by T. K. Kato
+1 Cha
Despite myself, despite knowing it was a game, I had goosebumps on my arms. It was how I’d felt reading this story, back in high school. The mind forgets details a lot faster than it forgets the impression, I suppose. And Lovecraft had left his impression on me and Elise, as well. “So what happened?”
“Obed and his people, they’d row out to Devil Reef in the middle of the night, chanting and calling up them Deep Ones for trade. I seen it then—’course I was only about seven—but I took my pa’s spyglass and looked out at the reef. I caught me a glimpse of the things and I swear to God I wish I hadn’t. One by one, anyone opposing Obed’s new religion went missing in the night. I bet you can guess where to.”
I rubbed my face. My hand bumped the headset I’d forgotten I was even wearing, and I had to resettle it. “So Obed sacrificed his enemies to the Deep Ones.”
Zadok nodded. “That went on a while, until people started to complain about all them as was missing. So then someone—I’m gonna guess maybe Obed’s old first mate—brought in the police. In a day, Obed and a bunch of his followers were off in jail, and I thought maybe that was the end of that.”
“It finally put an end to the sacrifices.”
+1 Cha
“Did. And you’d have thought that a fine thing, wouldn’t you? ‘Cept won’t nothing fine about it. See, a few weeks past the sacrifice …” Zadok’s voice trailed off and I had to lean in close to catch his whisper. “This one night … From up in the attic, I seen ’em. Swimming in … up the harbor. They came up, door to door, checking every house. My pa told me to hide, so I hid tight in that attic.” The old man sniffed, then wheezed. “Morning came, pa was gone. Won’t nobody left at all, ‘cept Obed’s men and those what didn’t speak against him.”
My palms were sweating. I leaned back a moment, trying to remind myself this was not a real person nor a real event. Zadok was a character pulled straight out of a story written a hundred years ago. Never mind the urge I had to put a comforting hand on his trembling shoulder.
“So …” The old man polished off the last of the whiskey and handed the bottle back. “So Obed, he says it was time things change now. Time everyone fell in line and started worshipping as he told it. Says … we got three oaths to take. Now see, I’m breaking the first one, telling you this. That’s one, see, keeping the secret? Maybe I’m even breaking the second oath, being loyal. Then the last … See, Obed says we’re not so much different from these Deep Ones. Says in the old days they mixed with us, back when men worshipped them.”
“Mixed? You mean …” Well, that was disgusting. Also biologically impossible, as far as I knew.
“Right you are. Because ’em as was born from such unions, they look like humans, at least in the beginning. As they get older, they start to change. Coming to be more and more like ’em Deep Ones. Then one day they go down to the sea and don’t come back. But down there, they can live forever, Obed says. So our children with ’em is gonna be immortal.”
Yeah, this was all coming back to me now. I was pretty such the narrator in this story discovered he was descended from Obed and fated for this change.
“So the people with the strange look about town …”
“Oh, they keep the worst of them all locked up and hid away. Got a whole nest of warrens under ’em boarded-up houses so they can get about when they need to. Up until the full change comes on them and …”
“And what?”
Zadok started like he’d seen something awful and jumped to his feet.
“You get out o’ this town, you hear? Just get!” He was staring out at the ocean, but I saw nothing of note out there.
+1 Cha
Before I could ask more, he took off at a dead run, heading inland as fast as his decrepit legs could carry him.
Shaking my head, I rose and stared out at the waters. I still didn’t see anything out there, though it was starting to get dark. Zadok’s bizarre story and behavior were just scripts, I tried to remind myself. But then, just how much of the tale had the designers ripped straight from Shadow Over Innsmouth? That, I could probably check into once I got back to the hotel.
Hell, I should have reread it before even coming here. All of Lovecraft’s works were online and I could’ve pulled it up on my phone on the bus ride over, had I not been so preoccupied.
In any event, the park was no doubt intended to grow creepier at night. As a tester, I probably ought to remain here and find out what they had in store. But … somehow I couldn’t quite stifle the unease the place filled me with. Masterful craftsmanship, I told myself.
No, if there was any chance of more cultists or worse stalking me in the night, it might prematurely end my session in this game. And I wasn’t ready for that.
I couldn’t bring myself to log out or to lose.
I didn’t have anything else left.
Admittedly, old Zadok’s tale had me on edge just a little. So I made quick time back to the hotel, not quite jogging, but still managing to work up a small sheen of sweat running down my back. When I reached the Gilman House, I removed the headset and headed in.
The clerk was still there—what was her name? Mia?—and she smiled again before visibly forcing the smile off her face.
“Welcome back, Mr. Walmore.” She slid a key over the counter. An actual key—not a card—one that looked made of bronze, even. Heavy. “Your room is the last door on the right, on the third floor. I’ve had your bags sent up there.”
“Thanks.” I took the key and ran my thumb over it. A nice touch, I supposed, avoiding the modern hotel design in favor of this antique. I stuck it in my pocket, and turned to the stairs.
“If you need anything, just let me know.”
I glanced back at her. “Am I the first outside tester they’ve brought in?”
