Phantasos

by Robert Barnard

  The front door of Planet X unlocked and Todd strolled in. He set the coffees down on the prize counter. One for Danny, marked with a “D”: heavy cream, extra sugar. And, one for himself, marked with a “T”: black. The only way he drank it.

  He rubbed his forehead and recalled the night before. The prank phone call, the destruction of the office phone, the long night out with Danny. Three hours of hard drinking at the Frosty Boot. Todd didn’t get to bed until four in the morning, and when he did, he didn’t sleep well. His alarm rang at seven.

  Danny should be in any minute now, Todd thought, unless he overslept…

  He walked into the office to examine the damage from the night before. It was worse than he remembered. Where the office phone was once bolted to the wall was now nothing but a jagged, punched out hole of drywall, so deep that the wooden frame behind it was exposed. The phone itself, smashed to bits, was scattered across the floor.

  Looking back, Todd wished that he could have controlled his temper better. But his prank caller had infuriated him with their strange remarks and the eerie way they delivered their taunts. No pause for breath or punctuation, their words still rang through Todd’s mind: Do you ever wonder if you’ve failed Shelly and do you ever wonder how you’d feel lying on the tracks as a speeding train—

  Todd ran his fingers through his hair. He had to stop thinking about the mystery caller and their cruel idea of a joke, and he had to clean up. Some of the machines needed their quarter trays emptied, the prize cabinet needed readjusting, the popcorn machine needed a scrub down. There was a busy day ahead whether he liked it or not. He grabbed a broom and started sweeping up his mess from the night before, when—

  Skitter, skitter. Clank.

  “The hell was that?” Todd muttered under his breath. He stopped sweeping to concentrate on listening. For a moment, the arcade was perfectly silent and still, before again—

  Skitter, skitter, skitter.

  “Danny?” Todd called out. “Danny is that you? I’m in the office.”

  No answer.

  “Danny?”

  Total silence.

  Todd finished sweeping the remaining bits of phone into a dustpan, leaned the broom against the office wall, and tiptoed out into the arcade. The room was empty, devoid of all life. He put his hand on his hips and blew upwards, directing some loose hairs away from the front of his face. Better not be rodents again.

  And then, there she was, standing just outside of the front door of the arcade, looking in through the glass window. Todd froze in disbelief. She was as beautiful as the last time he saw her. She may have even been wearing the same outfit. Long curls of blond hair rolled down to her shoulders, and she was smiling that beautiful, perfect, dazzling smile that she always had.

  It was Shelly—but what was she doing at the arcade? It was impossible. It didn’t make any sense. Time stopped and Todd could feel his heart pounding in his chest. He slowly raised a hand, attempted to wave, and tried to say the word: “Shelly.” But all that came out was a helpless croak, and he was startled by the skittering sound behind him.

  He snapped around, caught something out of the corner of his eye behind the prize cabinet, and saw that one of the coffees had been tipped over.

  “Dammit,” Todd said to no one, and he walked back to the prize cabinet to pick up the fallen beverage before it drained all over the cheap teddy bears and generic action figures. He looked down, saw that the spilt coffee was the one marked with a “T”—of course it was—and he yanked some paper towels from nearby and started to wipe up the mess. After the first paper towel wipe, he looked back up at the door. Shelly was gone.

  He finished dabbing up the small pool of coffee, then tossed the empty Styrofoam cup and dirty paper towels into a trash basket behind the prize counter. As soon as he was done, there was a heavy knock at the door.

  Todd looked up to find Danny with his head pressed against the window looking in. There was something in his hand.

  Todd lightly jogged to the door, opened it, and let his business partner inside.

  “I’m sorry, man. I forgot my keys this morning.”

  Todd said, “It’s no problem.”

  Danny held up his hand. In it was a black, rotary telephone. “I had an extra one lying around the house.”

  “I really appreciate that, friend,” Todd said. “Hey, was there anyone out there with you?”

  “No. Why?”

  “I thought I saw someone, that’s all.”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind, it’s stupid.”

