The Bad Game

by Adam Millard

  TWENTY-SIX

  Jamie and Scottie finished tying the boy to the chair. In the absence of rope, Deirdre had located a ball of garden twine. It wasn’t the strongest—rope would have been much better—but it did the job. They had had to use the entire ball on the Douglas-thing, who remained unconscious throughout. Occasionally its eyes fluttered open, revealing those obsidian pits that seemed to be searching into your very soul when they fell upon you. But Jamie was satisfied that they had subdued the Douglas-thing suitably.

  “I think that’ll hold him,” Scottie said to Jamie.

  “Great!” Hard-Hat said from the back of the pub. He appeared to be trying to get as far away from the Douglas-thing as possible. “Now that you have it all wrapped up in a bow, can we smash its fucking head off?”

  Jamie couldn’t believe how weak the workman sounded, how utterly terrified. “Nobody is killing it,” he said. “Do you have kids?”

  Hard-Hat shrugged. “None that I know about.” He looked smug about that. Angela, sitting at the bar, sighed and shook her head in disgust. “Look, I just don’t see how keeping that thing alive in the same room as us is going to help matters. What if it gets free, huh? What then?”

  “There are eight of us,” Scottie said. “Against an eight-year-old? I reckon we’ve got the upper hand, don’t you?”

  Hard-Hat still didn’t look convinced. He regarded the Douglas-thing tied to the chair the way you might an escaped paedophile or a rabid weasel. Jamie suddenly disliked the man. Yes, the boy strapped to the chair had become something else, something evil, but there had to be a way of getting him back. Someone was bound to figure this shit out eventually. Fuck, maybe it was some kind of drug, some new legal high which… what? Allowed kids to run on the ceiling and move at the speed of light? Okay, Jamie thought. Perhaps that is a little far-fetched, but it was no more ridiculous than the alternative. Demonic possession.

  “So what do we do now?” Liza said. She was checking her phone again. “And now the battery’s dead. Does anyone ever wonder whether the whole world is against you?” Outside, a car careened through the street, horn blaring, and was gone before Bandanna and Hard-Hat had a chance to make it to the window.

  “Well, I guess we’re just going to sit it out,” Ted said, searching the faces of Jamie and Scottie as if for confirmation. “Maybe we should try the TV? Any bit of news would be better than none right now.”

  Scottie nodded. “Just angle it away from the window,” he said. “If there are any of those things out there, and they see the screen, they’re gonna try to get in.”

  Ted Porter walked across the room, climbed up on the chair beneath the TV, repositioned the screen a little, and then pushed in the button at the bottom right-hand corner of the set.

  There was a click and nothing more. The red light next to the button remained dark; the screen failed to light up at all. “Deirdre?” Ted said. He seemed reluctant to climb down from the chair, as if he knew he would never get back up again if he did. “Is this thing even plugged in?”

  Deirdre walked across to the socket. There was a click, and then another click (off and on again) before she said, “It was on. Try it again.”

  Ted did. He tried it again, and again nothing happened. “Shit, I think the power’s out,” he said.

  “See? Whole world’s against us,” Liza mumbled as she slumped into a chair.

  Jamie walked over to where she now sat and placed a hand on her shoulder. She had lost some of her confidence, no longer sounded like the girl who he’d met earlier that day at the arcade. That’s the effect you have on girls, a voice said inside Jamie’s head. Though Jamie knew this was nothing to do with him. Murderous juveniles are enough to ruin even the strongest person’s day.

  The Douglas-thing suddenly moaned, lurched forwards in the chair to which it had been bound. Hard-Hat made a big song and dance about getting further away from it; Jamie shook his head and said, “It’s not going anywhere.”

  “Look at its eyes,” Deirdre said, one tremulous hand covering her puckered mouth.

  “That’s what they all look like,” Scottie said. He moved closer to the Douglas-thing, crouched down so that he was level with its face. “And they all smell the same, too,” he added as the stench hit the back of his throat. “It’s like they’re rotting from the inside out.”

