Prologue

A chorus of chaotic noises greeted Nelson like an old friend as he entered Starland Arcade. Beeps, bloops, and digital screeches echoed in his ears. He smiled. School was finally out for summer and he was looking forward to spending every single day right here. Back in March his grades took a dip. Nelson’s dad thought it was because he was spending too much time at the arcade. He wasn’t wrong. To get his grades up, Nelson’s dad had laid down the law: no arcade until things changed. When Nelson’s final report card came back with one C, three B’s, and even an A in English, his dad gave him a ten dollar bill and told him to go have fun.

Nelson breathed in the stale air and smiled wider. He was home.

Walking around, Nelson saw most of the machines had only one or two people at them. Even Space Invaders was completely vacant. Excited at the opportunity, he jogged over to the machine.

As he got closer, he saw where everyone was: a new game! A sea of teenagers stood between him and it. There were weird noises coming from it, but honestly nothing weirder than he would have expected coming out of Tempest. Walking over, he strained his head up to peek over a shoulder to get a clear look at the screen. All he could see was the greasy hair of the player with a pair headphones from a Walkman nested on top. Nelson looked above the player’s head to see what the game was called.

Polybius.

He hadn’t heard of it. Must have snuck in while he was persona non grata. Any thoughts of Space Invaders evaporated at the sight of a new challenge. The arcade cabinet had no art at all, just painted a stark black. Nelson was intrigued. He peered around at everyone else in line. All eyes were glued to the screen, hungry at a shot at the game. He couldn’t blame them. The gameplay was weird. Different. New. It was a color based puzzle game but there were very few visual indicators of how the player was progressing. The score up top jumped up at random increments, even once when the player didn’t do anything for almost thirty seconds. Another kid stepped in front of Nelson, a much taller guy. Nelson needed to get a better view. As he tried to inch forward, he was shoved by another kid, some guy from behind.

“Cool it, sleaze. Wait in line.”

Nelson’s entire body tensed up. The moment the other kid hit him, he knew what was going to happen. Fight or flight. He was no stranger to bullies. Normally his body just yelled at him to leave, get as far away from violence as possible. This was different though. He felt as if he couldn’t control himself anywhere. He no longer knew what was going to happen. His mind wanted to choose flight, but his body chose otherwise.

Clenching his left fist, Nelson spun around, using the momentum of the spin to slam his closed fist into the kid’s face. The kid was surprised and lost balance. He fell backwards onto another kid who started yelling.

As he watched the kid fall back, blood squirting from his nose, Nelson wondered what had caused him to do this. Was it the way the guy shoved him? Was it that he didn’t want to deal with this crap on his first day of back at the arcade? Or was it that Starland was supposed to be his hallowed sanctuary, away from bullies?

Whatever it was, Nelson was full-tilt now. He had both fists clenched and was ready for a fight. His body took over and his mind had given up resisting. His eyes darted around the surrounding crowd like an animal, ready to pounce. It was go time.

Nelson’s back was now to the arcade cabinet. Another kid from behind him grabbed his collar. Just as before, Nelson spun, fist connecting with nose. The kid tried to bring Nelson with him, ripping his favorite Star Wars shirt. This only enraged Nelson more. Nothing of the game loving boy remained behind the rabid eyes.

Nelson slightly looked back to make sure the first kid wasn’t coming back for more. He seemed to be down for the count. He was a sturdily built kid. If Nelson had been in his right mind he would have been surprised with himself. He returned his sights on the main target.

The injured kid fell through the crowd. The had made way for him, eyes peeled from the game. The kid landed on the guy playing Polybius, the only one who seemed ignorant to the bedlam behind him. Blood from the busted lip of the kid even got onto the player’s pants. The player kept at the game without missing a beat.

A young boy, around ten years old, surprised Nelson by leaping on his back and started gnawing on his exposed neck. His ill-groomed and dirty nails dug into Nelson’s chest as he clung on dearly, trying to break skin with his teeth.

