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  Still a little woozy, I made my way down toward the gorge. I tapped the map icon at the corner of my vision to orient myself. There was the green, with the hotel, churches, and Mason hall, all right in the center of town. On the east end lay wharves and a tiny island labeled Devil Reef.

  I was headed north, toward the gorge, the refinery, and the rail station. I dismissed the map. Any direction was as good as another at this point. Honestly, I had no clue what was really going on, but that made its own kind of sense. The terror of the unknown and all that.

  I couldn’t remember too many details of what I’d read from Lovecraft, but I remembered reading a quotation from an essay. He said something about the oldest emotion of mankind being fear and the oldest fear being the unknown. So whoever designed this park wanted to give the players a mindfuck.

  And for a moment down there, in the dark basement of that Mason hall, I’d forgotten I was even playing a game.

  Mindfuck achieved.

  Roaring water announced the nearing of the gorge well before I spotted it. By the time it came into view, the sound muffled any other noise. A rickety-looking covered bridge crossed the ravine and led to the refinery up on the hill. I might not have wanted to cross that, but I was pretty sure this was the same bridge we’d driven across earlier in the day. If it could support a bus, it could support me.

  And that refinery was a location on the map, which probably meant I had some objective to accomplish there.

  With a last shrug of my shoulders, I started down the path to the bridge. Still, I hesitated on the threshold. The bridge had no windows and was just long enough to be damn dark inside, virtually drenched in shadows. And yeah, okay, I was a little on edge after my last exploration into the darkness.

  So maybe my heart was beating a little faster than normal as I took my first step forward. Over the sound of crashing water, I couldn’t hear my footfalls, though I imagine they’d have clunked on the wooden bridge. Not wanting to cross even this small darkness, I pulled out the flashlight and shone it ahead of me.

  The bridge was empty enough, so I pushed on, keeping my eyes on where I was walking. Some of the boards looked more rotten than others, so I avoided those. I didn’t see how a game like this could have a trap that might send a live action player tumbling down into the gorge, but why take the chance, right?

  Something—I cannot even say what, really—made me freeze there, though. I felt a disturbance above me, even though I hadn’t consciously heard anything. I swung the flashlight up into the upper recesses of the bridge. The light raced over a cluster of uneven shiny blackness stuck on the underside of the roof. What the—

  As if assaulted by the light, hundreds of bats broke away and took flight, screeching and shrieking.

  The creatures swarmed over me and I screamed—yes, I admit that—and reflexively threw my arms over my head. The flap of wings rang so loud it even drowned out the sound of the falls below.

  Bats flapped all about me, their cries awful. I flung out a hand to drive them off.

  And a ripple in the air caught a cluster of the bats and hurled them away.

  11 Damage

  11 Damage

  11 Damage

  11 Damage

  The ripple collided with the side of the bridge, punched through it, and allowed light to spill in. The remaining bats escaped out the new hole as I ducked down to shield myself.

  For a few moments, I crouched there, awestruck. It took more than a bit to slow my breathing down and calm myself, I admit. I lifted my headset to check and, indeed, the hole I’d created only existed in the game. In real life, I was in the shadows of the bridge.

  So I’d acquired a telekinetic blast power. That was unexpected, to say the least.

  Traveling around the map to acquire different powers was a staple of adventure games, of course. Any kind of Metroidvania design motif featured that, but I hadn’t really expected it in this horror game. The subtle shift in genre threw me. Maybe that was just one more way for the designers to mess with the players, to subvert expectations. Keep us guessing.

  In any event, it worked to keep me interested. I mean, who doesn’t love testing out new powers, right?

  I flung my hand out again and sent a second ripple crashing through the bridge wall, demolishing more of it. Blowing shit up in games is satisfying in a way one rarely finds in real life, after all. On the other hand, I had no idea if my power had limited uses, so I supposed I should conserve it. Also, blowing up a bridge while standing on it was kind of dumb.

  I made my way across the bridge and followed the path until it split. To one side, it wound back down and offered an alternative route to the town, down by the wharves. The other branch headed up to the refinery, or past it, to the lighthouse. All were locations on the map, so all had to be significant.

  All I had to do was play along and sooner or later …

  Sooner or later, what? I’d forget about my real life? Maybe that was what Elise wanted, but it was bull. Life didn’t go away. It just went on, or it ended.

  And I was kidding myself with this stupid game.

  I pulled the headset off.

  It ended. Because some people wouldn’t ever play another game.

  Interlude

  The headset dangled from my hand as I wandered the path back toward the town. Maybe I never should have taken this job. Maybe trying to lose myself in work was just a way to hide from grief. Or worse … was trying to lose myself in fun actually dishonoring their memories?

  Why should I enjoy myself in the least?

  Unwilling to look through the glasses, unwilling to let myself get dragged back in, I walked down by the waterfront. Even without the headset, Cthulhu World had that desolate, hopeless atmosphere. It was like drinking in a mirror of my own moroseness. As if this place had been built only for me, a reflection of my broken soul.

  A part of me knew I was lost in maudlin self-pity. Most of me didn’t care.

