by Adam Millard
Level Fifty Two.
Beep-beeep-beep-thrum…
Angela struggled to drag the lifeless boy-thing off Scottie—he was a big lad, that was for sure—but thankfully Scottie still had some strength in him. He eased the boy-thing off, gasping for air, even though it tasted like death. When he was clear of the body, he pushed himself up to his feet and grunted. “Thank you.”
“Welcome,” Angela said. “Next time you tell me to ‘move’ like that, I’ll hit you with the damn sock thing.”
Beep-beeep-beep-thrum…
“Is everyone still alive?” Jamie asked from his position at the machine. He couldn’t see what was going on, hadn’t stopped playing for even one second. Couldn’t afford to.
“For now,” Scottie said, breathless. “Crack on, Jamie. You’re doing great.”
Jamie cracked on.
*
Ted and Deirdre sat staring at the thing in the chair. It watched them back, looked into their souls, which was a terrifying thing for an eight-year-old boy to be able to do. Every now and then it fought against its restraints, but it quickly tired, settled back down, back to watching them with those evil stygian eyes.
Deirdre looked to the clock hanging behind the bar. It was almost ten. “Do you think they’re dead?” she asked.
Ted shook his head. “Maybe the workmen,” he said. “But not the others.” He didn’t know how he knew that, and Deirdre didn’t ask, but it just seemed… about right.
*
Out on the promenade the creatures gathered, howling at the stars, eating of the dead, yearning for more chaos. They were all here now, all except for those who had fallen and perished, all except for Douglas Grice, who was otherwise engaged.
They searched each other’s minds, were able to read the thoughts of those cut from the same cloth.
We’re here.
Why are we here?
The arcade.
It wants us.
It’s calling to us.
Gēmuōbā.
It wants us to stop him.
Stop the player before it’s too late.
They knew what they had to do, and howled in unison as a sign of their collective understanding. They were to prevent the player from winning, from defeating Gēmuōbā. Their very existence depended upon it.
*
“He can’t take much more of this!” Scottie said. “Look at him! It’s fucking killing him!”
Jamie could barely speak now, but when he whispered, “It’s… okay,” everyone heard it.
“You’re not okay, Jamie. You’re dying, son!” Scottie couldn’t believe he had allowed it to come to this. He couldn’t believe that he had allowed Jamie to even stand in front of that Godforsaken machine. He thought of Jake, how he had never had a chance to tell him how much he loved him, how the boy had been found, floating face-down in the fishpond like some heron-mangled koi. And now he was going to let Jamie die, too. Just stand here and let the boy sacrifice himself to this. This. Fucking. Thing.
“Three levels to go,” Liza said as Jamie finished the sixty-third.
“I’m… okay…” Jamie reiterated, wiping blood away from his nostrils. It seemed, to Scottie, that every part of the poor lad was leaking crimson; that if he were to pull Jamie’s trousers down, there would be a pool of it in his boxer shorts.
“Three levels?” Scottie said, turning his attention to the screen. Pixels were flying around the display so quickly now that Scottie couldn’t focus on any single one of them. He had no idea how Jamie was doing it. “Okay… Jamie, when this is over, you get one of my cigarettes, no questions asked, okay?”
“Scottie,” Angela said, disapprovingly.
“What? As far as I’m concerned, the kid is single-handedly saving this fucking town. I’ll buy him all the cigarettes in Hemsby, if that’s what he wants.”
Angela was about to criticise Scottie’s somewhat lax paternal instincts when something thumped against the arcade entrance, rattling the locked door in its frame. Outside, something moaned, and then the door began to clatter more violently.
“Shit,” Scottie said. “They’re coming.”
*
The door was creaking, slowly giving way to the myriad creatures pressing against it. Once children, now monsters, they wanted only one thing.
To stop the player.
Game Over.
*
Jamie blinked blood and sweat from his stinging eyes. Beside him, Liza panted as if she had just finished a marathon. She was watching the game and the door as it buckled in the darkness across the room.
“We’re not going to make it!” Angela said. “We have to get out of here!”
“That’s not going to happen,” Scottie said. “Not without Jamie.”
Jamie played on, ignoring the commotion around him, forcing it to the back of his mind as the final level began to load. “Almost… almost there,” he said. Thick black fluid dripped from the corners of his mouth, as if he had chewed on a Blackjack and forgot to swallow.
“He’s going to do it,” Liza said.
Beep-beeep-beep-thrum…
Triangle—
Dot—
Pentagram—
All combined on the screen, clashing violently together as if trying to re-enact The Big Bang. Jamie thumbed the joystick down, hammered at the buttons, joystick up, green, green, red…
It’s just a game, he thought.
A second later, the door gave way to the monsters beyond and they streamed in, an army of lamenting child-beasts climbing over one another to reach the player. To finish the game.