Another teen started kicking the guy on the ground. Blood spurted out of the fallen child’s mouth in long dark globules, staining crimson on his attackers shoes and pants. The kid on the ground started crying out but after a few kicks the cries died down aand were replaced by hollow thumps and cracks as the kicks continued to connect with his ribs.

Nelson grabbed for his attacker, gripping tightly around the child’s neck. With all his might Nelson threw him. Pain tore through the base of his neck. The attacker must have had a solid grip of his neck with his teeth, taking skin with it. He felt warm blood drip down the back of his shirt.

The boy flew into a coin machine. A sickening crunch echoed throughout the midway. Nelson kept his eyes on the boy to ensure that he didn’t get up before turning to another child in his way. He needed to get his hands on Polybius. No one was going to stop him.

The violence spread like a virus around the player, but he paid it no mind. His eyes were large and unblinking; locked to the screen. Multicolor swirls reflected in his dilated eyes. Haunting electronic sounds continued to emanate from the game, but the player was ignorant to that as well. His Walkman was turned full blast. The Walkman had the initials “K A J” hand-engraved on it. The clear slot through the player revealed a cassette of Departure by Journey. The player was quietly mouthing the lyrics of “Wheel in the Sky.” He kept playing with tears beginning to water down his wide and almost fearful eyes.

He whispered softly, “I don’t know where I’ll be tomorrow.”

Chapter One

Sam Osborn walked out of the elevator into the dark hallway. Sleep still crusted on his eyes as he looked at the coins in his left hand. He slowly segregated the silver coins from the pennies and picked a quarter and a dime. The footsteps of his hard-soled shoes echoed in the cavernous hallway as he made his way instinctively to the coffee machine, drawn to its light like a moth to flame. Looking down, all he saw was the faded dark green carpeting and the faint red light of the coffee machine reflecting on his dark shoes. Anonymous stains from days past revealed a forgotten history of reporters that had come and gone.

Yawning loudly, Osborn deposited the two coins into the coffee machine, disinterested in any forgotten history or, frankly, anything else this early in the morning.

Clink.

Clink.

He shoved the remaining coins back into his tan trouser pockets as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes. With his eyes a little more alert, he pushed the buttons for his usual coffee and waited for the cup to drop and hot liquid to fill it. A loud hiss and clunk echoed in the hallway as the aged machine sprayed that grey brown life blood into his cup. Looking up, Osborn looked out the hallway window, the only source of natural light. Grey. Always grey.

Another beautiful day in Portland, he thought to himself.

The machine let out a light beep, its part of the deal complete. Osborn grabbed the coffee and lightly blew into it, cooling it. The walnut panels of the hallway along with the deep green carpeting always gave a dark feeling in the hallway. He was usually the first in and never turned on the hallway lights. The artificial lighting always bleached away the dark colors. He found the darkness in the hallway tranquil.

Trading the coins for his keys, Osborn fumbled to put the key into the door, both from the tired and the darkness. As he entered, he continued his morning routine. The office was even darker than the hallway – the blinds on all the windows were drawn. He navigated through the dark labyrinth of news desks to his.

Gently placing his coffee on his desk, Osborn hung his faded jacket on his chair. He started whistling a nameless tune to himself as he turned and approached the corresponding window. He effortlessly adjusted the blinds to let the gray light from outside in.

The light filling the room barely illuminated the once orange carpet which had faded to a brown from all the foot traffic over the years. The wood paneling along the walls matched the hallway and gave the place a bit of prestige, or at least that’s what the owners thought when they bought the office decades back. The ocean of typewriters sat silent, anticipating what stories the day would bring. Osborn’s reflected the gray light back at him, appreciative that he was first in the office.

His desk was a sprawling mess with the remnants of dead leads, empty stained paper cups, and a career’s worth of detritus still resting on most of it. The only area that could see the tan of the desk was the small space that was in front of his typewriter. There were two chairs: one which currently had his burnt sienna jacket slung over it and the other which he reserved for the slim chance he had an interview come in. As much as Osborn enjoyed being in the office, he lived for being on the street. In the short three years he’d been at the Oregonian he had observed with horror as colleagues became too comfortable at the desk. The desk was death, he often found himself whispering as a journalist prayer before sitting down.