  The tide brought with it a reek of brine and seaweed swept in from the bay. It might have been noxious, had I been here as a tourist. I wasn’t even sure why I was here.

  Slapping footfalls echoed along the boardwalk, and I turned to see Elise running toward me, her face a mask of concern. “Bobby?”

  I sighed, not even able to put to words the profound sense of pointlessness of all this.

  Nor did she ask. “They told me you cleared a stage! Already, I mean, that’s awesome. See, I told them you’d finish the game faster than our projections laid out.”

  “Well, I …”

  “So have you tested out the, uh, you know …”

  I snorted. “What, the superpowers?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Bobby, come on. Eldritch powers, all right? This is Cthulhu here. Black magic is always eldritch or cosmic or whatever. Don’t diminish the atmosphere by turning it into some comic book adaptation.”

  “Comic books don’t usually involve their protagonist losing sanity.”

  Elise grinned. “Sure. Just like the RPG, right? I mean, that’s the nature of the game. The closer you get to the truth, the harder it is for you to handle, you know?”

  Yeah, I didn’t recall too many of the old Call of Cthulhu RPG rules, but going insane was definitely one of the things that stood out. Elise had run quite a few of those games. Still, something felt different about this one. Maybe because of the AR forcing it all in my face. The biofeedback made it hard to separate myself from the character.

  I shrugged. “So why didn’t I start with a hundred sanity, then? I mean, it’s a percentile, right?”

  She chuckled. “Right, well, are any of us totally sane? Really?”

  I folded my arms over my chest, headset still hanging loose. What the hell was I supposed to say to that? I mean, were any of us? Not me, probably. Not after Zoe and Grace had gone like that. Snuffed out in a moment of pain and darkness. I should have … been there? Stopped it?

  Should have done something.

  Instead of staring at that cop,
stupefied as the world ended around me.

  Yeah, maybe the whole world was less than a hundred percent sane. Maybe you had to be nuts to want to play a game about going nuts facing some horror that mankind could neither understand nor hope to defeat.

  “So, you’re making good progress,” Elise said. “Maybe you can solve the whole game tomorrow.”

  “And do I get a bonus for winning faster?”

  She scoffed. “Hell no. We’re not made of money.”

  I looked around at the entire damn town they’d built for this park, then the headset. Programming that thing with all this must have cost millions or more. Not made of money. Sure. “But I will get paid?”

  “Of course you will. It’s all in the contract, Bobby. Didn’t you read the damn thing?”

  “Yeah.” Nope. I couldn’t be bothered to read a Facebook post these days. A fifty-page contract? Sure.

  “Okay, look at it like another game, then. You don’t get the reward until you finish the quest.” She shrugged. “So finish the quest, all right? If you finish this Innsmouth section, I’m sure I can convince the bosses to use you when we’re ready to open up other sections of the park.”

  “Other … ?”

  She nodded like a kid at Christmas. “God, Bobby, you’ll love the rest of them. I mean Lovecraft wrote so much delicious stuff. We’ve barely tapped the surface here.” She giggled. She actually fucking giggled. “So, uh, just do your job. That’s it. Don’t think about … anything else. It’ll be good for you.”

  Maybe it would be.

  Or maybe I was in the park now because … because there just wasn’t anything worthwhile left outside of it.

  So whatever. Bring on the horror. Bring the fear, the pain.

  As Elise walked away, I put the headset back on.

  A few streets from where I left Elise, I spotted an old man sitting on the steps of a rundown building in front of the wharves. The place might have once been a harbormaster’s office, but the roof had caved in, the glass in the windows was long gone, and the wooden walls had turned a sickly black-green with mold.

  This old man had a shock of white hair and none of the features that the Innsmouth locals supposedly developed as they grew older. I figured that meant he was this Zadok NPC that Thomas had mentioned—the only local willing to talk to an outsider.

  Which almost certainly meant he was some kind of quest-giver, right? Few games bother to name an NPC with no value. Meta-thinking? Sure. But, hell, play enough games and it became hard to turn off those instincts. They kind of infect your subconscious, right?

  I ambled toward where he sat hunched over his knees. The moment he caught wind of me, the old man was up and strolling off in another direction.

  “Excuse me!”

  He only quickened his steps.

  Design trope: the player has to do something before the NPC will talk to them.

  Idly I wondered if the park owners had co-opted programmers from any of the studios I was familiar with.

  Didn’t matter, really. To progress through the game, I clearly needed to accomplish something else first.

  The temptation to pull out my phone and Google Zadok in the original story struck me. Would that be cheating? Maybe. I mean, I was supposed to test the player experience, and that meant figuring this shit out myself. Though honestly, I wasn’t the biggest fan of obtuse puzzles. I liked RPGs for stories, the character-building aspects, and sometimes the combats. Obligatory puzzles were usually only a few steps above obligatory stealth missions, in my book.

  Both risked crossing the line from diverting change of pace to irritation keeping the player from doing what they bought the damn game for.

  But here I was. Zadok needed something before he’d offer me any information. And NPC Thomas had called him a drunk. So … I rolled my eyes. So next trope: the fetch quest.

