Kill Screen

by Joel A. Sutherland

  My gut clenched and I dug my fingernails into the palms of my hand to stop from throwing up.

  “Everyone will soon die,” the Wisp added. The fog began to swirl more quickly around her, and she rose higher into the air. “We will meet again, Evie.”

  I nodded. I couldn’t manage much else.

  The Wisp turned and passed through the wall behind the TV, a trail of mist following her. Just before she disappeared I could’ve sworn I heard a muted shriek come from the orb.

  I took a deep breath as soon as she was gone. It felt like I hadn’t breathed properly since she’d appeared.

  “What,” Harold said behind me, “was that?”

  “That,” I responded, “was the Wisp.”

  “Not what I meant.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said quietly with a nod.

  Harold shook his head in disbelief and slowly exhaled. “Do you think Kill Screen was purposefully designed to be unbeatable, to try to prevent the Wisp from getting out?”

  I shrugged. The thought made me feel sick. Had I done something I wasn’t supposed to do?

  That was a stupid question. Of course I had done something I wasn’t supposed to do.

  Harold continued. “Well, it could’ve been worse.”

  “How could it have been worse?”

  “The Wisp could’ve killed us. I bet she would’ve killed us if you two weren’t BFFs.”

  “We are not BFFs,” I said, my mood lightening a little as my heartrate began to return to normal. “And yeah, it could’ve been worse. But now the Wisp is out there, doing whatever it is wisps do.”

  “Do you think …” Harold trailed off, swallowed, then continued. “Do you think this is what the ghost meant when she said you’re going to kill us all?”

  “Yes,” I answered without hesitation or doubt. “Yes, I do.”

  “The end of the world …”

  “And it’s all my fault.”

  “So, what do we do about it?”

  I sighed. I didn’t know. Clearly we had to do something. But what? “If we tell your parents or my grandma, they’ll think we’re nuts. If we go to the police, they’ll think we’re nuts. If we try to warn the media, they’ll think we’re nuts. See a pattern here?”

  “We can’t just sit here and do nothing!”

  I agreed with Harold, but I didn’t have the chance to tell him that.

  The ghost from yesterday flew through the wall.

  “What have you done?” she screamed. Her eyes were wild. “I warned you. I warned you!”

  In the blink of an eye she was in my face and her long, pale hands were squeezing my neck.

  I couldn’t breathe. Stars exploded before my eyes. And then, as quickly as flipping off a light switch, blackness.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I woke up.

  I was lying in the middle of the floor, right where the ghost had attacked me. I couldn’t tell how much time had passed but it didn’t feel like I’d been out for long. Maybe only a minute or two. Maybe less.

  Harold was kneeling beside me, a look of worry on his face.

  “Oh, V, you’re okay,” he said in relief. “Your face — it turned blue nearly as soon as the ghost laid hands on you. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  I sat up and rubbed my pounding head gingerly. “What happened? Where is she?”

  Harold pointed at the corner of the basement.

  The ghost was skulking in the shadows and watching us with a mixture of hatred and concern.

  “You can see her?” I asked Harold.

  Harold nodded. Maybe ghosts could control who saw them and who couldn’t, and when.

  “Don’t worry,” Harold said. “She flew off you as soon as I tore this open.” He held up the salt packet I had brought down earlier in the morning. “And she doesn’t seem too eager to come any closer now that she knows what I have.”

  “Thank you,” I whispered to Harold.

  He smiled, blushed and nodded.

  “You have killed us all!” the ghost wailed. “The Wisp only has one purpose, one goal: to kill every human and reap every soul. And you,” she pointed a shaking finger at my chest. “You released her.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” I said defensively. “All I did was beat a video game. And the last time I checked, beating a video game never killed anyone.” I paused and considered something. “How did you know that beating Kill Screen would release the Wisp?”

  The ghost retreated a little. She ran her fingers through her black hair and then rubbed her forearms.