Osborn’s emaciated frame was fueled primarily by caffeine and nicotine. He had a steady and unhealthy regiment of both keeping hunger and sleep at bay. He slumped into his chair, rubbing his eyes, as part of his daily ritual. He had his usual burnt sienna suit and stained white shirt on. A powder blue tie with coffee stains of its own dangled uncomfortably around Osborn’s neck. A pack of cigarettes burst out of his shirt’s breast pocket, barely fitting in it. He had shaved three days ago, so he wasn’t due for another shave for three more. His hair was a blonde mess that ran down to his shoulders. He pulled the cigarettes out of his shirt’s breast pocket and tossed them in front of the typewriter.

Osborn relished the silent, lonesome mornings. It helped his mind wake up at its own pace. By the time most of the other staff got in he’d be fully alert and ready to run circles around them. Until then he’d quietly soak in the morning and get ready to make the news.

“Excuse me?”

Osborn looked over to the open doors of the office. A woman stood there in a blue dress, visibly confused by the darkness. She desperately gripped onto an oversized purse. Her hair was long but still a little damp from the morning shower. She also had different shoes on. They were both black, one had a buckle and the other didn’t. Between the mismatched shoes and the incomplete hair drying, the poor woman was a mess but trying her best to hide it. Her eyes also had a tired look to them. Not from lack of sleep, but from tears that have dried up.

“Can I help you, miss?” Osborn stood up. His gravely voice seemed to surprise the woman.

“I’m... um...” the woman looked around the empty office. “Are you a reporter?” Her voice was unsteady, shaky.

Osborn quickly navigated the darkness to the door. He flipped the switch and the overhead lights shyly turned on, some blinking the sleep from their eyes.

“Yes. Sam Osborn, at your service. What’s your name, miss?”

Osborn directed the woman over to his desk, she followed.

“My name is Sharon Jacobson.”

Once at his desk, Osborn grabbed an empty trash can and swept the mess of his desk into it with a single arm swipe.

“Please sit down, Mrs. Jacobson,” Osborn grunted as he sat down in his own chair. He casually pulled a notepad and pen out of the inside pocket of his jacket, flipping it open to the first available page.

“Now, how can I help you?”

Mrs. Jacobson, sitting, sighed, “My son Kevin has been missing for two weeks now.”

“I’m assuming you’ve already been to the police?” Osborn quietly studied Mrs. Jacobson’s face. He could see hidden frustration in her tightened mouth; exhaustion in the bags under her eyes; sadness from the dry skin where she had wiped away too many tears.

“Yes,” she nodded and brought out a piece of paper from her large purse. She handed it to him. “This is a copy of the police report I filed after I thought Kevin was missing. He didn’t come home one day. That’s not like him at all. Kevin was a good boy...”

She swallowed hard, fighting back tears.

“Is. Kevin is a good boy. He’s still alive. He has to be.”

Osborn looked at the paper and wrote down the case number of the police report in his notepad. The sheet had about fifty spots for the police to fill in details on the case. Not even a fifth of the fields had been properly filled out.

“What did the police have to say? This seems like an incomplete report,” Osborn began chewing at his pen, eyes trained on the document. “All it says is he’s missing. No notes on how they followed up.”

“That’s because they haven’t followed up. I’ve tried to talk to the case officer, Detective Moss, but he won’t even see me anymore. He says that Kevin probably ran off and they can’t do anything from here. It’s like...” Mrs. Jacobson sobbed. Osborn looked up to see her pinch her eyes hard to fight back the tears. She was determined to not cry in front of him.

“It’s like they don’t even want to look for him,” Osborn gently ventured. Mrs. Jacobson nodded.

Moss, Osborn wrote down in his notepad next to the case number. He underlined it.

“Well, let’s say he did run off, Mrs. Jacobson. Where could he have gone? Any family or...”

