There are many similarities between the accounts of those that have supposedly completed the game and visited this other world. According to their accounts, the building looks the same as the one they began in, but all the lights are off. The other common feature is that all that can be seen outside is a red cross in the distance. There are no other living things in that world except the player.
There is a plethora of these ‘dangerous’ games floating around online, but Elevator to Another World rose to mainstream notoriety after the death of Elisa Lam in 2013.
To summarise what is a complex and troubling case, Elisa Lam was a Canadian student reported missing when she failed to check out of the hotel in which she was staying – the Hotel Cecil, Los Angeles – on the 31st of January 2013. Lam’s body was found in the water tank on the roof of the hotel on the 19th of February after other guests complained about a lack of water pressure, and discoloured and foul-smelling water coming from the taps in their rooms.
There has been no definitive explanation for Elisa Lam’s death, but what is widely concluded is that she suffered a psychotic episode from the medication she was taking for her bipolar disorder.
This podcast is in no position to comment on the death of Elisa Lam. Many other crime podcasts have covered the case, and I don’t know enough about it to go into any great detail. But before Lam was found the LAPD released a video from a surveillance tape filmed within the hotel. The video shows Lam acting strangely inside one of the lifts: she presses a number of the floor buttons before moving back and forth to the open lift door and looking out.
As one would expect, the security tape has come under much scrutiny, and is easily accessible on YouTube. It is claimed that as much of a minute of the original footage from the video has been removed – for reasons unknown. There are many theories about the case of Elisa Lam, ranging from demon possession to a hit by the Illuminati. However, the link with Elevator to Another World can be dismissed in the first ten seconds, as it is clear that Elisa Lam presses the buttons to the floors in a linear order rather than the sequence from the game’s rules. The video is a disturbing watch, granted, but any link to this ‘game’ is, in my opinion, clutching at straws. I only mention it to demonstrate the power of online speculation and the prominence of the game that I believe Arla Macleod was playing in Cornwall.
Back to Arla Macleod or more specifically, Angel.
—Did Arla tell you what she was doing in the lift?
—Yeah man, she was giving it all this about some ‘gateway to another world’ or some shit, and I was like, ‘whatever’. But I knew what she was really saying, man. I knew what it was really about.
—And what was that?
—It had nothing to do with other worlds or witches or any of that shit, yeah? The thing with Arla – she was like me, man. She was like me…
Angel pauses here for a long time and I follow her gaze out across the salon and into the street, where people still pass by, oblivious to us sat here in the back room. When she continues, it’s as if the years leave her: a softer voice comes out from behind that hard exterior. It’s almost childlike, and I think I can detect tears. I feel a pang of sorrow for Angel; she’s dropped her guard, albeit momentarily, and I wonder if there’s something more to all this. And I wonder again why she’s so adamant about keeping herself anonymous.
Angel’s phone buzzes in her pocket. The sound pushes a gasp out of my chest. She looks at the screen for a second and then places it on the worktop beside her. I see her face for a moment in the light of her screen, see her guard snapping back – vigilant once again.
—The thing is, yeah, when no one wants you – when this world tells you that you’re not important, that you don’t matter, that you’re an inconvenience – some people start to believe it; they make themselves unlikeable.
Let me tell you a story, right. It’s not about Arla, but … well, it is in the end, you’ll see. I remember this boy, man, he’d just come into the home where I was when I was about fourteen, yeah? Somewhere near Ipswich. Like, this boy was younger, like eight or nine. He was way too young for the home. But that’s what it was like, yeah? You don’t get much of a choice.
The first night, this boy, he was wearing like, super-hero pyjamas – like any kid. But by his second night, man, he was in his boxer shorts shouting like the rest of us. I remember hearing one of his care team who came into the home talking to one of the staff. She was saying that Robbie – that was his name – she was saying that Robbie was used to having a story at night. But she’d asked him, and he’d told her he hadn’t had a story since he got to the home. And that … man, that just broke my heart, you know? It just got inside me. So I went to his room that night – me, this angry girl, I went to his room and told him that I’d read him a story. Maybe I was, like, trying to recreate a childhood I’d never had or something. I remember feeling it so strong – that if I could just read this kid a story, man, that it would like … fix something in me…
—What happened?
—He’s in bed, just lying there, and there’s screaming coming from Tyrone in the next room and Jordan in the floor above stamping about. And this Robbie kid, he just looks over to me, and his eyes, man, they’re just … empty; just …dead. And he says, ‘Fuck off out of my room, you cunt.’
It was too late for him, man. The damage had been done. He’d lost out on the last thing that made him feel safe, so he created armour. People used to say that was me too. And I guess it was until I met Arla.
—And do you think that was Arla too – was she putting on armour?
—You ever see Return to Oz? Man, that shit is brutal.
—You mean the wheelers and the queen with all the heads? It certainly is!