“Uh … yeah, I think so. I mean, I’m pretty sure. How are you finding the game?” There was that smile, and she leaned over the counter, just a little. “Having fun?”
Fun? Maybe. “It’s … compelling. Like a secret world underlies everything, just out of sight.”
“Wow. That’s … an interesting way of putting it.”
Another world. Huh. “Excuse me.” On a whim, I put on the headset. Why not, right? There had been another store in Thomas’ canteen.
Now, a different hotel clerk stared at me. This one a balding man with that slightly altered look I’d spotted in others. The narrow head, the too-large eyes. Assuming Zadok was correct, I was actually staring at a man turning into a Deep One. His bulging eyes seemed to bore right into me, as if judging me for some transgression I had no idea about.
“Evening,” I said.
The man nodded without speaking. Or blinking. Shit, I was not going to sleep too soundly here. The designers had left out no detail of the atmosphere. And even knowing it was a game, knowing the damn story—more or less—they’d based all this on, I still felt the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
I made my way around the corner to the stairs, but paused on the threshold. The wall beside the stairs had a thin line splitting the wallpaper, like the wall had been cut from two pieces. I lifted the headset. Without it, the seam was much harder to spot. I let the glasses fall back over my eyes then ran my fingers along the crease. A secret passage?
And why not? What self-respecting game didn’t put secret doors into creepy old buildings?
I pushed on the wall to one side of the crack and it turned slowly, creaking against the floor as it spun on an axis. A layer of dust blew up in my face. After waving that away, I peered down into a dark corridor now revealed.
Yeah, all right. So this was pretty cool.
I pulled out the flashlight and shone it into the opening. Just on the other side of the wall ran another staircase, this one descending into a secret basement.
Design trope: hidden boss?
I snorted. Yeah, I didn’t want to go facing any Lovecraftian bosses, thank you very much.
I started down the stairs.
They creaked under my weight. Cobwebs and dust had collected over the narrow descent. Clearly no one came here.
The stairs ended in a basement even thicker with webs. Having seen the trick with the spider already, I swung the light about the room to make sure it was clear before walking forward. I ducked under a web and dodged around others, making my way through this empty basement, at the back of which was a doorway with no door.
As I came up to this and peered inside, my stomach lurched. The room beyond was carved out of stone and seemed built from many blocks. The blocks were not arranged in anything resembling sense, though, but rather built upon one another at weird angles that made me dizzy, as if the designers had tried to implement Lovecraft’s fascination with non-Euclidean geometry.
-1 Sanity
Indeed, the room seemed to fold upon itself, with all lines leading into intersecting dimensions that should not have been possible in 3D space. The more I studied it, the more it seemed to writhe and wriggle before my eyes, increasing my dizziness. Bile scorched my throat and I tasted a hint of that fish I’d eaten a few hours before.
Before I puked up all that, I pulled off the headset. Of course that left me in total darkness.
So this room was pretty much a giant F-U from the designers to anyone who managed to find the secret.
I could just turn around and go back up the stairs, find my room and lie down. I probably should have done so. But honestly, I really had to know what lay beyond all this madness.
I put the headset back on, and stumbled through the room, trying not to look too hard at any path. I just had to keep moving forward and hope that I got to the opposite side.
After a moment, I paused. I thought I’d been walking in a straight line, but the far side of the room seemed no closer. When I looked back, though, I’d managed to follow a path through the floor that bent around and left me standing on the wall to the right of where I’d entered.
This place would give Escher nightmares.
Keeping my eyes on my feet, I pushed forward. The blocks I walked along became the stairs that finally led up to a door. I was so turned around I couldn’t say for certain if it was the same one I’d come in or not. If so, I was done with this particular room.
I walked through the door only to find it opened out into a narrow room blocked off by a stone wall. Faint red light emanated from a stone set in the wall. I swept the flashlight over it, then fell back a step. The wall bore a relief of Cthulhu: a great dragon-winged, octopus-headed monstrosity that had become the symbol of both this park and Lovecraft’s mythos. Cthulhu held six different gems in a circle formed between his clawed hands. The relief covered almost the entire length of the wall—or door! The bottom of it had a crack where the door must slide into the floor.
+1 Lore
Good God. They had really gone all out on this.
Six gems, but only the ruby was lit.
Game trope: unlock the seals on a door.
Each gem must represent an objective I had to accomplish before I could pass this door. Of course. So my ultimate goal was located at the beginning of the game, but I couldn’t get through until I visited every other corner of the map, no doubt.
And yes, at this point, I did have a grin on my face.
I went up to my room on the third floor and found it was nicer than the hotel might have led me to believe. Clean sheets on a fluffy queen-sized bed, a little desk in the corner. Even a small closet to hang my clothes, had I actually brought enough to be worthwhile.
My backpack and shoulder bag had been left sitting beside the bed. I ruffled through the bag to find my tablet and laid it on the desk, figuring it was about time to start making a few notes. I couldn’t say I’d spotted any bugs, exactly, though there were aspects of the game that did break the otherwise overpowering verisimilitude of this place.