Mrs. Jacobson cut him off. Her hands were balled up on her purse. She was obviously sick of hearing this line of questioning. “No! He didn’t run off. And even if he did, our closest family is in Missouri. He wouldn’t just up and leave. I’ve checked with all of his school friends. They haven’t seen him either. He’s missing and no one will even look for him!”

“Alright, Mrs. Jacobson, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend,” Osborn put up his hands defensively. Her hands unclenched and her eyes studied his typewriter.

“I don’t know how much I can do, though. I just report the news, I don’t go looking for missing kids. If the police won’t talk to you, have you thought of working with a private investigator?”

Mrs. Jacobson shook her head and deeply sighed. “All of the local investigators are retired cops. The moment they follow up with the police on the case, they call me back saying they’re dropping it and return my money. I need someone’s help.”

Osborn leaned back contemplatively looking to the ceiling for a moment, the pen back in his mouth. Now that’s odd, he thought to himself. Lazy cops were one thing, sure. Aggressively lazy cops were suspicious but not unheard of. From his experience, however, all the local private inspectors were hired guns. They didn’t care what got the bills paid. For them all to turn this down didn’t feel right. There was something here – Osborn felt it. He studied Mrs. Jacobson’s face again. As much as he wanted to give her some form of hope, he couldn’t guarantee he’d even take the story, let alone find the kid.

He stood up and motioned for Mrs. Jacobson to do the same. She did so reluctantly, resignation washing over her face. “Well, I’ll do what I can, ma’am. I’ll talk to my editor. Maybe we can run a story or something. What’s your number?”

She nodded lightly. As much as she hoped that the newspaper could have helped, she knew it was a long shot “I wrote my phone number on the back of the police report. If you hear anything, please call me. Thank you so much for your time, Mr. Osborn.”

Osborn watched Mrs. Jacobson leave the office. He tore out the page of notes from the morning and looked at them contemplatively. Sighing, he crumpled them up and tossed it into the trash with the rest of the dead leads.

Every day at the Oregonian started with a budget meeting to determine what stories the staff could fit into the paper that day. The paper’s staff had been filing in for an hour since Mrs. Jacobson left. Osborn stood at the outskirts of the meeting, barely paying attention to the other staff. He chewed on the pen, staring at the ground. The entire time his mind had been on Kevin Jacobson and his disappearance.

Missing kid. Nothing new or sexy about it, right? Why the hell was he still thinking about it? Like any newspaper, the Oregonian had to deal with its share of kooks coming off the street looking for attention, especially since they were in Portland. The place was filled with kooks. Mrs. Jacobson just didn’t come off as a kook to Osborn, though. She was a mother at her wit’s end. If the cops had made anyone else run that same gauntlet, they’d be in the same state. Was there something else there that he hadn’t seen yet? Why were the cops giving her the cold shoulder? And why were the private investigators turning her away? That was what Osborn couldn’t shake.

“Alright, what else we got?” Editor-in-Chief of the Oregonian, Ricky Valence was a veteran in the news industry. He kept the paper on track and was even an advocate in modernizing it. He had overseen bringing in its first computer. A stocky man with a thick beard and thicker glasses, his booming voice brought Osborn back into the conversation.

He looked straight at Osborn. “Sammy, you got something?”

“No,” Osborn hesitated and sighed. If he couldn’t let it go, now was the time to pitch it. “Well, maybe. A mom came in today looking for her kid. She said he’s been missing two weeks.”

Valence’s mouth vanished in his thick black beard with a confused frown. “We ain’t the cops.”

“Yeah, that’s what I told her,” Osborn still chewing on his pen. He was going to need a smoke after this.

“She’s already gone to them. I got a case number from her. The thing is that they’re stonewalling her. Even the local P.I.’s won’t take the case. Might be nothing.”

Valence rubbed his beard, slightly nodding, getting the picture. “But it might be something. Chase it today and see what you can get.”

And like that, Osborn was locked in. Once he was on a story, he didn’t let go.

The meeting wrapped up but Osborn was already halfway back to his desk. Sluggishly, the newsroom came to life as the clacking of typewriters and phone conversations grew in volume.