Angela screamed.
Scottie roared.
Liza braced herself against the side of the machine for the horrors yet to come.
Jamie hit the red button and finally closed his weary and blood-filled eyes.
Game Over.
TWENTY-NINE
The machine began to rumble. Gone was the tuneless eight-bit melody which had accompanied the game through the past sixty-six levels, replaced by a low groan. Almost as if the thing was in pain.
Jamie eased his eyes open, watched as smoke began to rise up in tendrils from the already-melting console. The shapes (triangle, dot, pentagram, dot, triangle) faded from the screen, which turned to crimson, which in turn cast its eerie glow across the entire arcade. The things flowing in from outside stopped suddenly, as if overcome with disorientation and puzzlement. It wasn’t until one of them—a little girl, no older than five—started to cry that Jamie realised what had happened.
The console had melted away to liquid plastic, its buttons and joystick almost indiscernible now amongst the molten confusion.
More children began to cry. Perhaps they were wondering what they were doing out so late, in the dark, without their parents, alone…
Jamie spat blood onto the arcade floor, and immediately regretted it. He turned to Scottie. “Sorry… about that,” he said, pointing to the small globule of blood on the carpet.
Scottie dry-swallowed, and for the longest time he was unable to speak. When he did manage it, he simply said, “You did it.”
Jamie turned, saw the children—five-year-olds, ten-year-olds, sixteen-year-olds—gathered in the centre of the arcade. Some were still outside; Jamie could see them through the entrance, collapsing in the rain, sobbing, seeking answers from older children. Some were calling out for their moms and dads, some were busy watching the flames licking at the end of the pier.
Jamie turned back to Scottie, to Angela, and to Liza as she slipped her hand into his. “I did?” he said. “Well fuck knows how I managed that.”
Outside, Hemsby continued to crumble and fall, but the worst of it was over.
Gēmuōbā
The man is dressed in a suit and a pair of the most expensive shoes—¥250000—money can buy. He enters the room lined with computers. At each computer sits a man. A tired-looking man. Many of them are bald and most of them are wearing spectacles. When they see the man with the expensive shoes enter,
they straighten themselves up, for they don’t want to disappoint him. The last person to disappoint him was not fired; he was taken out back and shot three times in the face. Many of these men do not want to be shot in the face.
Another man—second-in-command—sees the man with the expensive shoes and makes his way across the lushly-carpeted room to where he is now standing, staring intently down at a monitor and shaking his head.
“Mr. Ito,” says Kagome, the second-in-command. Mr Ito’s shoes are so nice, he thinks. One day, I will own a pair of shoes just like that.
Ito looks up at Kagome and sighs. “Sore ni shippai shimashita,” he says. It failed.
“It did not fail, Mr. Ito,” says Kagome. “In fact, we are treating it as a complete success.” He stares down at the monitor, at the burning pier, at the children spilling out onto the street, crying for their mothers, praying that their fathers come and scoop them up and carry them to safety.
Ito is not convinced. In broken English, he says, “What of machine?”
Kagome really doesn’t want to be taken out back, and so he lies a little. Everyone lies a little. “It is perfectly ready,” he says. “More levels will be added. Gēmuōbā will not fail you, Mr. Ito.”
Ito nods, grunts his approval, and moves through the office. He takes a lift to the basement, cursing all the way down in Japanese. Kagome is an idiot. He will be dead by morning. Ito will not be lied to, not by an underling.
As the lift whispers open at the basement, Ito steps out, feels the chill already as it surrounds him like so many locusts. Through the basement he moves, being careful not to scuff his expensive shoes on the racks to either side.
The basement opens up onto a warehouse. Ito can feel it—the potential, the rage, the unmitigated power of the machines all around him—and he grins. His teeth are old and decayed. He can afford to have them fixed, but shoes are far more important to him.
“Gēmuōbā,” he says. “Game over.”
Tomorrow, the delivery trucks will come and the warehouse will be empty once again. He’s forgotten what an empty warehouse looks like. He quite likes the sound of it.
THE END
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Adam Millard is the author of twenty-one novels, twelve novellas, and more than a hundred short stories, which can be found in various collections and anthologies. Probably best known for his post-apocalyptic fiction, Adam also writes fantasy/horror for children, as well as bizarro fiction for several publishers. His “Dead” series has been the filling in a Stephen King/Bram Stoker sandwich on Amazon’s bestsellers chart, and the translation rights have recently sold to German publisher, Voodoo Press. Adam also writes for This is Horror.
Visit his official site www.adammillard.co.uk and follow Adam on Twitter @adammillard.
The Sinister Horror Company is an independent UK publisher of genre fiction founded by Daniel Marc Chant, Duncan P Bradshaw and J R Park. Their mission a simple one – to write, publish and launch innovative and exciting genre fiction by themselves and others
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