“Jeeze,” Lauren said. “Did it say something bad about your mother? Call you a name?”
“I can’t pinpoint it,” Danny said. “But I have no desire to play the thing.”
“Well, I’m sold,” Alley said, and he was already fishing around his pocket for some quarters.
“You’re not really going to play this, are you Alley?” Benji said. “You only brought four bucks. You’re gonna blow one-fourth of all your money on a single play. We’re gonna be here all afternoon, you know. At least until the storm passes.”
“What are you now, my algebra teacher?” Alley said. “I want to play it!”
Alley was, indeed, enamored with anything that glinted of new and cutting edge technology. He had been collecting magazine articles for quite some time, all of them talking about the new Nintendo coming out in a few months. Well, in a few months it’d be out in Japan; Alley would have to wait a year before it arrived stateside. They were calling it the “Super Nintendo,” and Alley loved that title—a Nintendo, just like his, only more super-er! He couldn’t wait. In the meantime, however, a brand new arcade cabinet might quench his thirst for new technology.
“Where is the monitor on this thing?” Alley asked.
Danny patted the top of the cabinet. “There isn’t one. A couple of goofy goggles come down when you’re ready to play.”
“Get out,” Alley said. “It’s virtual reality?” If he wasn’t completely sold before, he was now.
“I guess,” Danny said with a shrug.
“How do you pronounce the name?” Lauren asked.
Danny said, “Phantasos.”
“That’s a stupid name,” she said.
“Yeah,” Benji added. “A buck per play, and only the guy playing can see what’s going on. So, it’s not even like we can huddle around and cheer him on, or learn from his mistakes, or decide if we want to play it ourselves.”
Danny laughed. “I completely agree with you. All of this nonsense was Todd’s idea, so complain to him the next time you see him. I got a line at the prize cabinet though, so have fun, kids. Good luck.”
“Well?” Alley said, squeezing a fistful of quarters.
“Well,” Benji said, “have fun with it. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather play a game of Double Dragon with me, first?”
Benji said, “Positive.”
“I’ll play Double Dragon with you,” Lauren said, and that was that. Lauren and Benji walked to the other side of the arcade, and Alley plunked four quarters into Phantasos, one by one. Plink, plink, plink. He hesitated, and then, plink.
Right away, orchestral music started to play from a speaker on top of the machine. A small door above Alley opened up, and a bar with a pair of rubbery goggles at the end of it descended slowly towards him.
The goggles stopped, just short of Alley’s face, and he frowned and groaned. My dollar’s gonna go to waste. He stood on his tippy-toes, trying to peer into the goggles, and when he grabbed onto them for support he was surprised that they gave way and fell some more, until Alley could comfortably position them in front of his face.
Now looking deep into the goggles, Alley grabbed at the joystick and buttons in front of him. A mesmerizing array of colors began to dance, and Alley stood, jaw open, clicking at the buttons on the arcade cabinet and pulling on the joystick. He took a deep breath, then said out loud to no one:
“Whoa.”
“I didn’t know you were such a Double Dragon fan,” Benji said, escorting Lauren towards the machine.
“I play it with Alley sometimes at home, but the arcade version is so much better than his copy.”
Benji reached into his pocket, pulled out one quarter for him and one for Lauren.
“What a gentlemen,” Lauren said jokingly.
Benji shrugged.
“I’m sorry for how miserable I’ve been acting these past few days. It’s summer, I get it. We should be having fun.”
Benji put one hand on a joystick and hovered the other above a row of buttons. A short cinematic began to play on screen.
“Don’t be sorry,” Benji said. “It’s tough. I can’t imagine what it’s like. I’m just the neighbor, the friend. I—mostly—only see the good times. I’m not there for the late night scares and the medicines and the doctor visits and all of that. I can’t imagine.”