At his desk, Osborn sighed, rubbing a hand back through his messy hair. He looked into the trashcan and pulled out the crumbled notes. He flattened it out on the desk and put it next to the police report. Osborn found the precinct’s number and dialed it up.

“Portland PD, 8th Precinct,” a nasally male voice came through the other side.

“Morning. This is Sam Osborn with the Oregonian. Missing persons, please.”

“One moment.” Osborn heard the transfer.

“Missing Persons. This is Moss,” the voice was a deep baritone with a touch of resentment for being bothered this early.

Jackpot, Osborn thought. He eyeballed the underlined name Moss in his notes.

“Detective Moss. Good morning. This is Sam Osborn with the Oregonian. I’m calling in reference to a missing person. Kevin Jacobson. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?” Osborn wore his brightest smile. Osborn had a theory that smiling on the phone made a person’s voice smile. He wanted to be nothing but smiles and rainbows to Detective Moss if he was going to get anywhere.

“Sorry, Mr. Osborn. I’ve never heard of a Kevin Jacobson. You must be mistaken.” Osborn thought he heard a tone of frustration in Moss’ voice. He must have been one of those detectives that got pissed off by smiles and rainbows.

“If you could humor me, detective,” Osborn’s smile widened and almost gave a forced chuckle. “I’m calling in reference to a case number 005-675-0035-8845. I’m looking at a copy of it right now. Missing person, Kevin Jacobson. It’s even got your name on it. Are you sure there is nothing regarding this in your records?”

Silence. Osborn was almost certain that the phone had disconnected. He was about to repeat himself when Moss blurted out, “Yeah, I’m sure.”

There was no question that Moss had hung up by slamming the receiver. Osborn leaned back in his chair, his smile fading to a smirk.

“What a winner, this guy,” Osborn muttered to himself. His eyes drifted over his desk, gravitating to his cigarettes. He snagged them and the crumpled notes, jamming them into his breast pocket. His jacket flew off the chair as he grabbed it and walked to the door. He figured it was time Mrs. Jacobson had some hope.

Chapter Two

“I was pleasantly surprised when I received your call, Mr. Osborn.” Mrs. Jacobson stepped into her living room with a tray of lemonade. Osborn graciously accepted one. His faded brown suit sat in contrast to the off-white couch he sat on. Mrs. Jacobson sat down on a matching couch across from him. She still wore the same dress as in the office but she now had matching shoes and her hair was a little more managed. Mrs. Jacobson placed the tray on an old coffee table that sat between the matching couches. It had scuff marks all over it, evidence of a growing teenager’s presence. The floor of the room had a slightly different white shade to it. The walls were white as well. Osborn got a vaguely institutional feel from all the whiteness. There was the occasional framed photo of Mrs. Jacobson with (who Osborn assumed to be) Kevin. There were no pictures of a Mr. Jacobson anywhere but Osborn thought better than to approach the topic with the sting of a missing son still fresh. The living room was small. There could be an argument whether the room was cozy or cramped. Aside from the two couches and coffee table, there were end tables and a dining room sideboard. Not far from the couches was a dining room table that matched the sideboard that was much larger than needed for the two chairs on it. If Osborn had to go on a limb, all this furniture once resided in a much larger house, but the departure of Mr. Jacobson resulted in a downsizing of home.

“I thought you would forget about me just like everyone else,” Mrs. Jacobson continued. She smiled in a way that seemed removed the wear and tear of the stresses she must have felt recently. Underneath all the horror of the last two weeks she was a beautiful woman, something stirred in Osborn, but he buckled down to business.

“Please, call me Sam. I gotta say my curiosity was piqued. I called up that detective you talked to, Moss. When I read off the case number he hung up on me. I think there’s something going on.”

Osborn took a sip of the lemonade. He tried hard to hold back a wince. It was more bitter than he was expecting. He decided not to say anything about it. He noticed that Mrs. Jacobson had winced when she opened the door. He had chain smoked two cigarettes on the way here and the scent lingered on him. She was polite enough to not bring up the smell she found offensive and still invite her into his home. The least he could do was have some bitter lemonade.

