Phantasos

by Robert Barnard

  He started the drive up to North Grand Ridge, towards the Sunway Hotel on the edge of town. He clicked a button on the car radio and a tune by Van Halen started to play. A good omen, Todd figured.

  The drive up the I-3 was quiet and uneventful, so he passed the time by drumming his fingers on his steering wheel while the Fiero rattled along. He sang quietly to himself, cheerfully: She take me down, down, down, to the bottom…and then he hummed the rest of the lyrics that he didn’t know.

  Traffic was light. By sleeping in late, he’d dodged the early rush hour entirely. Up ahead, he saw a bright green highway sign approaching. Exit 27. If Todd remembered right, that was the exit that would take him to the Sunway. Not that it really mattered. Even if he was wrong, he could pull over somewhere and ask for directions. He wasn’t in a rush.

  He steered the Fiero to the right, merged into traffic, and caught his exit. His car slowed to a stop at a red light, and as he waited, he caught a young couple in the car beside him laughing and playfully tickling one another. He must have been staring too long, because the girl in the passenger seat noticed him and glared, and the couple’s vehicle sped off just as a car behind Todd started to honk.

  “It’s green, moron,” a voice yelled.

  Todd raised his hand into the rearview mirror, waved, and continued on.

  The Sunway was in a miserable, forgotten, old stretch of town at the end of a long and winding road dotted with shady liquor stores and housing projects. He wondered why the Sunway, of all damn places, a place known only for drug and prostitution busts on the evening news, would be the preferred place of meeting. He shrugged. Just another item on a long list of things that no longer made any sense.

  Nothing made sense, nothing, Todd realized, in the past forty-eight hours. In fact, everything had gone quite to shit ever since…ever since…

  Ever since that arcade cabinet showed up, Todd thought. And he tried to rationalize if the sudden string of odd occurrences could somehow be related to the arrival of Phantasos. But, of all the things that didn’t make sense, that made the least sense. If anything, Phantasos had been the only ray of hope he’d seen in the past two days. It would surely drum up business at the arcade, and the game itself was the most wondrous thing he’d set eyes on in recent memory. He remembered the first time he played the game and the dazzling visuals that drew him in, as if he was in another world—

  A raccoon ran out into the street in front of Todd, and he stomped on the brake pedal of the Fiero. The car screeched, fish tailed slightly, and came to an abrupt stop just before it would have flattened the creature. The raccoon looked at Todd through the windshield, frozen in fear. Todd honked the horn of the car and yelled, “Get outta the way, would ya?”

  The raccoon stood motionless in the road, staring at Todd, and for the first time all morning Todd began to fill with a particular brand of dread. He had been uneasy, sure, ever since he agreed to meet Shelly on the outskirts of town. But this—the two lane road, dense with foliage, ramshackle houses, and sketchy convenience stores; the raccoon staring a hole through him; the smell of burnt rubber tickling his nostrils—it all made his stomach feel sour, and for a moment he considered turning his car around and forgetting the entire thing had ever happened.

  Honk. Honk. Todd repeatedly tapped the car horn, yelled: “Go, go on, get. You stupid raccoon!” And suddenly, as if it had seen something that spooked it, the raccoon darted off into the bushes on the side of the road.

  Todd drove up to the Sunway, parked his car, and glanced around anxiously. There were hardly any other cars in the mostly vacant lot. A neon sign to the side of the building flickered, read: Vacancy. Todd thought, Of course ‘Vacancy,’ who in their right mind would decide to sleep in a place like this?

  He strolled into the front office. In the confusion of his phone call with Shelly, he realized, he had never asked her for her room number. So, short of knocking on each door to find her, and risk being shot at (or worse), Todd approached the weathered woman sitting behind the front desk.

  “Excuse me,” he said meekly.

  “Whadda ya want,” the woman said, and she took a long draw off of her cigarette. She didn’t bother to turn away from the seven-inch black and white television she was watching.

  “I’m looking for someone who’s staying here. I’m not sure what room she’s in. Shelly Flynn.”

  “Lotta men come in here lookin’ for women.” The woman shrugged and took another puff of her cigarette, then glanced at the cash register.

  “Cut me a break, lady.” Todd said. “You think I’m going to fork over some cash, for what—to find out which room she’s in?”

  Again the woman shrugged.

  Todd reached over the counter, yanked a clipboard that was dangling in front of the woman, and glanced through a small chart of names and room numbers. Shelly Flynn—125.

