone, so I said I'd go with her. I'd like to say that my motivations were selfless and heroic, and partially, maybe they were. But let's face it. This was the stuff of horror movies, and I found myself burning with the kind of curiosity that did in the cat. It's the kind of curiosity that always motivates characters to follow a creaking sound up the staircase or open the wrong door despite the fact that everyone in the theater is screaming at them to run. I think it's called stupidity.

Nonetheless, down we went.

The Factory of Fears is the longest maze on the ship. It begins on the aft topside deck and winds down four decks to a gangway at the bottom. Like all the mazes at Shipwreck, Factory is elaborately decorated with atmospheric scenery, dim green, blue and purple lights and grisly props. Without the loud, thumping, repetitive music that usually thunders through loudspeakers to create a sense of nervousness, the maze was eerily silent. The only sound, in fact, was the occasion hiss of a still active fog machine and the sounds of our shoes against the metal deck plates. We had flashlights, which was reassuring, and Diana kept calling for monsters, just in case someone was hidden, waiting for the next group of guests. But no one answered. We hurried through the twisting hallways without stopping until we reached the meat locker. It was a caged area containing a huge side of latex beef beside a grisly kitchen. The last four monsters were clustered together there.

"Did you hear what happened?" one of them said as we approached. "There's a killer on the loose with a big butcher knife! He attacked one of the monsters. I wonder who it was that got it?"

Killer? Butcher knife? My, how the story had grown, I thought.

We didn't stop to correct them, we just told them that everyone was to report to the break room. But before we could lead them out, Unger appeared with a couple of security guards, and he said he'd take them up the outside stairway. But Diana and I lingered, and decided instead to go back up through the maze just in case we had missed someone. It was then that it got scary. On the way down, we half expected to have someone pop out at us, because we knew all the monsters weren't accounted for. But now that they were, the only person who might pop out at us was the stalker. We walked side by side, nearly pressed together as we slowly ascended toward the top. The hallway from the meat locker was misty and covered with artificial cobwebs that waved occasionally causing us to stop and stab at them with the beams of our flashlights. We tiptoed through the crypt, which had stacked shelves meant for monsters to hide in, half-expecting someone to come rolling out of one of the spaces .

Then it was through the fog into the gallery, a place where pictures changed under a periodically cycling black light. We hugged every corner, peering around them before moving on into the long, dark, gloomy Hall of Faces from which Styrofoam gargoyles stared menacingly down at us.

The silence was staggering and nothing moved. It was agonizing. By the time we got to the theater, which featured a giant ghoul on stage that seemed to dance under a strobe light, we were running. We ran up the final staircase and burst into the bright light of the break room.

We sighed with relief. Diana hugged me and thanked me a thousand times for going along. I told her it was no big. But it was. You have no idea how the imagination can play tricks on you. Even though I hadn't said anything, I thought I'd seen the stalker at every turn. I don't know what I would have done if he had popped up. I was just glad I didn't have to decide. Then it occurred to me, and I had to smile, that I'd had a much scarier experience than anyone who had paid to go to Shipwreck. And I was being paid to do it.