—Yeah man, that shit’s scary. But it’s not the worst of it. The worst of it is little Dorothy, man. They all think she’s lost her mind so they want to give her shock therapy. Her only escape from that shitty little farm in Kansas was Oz. Dorothy went there to escape a world where she didn’t matter, where they would get rid of her only friend – that dog – and where they would fry her brains without a second thought. Dorothy Gayle was like Arla – or Arla was like Dorothy Gayle. All she wanted to do was get the fuck out of here and into Oz.
—Why do you think that was, Angel? What was it about her world that Arla was trying to escape from – to protect herself from?
—Man, we all got stuff we’re running from. We’ve all got wheelers after us – evil queens.
Angel won’t elaborate further and I take the hint; she’s right when she claims to be stubborn. ‘It’s not my story to tell,’ she repeats and lowers her head. Angel seems deeply reluctant to talk about anything more than this particular time in her life. I get an urge to share with her what’s been happening to me, wondering if that will encourage her to open up. But I stop myself, although it takes a lot not to ask who Angel’s ‘wheelers’ are.
—So me and Arla … we just, like, roamed about, you know? Aimless, just wandering round.
—Where did the two of you end up?
—It’s mad down there on the coast – it’s like tropical heat and shit; palm trees and that, you know? That summer was hot; it was like being abroad. Gary kept saying it was like being abroad but everyone spoke English.
The hotel was right above the beach, hanging off the cliff. To get down, you had to take this path. It was like a long zigzag down the cliff and there was, like, loads of older people and that with sticks. Arla and me, we just wandered down those paths. You could see the sea behind you, this big green wall, all the waves like paint flecks and that big blue sky above you. There was all sorts of mad flowers and weeds and that growing alongside those paths and you could smell the salt of the sea as you walked. It was like something out of a book or a film or some shit.
—So the two of you walked to the beach?
—Well, yeah and no. You could get down to the beach that way, but there was more than one path, you know? It was a huge cliff and there were a
ll sorts of paths snaking down like veins or something. We just wandered those paths and as soon as we saw other people, we’d take another path. It was like a game.
—Why did you do that?
—I dunno, man. We never said we’d do it, we just did. For me, I think that if I’d seen Gary and Emma, like, I’d have felt bad. They’d paid for me to do all this shit, you know, like activities and stuff.
—Did they ever find out? That you weren’t there I mean?
—Nah. Trust me, they were good people; they weren’t like … They cared man. But they were tired; it was their holiday too. They trusted me.
Angel turns away and goes a little quiet again, overwhelmed by emotion. I get it; Angel has told me a few times that Gary and Emma were the only carers that she ever really felt a connection with. I haven’t the heart to ask her what happened with her and them in the end.
—So when you and Arla were exploring, I imagine you did a lot of talking.
—Yeah, just chatting about our lives and that. It was well weird cos we didn’t even know each other and we started talking deep shit, like, really early on. We talked about our lives and our dreams. She had a lot.
—Did Arla tell you much about what things were like at home?
—A bit. I can’t speak for her, you know, but I will tell you that she had it hard … She was under it at home.
—Under it?
—Yeah, man. Her parents, man … her mum, yeah? They really had that Catholic guilt thing going hard.
—Go on.
—Just, like, Arla’s mum didn’t trust her an inch!
—Why do you think that was?
—I dunno, man. Arla was a good girl, you know? The opposite of me completely. She was one of those girls that got As, man, that, like, did their homework. It sounded like her mum and dad was a bit … tapped, you know? It sounded like neither of them were right in the head.
—What made you think that?
—Maybe it was just that we were from such different worlds, me and her? Arla wasn’t allowed to go out with her friends or anything. When everyone was down the park and that, she would have to stay in. A boyfriend? That was out of the question, you know? She just seemed to spend all her time in the house on the internet and stuff. That was her place, the internet – that was her one place where her mum and dad couldn’t watch her. They didn’t even know about it. They spent their time driving her sister about and Arla just hung about online. That was her world. That’s probably why she was into all that mad stuff.
—What mad stuff?
—Like, those games – like the lift game. And all that Skexxixx stuff – that music. I’d never even heard of it till Arla played me some.
I remember it was this beautiful day. We were walking down those paths and, like, she was telling me all this deep shit about these songs and about how only certain people could properly understand them. I wasn’t even really listening, man. I guess I was falling in love with her, you know? It was like something out of a film, with the flowers and shit. I could smell her skin … the sun cream … and, man, all I could think was that this doesn’t happen to girls like me, you know? I told her a lot, man; I told her stuff I don’t normally tell.
—Why was that? Why would you open up to Arla? It seems a little out of character, don’t you think?
—I’ve sometimes thought about that, man. At first I thought it was cos I was attracted to her, yeah? Maybe I wanted her to see this part of me I didn’t really show anyone else, like it would impress her or something. But now I’m older, I think it was something to do with Arla herself. She was like a dream; like, she was not quite real. I knew I’d never see her again after this holiday, that we’d never hear from each other again, so we were in different worlds and that sort of made it OK, you know? That made it easier to just talk.
—Did Arla talk back to you in the same way?
—Sort of, I guess. She was an odd one though, like she wasn’t quite of this world.
