Autopsy of an Eldritch City: Ten Tales of Strange and Unproductive Thinking (29 page)

Still, Alex found the game to be somewhat unnerving. Perhaps because it was such a lonely experience: the castle you explored was all but abandoned, with no other NPCs to interact with, and not even any monsters to slay (or be slain by, which would at least provide some cathartic release). And yet, as he played the game, he couldn’t help but feel that his character was in danger, was being watched at all times by invisible presences. This sense of paranoia soon manifested itself in a more intimate sense: he began to feel as if
he
were in danger, as if he were being watched. Of course, this was jumping at shadows, and he decided it was all of those creepy urban legends about the game that he had read. Alex had always found urban legends spooky, everything from
Pokémon
’s Lavender Town Syndrome to Squidward’s Suicide and things of that nature. He remembered the night years ago when he had watched the haunted video tape sequence from the film
The Ring
, and how for an hour afterward he kept dreading for his phone to ring.

Finally, after much trial and experimentation, Alex had only one possible combination of items left: the piece of Mason temple, the pentacle, and the crystal. After collecting these items, he returned his avatar to the altar outside to perform the ritual. But then something unusual happened. As soon as his avatar touched the altar the game suddenly became completely silent, and a new message appeared in the status bar at the top of the screen: “You are possessed by a demon.” When Alex realized he could still move his avatar around, he made it go back into the castle, and now saw that he was once again being instructed to find 3 items to perform a ritual.
But how?
he thought.
There should only be two items left.
He collected the drugs and the faggot, and then, to his surprise, in one of the hallways he came across a new object: what looked like a book. He moved the square over it and was informed that he had collected a copy of the
Necronomicon
. Instructed to perform the ritual, he returned outside and approached the altar.

As soon as the square touched the altar, the image on the screen vanished and a new image appeared in its place: Alex suddenly saw himself on the screen, facing himself. There he was on the screen, seated before his computer, with the rest of his bedroom behind him, almost as if the game had hacked into his webcam. That would be the rational explanation, were it not for one simple fact: Alex’s webcam was currently unplugged. Another problem with this webcam theory was that the reflection of him on the screen wasn’t a true reflection, partly because not only was it
not
mimicking the actions of Alex (for at that moment he was gazing at the screen and blinking rapidly in disbelief, while the version of himself in the game was just gazing back at him dully, unblinking), but also because the eyes of the Alex on the screen were… different. They looked less like human eyes and more like cartoon eyes, like the kind of eyes you would see on a character in some Japanese anime. Alex found all this somewhat unsettling, especially because the game remained completely silent.

This silence, however, proved to be short-lived, because about a minute after Alex’s visage appeared on the screen, a horrible noise began blasting from the speakers of Alex’s computer. Alex had heard terrifying noises in video games before, such as the nerve-shattering repeating drone sound effect that played in Shadow’s first dream in
Final Fantasy VI
. But this noise was worse, so much worse. It sounded like the primeval roar of some Anteverse-bred Category V Kaiju emerging from the Breach on the floor of Challenger Deep in the Pacific Ocean, or the subterranean howling of Cthelll, the broiling cauldron burning in Earth’s center in constant patripassian pain. In conjunction with this sudden squall of noise, a visual change began to appear on the screen itself. An anomaly was beginning to manifest in the air behind the shoulders of the Alex on the computer screen. It looked like a gray monster from an old 8-bit video game from the 1980s, only blown up to an immensely magnified degree, making its outline look quite blocky. As the gray goo nanomonster slowly began to become less opaque and more tangible, pixelated blood began streaming down from the corners of the electronic Alex’s cartoon eyes. 

Still, it was the sound itself that horrified Alex more than anything else. Desperate to stop it, his hand shot forward and held down the power button on his computer’s chassis, forcing it to shut down, and as the screen went black he whipped off his headphones.

It was at that precise moment that he realized that the horrible sound wasn’t coming from his computer’s soundcard and speakers, but from a point directly behind him.

“Vital spark of heav’nly flame!

Quit, O quit this mortal frame:

Trembling, hoping, ling’ring, flying,

O the pain, the bliss of dying!

Cease, fond Nature, cease thy strife,

And let me languish into life.”

—Alexander Pope,
The Dying Christian to his Soul

“The poet must visit Hell;

he need not stay there.”

—Craig Laurance-Gidney, “Strange Alphabets”

“Strange and Unproductive Thinking” (David Lynch) title song

“Black Mamba” (Cut Hands)

“Sonata II in A” (Thomas Vincent)

“All Things Are Quite Silent” (Shirley Collins)

“Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)” (Talking Heads)

“Voodoo” (Adam Lambert)

“Overture (from
Macbeth
)” (Third Ear Band)

“Crucible of Flame” (Mari Yamaguchi)

“Purple People Eater” (Judy Garland)

“Lavender Town’s Theme” (Junichi Masuda)

“The Decline of English Murder” (Alan Moore)

“Sims Will Build”

“Caribou” (The Pixies)

“Red Birds Will Fly Out of the East and Destroy Paris in a Night” (Coil)

“Early Winter” (Gwen Stefani)

“Nyarlathotep” (Burning Star Core)

“The Snow” (Coil)

“Atlantis” (Donovan)

“Wasted Time” (The Eagles)

“Atlantis” (Sun Ra)

“Fracking Fluid Injection” (The Knife)

“Time” (Pink Floyd)

“What in the World” (David Bowie)

“Heart of Glass” (Blondie)

“Look at Your Game Girl” (Charles Manson)

“Miss the Girl” (The Creatures)

“When You Were Young” (The Killers)

“Go Your Own Way” (Fleetwood Mac)

“Circle” (Siouxsie & the Banshees)

“Underneath ” (Adam Lambert)

“Rabbit Snare” (Throbbing Gristle)

“Turn You Inside-Out” (R.E.M.)

“Christmas Time Is Here (Instrumental)” (Vince Guaraldi Trio)

“Sanctus” (Libera)

“Big Church (Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért)” (Sunn O))))

“The Great, Bloody and Bruised Veil of the World” (Current 93)

“The Holy Hour” (The Cure)

“The Blood” (The Cure)

“Demons” (Imagine Dragons)

“Came Back Haunted” (Nine Inch Nails)

“Asleep” (The Smiths) end credits

About the Author

James Champagne is the author of Grimoire: A Compendium of Neo-Goth Narratives. His work has also appeared in the anthologies Userlands: New Fiction Writers From the Blogging Underground and Mighty in Sorrow: a Tribute to Current 93 & David Tibet. He was born in 1980 and lives in Rhode Island. This is his second collection.

About the Artist

O.B. De Alessi is an Italian artist born in 1984 and currently living in London. Her work has been exhibited in Europe, South America, Australia and Russia. She also illustrated the cover of Luna Miguel’s poetry book
Estar Enfermo
and she is the author of
I Murder So That I May Come Back
published by Kiddiepunk, as well as the illustrated short story “Sunora” published by Libri di Pixel.