Checkered Tales and Nighthawk Feathers

Pete, Yellow, Maze

'Oh, Petey! I've been waiting such a long time, and you're here!'

The oily smell of the winding corridor makes Peter dizzy. He totters a little; the maze pitches as if it's being turned by colossal hands. A laugh echoes through it, all of it, filling the halls like blood rushing through a network of veins. Loud, goofy, echoing. Manic and terrible. Sweat begins to bead on the back of Pete's neck, catching in the strands of his greasy hair.

-

Sometimes Ted goes missing.

The longest was a week, but he's always back, hoarse in the throat and jumpy, with big prey-animal eyes. He doesn't say where he goes, just that something came up. It's nothing to do with his job, because Richie's uncle works with Ted, and he doesn't know what's going on either. Someone else calls in sick for him. They never give their name, but they always sound excited. Ted doesn't seem weird before he vanishes, and he never gives warning. It's as if something just snaps its fingers and decides that for a few days, he doesn't exist.

So Pete goes digging.

Asking more of Richie's uncle Paul goes nowhere; for someone whom Ted calls his 'best friend', he doesn't seem too concerned about what Ted gets up to in his unexplained absences. He checks his facebook, his twitter, even his goddamn stupid movie reveiw blog he uses to rate how 'juggy' a film is. Nothing comes up that would suggest an answer.

In the beginning, Pete would never plan to snoop around his brother's bedroom, for multiple reasons. The first is that he doesn't want to be exposed to whatever biohazard Ted has been cooking up in there, between nightly activities and unwashed laundry and combinations thereof. Secondly is the matter of respect; his own room is a sanctuary, and when Ted barges in, the violation ruins his day. Then again, Ted barges into his room a lot, always without knocking, so Pete can't feel too bad about it.

And there it is, on his bedside table. Next to a dog-eared nudie mag, and a mug that contains four parts whiskey to one part spit, sits a fist-sized yellow puzzle box. It sticks out obscenely: a golden cube, pristine compared to the clutter and mess of the rest of the room, translucent and covered in snaking labyrinthine lines. Deep magnetic purrs pulse out of it that pull Pete closer, making the ends of his hair frizz and lift, like the moment before lightning hits.

He touches the cube.

-

'Both Spankoffskis in my collection! I must've been a good boy this year!'

The voice barks out another enormous cackle, so forceful that Pete imagines it ripping its way out of its creator's chest, heaved out like big wracking sobs in awful full-body peals. Its source is around the next corner but he can already imagine it: the laugh conjures an image, slack open jaws and lolling tongues and rolling eyes, a malfunctioning animatronic, a horrible dream. There's something else, too. Another voice, below the first, utterly dwarfed like a birdsong by a jet engine. Laughter, again, but human. Panicked.

Pete rounds the corner in a dumb machismo sprint and stops, clenching his clammy fists at his sides. It's here, and it's worse. Yellow fur spills over the sticky carpet. Patchy, rotten fabric wraps itself around a shape that could be described as human, but shouldn't. It's too big, and the costume hangs from it baggy in places and skin-tight in others; it stinks of wilting lillies and expired medicine. Sitting on top of the lop-sided shoulders is a terrible imitation of a goat's head – a mocking caricature of sacrifice, bug-eyed sparkledog baphomet – with a long blue tongue that falls out of its mouth and laves at the shell of Ted's ear.

Ted. Pete snaps out of his terror and looks at the human pinned beneath the monster, small and stuck and squirming.

Sweat glues Ted's hair to his forehead, painting his face a slick red hue. His mouth is an impossible smile. Pete can see all of his teeth. Tears have dried and renewed and dried on his cheeks, and he's using the creature's pause to pull in huge, cursing breaths. He's stuck on his belly, hands clawing at the thing's wrists, trying to wrest them away from his sides.