I’ve heard people describe both Alice and Arla in this way – as if there were something ethereal about the sisters that seemed to draw people in and push them away in equal measure.
I should also say that I realise that so far Angel hasn’t even mentioned what happened in 2014. This is deliberate; she told me before we started the interview that what happened shocked her deeply. When she heard about it on the news she remembered Arla’s name instantly. But she does not want to speculate about what Arla did to her family that night and anyway, she says she hadn’t been in touch with Arla since they met on holiday.
It is also worth noting that Arla and Angel did not spend entire days unsupervised. Angel’s memories are hazy but she insists they must have gone back to the hotel every few hours to make sure they were seen by their parents and guardians – and to eat meals with them. But otherwise they were granted free range of the resort.
—Me and Arla went down to the beach at the bottom of the cliffs a bit, but neither of us liked the feel of the sand on our feet very much. And there were too many people there, kids and parents playing out in the sun. Happy families.
—So where did you go instead?
—That’s when things went wrong; that’s why I wish I could just keep those first couple of days sacred. That what came next didn’t happen, you see?
—What did come next?
—Man, there’s so much of it – it’s a lot to explain, you know?
—Where’s a good place to start?
—Hmm … probably the games room.
—The games room?
—There was this tiny little room on the basement floor, next to the fire exit. It had pinball, one of those arcade games and fruit machines.
This is interesting. You will, of course, recall Arla’s account from episode one of seeing the black-eyed kids in the very same room.
—Did the two of you go there often?
—Nah, man, we just found it one day after playing the lift game. We just went down to the basement and just sort of hung there for a bit. It wasn’t our thing; it was just somewhere else to go that wasn’t full of other people.
—So what happened down there?
—It’s hard to remember exactly. There was some sports thing going on outside – you could hear it whenever you went out, some football match or something. So we must have been in hiding from that. That day there were a lot of new people in the hotel – families with suitcases coming in and out. Changeover day or something.
I guess we were just trying to keep away from all that. Just lying low, you know?
From what I can gather, Arla and Angel were kindred spirits of sorts and much of their behaviour centred around avoiding others, especially people their own age. This strikes me as a little strange when it comes to Angel. She hasn’t long told me she almost found solace in the ‘bad boys’ again, but meeting Arla put a stop to that. Perhaps in Arla she found what she was looking for?
Angel sighs as she recounts the next part and there’s more than a little bitterness in her voice.
—Then, like, this boy appears.
—A boy?
—Yeah, he was our age I think, or maybe younger. I dunno, man. I didn’t give a fuck. One minute it was just me and Arla and next he was just suddenly there, ruining the vibe, you know?
—Really? His presence was that intrusive?
—From the very first second.
—Tell me more about this boy.
—OK. First, his name was Anthony. It didn’t suit him! You know how some people just, like, don’t suit their name, like, it just hangs off them like a bad coat? That was this guy, man. Anthony, it sounded just all wrong for him, you know?
—What did he look like?
—Ah, this guy was big and I’m not talking personality.
—He was overweight?
—He was wearing these big jeans, and you know his mum’s got them for him from the fat-kid shop – Big & Beautiful or whatever. He was so fat his arms sort of stuck out, like a penguin or something, you
know? He was breathing really loud as well – wheezing. It was disgusting. He had these red cheeks, sweat on his forehead. It was like even just existing was difficult for him, you know? He couldn’t look at you, always had his head down. Weird man, just a big fat weirdo.
—So was Anthony just another guest?
—Oh we found out all about him immediately. You know, this is making me sound bad, like, shallow or something, yeah? But I’m not, because, like, I have no problem with fat … sorry, overweight people. I mean, I’m no model. But it wasn’t about that with him – it wasn’t his weight that was the problem.
—Was there something else other than your attachment to Arla that this guy had interrupted?
—So as soon as he walked into that room and we turned round I mean, I was taken aback by the sight of him at first cos the way he looked at us, it was creepy, man, like, up and down, slowly, both of us, one at a time. It was, like, for me anyway, you could feel his eyes all over your body. It made you feel greasy or something – violated, you know?
—He was predatory?
—See, I thought so at the time, but now I just think he was a bit sad, a bit lonely and awkward. But when he looked at Arla – man, I could see it written all over his face, and my heart just sort of sank.
—Why?
—You know what? I think I saw exactly what I had felt on his face. It was the feeling I had when I saw her the first time.
—Why did your heart sink at that?
—Because in that second I knew that we’d never be rid of him. At that moment I thought that whatever delicate chemistry was trying to happen between Arla and me was just about to get snuffed out. It sounds bad, doesn’t it? Can you edit and shit afterwards to make me not sound so bad?
It is difficult, nigh on impossible, for me to locate the other guests who stayed at this hotel at the same time as Angel and Arla. Believe me, I’ve tried, but my sleuthing has only turned up maybes and dead ends. So unless the people themselves come forward, as Angel has, I am at a loss. All I have to go on are the words of Angel and Arla and I am aware that their recollections of the events are liable to bias and distortion.
Hydra Page 16