“So you mentioned Kevin’s been gone about two weeks now? The police report was dated the 18th. Exactly when did you notice he was missing?”

“The day before,” Mrs. Jacobson started. She wrung her hands nervously together. She tried to be subtle about it, catching herself and putting her hands to her side. “Kevin is a very punctual boy. He knows to be home before dark and has never gotten into any trouble. I’ve been a more lenient mother with him than I probably should have.”

Mrs. Jacobson looked down at her feet, clenching her eyes and mouth. She was taking this hard on herself, Osborn noted. He took another sip of the lemonade, though his taste buds told him that politeness had its limits, and he just hit it. He placed the glass down.

“Had you noticed anything different about him before he went missing? Change in personality? Appetite? Anything might help me find a direction on where to start looking for him.” He brought out his notebook, pen at the ready.

Mrs. Jacobson looked at a picture of Kevin on the wall. Osborn’s eyes followed hers. It was a school photo. He had a dark blue jacket on over a lighter blue shirt with a red tie. He looked like an average kid. Brown hair, nice smile.

“Well, he had been a little distant recently. He always wore headphones out of the house before, but now he was wearing them everywhere. During dinner, walking around inside. He stopped talking to me as much as he used to in the last month, but he just turned sixteen. I thought he was acting just like teenagers are supposed to.”

“This started last month? About when precisely?” Osborn’s eyes returned to Mrs. Jacobson’s face. She continued staring at the picture of Kevin. The smile was starting to crack.

“Right before school got out, so about a month and a half, I’d say?”

Osborn nodded and scribbled down “Late May/Early June” and circled it. He felt he was on a race before she broke down again.

“Would it be okay if I poked around in Kevin’s room? It might help me figure out if he had made any plans.”

Mrs. Jacobson regained her composure and stood up. The smile regained strength and she led Osborn down a hallway. “By all means. That’s more than the police did.”

The room was a mess. Comics and school notebooks littered the floor with some of the white carpet shining through. The bed was unmade, as if Kevin had just left the day before. Dirty clothing tossed haphazardly in a pile by the wall, except one sweat stained shirt that was draped over a chair. The only place there seemed to be any order was in the record collection, which was immaculate and fastidiously organized alphabetically by band name and then chronologically by album release. There were some clumpings of Led Zeppelin, the Who, and the Doors with other one off albums. The crown jewel of the collection was an impressive and exhaustive collection of Journey’s discography. All six albums on vinyl were present with the latest album, Departure, still on the record player, the sleeve lying on top of it. There was also a healthy cassette collection, also organized neatly near the albums. Not nearly as organized and not as impressive. No Journey was present. With Kevin listening to a tape player nonstop, Osborn deduced Kevin had those with him, wherever he was now. The walls were covered with rock band posters, Journey unsurprisingly holding the majority of wall space.

Osborn picked up a school notebooks and found that each first page had a date. He opened another and found the same. Smiling with his luck, he organized them and started reading to get a better idea into what happened. The earliest notebook entry was dated January 20th, 1981. It must have been the start of the new semester. The notes were fastidious, at least at first. The notebook ran all the way to February 17th. The notes were still solid but not as extraneous. Throughout the first notebook was occasional doodles of guitars and the Journey logo. Osborn put that aside. It didn’t have much insight into Kevin or why he left.

Continuing, he found the next one started to stray in concentration. It just felt like semester fatigue rather than anything new. Still no direct insights into what happened to Kevin, though. The Journey doodles were almost completely replaced with video game characters: Pac-Man chasing ghosts, Donkey Kong throwing barrels down the college ruled lines. There was even an entire page dedicated to a Space Invaders scene where Kevin had given up on taking American History notes.

The entry for May 28th was where things took a stark change. Kevin seemed to have stopped writing notes for class altogether and the notebook quickly shifted to a journal format. He also stopped dating them.