“It seems to come and go in waves,” Lauren said, maneuvering her character through a grungy street on screen. The figure on the monitor began to pummel a thug carrying a baseball bat. “Some weeks are better than others. It’s been good lately.”
“That’s good,” Benji said, and in a hurry to control his character, he swung his joystick fast and his elbow brushed against Lauren’s. “Sorry,” he added.
Benji didn’t move his gaze from the screen, but from the corner of his eye he thought that he saw Lauren blush—
“Somebody help him!” A voice screamed from clear across the arcade. “Somebody, do something! He’s bleeding!”
Lauren and Benji looked at one another, and without looking back at the game, raced from where they stood to where they last saw Alley. Lauren’s heart pounded like a jackhammer, and her hearing went fuzzy. The sounds of the arcade became muffled, distant noises, as if she was suddenly underwater. Her hands cooled, her mouth went dry, and as she ran she felt weightless, a ghost floating across the arcade floor.
In front of the Phantasos machine, a crowd had circled around. Lauren jammed her hands between a couple of kids and pried her way through them. Lying on his back, a ruby stream trickling from a nostril, was Alley. His eyes had rolled back in his head and he was jerking back and forth frantically.
“Call 911,” Lauren screamed, and though she was certain the words left her mouth—the crowd jumped back a step at her shriek—she didn’t hear her own voice. “Call them, now!”
Benji raced towards Danny, who he saw darting for the rear office of the arcade. “I’m on it, I’m on it, I’m doing it now,” Danny said in a panic.
Benji sprinted towards the crowd forming around Alley. He pushed his way through them and dropped to the floor beside his friend, and held his hand. This Alley looked nothing like the Alley that Benji was most fond of—his lips were chalky white, his skin was pale and cold, and the way his body jerked and seized was terrifying.
“Just hold on,” Benji whispered to his friend. “Just hold on.”
The lights in the arcade flickered and a thunderclap boomed so loudly the walls shook. In an instant, a hard, terrible rain started to fall.
Fifteen
DANNY STOOD IN THE DOORWAY OF the arcade with the rest of the customers who had gathered about, and watched the paramedics take care of Alley. He was carefully placed onto a stretcher, an oxygen mask was pulled over his face, and the stretcher was cautiously loaded into the rear of an ambulance. Benji and Lauren hopped in after him, the lights on top of the ambulance started to strobe, and a whining siren cut through the air as the ambulance took off through the falling sheets of rain.
No sooner had the ambulance driven away, a police cruiser pulled up in front of the arcade. A big, ’88 Impala. A tank of a car. The lights and the sirens were both off, and the car pulled up to the curb slowly. Danny heard the transmission click into park, and out stood two square-faced, somber looking officers.
“Are you Daniel Feist?” the younger of the two officers asked.
“I am,” he said, and he felt his stomach sink so slow he thought it might spill out onto the sidewalk in front of him.
“We’ll need to speak to you for a moment,” the older officer said, removing his cap as he stepped into the arcade.
Danny shooed the remaining patrons out of the arcade and locked the doors, then quickly hung a sign on the door that simply read: Closed. He escorted the officers to the back office, but before they could say a word he suddenly knew, he just knew it was rotten news, the way someone knows when something terrible has happened—it shivers through their body, through their bones, through their marrow. Through thei
r very being.
The officers made sure Danny was sitting firmly in his seat, then introduced themselves: the older officer, Officer King, and the younger officer, Officer Drummond. Once the formalities were over, King and Drummond cut to the chase and went directly to the matter at hand. They gave Danny their condolences, held his shoulder so he wouldn’t lean out of his chair, and informed him that Todd Prower had passed away at approximately 2 PM that afternoon.
Danny cried a hard, trembling cry that echoed off the walls of the office. When it seemed as if his energy was spent, that he was physically unable to weep another tear, he asked King and Drummond how Todd passed and then the sobbing began again, as furiously as ever.
Ten minutes must have passed—maybe twenty?—Danny wasn’t sure. The officers were being decent and considerate enough, not at all acting impatient or like time was a concern.