  Finally she said, “My name is Leda.” She spoke so quietly I had to strain to hear her. “And I …” She trailed off, then restarted. “I worked for Grim Reapings. I was a game designer. I created Kill Screen.”

  ***

  It was one of those moments in your life when time didn’t just feel like it had slowed down — it felt like it had stopped. Like, dead in its tracks.

  I stared at the ghost — at Leda — as her words sunk in.

  “How did you know I was so close to beating Kill Screen?” I blurted out. Not the most tactful approach, but my head was quickly filling with questions and I felt like my brain would explode in another second or two.

  Leda didn’t leave and I took that as a good sign. “I can control electronic devices — phones, computers, tablets. I can fry them too, if I want. I don’t even need to physically touch them. I don’t fully understand it — I don’t think I’ve been dead long. But after I died, I saw your posts on Grim Reapings’s website, so I came here and watched you. Once I knew you were telling the truth on the message board and were close to beating the game, I panicked and tried to stop you.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell me what would happen? Why did you try to freak me out last night?”

  Leda shook her head and rubbed her face, looking genuinely confused. “I don’t know what came over me. I shouldn’t have done that. It was a mistake.”

  I hadn’t yet met a ghost that was completely rational, so I bought her excuse. “You said you haven’t been dead long. When did you die?”

  “I’m not sure,” Leda said. “Not exactly. Time is difficult to keep track of. It’s fast, it’s slow. It doesn’t follow a straight path like it used to. Maybe a week? Maybe a year?”

  Harold Googled “leda grim reapings” on his phone. “You were the victim of a hit and run in Halifax. The driver fled the scene. It was November first, the day after Kill Screen was released. Bad timing.” Harold looked up quickly and his cheeks flushed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make light of your death.”

  “It’s okay,” Leda said, but she looked depressed.

  “I’m sorry, Leda,” I said. “I know you’re confused and upset, but why did you design Kill Screen to release the Wisp if you knew what she’d do?”

  She broke eye contact and shook her head. “I don’t remember.”

  “You remembered that she’d be released when the game was beat and what she plans on doing now that she’s free—” I paused and took a deep breath to calm my nerves (it didn’t work) before continuing. “But you don’t remember why you made it possible?”

  “No, I’m sorry, but I don’t.”

  I sighed. “How about how to beat her? Or even where she’ll go? Do you have any guesses?”

  Leda looked away and shook her head. She looked as guilty as I felt. Like it or not, we were in this together. But Harold — Harold didn’t have to be involved any further.

  “If you’d rather head home now, Harold, I totally understand,” I said.

  Harold looked like he might throw up any moment but he managed to shake his head. “No. I’m with you, V.”

  I forced a smile and nodded. “So, Leda, do you have any ideas how to jog your memory?”

  To my surprise, she did. “Yes. One. But you’re not going to like it.”

  “Why not?”

  “We have to go to Halifax, to my office.”

  “Why wouldn’t I like that?” Grandma had already offered to take me
into the city, and I’d wanted to visit Grim Reapings since I’d become obsessed with Kill Screen.

  “I’ve been using your cellphones to monitor social media sites the whole time we’ve been talking,” Leda said.

  I felt violated, somehow. Not that I had anything too private on my phone, but still, it was my phone.

  Leda continued. “‘Hashtag Halifax fog’ is trending. I think the Wisp has beaten us there.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  As we drove along Highway 101 from Wolfville to Halifax I took stock of how surreal the past twenty-four hours had been.

  A ghost had warned me that I was going to kill everyone. I had ignored the ghost and beaten an unbeatable game. Some sort of terrible, powerful, ancient spirit was released into the world. And now I was headed to the city with the ghost and my best friend to look for clues in Grim Reapings’s office to beat said evil spirit.

  It was like the storyline of a really weird video game, but without a cool soundtrack and the ability to pause or restart the game if anything bad happened to us. Oh, and my grandmother was driving us to face off against the end boss, completely unaware that anything out of the ordinary was taking place.