  “There,” he said, “that’s all I needed to know.” He threw the clipboard back behind the counter of the front desk. He was agitated enough; this ordeal only amped him up more.

  The woman at the front desk flushed with anger. “The hell you think you are, fella?” she said, then she snorted, as if she was preparing to spit. “I should call the cops on ya.”

  Todd was nearly out the front door. He took a look around the place, said, “I bet you won’t.”

  “Getcher ass outta here,” the woman grunted, but Todd had already shut the door.

  Todd knocked on the door to 125. Next door, in 126, he saw the curtains flutter. He felt like he was being watched. The curtains went still, and Todd knocked again.

  Knock, knock, knock.

  The door to 126 opened, and a man with a scraggly beard and very few teeth poked his head outside. “The hell is wrong with you, man? Ain’t no one in—”

  The door to 125 opened, and a shimmering head of blonde curls poked out.

  “My apologies, man, my apologies,” the strange fellow in 126 said, and he ducked back inside and shut his door.

  Todd stood, completely frozen and still, taking in all five feet of Shelly as she stood before him. His hands turned icy, his vision went blurry, and his ears pin holed—for a moment he was certain he would pass out where he stood.

  She looked exactly how she did the last time he saw her, gorgeous and radiant. So full of life. So perfect.

  “Well?” Shelly said. “Aren’t you going to say hello?”

  Todd’s eyes swelled with grief. “Hello.” The word came out choked and uneven.

  “Are you feeling all right, sugar plum?” she said.

  “I’m fine, I just. I can’t believe that…” Todd paused. “It’s so nice to see you again, Shelly. I’ve missed you so much.”

  Todd stumbled forward, wrapped his arms around her, and squeezed her tight. She reciprocated, held him close, and the two stood together for a long while.

  “Let’s get out of this dingy place, yeah?” Shelly said. She leaned back and kissed him on his forehead, then reached into her purse and pulled out a big pair of Jackie-O sunglasses and slid them on her face. “Let’s go for a drive.”

  The car hummed along the back roads of North Grand Ridge. The pair weren’t saying much to one another.

  “Where do you want to go?” Todd said.

  Shelly replied, “Why, wherever you want, handsome.”

  Again, the car went silent. Todd drove, white knuckled, sometimes too afraid to look beside him at his passenger.

  “You’re awfully quiet today,” Shelly said.

  “I guess…I guess I just don’t know what to say,” Todd said. “I always wondered what I’d say to you again if I had the chance. There were so many things. But now…now I’m just...” He accelerated. “Blank.”

  “Well, this will pep you up,” Shelly said, and she reached into her purse and pulled out a small paper towel. She unwrapped it, revealing the prize inside: a thick hunk of partially melted fudge. “Why don’t you have a bite?” Shelly said, and she smiled. “Just one bite.”

  “I’m no
t hungry, Shell,” Todd said.

  Shelly looked perturbed. “But I brought it all the way from New York for you. You’ve gone and hurt my feelings.”

  The car slowed to a stop at a railroad crossing. The gate lowered, a warning signal chimed, and two red lights beside the arm of the gate started to flicker back and forth.

  “I don’t know what that is, but it’s not fudge, and it’s not from New York. And I won’t eat it.”

  “Baby,” Shelly said. “What are you so sore about?”

  In the distance, Todd could hear the faint whistle of a train and the far off drone of a chugging locomotive.

  “Cut the bullshit,” Todd said. “You aren’t my Shelly. I don’t know who you are, but you sure as hell aren’t her.”

  “Baby…” Shelly said, and she placed a palm on Todd’s knee. Despite his foot being on the brake, the car inched forward.

  “What are you doing?” he asked. “Are you crazy?”

  “I’m not doing anything. You’re the driver, stud.”

  The car rolled forward, the windshield brushing against the bottom of the crossing gate.

  “You’re insane,” Todd said, and the car continued onwards.

  “If I’m not Shelly,” Shelly said, and the car scraped underneath the crossing gate. The front tires were practically touching the tracks. “Then why would you agree to meet me?”

  Todd was hot, now. Hot with panic and fright and queasiness. A cold sweat was beading on his forehead. He stomped the gas: the car did nothing. He stomped the brake: the car did nothing. He shifted into park, out of park, slammed the steering wheel—no bother. No matter what he did, the car continued to roll forward at a snail’s pace. In a moment they’d be square atop the tracks.

  “I wanted to know what it felt like,” Todd said, “to see you again—to touch you again—to be held by you again. If I had known that the last time I saw you would be the last time I would ever see you, I would have held you so much longer that morning. I would have made us breakfast and told you to skip your audition, and I would have never let you go.”