When there was finally a break in sobbing Drummond said, “We’d like to talk to you for a bit, Danny. But we don’t have to right now. We can visit you a little later, if you’d like.”
“No,” Danny said. He raised his hand, leaned back in his seat, and crossed his legs. “I can talk. I can talk.” He drew long, sharp breaths, counting between them. After the third breath, the room went silent.
“I know it’s difficult,” King said, “but can you tell Officer Drummond and myself if Todd has had any problems lately?” Drummond pulled out a short pencil and a memo pad, flipped open to a blank sheet.
“What kind of problems?” Danny said.
“Oh,” King said. “Anything. Girl problems, money problems. Was there anything bothering him?”
Danny cleared his throat. “It’s been no secret in town that the arcade hasn’t been doing so well. Financially.”
“That’s a start,” King said. “Drummond and myself don’t play many of these video amusements. We were unaware of your financial situation.”
“We had some problems paying the lease a month or two back, but Todd took care of it. There’s been some bill collectors, but nothing too serious. Not yet. We’ve been able to stay afloat.”
“So, some significant money problems,” Drummond said.
“No,” Danny said. “I just told you, they weren’t too serious—”
“Coming up late on rent, bill collectors knocking on your door.” Drummond shrugged. “Sounds serious to me.”
“What about women?” King interrupted. “Was Todd seeing anyone? Romantically?”
“No,” Danny said.
“Was he sneaking around? Could he have been having an affair without you knowing?”
“No,” Danny said. “Why are you asking me so many questions about a woman?”
King leaned back, sighed, and raised his eyebrows to Drummond. Drummond nodded his head, Go ahead, show him, and King reached down to the floor for his briefcase. He opened it up and took out two clear bags, each marked as evidence, and each one had a single piece of notebook paper inside with some scribbles.
“First thing’s first,” King said. “We found both of these on Todd’s kitchen table. It looks like he wrote them this morning, before he left the house.”
Danny reached across the table and picked up the bag on the left. Through the clear plastic bag, he read: Danny. My one true friend. If I don’t come back today, I love you. I’m sorry about all of this. Please take care of yourself, buddy.
Danny raised his eyes towards the ceiling, fighting back the lump in his throat.
“And the other,” King said, sliding the evidence bag across the table towards Danny.
Danny looked down at the note, and read it to himself through the clear plastic: To any law enforcement personnel who may find this—I am writing this in sane body and mind. This afternoon I will drive myself to meet a woman identifying herself as Shelly Flynn at the Sunway Hotel in North Grand Ridge. Should any injury come to me, find this woman. She is responsible.
“Well?” Drummond said.
Danny was frozen, reading the note over and over again until the words were practically memorized.
“Does that name ring any bells?” Drummond asked.
“It does,” Danny said. “Shelly Flynn was Todd’s fiancé. They used to live together in New York City.”
Danny took a deep breath, then said: “She died six years ago.”
Danny adjusted in his chair, and at the request of the officers, started to tell the story of Todd and Shelly…
The two were living in the lower east side, around ’84. Both were working odd jobs to make ends meet. Todd was primarily focused on electrical wiring, and he had started to make a comfortable wage doing arcade cabinet service and repair. Shelly was an aspiring actress—and at this point in the story, Danny asked the officers if they had ever seen Ghostbusters. They nodded, then he proudly told them of a walk-on role Shelly had towards the end of the film. No speaking lines, but there she was, “the most beautiful girl in the crowd,” as Danny had put it.
After the Ghostbusters gig, Shelly started to line up more and more serious auditions. Still the occasional soda or fast-food commercial, sure, but more legitimate roles, too.