  Grandma clearly couldn’t see Leda since she hadn’t totally freaked out.

  With his head resting against the window and a faraway look in his eyes, Harold looked a little queasy.

  “You okay?” Grandma asked Harold as she glanced at him in the rear-view mirror.

  “I’m fine,” he said meekly. He glanced at Leda briefly and groaned, as if he still couldn’t believe he could see her. “I get car sick, that’s all.”

  “Don’t worry about him,” I told Grandma. Not because I didn’t care about Harold, but because I wanted Grandma to focus on the road. The fog was getting worse the closer we got to Halifax.

  We switched over to Highway 7 near Bedford. Halifax — and whatever horrors awaited us there — were only fifteen minutes away.

  ***

  “This. Is. Awesome.”

  Leda, Harold and I were standing in the front lobby of the Grim Reapings offices, an old stone building on Lower Water Street near the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. Leda had led us there after we’d split up from Grandma. I had asked if Grandma wanted us to stick with her, and she had said she knew kids our age wouldn’t want to be saddled with her on a Sunday afternoon. So we agreed to meet at the Split Crow at five o’clock for dinner. Although Leda doubted anyone would be working in her office on a Sunday, she wanted to make sure. We waited outside in the fog and listened to passersby talking about how crazy the weather was. Once Leda was certain the building was empty, she unlocked the door and let us in.

  I stood statue-still and soaked it all in, finding it hard to believe that I’d gone from being just another kid trying to beat Kill Screen to a kid standing in the Grim Reapings offices.

  “Really?” Harold said. “What about it, exactly, is awesome?”

  “Everything,” I said in awe.

  Harold scanned the lobby and looked confused. “All I see is a desk, some doors, four plain walls, three posters …”

  “I know,” I said. “Isn’t it great?” I pointed at the first poster on my left, which featured a white unicorn with a rainbow horn. “Rainbow Crayon Unicorn. Grim Reapings’s first game. The evil dragon Smog has polluted the world by covering it in a grey cloud that has sucked up all the colour, so you have to use Rainbow Crayon Unicorn’s horn to colour everything back in. It was a complete failure, probably because three-year-olds don’t play video games much and — shocker — teens and adults weren’t interested.”

  “Very few people even know what Rainbow Crayon Unicorn is,” Leda said with a mixture of wonder and embarrassment. “I’d been meaning to take that poster down for months.”

  I smiled and pointed at the second poster, which showed a cartoon shark swimming straight up to the surface of a lake, where a bunch of monkeys were having a good time. “Sharkey Shark and the Monkey Munch. Grim Reapings’s second game. Underrated, in my opinion.”

  Now it was Leda’s turn to look confused. “Thank you?” she said, half statement, half question.

  “You play as Sharkey Shark,” I continued, “and you, well, you munch monkeys. That’s it, really. Pretty simple. But addictive. It was another total disaster. And then, of course, came Kill Screen.” I pointed at the final poster on the wall.

  The computerized Wisp stared back at us, menace in her pixelated eyes. A chill spread through my body and I remembered the reason we were there.

  Where There’s a Will, There’s a Wraith.

  “We should carry on,” I said. I checked my phone. It was nearly noon. Not knowing exactly where the Wisp was or what she was doing was worse than anything I could imagine.

  Leda’s office looked like a crime scene. Stacks of paper, notepads and books covered every surface. Sticky notes with handwritten scribbles surrounded her computer monitor. Sketches from Kill Screen and what I assumed to be other games in development were taped one over the other on a large whiteboard mounted on the wall.

  My first thought was that someone had ransacked the place after her death. But when I asked her, Leda shook her head.

  “No, I was always just very busy. It may look chaotic, but I had a system. I always knew exactly where everything was. Luckily it doesn’t look like any of my colleagues have been in here since I died.”

  “Okay, fine,” Harold said. “So where’s the clue you were hoping to find that might help you remember anything important?”

