“You can say that again,” I replied. “No, I’ve never met a ghost that could see the future. Most are confused and aren’t sure what’s happening in the present. Many don’t even know they’re dead!” I grimaced, thinking back to the previous summer. “I once saw a decapitated ghost walking down Main Street, yelling at his own head for falling off. He held it in place on his shoulders and wondered aloud — and I’m not joking — if his doctor would have an opening to see him that day.”
Harold laughed and shook his head. “I’m glad I never have to see stuff like that. I wouldn’t be able to eat for a year.”
I unwrapped a Pop-Tart and bit off a corner. “You get used to it,” I said as I chewed noisily, crumbs flying out of my mouth with every word.
“You know, you eat really poorly for an athlete,” Harold said.
“Ex-athlete,” I corrected. I stuck the rest of the Pop-Tart in my mouth, picked up Toni and unpaused the game. “I won’t make you stay. Feel free to leave if you’re afraid of dying a horrible, tragic death.”
Harold blew air noisily through his lips. “That’s not going to happen.”
“Your horrible, tragic death?”
“No, that’s still a distinct possibility. I was referring to me leaving. If you’re going to bring about our destruction, I want a front-row seat.”
“It’s your funeral,” I said.
I searched a few more rooms in the Wisp’s cabin but didn’t find anything interesting.
“Do you think her warning is somehow connected to the fact that you can see ghosts?” Harold asked.
I shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
“She said you’re going to kill us all. Like, humans and ghosts. That’s weird.”
“Everything about her was weird.”
As I continued to search the cabin with my mind on autopilot, I started to think back to the earlier levels of the game. What Harold had said got me thinking. The purpose of Kill Screen was to travel through a series of locations — both urban and rural — hunting ghosts and sending them all back to the Netherrealm using the Soul Burner. Each of the ghosts, including some incredibly nasty ones that appeared at the end of each level, had been summoned by the Wisp. She was some sort of supreme, ancient, all-powerful being that was dead set on killing everyone on the planet so that she’d be in charge of every spirit.
When you played the game, your character was the only person standing between the Wisp and the apocalypse.
I was close to beating the Wisp — I could feel it — but then that real-life ghost had appeared and told me that the apocalypse was coming and, somehow, it would be my fault.
I shook my head and shrugged. It was a small coincidence, that was all.
The Wisp appeared suddenly in a bedroom. “You are not worthy to live,” she said, not even giving me time to recite the usual dialogue: that I’d come to send her back to the Netherrealm and she was an agent of darkness and all that stuff.
“But you are worthy to die,” I said along with her.
Her eyes narrowed and darkened. The air thrummed with electricity. The orb that floated above her hand grew brighter — it looked like a bluish-white ball of fire.
And then, for the 110th time, I died.
Enough, I thought. I will not die one hundred and eleven times. No way.
But how? How could I beat an unbeatable end boss?
And then I had an idea.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I actually started to laugh. Yeah, like that crazy person I had often promised Harold I wasn’t.
But I didn’t care how I sounded. I had an idea.
YOU DIED swirled around the screen like smoke from a snuffed candle.
“Something funny, nutso?” Harold asked.
“Yeah, maybe,” I replied, ignoring his joke. “What did you say the Wisp’s orb reminded you of yesterday? Something you read about on Wikipedia?”
“A will-o’-the-wisp.”
I nodded. “What if you’re right? What if the orb is actually someone’s soul? But it isn’t there to lead people off the path. It is the path! The path to beating the Wisp.”
For a moment Harold didn’t look like he was buying it, but then his eyes suddenly widened and he raised his fist to his mouth like he needed to bite down on something. He jumped off the couch, picked up the Kill Screen case from the coffee table and pointed at the cover. “Where There’s a Will, There’s a Wraith! Kill Screen’s tagline!”
I could hardly believe it. Everything was starting to line up. “Of course! It’s a hidden clue. The orb is literally a will-o’-the-wisp — a soul, or wraith, that she controls. Didn’t you say that ghosts are energy? So if that’s true, and the Wisp’s orb is a will-o’-the-wisp, then maybe the orb is the source of her power, like a battery, and is the key to defeating her and winning the game.” My mind was racing. “We need to find out how will-o’-the-wisps can be beaten.”
Harold held up his free hand. His other hand was tapping furiously on his phone. “Way ahead of you.”
“Let me guess: Wikipedia?”
“Uh-huh.” His eyes darted left and right as he read quickly and muttered to himself. And then he smiled. “Got it! There are many variations of will-o’-the-wisps around the world, but all cultures seem to agree they’re either ghosts or fairies that are seen in forests and swamps late at night. There’s not a lot of talk about how to beat them — most sources simply warn people to avoid them and to never, ever follow them — but here it says that long ago in parts of Europe, Asia and South America it was believed that if you could somehow catch a will-o’-the-wisp and submerge it, its flame would be extinguished and the soul would be released.”
“That’s it,” I said. “It has to be. Now I just have to figure out how to soak the Wisp’s orb.”
“Any chance you can turn your Soul Burner into a water gun?” Harold asked without much confidence.