  Todd ducked out of the front door anyway, looked up the street, then down it, then back up it once more. Then he hopped back into the arcade.

  Danny said, “What’s the matter? Didn’t believe me?”

  “It’s just—I didn’t—just forget about it, Danny. All right?”

  “Sure, sure,” Danny said.

  “Long night of drinking, is all. Long night of drinking. Come in, let’s get to work.”

  Danny lazily swept the front of the arcade with one hand and drank the coffee that Todd brought him with the other. It was delicious, so warm and nourishing; it helped to bring him back to life after a long night out with little sleep.

  In the office, Todd was connecting the temporary phone that Danny so graciously brought in. The drywall would need repair and a better phone would need to be bought—the cord on this one was much too short—but for now, it was better than nothing.

  Todd flipped through a short stack of papers on his desk. Whoever had called the night before was not only cruel in their prank, but had an intimate knowledge of Todd and his business. They knew enough that a new arcade machine was brought in, that it was manufactured by the Vidtronix Games Corporation, and that someone had even stopped by to calibrate it. Todd tugged out a sheet of paper with the phone number for Vidtronix, walked over to the phone, and dialed.

  “Vidtronix Games Corporation, where video games are brought to life. How may I direct your call?”

  “Yes,” Todd said, and the word left his mouth with a stutter. He drew a sharp breath, trying to remain calm. “My name is Todd Prower. Your company installed a Phantasos machine at my arcade in Grand Ridge, Oregon. The Planet X Arcade.”

  “Oh, sure,” the woman on the other end said. “Is there a problem? How can I be of assistance?”

  “Who am I speaking to right now?”

  The woman paused. “My name is Veronica, sir—”

  “Veronica what?” Todd demanded.

  Veronica said, “Veronica Sheehan, and there is no need to take such a tone with me.”

  Todd paused. “I’m sorry. Please connect me with…” he looked at the name he scribbled into his notes beside Vidtronix’s phone number. “Amy Armstrong. I need to speak with Miss Armstrong, thank you.”

  The voice on the phone hesitated, and Todd even heard the sound of some computer keyboard clicks, before she answered: “I’m sorry, sir. No one works here with that name.”

  Todd bit his lip and slammed his palm on his desk. “The hell they don’t.”

  “Sir, if you keep using that language, I’ll have to disconnect—”

  “Someone named Amy Armstrong called from your office just after eleven last night, and—”

  “Sir, our office closes promptly at five PM, PDT. I assure you that there was no one here that would call your business at such an hour.”

  “And I assure you,” Todd said, almost yelling, “that there was. Now cut the bullshit with me and—”

  “Sir,” the woman said, “I asked you politely not to talk to me in such a disgusting manner. The next time you are the victim of a prank call, I suggest that you contact your telephone company or local law enforcement agency for further information. Good day.”

  Todd heard the slam of a telephone handset, followed by a dial tone.

  Eight

  BENJI WOKE UP AT A LITTLE after ten in the morning, because what good is the first day of summer vacation if not for sleeping in?

/>   He bounced down the stairs of his empty house, walked to the fridge, grabbed a carton of Orange Juice and took a huge gulp straight from the container. He was wiping his mouth with his shirtsleeve when he heard a bike go whizzing by the front of his house. The bike slowed down, turned around, and stopped on the sidewalk in front of his home.

  Benji walked towards his living room uneasily, and through the sheer floral print curtains of his front living room window saw Rodney Frye sitting on his bike, looking in.

  “I know you’re in there,” Rodney hollered.

  Great, Benji thought. He got a new tire. Or a new bike. Rodney’s family was the type that replaced the living room television when the remote broke, or upgraded the family car when there was a problem with the radiator.

  “Come out, butthead. Bring whatever cash you’ve got, take your beating, and we’ll call it square, all right?”

  Benji stood in his living room, motionless. He felt his hands turn cool and the orange juice was sitting bitter in his stomach. Screw him, Benji thought. In a day or two he’ll be in miserable Florida, with his miserable father, getting sunburns and riding roller coasters. With any luck, maybe an alligator will eat him alive.

