Messenger of Fear (Messenger of Fear 1)

Not a grain, no, tiny channels, carvings into his brown flesh, like . . . And there I stopped breathing for a moment because I could not both see and digest what I was seeing and spare the focus required to breathe. Not a wooden grain but an endless maze carved into him, shallow runs that twisted and turned, forming suggestions of leering faces and twisted beasts. There was something Aztec there, something of demonic frescoes. These channels, this maze, it covered every inch of him. Within the channels were holes, black and sudden. It was not entirely rigid, this maze pattern, not entirely fixed, for there was movement there, down within those endless lines and curves and those baffling holes.

I heard more clearly now the sounds of what seemed like desperate scuffling feet and even, perhaps, though I did want to believe it, fingernails scratching as if to escape, or to hold on. And the sounds of voices were ever more unmistakable as wheedling, begging, prayers almost, yes, and cries of despair.

Then as the last of the mist unveiled the full obscenity before me, I saw that things—living things—crawled in those maze tunnels. Human things. No bigger than cockroaches, they were nevertheless human, and they ran and staggered within that endless maze, indifferent to gravity, going up and down with equal ease or equal distress.

There were hundreds. Thousands, maybe. And some fell down the holes or maybe in extremis they jumped, and I knew then that this maze was not merely on the creature’s skin but all the way through him. He was made of some precise wormwood, his entire body a mass of tunnels that might lead to places best not even to guess at.

And still I had not dared raise my eyes to his head, heeding Messenger’s warning not to meet his gaze and now very much convinced, convinced down to the marrow of my bones, that I did not want to look in this monster’s eyes.

But curiosity was as always my weakness, though I had always believed it a strength. I followed a particular denizen of that maze as it ran upward, racing with utter indifference to gravity along the line of the creature’s neck. I followed that scrabbling man, for man is what it seemed to me to be, as it ascended, and I used that focus as my excuse to myself for allowing my eyes to rise, inch by inch, along that twisted wood-hued form.

The man reached an ending and threw himself wildly against a barrier, but it was too late now for me to stop. I knew I would look higher. I knew myself, that much at least, that I had no power to resist the terrible urge to know.

And so my dread-weighted eyelids rose and my neck craned and I saw the skeletal maw, the chipped and ragged teeth, as darkly stained as all the rest of the creature, and now, helpless to stop, I let my willful gaze travel up and ever up and then—

“No!” I cried, the word forced from a convulsing throat.

I turned sharply away but too late, too late by far. I had looked into the eyes of the Master of the Game and seen there the fleshy, swollen worms that gorged upon the insect-like humans.

“No, no, no, no, no,” the voice said over and over again. My voice, though it was strained and unearthly. “No, no, no!”

I knew at that moment that all the pathways, all the tunnels, all the dark holes, the whole of the three-dimensional maze led inexorably to those eyes, to those worms, to that fate.

“Messenger,” the Master of the Game said in a voice that creaked like sapling branches twisted to breaking. “Who are the players?”

For the first time since the appearance of the maze creature, I remembered the presence of Liam and Emma. All of my own horror was there written on their stricken faces. I felt obscurely guilty, as though I was somehow responsible for showing them this terrifying apparition. I saw in their eyes my own wonder and fascination mixed with revulsion. And worse, for they feared that they were to be reduced to lives as pitiable as the damned who lived within the Master of the Game. They saw themselves as those skittering, crying, helpless creatures trapped in tunnels and holes, lost, ever and ever lost in the maze.

And were they wrong? I didn’t know. I had no words of comfort to give them. I had as yet no words of comfort for myself. And as Emma looked to me, she could see my own confusion and dread and this amplified her own.

I did not look again at the monster’s eyes. That was too much. That was a reality that had to be simply denied, pushed aside, and forgotten if I was to maintain my slippery grip on sanity.

“These are the players,” Messenger said. “Liam and Emma.”

“One will play for both,” the Game Master said.

I saw Messenger’s eyes flick and his lips tighten. He didn’t like that. It worried him.

“I’ll play,” Liam said, stepping forward protectively, imagining that he was being heroic, and that, I thought, was heroism, wasn’t it? He had no idea what dangers might face him, and yet, looking at the Game Master, seeing the undeniably supernatural for the first time in his life, he somehow found it within him to push himself forward, to take on his fate.

But Emma was having none of it. “No, no, I’ll do it!”

“Babe, no,” Liam pleaded.

“I’m not going to let you deal with this by yourself, Liam.”

They held each other, side by side, facing the Game Master. Messenger said, “Game Master . . .” But he stopped himself and took a deliberate step back.

“To each his own duty, Messenger,” the Game Master warned. Then, to Liam and Emma, he said, “The boy will play, but never fear, the female will have her own role.”

“Step back, Mara,” Messenger warned me. I obeyed.

The Game Master stood still, then raised his arms. From the blunt stubs where fingers should have been, there grew branches. These branches were leafless, crooked and gnarled, but lacking even the promise of life. They grew and spread to form a sort of bower, a nest or perhaps cage that surrounded and confined the two kids, who held hands throughout until, without willing it, they were simply apart, their own limbs seemingly paralyzed.

Messenger and I, outside this bower, watched.

“Do not attempt to interfere,” Messenger said. “Whatever comes.”

“Don’t you know what is coming?” I asked.