It was a morning in early November, Danny recalled, that Shelly was on her way to an audition. She was waiting at her subway stop for the A line, just a few blocks from home. It was early in the morning, so apparently there weren’t many people around. A couple of thugs started badgering her, asking her out, where she was going. Just harassing her. It went from bad to worse when one of them gave up on the romantic advances and focused on her purse. Shelly put up a fight, a struggle ensued…
One of the thugs grabbed her, fought her for her purse, and when she wouldn’t relent he shoved her and she spilled backwards onto the tracks. Just a moment before the A train was to arrive.
And that was that. Some Good Samaritan nearby tried to help her up, but it was too late. There was nothing anyone could do. It was over.
King raised his eyebrows, looked at Drummond. Danny caught the two giving themselves each a look of affirmation.
“Six years ago, huh?” Drummond said.
“Yeah. After that, Todd came out to Oregon. To start over, I guess. We met at an arcade expo and opened up Planet X together. Well—mostly him. I didn’t contribute as much as him, financially.”
“Did he seem upset lately?” King asked.
“There had been some prank calls,” Danny admitted. “One of them really upset him. He had been drinking more than usual. But, I mean, what are you guys trying to get me to say here?”
“Hm,” Drummond said, and he jotted some notes into his memo pad before flipping it shut. “Danny, I have to tell you how we’re seeing this whole thing from our perspective. The sad, vague notes he left. The nature of his accident. Hell, with what you just told us about his girlfriend, it’s no wonder he chose to go the way he did. Train tracks. Poetic.”
“His fiancé,” Danny said, correcting the officer. “Not girlfriend. And what the hell are you implying?” Danny demanded. He felt himself getting angry.
“Danny,” King said, and he gave him a look—a caring look, but one that also said: Don’t turn this into something worse. “It might have been hard for you to see how troubled he was, with how close the two of you were—”
“Yeah, we’re close! If he was ‘troubled’ I would have noticed—”
“But the money problems, the tragic story of his fiancé,” King said, putting extra annunciation on ‘fiancé’, “the nature of the crime scene. I’m sorry to tell it to you like this, son. We’re treating your friend’s death as a suicide.”
“Like hell you are,” Danny said. “Didn’t you read the note?”
“Which one?” Drummond said. “The one where he apologized for letting you down?”
“No,” Danny said, narrowing his eyes. “The one where he says someone impersonating Shelly is following him.”
King and Drummond shrugged. “We checked out that hotel north of town. The Sunway. Little old woman at the front desk says she remembered se
eing Todd. Alone. There were only two rooms checked out today. One was to some guy in room 126—a crack head. Not really one to be easily mistaken for a blonde beauty. The other was in 201. Again, a male. We’ll pull any security tapes, of course, but I wouldn’t count on it helping with anything. The crime scene was—well, quite horrible—the worst many of us have ever seen. We’ve had experts combing through the wreckage for the past hour, and there was only one occupant in Mr. Prower’s Fiero, and that was Mr. Prower.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Danny said, defeated.
“These things never do,” King said, and the officers excused themselves.
Sixteen
ALLEY HEARD THE FAMILIAR HISS OF oxygen pumping into him, the impatient droning of emergency sirens overhead.
He didn’t want to open his eyes, he’d rather they just stay firmly shut and he could imagine the entire thing was a bad dream. I just wanted to play at the arcade with my friend, he thought. Why today, why today, why today…?
At last, he blinked his eyes open, found himself looking into a bright fluorescent light. Four shadows converged over him: dark, featureless, their silhouettes only vaguely human shaped.
Alley screamed out, “Get away!”
Responding to his cry, one of the shadows loomed down closer, until it was nose-to-nose with Alley. Its breath smelled rotten, and it seemed to purr.
He shut his eyes and again screamed, “Get away from me!”
“What’s wrong with him?” Lauren asked, kneeling over her younger brother.
Alley, relieved to hear the softness of his sister’s voice, summoned the courage to open his eyes once more. Leaning over him was Lauren, her long waves of hair tickling the tip of his nose.
“You’re not him,” Alley said.
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