  “Come out, Bauer!” Rodney yelled. “Come out and take it like a man, let’s get this over with!”

  Benji continued to stand still, a mannequin in his own home. Frozen in place.

  “Whatever, dickweed,” Rodney called out. “You can try to hide until fall if you want, but I’ve got all summer. I’ll see you around.” And Rodney took off on his bike.

  He’s got all summer? Benji thought, suddenly panicked. What does he mean by that?

  Benji took his time showering and getting ready before he headed over to the Emerson’s house. He put on a thin, white t-shirt with a Batman emblem in the middle of it and the lightest pair of shorts he owned. It was barely noon, and yet the heat was relentless. Every window in his home was open, but there was no breeze. The fans sprinkled throughout the home offered little relief.

  He was optimistic that him and his friends would have a good day of quarter fishing; so good, perhaps, that they could stop in the McDonald’s by the Shop-and-Save for lunch afterwards. But, just in case, he made himself eat a small bowl of cereal before heading out the door.

  Benji biked across the street to the Emerson’s house and parked his Huffy behind their front deck, hiding it. There had been so sign of Rodney since earlier, but it was better to be safe than sorry, Benji figured.

  Knock. Knock. Knock.

  Lauren opened the door, smiled, and let Benji inside. Benji hopped onto the couch beside Alley, who didn’t bother to look away from the television set when he said, “Hey, Benji. You’re here early. They’re about to play Plinko!”

  On the fifteen-inch screen in the middle of the room, Bob Barker escorted a young contestant from one end of the stage to the other. A giant, elaborate prize board was set up.

  “I hate Plinko,” Benji mumbled.

  “It’s my favorite,” Alley said.

  “There’s no skill involved. It’s just luck.”

  “Well, that’s why it’s exciting. Could you imagine winning fifty-thousand dollars?”

  “I could,” Benji said. “We certainly wouldn’t be quarter fishing at the grocery store today.”

  “Fifty-thousand dollars in quarters,” Alley said. “We could fill a room with them, then swim through them. We could play at Planet X forever.”

  “We could buy Planet X,” Benji offered. “Then we could set all the machines to free-play. We wouldn’t ever have to pay to play them.”

  “That would take some off the fun out of it, don’t you think?”

  “No. I think unlimited plays on an arcade cabinet would be awfully fun.”

  “Well,” Alley said. “The fun comes from putting a quarter in and trying to get your money’s worth. If you do really bad, you feel like you wasted the quarter. If you do really well, then you don’t feel bad for spending the money. If you play for free, then where’s the pressure? What’s the reward for doing good? If a ghost eats you in Pac-Man, then you just press start and go again? That doesn’t sound like fun.”

  Benji shook his head. “Leave it to the smartest guy in the room to ruin the thought of unlimited, free video games.”

  “Hey,” Lauren said to Alley, glancing at the watch on her wrist. “Finish your lunch, you need to take your noon dose before we leave.”

  Alley rolled his eyes. On the tray table in front of him, where he sat legs crossed, was a grilled-cheese sandwich that Lauren had so lovingly prepared for him. Beside the sandwich was a plastic, translucent case that housed a dozen pills in varying sizes. The noon dose.

  “Come on, I mean it,” Lauren said. “You’d do it if mom asked you to.”

  “You’re not mom.”

  Lauren stopped what she was doing—fidgeting with the laces of a shoe she just put on—to stand up straight and give Alley a look. The look. The look that said: Somehow in all of this I became responsible for your well being, and even though I’m only a year older than you, you’ll do what I tell you because that’s the way it is and I can make your life difficult if I have to. All that, all in a single look. Alley started to eat his sandwich.

  “I don’t like these new ones,” Alley grumbled, finishing a bite of sandwich and chasing the first of a dozen pills with a sip of Hi-C. “They give me bad dreams.”

  “I’m sorry they give you bad dreams,” Lauren said. “But you still need to take them.”