  Tried and true and always ridiculous.

  I strolled back toward the general store. By the time I reached it, the day had already grown late. The real Thomas had mentioned that the bar in the hotel wasn’t operational yet, which meant this was the only place I’d get some dinner, even if it was early for it.

  I flipped up the headset and snagged another basket of fish and chips.

  “Good stuff, right mate?” Thomas asked.

  I shrugged, then pulled the headset back on even as I ate. I didn’t want to waste what daylight was left. I glanced around the general store and didn’t see any obvious sign of liquor, but NPC Thomas had definitely mentioned Zadok bought it here. So where … Prohibition! Lovecraft’s works were mostly set in the late ’20s and early ’30s.

  I leaned on the counter and looked NPC Thomas right in the eye.

  “Help you, mister?”

  “Where would a thirsty man go for a drink?” I asked.

  After a halfhearted look around, Thomas pulled a bottle of whiskey from under the counter and wrapped it in a paper bag. “Wet enough for your thirst?”

  “Most likely.”

  “That’ll be $3 then.”

  “All right.”

  -3 Currency

  Huh. Still strange, not even needing to pull out a wallet.

  Bagged bottle in hand, I hurried back toward the wharves. It took some looking around to find my target, though. Most of the buildings were all boarded up here, and I saw only a few people about, bringing in fishing boats, tying them to the docks and so forth. Those I did see indeed showed signs of the strange features Thomas had told me about.

  Bulging eyes and balding pates mixed with slightly hunched backs. All creating the impression of something not quite right about these people.

  Past them, keeping to himself, I spotted Zadok again. As I drew near, he rose to scamper away, but I raised the bag and he paused. When I lifted the bottle out for all the world to see, he ambled my way faster than I’d have expected a man his age could move.

  “Hey, Mister,” he said. “You want to help an old man out?”

  Yeah. That was pretty much my life’s ambition. Fetching booze for a drunk. Rolling my eyes again, I handed him the bottle and he took a long swig from it.

  “So,” I said. “Word is you’ve lived here a long time.”

  “All my life.” Another sip.

  “Well, I’d like to hear about the place. About the odd happenings here.”

  “Ugn.” He pointed to the same steps I’d found him on earlier and we walked over there, where he slumped down with a groan. “Odd happenings. You bet your sweet teeth. See that island there?”

  I looked out over the bay. Even with the tide up, a thin stretch of land poked out of the waters. I’d seen that coming into town, but thought nothing of it. Still, it must be that Devil Reef island I’d seen on the map. “I see it.”

  “It’s cursed, you hear me. Darn wicked place, is why they call it what they do. It’s where old Captain Obed Marsh called upon the spawn of Satan, back a hundred years ago, almost. Called ’em up.” Now he looked hard at me, like he’d seen a dozen men like me and wasn’t impressed. Still, he cleared his throat. “Called ’em up and that’s when the wickedness started. Odd happenings!” He scoffed and took another swig of whiskey. “Ain’t hardly the word for it, odd.”

  I didn’t recall Satan or any other Christian ideas playing much of a part in Lovecraft’s work. “Captain Obed Marsh?” I prompted. “Who was he?”

  “Local man, gone merchanting all over the world. Captain Marsh, he travelled all around, even out in the South Sea. There he learned what folk here forgot, about the old powers.”

  “Old powers?” Now that sounded like something straight out of Lovecraft. If only I could properly remember the damn story.

  “Them as was here long before men, you know. Spawn of Satan, no doubt, all these old ones. An’ the captain met island folk what remembered and gave all kinds of sacrifices into the deep.”

  Yeah. Creepy. “Sacrificing people?”

  “That’s what the old captain said. Mind, I was just a boy back then. But I remember clear e
nough, times going bad on us. Not enough fish and people complaining God won’t answering no prayers in church. And the captain coming back and saying there was gods what would promise lots of fish and gold besides.”

  “Gold?” The pirate treasure that hunter had been after, maybe? Brought up from some kind of undersea aliens. That sounded familiar too.

  “Mmm, hmmm. Captain could read people like a book, he could, and he got the islanders to tell him those old secrets. Then he got to trading with them old sea devils … trading for gold and for good fish.”

  “Trading …” Oh. “You mean trading the sacrifices. He was trading people.”

  Zadok tapped a finger to his nose and then pointed at me. “Not that anyone believed it, or at least they didn’t talk about it none. But Obed’s first mate didn’t hold with what was going on, and he tried to warn people. These sea-devils had whole cities down under the water like some twisted mermaids or so forth. But Obed, he convinced the townsfolk to offer up twice a year.”

  Yeah. Saw that coming. “So these fish people came here?”

  “Fishes? Frogs? Can’t rightly say which these Deep Ones is more like, but I can say this. Obed got so much of their gold stuff, he started that refinery to process it all. See, the devils would give it up, twisted in crowns and showing all kinds of vile designs what no human ain’t never thought of.” Zadok paused to take another swig. “Strange pieces, what don’t belong in the world of man at all. So Obed’d melt ’em all down and resell the gold. Made hisself rich and became the top family here.”

  +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.”