“No, it can’t be modified. It shoots salt, iron, chalcedony and energy. That’s it, that’s all.”
“Is there any water outside the cabin? Maybe a lake or a river you can lure the Wisp to?”
“Nothing I’ve ever seen, and the Wisp never leaves the cabin. She doesn’t even leave whatever room she generates in with each new game.”
“What about earlier levels? Did you ever see a water bottle or something you could add to your inventory?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. But I guess I could start over and play through every single level and mission again, just to make sure.” I sighed at the thought. How depressing. How boring. I took another bite of Pop-Tart and chewed robotically.
Harold claimed the last one from the box. He chewed, swallowed a mouthful, then sat up a little straighter. “What about the bathroom sink?”
“In the cabin? It didn’t work, remember? No water.”
“It didn’t work the way you’d expect, but it did work. I mean, it’s not like nothing came out when you turned on the tap.”
“Yeah, but it was sand, not water. You said—”
“That to beat a will-o’-the-wisp you need to submerge it. The website didn’t say it had to be water. And if the orb is anything like fire—”
“Sand would work too!”
“It’s worth a shot,” he said, beaming. “But how do you get the sand out of the bathroom?”
I racked my brain but couldn’t think how the game would allow me to collect the sand and carry it into a different room. When I put my hand under the stream of sand it scattered across the floor but it wasn’t a collectible item. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe you could replay the game until the Wisp is in the bathroom and throw some at her.”
“Maybe, but whenever I enter a room the Wisp kills me within a second or two. I won’t have time to turn on the taps, let alone throw the sand at her.”
We were close to figuring it out, closer than we’d ever been. This had to be the answer. It had to be.
I couldn’t accept that the game was truly unbeatable.
&n
bsp; “What if …” My mind was laying tracks of thought. I didn’t quite know where the track might lead me, but the train started rolling nonetheless. “What if the Wisp didn’t need to be in the bathroom, but somewhere else? What if … I entered the bathroom, alone, and then …”
It hit me.
“What?” Harold asked.
“OMG,” I said as I stood up slowly.
“What?” Harold shouted, standing with me.
“I might not be able to move the sand to a different room, and the Wisp might be too quick to be killed when she’s in the bathroom, but none of that matters.”
“I like where you’re going with this.”
“None of that matters,” I repeated, “because there’s a glitch in the game. I don’t need to replay the game until the Wisp is in the bathroom. I need to replay the game until the Wisp is in the kitchen, beside the bathroom!”
“And then—”
“And then I throw the sand on her orb, the will-o’-the-wisp, when it accidentally appears through the wall.”
“And then—”
I smiled at Harold. He smiled back at me. “And then no more Wisp.”
CHAPTER NINE
We sat back down. Harold handed me Toni. I resumed the game.
The first stop was the bathroom. I watched the wall but the Wisp didn’t come through it. Before leaving I tested the faucet just to make sure it still worked and sand poured out.
I left, found the Wisp, and died.
I told myself it might take all day, so I was caught off guard when, on the next try, I entered the bathroom and saw the Wisp’s arm and leg bleeding through the wall. I actually jumped, which was weird since I’d spent so much time playing Kill Screen that I no longer even blinked when the hidden ghosts and spirits of earlier levels suddenly leapt out of the shadows. I was dead to the game’s jump-scare tactics. But an elbow and a knee sticking through a bathroom wall had me on the verge of fainting.
“So,” Harold said. He wiped his palms on his pants. “This is it.”
“This is it,” I replied. My throat felt raw and rough. I tipped my cream soda can to my lips but it was empty.
The clock on the wall went tick-tock, tick-tock.
The Wisp was floating up and down and side to side. Every now and again the edge of her orb was visible for a brief moment, but never her face. So I knew she couldn’t see me. Her movement was graceful and hypnotic, following a predictable pattern.
I turned on the tap. Sand began to fill the sink.
My pulse quickened and my heart sped up, like it was trying to pound its way through my chest.
I put my hand under the faucet. Sand scattered across the sink. Some scattered on the floor around my feet.
“V?” Harold said. He sounded far, far away. “What are you waiting for?”
Tick.
I watched the Wisp sway.
Tock.
I listened to the pitter-patter of a thousand grains of sand dancing on the floor.
Tick.
I had worked toward this moment for months.
Tock.
And here it was.
The orb came through the wall. I turned my hand, sending a stream of sand straight for it.
Time either sped up or slowed down. I don’t really remember which, but what I do remember vividly is what happened once the sand hit the orb.
I’ll never forget it.
The Wisp died. Not with a bang or with a whimper.
She died with a G. And then an H. And then another G and another H. And then F, G, P, Q, H, I, P, Q, followed by a bunch more letters and a whack of 1s and 0s. The game froze and the random string of letters and numbers marched across the screen from right to left. When they reached the middle they stopped, flickered and then disappeared.
The screen went black and the console turned off with a loud electrical crack that was followed by a high-pitched whine that slowly faded away.
I didn’t move, blink or breathe until Harold broke the silence.
“Um, what just happened?”
“I think I beat Kill Screen,” I said. “And in the process killed my television.”
