by Tobias Wade
Before he had moved, there had been girls that he had liked, and who had probably liked him, but he’d been distracted by the daily trauma that was his parents’ crumbling marriage to really pay attention or do anything about it. As far as he was concerned, he’d like to have a girlfriend, but if that was what it would lead to, he’d rather lose himself in books and games and music. Still, the feelings he had for Liz were undeniable and getting stronger every day.
One night, after an evening of Seeking, she leaned over and kissed him. He was both shocked and elated. His head went swimmy and he couldn’t think straight. She took his confused grin as an invitation to do it again and this time he kissed her back. As he skated home that night with the scent of her perfume lingering on his shirt, he thought he was about as happy as anyone could ever be. Soon, they were spending entire ”Seeker” sessions making out, making plans, and making Spenser Springs feel like somewhere he enjoyed being instead of somewhere he was waiting to leave as soon as he was able.
1988
“How is she? How’s Liz?”
Jen grimaced and rolled her eyes to the side. Then she shrugged and looked out the window.
Tristan was crestfallen, “That good, huh?”
Jen shrugged again and then dug in her purse for a cigarette. Tristan opened one of his new packs and lit one himself. “Damn.”
“It’s not like you didn’t know,” Jen said, “You broke her heart.”
“Okay, yes, I did know that. And it broke mine too. But what was I supposed to do? Skip going to college?”
“We didn’t go to college and we’re doing okay,” said Rob.
“Shut up, moron. We all know he wasn’t going to skip college for a high school girlfriend. But you never called, never wrote, and you didn’t even come home at Christmas.”
“I couldn’t! My parents, my very divorced parents who hadn’t spoken to one another at all since they split up came to visit me at school in California. It was a really big deal for all of us. What was I supposed to do? ‘Hey Mom and Dad, I know you just spent hundreds of dollars and took vacation from your jobs and you’ve chosen to be around someone you despise for several days just to make your son happy for the first time in years but instead I’m gonna catch a Greyhound to Texas?’”
“I didn’t know that. Sorry. But you could have at least written.”
“I called when I could. There’s a two-hour time difference so when I was available, she was always working. I called her house and she was never there. I’d call the video store and I always got put on hold. And long-distance calls are too expensive to get put on hold while she’s talking to customers about different movies for ten minutes. But yeah, I didn’t write. Because the best way to fix a long-distance relationship that isn’t working is to write, ‘Dear Liz, how are you, I am fine.’”
Their eyes met for a moment and he saw true sorrow there. What had been going on since he’d left? When he’d broken it off with Liz, after almost a year of phone tag, missed connections, fights, and miscommunication, she seemed to have taken it rather well. Sure, she had been cordial and perhaps a bit curt, but he’d been fighting tears of his own so the less of a big deal she made of it, made it that much easier for him.
He had truly cared for her. She’d been his best friend, his girlfriend, his first real date, his first lover… But the college situation was untenable and after so much sustained misery on both their parts, he came to believe that they both knew it should end but one just needed to get up the nerve. He hadn’t spoken to her since.
The Bronco slowed as Rob turned off the highway onto the dirt road taking them to their destination. The spot was a camping area that the five of them had claimed the year Rob got his license. Spenser Springs was surrounded on all sides by forests that were a mishmash of private property, government lands, and timber company reserves that amounted to thousands upon thousands of acres of woods that were perfect for a bunch of kids who wanted to avoid parental supervision or curious law enforcement officers. Tristan himself had found the spot using one of his father’s forestry maps. It was a remote clearing, miles from the highway or any houses. There, they could smoke cigarettes, a habit that had seemed to sprout up overnight, and drink alcohol, a pastime that started when Rob had pinched a twelve-pack of Shafer from his father.
The freedom offered by the forest allowed them to yell and chant and bring a kind of manic realism to Seeker that they couldn’t realize sitting upstairs in a bedroom. Here there were no prying eyes or shouts to keep it down. As the five of them entered their junior years in high school, the Seekers found themselves out at the spot nearly every weekend.
1987
“What are we going to do when we graduate?” asked Ryan.
The five teenagers sat around their campfire drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. Rob’s boom box played Master of Puppets as the wind sent swarms of crackling sparks spinning into the night sky.
“Drink beer every night? Because we don’t have to be somewhere in the morning?” Rob suggested.
“Ever hear of a fricken job?” his exasperated sister asked, shaking her head.
“Oh right,” he chuckled. “Damn.”
Liz sat with her legs crossed. Tristan lay beside her with his head in her lap. “I’ll be managing one of the businesses, I guess. Probably the video store,” she said.
“Trophy wife,” said Jen. She threw up her hand with the index finger and pinky extended and said, “Or Metallica groupie. Just as good.”
They all laughed.
“No, I mean, with Seeker?” Ryan continued, “I mean, we ain’t all gonna be together forever, and we can’t break up the team either, so how are we gonna keep it going?”
“Where the hell you going?” Rob asked, “Other than church?”
Ryan flicked his still-lit cigarette at him, causing the front of Rob’s shirt to explode in tiny embers. He hopped up and shook and dusted the fire from his chest. “Hey!”