  Leda shook her head. “I don’t remember. Like I said, I’ve been confused.”

  “Well, let’s start searching,” I said.

  We began digging through Leda’s paperwork and rooting through her desk drawers. Before long I found a very small notebook, labelled “The Wisp,” on a bookshelf.

  “Bingo,” I said, and the others crowded in close and looked over my shoulders.

  “My notebook!” Leda said. “I did a lot of research on the Wisp when I first started brainstorming about Kill Screen. I wanted the game to include as many real ghosts as possible.” She took the notebook from me and opened it to the first page. “I remember … I read about the Wisp on some internet message board but couldn’t find much else online. So I hacked into the website and found a secret encrypted members only page. That’s where I found most of this info.”

  “What was the name of the website?” Harold asked, turning on his phone and opening an internet browser.

  Leda considered the question for a while but ultimately shook her head. “I don’t know. Something with a couple of Ms.”

  “Monkey munch?” Harold asked with a smile.

  Leda didn’t laugh.

  An ear-splitting boom thundered in my ears and shook the office windows. I shielded my head and dove under Leda’s desk, certain we were under attack — certain that the apocalypse had begun.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  With eyes shut tight and hands over my ears, I waited for the sound of blood-curdling screams to begin on the busy streets outside the office. I pictured the Wisp flying through the air with a scythe in hand cutting people down where they stood and harvesting their souls.

  But nothing happened.

  The boom that had sent me diving for cover was followed by silence.

  I dropped my hands, opened my eyes and looked out from under the desk. Harold and Leda were staring back at me. Not only had neither of them dropped to the floor, but neither looked concerned in the slightest.

  Heat flushed my cheeks. I got back to my feet. “You guys heard that, right?”

  “Yeah, I heard it,” Harold said.

  “And it didn’t even make you jump?”

  “Of course not. It was just the firing of the noon gun.” Harold looked at me skeptically. “You have been to Halifax before, right?”

  “Yes, I have been to Halifax before,” I said a little irritably. “You know I have, but I guess I’ve only ever been here later in the day because that—” I poi
nted out the window. “I would’ve remembered that.”

  Harold and I had gone on a school field trip to Fort George on Citadel Hill. Now that I thought of it, I vaguely remembered a tour guide at the fort saying they fired a canon every day at noon.

  “I worked here for years and never got used to it,” Leda said.

  That made me feel a little less embarrassed.

  “Leda, can I see that again?” I pointed at the notebook I’d found, eager to change the topic and get back on track.

  She nodded and handed it over.

  I flipped through the notebook. Jumbled notes were scribbled across the pages, making it hard to understand, but a few sentences jumped out at me.

  Like the Grim Reaper, the Wisp cannot kill.

  That was good to hear.

  Her main pursuit is the death of all living humans and the enslavement of all souls.

  That, not so much.

  “Remember that you have to die.”

  I held the book open to Leda and tapped that quote. “The Wisp said this to me before she left the basement. You wrote it here in quotation marks. Do you remember why?”

  “It was a memento!” Leda blurted out.

  “A memento?”

  “I think so.” Leda’s brow furrowed and she tapped her chin. “Sorry. That doesn’t make sense, does it? How can an expression be a memento? I don’t know why I said that.”

  “Maybe it was an expression printed or engraved on a memento?” I offered.

  “Maybe,” Leda said, but she didn’t look convinced.

  “Hmm …” Harold said. He was sitting at Leda’s desk, flipping through a small black book.

  “What’s up, Harold?” I asked.

  “Hunh?” He jerked his head up as if he’d forgotten we were there. “Oh. I found your day planner.” He pointed at November 1. “Your only appointment on the day you were hit by the car was with a man named Morrie.”

  “Morrie?” Leda said. “That is my handwriting, but I don’t remember anyone named Morrie.”

  “Well, according to your schedule you met with him at 9:45 a.m.” Harold flipped back through the pages. “That’s the only time I see his name.”