Standing in front of the desk, I paused. Everywhere in the whole town had featured an insidious double in the game world. Would they have gone so far as to program the rooms themselves? I pulled the headset back on and the room did change, taking on an ambiance more suited to a hundred years ago. The sheets and curtains were a bit coarser, with more frills. The modern nightstand was replaced with a carved antique, the built-in nightlight fading away to reveal an actual lamp. Everything was a bit plainer, drabber—more sullen.
I turned about, soaking in the decor. A discolored patch on the door and the wall adjacent stood out now. Drawing closer, I could spot holes where nails had been removed. Based on the location, this had probably once been a locking bolt. Someone had pulled it right out of the wall.
A game that offered no real respite. Probably not unlike the source material. Leaving the headset on, I searched the room more thoroughly. On a high shelf in the closet, I found the missing bolt. I stared at the thing in my hand a moment. Someone had programmed this, so clearly it was necessary or at least a bonus. With a shrug, I returned to the door, then fitted the missing lock. A few swift strokes of my hammer beat the nails into the wood, then I slid the bolt into place.
I half-expected an in-game message to flash before my eyes, but none came. Finally, I gave up, removed the headset, and sat down at the desk. With the weight off my feet, I suddenly realized how fatigued I’d become. All the walking around maybe, but a headache was building behind my eyes. Prolonged exposure to the AR environment might have side effects. I wasn’t really here to test that, but it was worth making note of so the owners could investigate further before finding themselves embroiled in some lawsuit.
I pressed two fingers against the bridge of my nose and slowly massaged my brows, trying to lessen the pressure in my head. With a sniff, I shook it off and pulled out my phone. Yeah, I should have just played the damn game, right? But I knew they were using elements right out of Shadows over Innsmouth and it was bugging the hell out of me that I couldn’t properly remember all the details of the story. Besides, they had to know most guests who came to this park would’ve read all of Lovecraft’s works.
I opened up Safari and got that annoying “no net” message. Not only did the room have no wi-fi, I had no cell bars. I grimaced. Crap service. Sure I was out in the middle of nowhere, but we weren’t far from actual cities. I should have had at least a little signal.
Grumbling, I jammed the phone back in my pocket and switched to the tablet. No signal on that, either, but at least I could use it to type up my notes on the game thus far.
I started with a bullet list of anything that came to mind, all the places the game pulled me out of the experience. Then I replayed the whole process in my mind. The thing was, looking back, I wasn’t certain I actually disapproved of them implementing traditional design motifs. They did serve to offer experienced gamers a foundation to latch on to and move through the game world. And if the designers managed to subvert those motifs on occasion, it would make them doubly effective.
I also made a few notes on the startlingly responsive AI I’d encountered in the NPCs. No complaints there, that was for sure. The owners might be able to make a fortune just licensing those scripts to other companies.
So far, everything seemed well-designed and I doubted they’d have any problems once they—
The handle to my door rattled.
I turned sharply to look at it, my heart rate exploding. Someone prodded at the handle, finding it locked but not quite accepting it. And it wasn’t like I could assume it was some drunk guest with the wrong room. No one else was here except for the employees.
So … Mia? Elise?
After a second to slow my pulse, I rose and walked to the door, then flipped the bolt. By now the rattling had stopped. I opened the door but found only an empty hallway beyond.
“Elise?”
What the hell? If someone had been there, he or she ought to have still been in the hall, unless they actually ran away the second they gave up on the lock. So … could this be part of the game? After another glance around, I shut the door and locked it again. To pull this off, the hotel itself would
have to be rigged with some kind of mechanical interface to the game. Maybe on a timer?
In the original tale, I was pretty sure the protagonist had been accosted in his hotel room. So were they trying to recreate that rather creepy moment? If so, it meant this whole park was not only an AR interface, but was actually rigged to mess with the guests. To mess with me.
And Elise must have known that.
Cthulhu World—those with heart conditions should not ride this ride.
My pulse had begun pounding again. Not quite sure why, I put the headset back on. The in-game bolt had opened on its own, either when I unlocked the real deadbolt, or when I opened the door.
Stage 2
More than a little creeped out, I slammed the in-game bolt back into place, then retreated away from the door. A bare moment later, the handle rattled again.
Okay.
So most likely, an NPC was trying to access the room. If I took off the headset it would have to end or pause the scenario … but if this was some iconic moment from the original tale, I felt obligated to play it out. That was why I was here, after all.
Well then, I was checked into the only hotel in Innsmouth. The hotel manager, like most of the town, was part of this Deep One cult. A cult that offered up human sacrifices.
I turned slowly about my room. The only other exit was the window, and I was on the third floor. I flung open the shutters and peered outside. There was a ledge below, but it was on the first story, meaning a serious drop. This might have been part video game, but a fall like that could result in actual injuries. Surely they didn’t expect the guests to try any such thing.
That meant I was left with either hiding, waiting it out, or confronting my would-be intruder.
I supposed I owed it to the designers to test out what would happen if I confronted whoever was here.
And yeah, the thought of it got my heart racing in a way usually resolved for a boss battle.