  The smell in the room was now unbearable. Over in the corner, Bandanna gagged before excusing himself to the kitchen area.

  The Douglas-thing bucked and struggled against its restraints, snarling and drooling, chewing at the air as if there was something tasty there that couldn’t be seen by mere humans. The more the thing breathed, the headier the stench permeating the room became. Jamie had a strong constitution, but even his eyes were watering by now.

  “Can we knock it the fuck back out for now?” Hard-Hat said, motioning to the creature in the chair. “It might not escape your little boy-scout knots, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to finish us off with its hell-breath.”

  “Maybe we should,” Scottie said. The thing in the chair seemed to understand; its thrashing became more intense. The chair lifted up beneath it momentarily, and Jamie thought the Douglas-thing was going to tip back, shatter the wooden chair or break its own arms off trying to get free.

  Then it settled again, exhausted and resigned to the fact that it was going nowhere fast. Its breathing was laboured, though no less pungent.

  “I don’t think it’s going to give us any trouble,” Jamie said. He wanted to tell them what he had learned from meeting Douglas earlier that day at the arcade. That he was some kind of clever robot, one of those autistic kids who speak in monotone and count cards in their spare time. He wanted to tell them this so that they wouldn’t want to hurt the Douglas-thing any more than was necessary.

  “I don’t think you’re old enough to make executive decisions, kid,” Hard-Hat said.

  Scottie bolted across the room, had Hard-Hat around the throat before anyone knew what was happening. The yellow helmet dropped from the workman’s head, rolled away and came to a halt next to the fruit-machine. “You don’t talk to the kid like that, okay?” It came out in a whisper, which was far more menacing than a raised voice would have sounded. Hard-Hat’s eyes looked apt to pop out of his head. “Nod if you understand.”

  Hard-Hat nodded.

  Scottie released him, and Hard-Hat sucked in air and felt around his throat, though he didn’t utter a word. Jamie didn’t think the prick would say shit if he had a mouth full of it, not now, maybe not again.

  “Beep-beeep… beep-thrum!”

  They all turned to the Douglas-thing. It appeared to be smiling, head moving around the room as if its neck was no longer strong enough to support it. Its expression was almost beatific.

  “And now it’s talking nonsense,” Ted said. He was pouring himself a large glass of whiskey. “If you don’t knock it out, I bloody well will.”

  “Beep… beeep… beep… thrum!”

  Scottie looked to Jamie, who already knew what the man was going to say. Jamie nodded. “He was playing it earlier,” he said. “I saw him waiting in line.”

  “Playing what?” Deirdre asked. She was slurring her words, now, and looked like a decent night’s sleep wouldn’t go amiss.

  Scottie looked deep in thought, as if he was trying to convince himself that something inexplicable was indeed possible. Turned out that was exactly what he was trying to do. “Barry was playing it, too,” he said. “About an hour before he threw that baby onto the dodgem arena.”

  “His eyes were blacked out, as well,” Jamie said. “He was one of them, though not when they took him away in the police car.”

  “Maybe he was trying to fight it?” Liza said. “Whatever it is.”

  “And Calum and Lee,” Jamie said. “They were the first to play the damn thing.” And, yes! That was why he had almost recognised the boy on the Ferris wheel, the one who had thrown the girl off as if she was some sort of meat-mannequin. He, too, had been lining
up to play the new game earlier that day.

  “But… I mean, is something like that even possible?” Scottie said.

  “Beep… beeep… beep… thrum,” said the Douglas-thing.

  “It all makes sense,” Jamie said. “This all started today. That game came in today. Those kids out there have all played it. That’s why I’m not one of them, or Liza. We didn’t play the damn thing!”

  “Will someone explain to me what the hell is going on?” Angela said.

  “Jemuba,” Scottie said. Jamie thought that was close enough. “New machine that came in this morning. The kids have been playing the fuck out of the thing all day long.” He shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe how stupid he had been. “I’ve been trying to figure out what was so special about that Godforsaken thing, and now I know. The kids have been infatuated with it. It’s because it calls to them, it wants them to play it.”