  Alley swallowed the second, third, and fourth pills. He grimaced on the fourth one; Benji noticed that it was quite large. He felt bad for his friend.

  “What kind of bad dreams?” Benji asked, curious.

  “Well, last night I dreamt that my teeth kept falling out. All of them. My whole mouth. And each time I’d spit out a mouthful of teeth, a new set would grow in, and right away I’d have to spit those out, too. So, all night, I was spitting out blood and teeth.” Alley made a mock choking sound. “So grody.”

  The bike ride to Shop-and-Save was pleasant, even in the heat. Lauren led the way—she was always fastest, considering Benji was pedaling for two—and the trio caught the occasional cool breeze.

  “I hate having to wear this stupid thing,” Alley said, as Benji turned into the Shop-and-Save parking lot. Alley shook his head from side to side to keep the helmet from sliding down his forehead.

  “Your sister doesn’t want you getting hurt,” Benji said.

  “I look like a major dork.”

  “No you don’t.”

  “Says the guy not wearing a bicycle helmet. It’s making my head sweaty. I want to feel the breeze!”

  Benji parked his bike beside Lauren’s on the side of the Shop-and-Save, and Alley hopped off. Right away, the three began to scan the mostly empty parking lot ahead of them.

  The scheme was simple. Shop-and-Save used shopping carts that had small contraptions on the handle. The carts were locked up in front of the grocery store, daisy-chained together, and customers would have to insert a quarter into the contraption to free it from the other parked carts. The hope, was, that customers would return their carts to the front of the store and retrieve their quarter, and the parking lot wouldn’t be cluttered with carts.

  This, of course, wasn’t a reliable system. Benji, Lauren, and Alley counted on the laziness of shoppers to fund their summer afternoons in the Planet X Arcade, their favorite hangout spot for the past few years. They would patrol the parking lot, pick out stray carts, return them to the front of the store, and keep the quarter. Shoppers who were lazy didn’t have to return their cart, Shop-and-Save kept a clean parking lot, and Benji, Lauren, and Alley would pocket fistfuls of quarters to use at the arcade. Everybody won.

  “I see one already!” Alley shouted. There was a cart parked next to a lamppost in the middle of the parking lot. Alley started to jog towards it.

  “Be careful,” Lauren hollered, but Alley had already taken off and she wasn’t even sure
that he heard her.

  “Are you all right?” Benji asked Lauren. Behind the big lenses of her glasses, Benji could tell that her eyes were starting to water.

  “I hate having to be the one in charge when no one’s home, having to make sure he takes all of that damn medicine,” Lauren said. “He shouldn’t have to take it, and I shouldn’t have to force him to take it. It’s not fair.”

  “I noticed some new ones on his table today, while we were watching The Price is Right.”

  “A lot of new ones,” Lauren said. “He had an appointment last week. He can’t go a single appointment without needing some kind of new prescription. It’s driving my parents wild and it’s making him loopy. The poor kid, he doesn’t sleep well anymore. Some of the nightmares he has—you wouldn’t believe.”

  “Yeah, the teeth one was the strangest one he’s ever told me about.”

  “And I’m such a bitch, right, forcing him to wear his helmet? I know he just wants to fit in. But Christ, the kid gets a paper cut and it’s an emergency room visit.”

  “Next time we ride bikes,” Benji said, “I’ll be sure to wear my helmet. To make him feel better about it. A little solidarity can’t hurt.”

  In the parking lot, Alley was racing the cart towards the front of the store, one foot on the back of it, the other foot kicking forward, riding it like a scooter.

  “That would be really sweet of you, Ben,” Lauren said. “And I’m sure he’d appreciate it.”

  “That little monkey is my best friend. I’d do anything to keep his spirits up.”

  “Me too,” Lauren said, and Benji noticed the sadness in her eyes subsiding.

  In the distance, Alley held up a single, gleaming quarter triumphantly. “First one of the day!” he yelled, excitedly.

  Benji and Lauren nodded, smiling.

  “He’s going to have a great party tonight,” Benji said. “Wait until you see what I got him.”