“I’m serious! Do you know how much progress we’d lose if we tried to start over? If one of us left?”
Tristan sat up. “I mean, yeah, but it’s not like we’ll ever get to the end anyway. They release new expansions and revisions all the time. We’ll have to stop at some point, eventually.”
All of them were quiet now, alone with their thoughts, staring into the fire. It was something none of them had considered, apparently. Here they were, young and mostly free of responsibilities. It had not occurred to anyone that they might someday have jobs and families, that someday they would not be free to spend every spare moment in the woods getting drunk with their friends. That someday there may not be spare moments anymore.
Tristan got up and went to the cooler for another beer. He dug into his pocket for a cigarette and lit it, then leaned on Rob’s truck, his face lit by the Coleman lantern hanging from the tree opposite the fire. “I wasn’t sure how to tell you all this, but I’ve been accepted to USC in Los Angeles. My, um, grades are good enough that I even got a partial scholarship.” He took a drag from his cigarette and looked around at their faces.
“Whoa,” said Rob.
“That’s wonderful!” said Jen, who hopped to her feet and came over to hug him.
Ryan stood up too and shook his hand. “Congratulations,” he said. Although he was not smiling.
Tristan turned to Liz who still sat where she had been, a look of astonished bewilderment on her face. She noticed him looking, then got up herself and hugged him. “That’s incredible news,” she said, a slight hitch in her voice, “I had no idea.”
He pulled her closer and kissed her. She kissed back, but there was hesitation, a resistance that he hadn’t felt before. When he released her, her eyes were wet. She sniffled and wiped her nose and eyes with the sleeve of her flannel shirt. “Stupid smoke,” she said.
Ryan looking more sullen than normal said, “So when are you leaving?”
1988
It was near dark when the Bronco final
ly rolled to a stop at the campsite. Ryan and Liz had set up their tents in the corner and Tristan helped Jen and Rob unload their gear. He counted the tents and realized there wasn’t one for him. He’d always simply slept with Liz in the one they’d shared. He continued helping to set up without asking. He didn’t want to make things more awkward than they were already going to be. For their parts, Liz and Ryan had been busy. They had gathered and piled two rather large stacks of firewood, much more than they would need for just a night or two, and a third, smaller pile stacked on a pile of old ash, ready to be lit.
Ryan came out of the woods with another handful of firewood. He tossed it on one of the larger piled when he saw Tristan. He came over and shook his hand and then hugged him. “You have no idea how good it is to see you.”
“You too, man! How have you been?”
Ryan shrugged noncommittally and looked up into the trees, “Okay, I guess. Workin’ at the church with Mom. How’s school?”
“They keep me pretty busy.”
Ryan nodded, “Beer?”
“Sure.”
Ryan slowly turned and went to the cooler. Rob put an arm around Tristan’s shoulders.
“What’s with him, is he high or something?” Tristan asked.
“If he is, I don’t want any,” Rob laughed, “Come help me with the tent.”
Moments later, Liz emerged from the woods as well. She too was carrying a stack of firewood. When she saw Tristan, she dropped it and ran over to him. The two stared at one another for a moment, before she leaned in and hugged him. Tristan was relieved. He relaxed and hugged her back. He’d missed her terribly over the past year. In her arms is where he’d needed to be. When their embrace finally ended, there were tears in both their eyes. In the near dark, he glanced around and could see that Rob, Jen, and Ryan were all watching them. Ryan and Jen had tears in their eyes as well.
When it was dark, after they had all eaten and caught up on current events, the five of them sat around the fire smoking and sipping beers. “Hey College Boy, you said you had a scary story to tell us,” said Rob.
“Oh yeah,” said Tristan, “So, I’ve got this guy in my dorms whose dad is on the LAPD. He gets to hear about some really wild stuff. So, I don’t know if you guys noticed that Seeker is no longer in stores. All the guide books and expansion packs and everything have been pulled?”
The other four glanced at one another, then back at him and nodded.
“Well, the official word is that they had copyright infringement issues with other games and books and stuff and ended up going bankrupt and just closing up shop. But that’s not what really happened at all. Turns out that the main writer, Sammons, was this millionaire occultist guy who was using the game for some sort of giant ritual.”
Ryan’s face was lit when he took a drag of his cigarette and Tristan noticed that the kid looked absolutely spooked.
“It turns out that the whole thing was fake.”
“What do you mean, fake?” asked Rob, “The books are real. The prizes were real. It was a game we played; that was real.”
“But the competitions weren’t. The prizes were bribes to keep kids playing. What Sammons did was line it up so that he was recording the voices of thousands of children saying all these strange words. They found this special room, like a combination of a recording studio and some sort of black church, under his house. He had taken all the words and chants and all the stuff we called in over the years and cut them together and layered the tracks together, so he had all these kids all over the world basically saying the words to spells and stuff. He was using us to try to summon demons.”
All five stared deeply into the fire as it crackled in the cool night air. Nobody said a word for a while, each silent with whatever thoughts this revelation had left them. It was Ryan who finally spoke.
“Do you believe in God, Tristan?”