  “You’re talking about a demonic videogame?” Deirdre said, eyes rolling to the back of her head. “Now I have really heard it all.”

  “It has to be why,” Jamie said. “Everyone who played the game has turned. It’s like it’s controlling them, making them do things, bad things.”

  Scottie nodded. “I didn’t even order the fucking thing,” he said.

  “Who in their right mind would?” Hard-Hat said. He must have been feeling brave again.

  They stood there listening to the Douglas-thing beeping and thrumming, nobody speaking, everyone thinking. Scottie was the first to move. He marched across the pub, bent to pick up Hard-Hat’s fallen helmet, and tossed it at the man, who caught it after a series of fumbles.

  “We need to get to the arcade,” Scottie said.

  “Destroy the machine,” Jamie said.

  “Okay, you guys go ahead,” said Hard-Hat. “When that kid’s eyes go white, we’ll know you’ve saved the day.”

  “You’re coming with us,” Scottie said.

  “The fuck I am,” said Hard-Hat. Bandanna must have been listening from the kitchen. He came out paler than he’d gone in.

  “We’re going to need help,” Scottie said. “As much as we can get. Those things might already be there.”

  Jamie could imagine them, tearing the arcade apart, demonic little bastards. From the look on Scottie’s face, Jamie guessed he was thinking the same thing. Though they wouldn’t damage the machine—Gēmuōbā—for it was their master, the reason why they existed. “If we can destroy the game,” he said, “we might be able to save these kids.”

  “Okay,” Liza said, climbing to her feet. She picked up her sock-weapon.

  Angela stood, too. She nodded once toward Scottie: lead the way, soldier.

  Bandanna shrugged. “Fuck it!” he said. He reached for the almost-empty whiskey bottle on the counter and wielded it like a weapon before turning to Hard-Hat.

  Hard-Hat sighed. He went to put on his helmet, though just before it made contact with his head, something fell out of it. A piece of paper or a receipt. They all watched as it fluttered toward the carpet. It landed at the feet of the Douglas-thing, and even the Douglas-thing was intrigued.

  “I don’t believe it,” Scottie said. He bent, snatched up the picture, before it had a chance to mysteriously vanish once again. Jake’s beautiful face stared back at him from the photograph. Where have you been, Dad? I’ve missed you!

  “What is it?” Jamie said as he tucked his sock-weapon into the waistband of his jeans.

  Scottie smiled. “A sign,” he said.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  In the three streets between The Lacon Arms and Scottie’s Arcade, Jamie counted fifteen bodies. Some of them were children, but the majority were adult males and females, those who had fallen at the hands of the maniac youths. Here a man lay strewn, his head separated from his body and kicked unceremoniously to the kerb; there, a woman had been impaled upon a gate, its bronze finials jutting up and out of her face, her neck, her chest. There were two men lying face-down in puddles, as if their attackers had simply held them there until they stopped struggling. An elderly woman—no doubt a retiree seeking beauty and calm in her twilight years—had been stabbed through the head with a stalactite of glass. From her motorised scooter, she stared wide-eyed, imploring whoever found her to make her look respectable in death.

  There was no time for that. Not now, anyway. The survivors kept to the shadows as they moved through the streets. In the distance, buildings burned, alarms wailed, and children screamed and howled. The rain continued to pour, and by the time they arrived at the arcade, the survivors were soaked to the bone. Bringing an umbrella had been the last thing on any of their minds.

  The arcade was quiet and didn’t look as though it had been attacked. The promenade had suffered somewhat—several of the storefronts had been smashed, and at least one building was on fire—but down this end, things appeared okay. It was a miracle, Jamie thought. Either that or the calm before the storm.

  Scottie quickly set about the padlocked cage which covered the front entrance of the arcade. Three locks later and he eased the steel shutter away, leaned it up against the arcade wall.

  “Is this going to take long?” Hard-Hat whispered as he glanced nervously about the place.

  Scottie didn’t even answer the man. He slid the key into the keyhole and turned.

  Once inside, Jamie said, “Power’s not down here.”