The first entry spoke of a new cabinet that they added to the arcade. He didn’t list the name of the arcade, so Osborn wrote a note to himself to ask Mrs. Jacobson. The new cabinet was like nothing Kevin had ever seen. It seemed to transcend normal games. It was called Polybius. There was a doodle of an arcade cabinet in the margins, though it was just black scribbles inside the lines. Kevin continued about the game, writing that the puzzles were infuriatingly impossible yet seemed to give way at the right point to keep players going. He didn’t get a chance to play at first - the lines were far too long. But just watching seemed to be enough for Kevin. The journal continued to describe the game in contradictory terms - it had every color imaginable in the spectrum yet was limited to vector graphics of just black and red with inconsistent white flashes; the puzzles were straightforward and simple yet every game play was completely different between players; the music was fully immersive and rich yet cacophonous and just noise.

The journal continued to devolve. Some pages were nothing but abstract doodles, some were writing in a language Osborn couldn’t recognize. There were even five pages of nothing but the word “Polybius” written over and over in different fonts, primarily in block letters.

Seventeen pages in, Kevin finally got his hands on the game. He relayed it as a completely different experience. He made sure to note that he wanted to play without his headphones on. He wanted to “fully be one with Polybius.” He couldn’t remember seeing richer colors or hearing more vibrant music from when he just watched. He said “the music was a part of him” and that he was “falling into the game.” The first level was solved in such a fluid way that Kevin was no longer in control of his own hands. He was no longer in control of his own body. He felt he was both playing the machine and a passive observer. His hands moved automatically. He closed his eyes and still saw the game’s colors flow through him. As he played, he swore that he was in an endless desert, right in the middle of it. Just him and Polybius. The sun beat down on him but he felt no heat. No cold.

That’s when it turned on him. As he played the game, he began to feel terrified. Polybius was beginning to play him. His very soul was in danger. Kevin’s mother was there, behind him, screaming as she was being ripped apart by vultures or some profane beast, but he couldn’t watch. He wrote down that he heard his mother shrieking out his name, pleading for help. He knew that he was the only one who could save her. He never turned around. He had to keep playing. If he failed, his very mortal soul would be forfeit.

The writing was more scratchy than previous pages. Hurried. In a panic. Osborn lifted the page to look on the other side, he could see the imprint from the writing went the next few pages. He must have had adrenaline pumping through him from just remembering this while transcribing what happened. Osborn suspected that the poor kid was reliving the moment when writing this. He had interviewed a few Vietnam vets in his day and this journal was sounding more like one of them talking about a bad acid trip than a day at the arcade.

The following days, Kevin said the memories followed him into his dreams. He wrote that some demon that sounded like it came straight out of Heavy Metal magazine was tormenting him. It had horns and metal protrusions. Even some weird metal lines tracing the demon’s face. He said the demon spoke in a language that Kevin must have heard before. It was so terrifyingly familiar. Kevin wrote vaguely about what happened in the dreams. He mentioned that people burnt beyond all recognition were writhing in pain around the demon. He seemed to almost dread writing about it but the amount of detail he put into the description of them was real.

Then the journal just stopped.

When Osborn got to the last page, he noticed a red spot on the paper. He then felt warm on his face. He wiped his hand under his nose to see the same red. A nosebleed? Osborn’s body tensed with panic. What could have caused this? He dropped the journal on the bed and stood up. He stared at the journal for a minute. The seed of a thought grew. Had reading the experience brought about the nosebleed?

Osborn chuckled to himself. Right, Osborn thought with a smile, looking around for something to stop the bleeding. He found a box next to the kid’s bed and grabbed a handful, wiping his nose.

He looked in the mirror above the dresser to see if any blood got on his shirt. Two drops. Of course it did. Sighing to himself, he was about to make for the bathroom to clean himself when he noticed a big pickle jar full of coins behind him sitting on Kevin’s desk reflected in the mirror. It was turned at a way so that it looked as though there was masking tape on the other side. Osborn went to it and turned it around so the masking tape faced him.

He felt a chill run through him when he read the single word that what was written in bold sharpie.

Escape.