Tristan was caught off guard. “Uh, I don’t know. I guess? We’ve never been too religious.”
“We are. My family. Religious,” Ryan replied. His wide, haunted eyes seemed strangely calm as he stared in the firelight. “The thing about faith? It’s something you believe in even when you don’t have proof. You know? Like, you know that God is watching. Just watching. But you don’t really know. You only hope. You hope, and you try to believe in Him, even when things like books and songs and other people tell you he don’t exist, you know? That’s faith.”
“Ryan, I don’t—“
“I don’t know what you call it when you believe in God because you have proof. I don’t know if there’s even a word for that.” He looked up. “You know how I know that God is real, Tristan? You know?”
Tristan looked at the others for help, but they were all silent, just staring into the fire.
“Rya—“
Ryan leapt to his feet and screamed, “ASK ME HOW I KNOW THAT GOD IS REAL!!!”
“How do you know that God is real, Ryan?”
Ryan’s rage seemed to dissipate. His shoulders slumped, and he sat back down in his seat, “I know because I gave my soul to Satan. He has me now. He comes to me every night and laughs about how he tricked us, how he got me to give myself to him and how I didn’t even fight. How I said all the words. How I said them willingly. How I wanted to say them. He comes to me, Tristan. He comes to all of us. You delivered us to him.”
Tristan was stunned.
“Knowing that God is real, but that he will never have me. Sitting in church with my parents, listening to Satan laughing at me in my head. I’m worse than lost, Tristan, I’m damned. We all are.”
Tristan got to his feet, “Look, I don’t know what’s going on here. Is this some kind of game?” Suddenly, his body felt weak and he needed to sit down again. His head swam for a second before his vision cleared. He thought nothing of it, as he’d been drinking all day. “Ryan, I’m sorry. I never meant to… He scammed me too.”
“The Pied Piper,” said Ryan.
“What?”
“That first day, back in school. You mentioned the Pied Piper. An outsider who comes into town with odd clothes and strange music that lures the children away. You remember that? You said it was like He-Man, these games. But when I played with He-Man, I never had dreams about demons slaughtering my parents and raping my little sister. Not once.” He looked up at Tristan with wide eyes before staring back into the fire. “Now that’s all I ever dream about.”
“But nobody meant for you to promise your soul to anyone.” Tristan tried to reason with Ryan, but he seemed too far gone. “I didn’t know! It was just a game!”
Rob, who had been quiet the whole time spoke up. “You think the devil, or Satan or whatever… You think after you promise yourself to the devil hundreds of times a year for like five years he’s going to just let you go because you thought it was a game? We did it over and over and over again in like seven different languages! He’s got us, man. It’s true. I ain’t got it bad as Ryan but it’s there. We’re fucked.”
“What do you mean? You’re in on this too? Jen! Liz, come on! Tell me this isn’t happening!”
Jen hugged herself and rocked forward on her lawn chair. “This… It’s happening.” She then put her hands to her face and began sobbing.
Tristan tried to stand again but found his legs did not have the strength. He fell backwards into his chair and went a little off balance before falling back into place. “What… What’s happening?”
“We had to give you something to keep you here,” Rob said, “So you can’t run off.”
“What the hell?” Tristan stammered. He didn’t feel drugged or overly drunk, but his extremities refused to work correctly.
“Remember the Marie Laveau challenge?” Liz asked, “The Voodoo Curse? Turns out a lot of the stuff we learned about potions and poisons is true. Most of Seeker turned out to be true. The goal of the challenge was to gather the names of all these herbs that the Voodoos use in their rituals. Once I had the names, it was easy to
get hold of them and mix ‘em up.”
Rob came to stand behind Liz, “Look man, I’m sorry about this. I love you man, you’re my brother. But it’s the only way.” He stepped out of the shadows with a coil of rope in his hands. Jen sobbed harder. Rob shrugged. Ryan stared into the fire. Liz stared into Tristan’s eyes. Her face blurred and everything went black.
When he awoke his head was pounding. It was full dark, and he could not see. His hands and feet were bound, and he was covered in some sort of blanket. The odor of wood smoke was in the air, so he knew he was not far from the campsite. There was another odor as well—gasoline. He dared not move. He had to figure a way to get untied and away from here. His friends had all gone insane. What were they planning? Whatever it was, he was terrified to find out. He moved his hands slightly, testing his restraints.
A bell rang above his head. Startled, his body jerked and the bell rang louder. The bell was tied to him so tightly that any movement would alert the others. Tristan struggled to get up, finally getting his back against a tree and moving into a sitting position. He had some sort of hood or cowl hanging over his eyes, so he could not see properly, but what he saw made him shudder.
By the light of a lantern they came, four cloaked figures in procession. They walked in single file toward him, stopping ten or fifteen feet away, then spreading out and facing one another. Each had a candle in one hand and a small dagger in the other, except for the one who held the lantern. Then the lantern was extinguished, and then that figure lit a candle as well. They moved away from one another and took positions farther away. As one they dropped their candles and small fires erupted at their feet. Tristan watched in as one of them stepped away from the fire and knelt in front of him. The figure removed the hood and Liz’s face was revealed in the firelight.