But the television wasn’t dead. It turned itself back on, as did the console.
The same smoky font that floated around at the end of every game appeared. But instead of reading YOU DIED, it read YOU WON.
I had won. After hours and days and months spent playing the game no one could beat, I, Evie Vanstone, had won.
I couldn’t believe it.
I took a picture of the screen with my phone. My hands were shaking so bad that the picture was blurry, but the words could still be made out.
But then the smoke shifted and the words changed. It no longer read YOU WON.
It now quietly proclaimed, ALL WILL DIE.
CHAPTER TEN
“Uh, V?” Harold asked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
All will die. Seemed pretty straightforward, but that wouldn’t be an appropriate response. Instead I shook my head and said, “I’m not sure. Maybe it’s a teaser for a sequel? Or some programmer’s weird idea of a hidden joke?”
That had to be it. It was a harmless Easter egg. Video games were full of stuff like that.
But the ghost’s warning suddenly ran through my head: You are going to bring about our destruction. You will kill us all.
ALL WILL DIE continued to swirl around the screen in silence. Where were the end credits? Why wasn’t the game resetting to the home screen? I hit a few buttons on Toni but nothing happened.
I stood up and crossed the room, then knelt in front of the TV.
“What are you doing?” Harold asked. He sounded concerned.
“I’m turning the console off,” I said. “The game’s frozen. Not surprising, since it glitched out when I beat the Wisp.”
I said that partly to make Harold feel a little better, but mostly to make myself feel a little better. I knew it wasn’t frozen — the words were still moving. I just couldn’t sit there and stare at them any longer.
I took a deep breath and placed the tip of my forefinger on the power button.
As soon as my skin touched plastic — but before I had pressed the button — the words onscreen faded away. I pulled my hand back and stared at the TV. Before long a string of bizarre characters and symbols appeared.
“You recognize this language?” I asked.
“Doesn’t look like anything I’ve ever seen.”
“Me neither.” The words were a weird mix of rounded, flowing characters and jagged lines that looked more like slash marks than letters. They looked angry.
The bizarre language slowly morphed into letters I recognized.
I read the words aloud. “Slith sekae, slith hasei. Kahorra meen, vokalai skanda ilk hokuun. Kalaharra, tanzinae. Exat.”
The lights in the basement dimmed. The temperature plummeted low enough that we could see our breath as it puffed out of our mouths in thick, white clouds. Frost spread in spiderweb patterns across the small windows near the ceiling. The walls started to shake. The air started to thrum. It was hard to breathe. My heart felt like it was struggling to beat, like it had been trapped in a too-small jar. My head ached and my skin crawled. I bent over at the waist, put my hands to my temples and moaned. It didn’t help.
Then I looked up.
Hovering a foot off the floor, between me and the television, was a ghost. Not the ghost from the day before.
The Wisp.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Who has summoned me?”
The Wisp spoke with a mixture of grace and venom, somehow sounding bored and excited, quiet and forceful. She looked just like she did in the game, with bluish-white skin that glowed faintly and black glassy eyes.
Also true to the game, she held her left hand palm-up in front of her chest, and above it floated her golden orb. In person it looked like a glass ball that had trapped a solar flare.
Without the constraints that come with being pixelated, the mist that envel
oped her from head to toe swirled slowly and hypnotically, as vivid and earthy as early-morning fog. She smelled like a springtime forest, too, with underlying notes of wet stone, rotting mulch and wood smoke. Like the mist, her odour was something the game couldn’t accurately capture.
I tried to swallow but my mouth was dry. “Um …” I said in response to her question. Not my most eloquent opening, but it wasn’t every day I spoke to the ruler of the Netherrealm. “If beating Kill Screen summoned you, then that would be, uh, me.” I raised my hand like a kindergartner in need of a potty break, then, feeling silly, quickly lowered it.
“I’m Evie Vanstone,” I added, and then immediately winced. Stop it, I warned myself. Don’t reveal anything else.
The Wisp regarded me with cool detachment and a twinge of amusement, or maybe disbelief. I’m not sure. It was nearly impossible to guess what she was thinking.
“Thank you, Evie Vanstone,” she said. “You are a friend of the Netherrealm.”
A friend of the Netherrealm? No, no, no. She had the wrong girl. The dialogue my character had said almost every time I’d faced the Wisp in the game — I have come to send you back to the Netherrealm — rang through my head. The Wisp seemed to think I was on her side, that I’d summoned her on purpose. But I suppose the real Wisp wouldn’t know that she’d killed me 112 times, or that I’d killed her once. She didn’t know that we were enemies.
I nearly told her. I nearly shouted, “You are an agent of darkness and are not welcome here among the living!” But I stopped myself. She could probably kill me and Harold with a single snap of her fingers.
“Yes,” I said with a low bow. I caught a glimpse of Harold. He looked confused, so I winked at him to let him know it was an act. “I, um, love the Netherrealm. It’s my favourite place in the world. Or should I say in the underworld? I’ve never actually been.”
“All in good time,” the Wisp said. A thin smile flashed across her lips, briefly revealing teeth too sharp. “Remember that you have to die.”
Kill Screen Page 3