  “How do you know?” Angela asked, pulling the door shut as she came through it. She was the last one in, and so Scottie locked the door once again and turned to face the others.

  “The cameras are working,” Jamie said, motioning to the ceiling in the corner of the room. A red light blinked intermittently.

  “You can’t run a place like this and not have a standby generator,” Scottie said. “Two-day power-cut would just about put you out of business.”

  Jamie led the way through the gloomy arcade. Liza was never more than a step away from him, as if she only felt safe with him by her side. Hard-Hat, Bandanna, Angela, and Scottie were just behind.

  “Fuck, it’s freezing in here,” Angela said, shivering and pulling her arms across her chest. “Standby generator not connected to the heating, huh?”

  “Never usually have much call to heat the arcade at night,” Scottie said. “Reckon my room should be nice and warm.”

  “Wait,” Hard-Hat said. “You live here? At the arcade?”

  Scottie nodded. “Cheaper than renting anything out there,” he said. “Why?”

  “Do you have a TV?” Hard-Hat said.

  Scottie reached into his pocket. He came out with a set of keys, which he tossed underarm to the workman. “Through the cage,” he said. “Keep the noise down, though. We don’t want those fuckers knowing we’re in here.”

  “You coming?” Hard-Hat said to Bandanna. He looked hopeful, and when Bandanna failed to answer—he looked as if he’d rather stay with the people with the sock-weapons—he said, “Yeah, you’re coming.”

  As the workmen entered the cage, and then the door at the rear of it, Scottie and Jamie led the way to the new game. The bad game.

  Gēmuōbā.

  It looked ominous in the semi-darkness of the arcade; its lack of decals only served to make it appear more… evil.

  “Game over,” Liza said as she stood staring up at the machine.

  “Huh?” It was a strange thing for Liza to say, and Jamie was unsettled enough.

  “That,” she said, pointing at the solitary word stretching across the top of the machine. “It’s Japanese. It means ‘Game Over’.”

  Jamie frowned.

  “Smart girl,” Scottie said.

  “Blame it on my mom and dad,” Liza said. “They insisted I learn a couple of languages growing up. Mom speaks French, German, Spanish, all the usual ones. I have enough of those at school, so I chose something I wouldn’t get bored with.”

  “Japanese,” Jamie said.

  “It was either that or Swahili.” Liza winked at him. Jamie had never been in love before, th
ough he imagined it felt something like what he was feeling in that moment. If they made it out of this mess alive, he made a promise to himself that he would ask Liza out on a date. Bowling, maybe. Or JoJo’s, providing the ice-cream parlour wasn’t the one burning to cinders halfway down the promenade.

  “So it’s ‘Game Over’ is it?” Scottie said, regarding the machine warily. None of them knew what it was capable of, other than what it had done to those who played it. For all they knew it could grow a pair of arms and pummel them to death. Jamie, too, was careful as he approached the machine. Even though it wasn’t plugged in, he was almost certain he could feel energy coursing through it.

  As if it were alive.

  “So, we going to smash it up?” Angela said, wind-milling her sock-weapon. “Will that be enough, do you think?”

  Scottie sighed, scratched his head. “I guess…” was all he could manage.

  “Wait!” Jamie said. “What if it’s not enough? What if that just breaks the vessel, but the program remains intact? We’ll never be able to stop it.” He turned to face the machine, ignoring the urge to just run away home, to jump into his bed and pull up the covers. “We need to know what it is. What it does.”

  “You’re talking about switching it on,” Scottie said. “Switching on the game which turns kids into fucking lunatics.”

  Jamie nodded. “You know, yourself, the instructions are all in Japanese. We don’t know how it works, or how to play it.”

  “I’d be able to translate it,” Liza said. “Providing it is basic Nihongo. I know nothing about videogame code. I just want you to know that up front.”

  “If we know what we’re dealing with, we might be able to stop it.” Jamie waited for Scottie to make a decision. If he said no, that this was absurd and that they should drag the machine outside and torch it, then Jamie would do that. But he knew what Scottie was thinking. After all, they were on the same wavelength pretty much all of the time.