  Shelly laughed. “You’re all the same. So sentimental.”

  The Fiero was sitting perfectly centered on the train tracks now, parked; it refused to move backwards or forward. Todd jiggled the handle of the driver’s side door, but it wouldn’t budge. He tugged at his seatbelt, but it wouldn’t unclick.

  “Going somewhere?” Shelly asked with a smirk.

  Suddenly, Todd went calm, and he sat still in his seat. The light from the front of the locomotive was shining on him now—a bright, hot, intense light—and the frantic whistle blowing of the engineer was as impatient and close and horrifying as ever.

  “That’s unusual,” Shelly said. “Now is ordinarily the time when the terror starts, and the begging, and the pleading, and et cetera…”

  Todd sat still. “You’ll have none of that from me. The day I lost you—the day I lost Shelly, the real Shelly—I said, ‘I can never go another day without her.’ And I suppose now I’ve finally got my wish.”

  Shelly took off her pair of Jackie-O’s. Where bright, beautiful, steely grey eyes should be were nothing but black, empty sockets. Her jaw unhinged, her teeth grew long and sharp, and she tilted her head back and laughed and laughed and laughed.

  Todd shut his eyes tightly, trying to ignore the cackling monstrosity to the right of him and the impending doom to the left of him. The locomotive barreled forward, the ground thundering beneath him, the small car shuddering from the vibrations.

  Suddenly he felt warm, peaceful, and the most at ease he’d been in days, and he knew that—somehow, someway—everything was going to be all right after all.

  The train whistle blew one last time before colliding into the Fiero—Seventy-Five Miles Per Hour, the police reports would later say—and it crashed through the small coupe mercilessly. In an instant the vehicle transformed from car to cloud of dust, and one billion tiny fragments of steel, and tire, and glass, and blood, and bone, exploded away from the front of the speeding locomotive in one billion different directions.

  Fourteen

  BENJI PEDALED FURIOUSLY TO BEAT THE RAIN. Alley stood behind him, on the rear tire pegs of the bike, holding on to Benji’s shoulders and cheering. Lauren, as usual, was a few yards ahead, her long wavy hair breezing back beneath her helmet, the purple streamers on her handlebars sparkling and dancing as she rode. She had always mocked them—called them “stupid” and “for little girls”—but Benji had just then noticed that she never cut them off, even though removing them would be as simple as a scissor snip.

  Benji hollered, “Can you go any faster?”

  “If you want me to,” Lauren said.

  “I was being sarcastic. Slow down.”

  “I don’t want to get caught in the rain.”

  Lauren turned off of Shady Reach and on to Little Hollow, the main street through downtown Grand Ridge. Benji followed not too far behind, the muscles in his legs burning.

  “Go faster, you’re losing her,” Alley said, and Benji rolled his eyes.

  Lauren stopped pedaling and came to a quick stop on the southeast corner of Little Hollow and Shady Reach. A fire truck went screaming by in the northbound lane, immediately followed by an ambulance, and yet another fire truck, all howling furiously. There was a brief respite from the blaring sirens, then no less than a half dozen police cars came bolting up Little Hollow in the same direction as the ambulance and fire trucks. Another short pause, then one more fire truck, and the parade of frantic emergency vehicles was over. The clouds of flashing lights disappeared up Little Hollow in the direction of North Grand Ridge.

  “Cheese and rice,” Alley said. Lauren hated that expression, a by-product of her mother always scolding them for “taking the Lord’s name in vain.”

  “I hope everyone’s okay,” Benji said, and Lauren hated that expression, too.

  “Obviously someone is not okay,” Lauren said. “Someone is clearly not okay, did you not just see how many policemen, and firemen, and paramedics blew by us?”

  Benji bit his tongue. He was just making a simple comment. But, there was no point to arguing; he knew how much the sight of ambulances and first responders upset Lauren, because they made her think of Alley. They reminded her of all the times Alley had been whisked away from home, in the middle of the night, under a relentless stream of horns and sirens. They reminded her of hospitals, and worst of all, they reminded her of Alley’s fragility.

  “Come on,” Lauren said, noticing Benji’s vacant stare, and she suddenly felt guilty for her burst of sarcasm. “We’re almost there. We’ll beat the rain.”

  Benji would later reflect on the morning after Alley’s birthday party, and all of the ominous signs that the universe sometimes gives. The bad dreams the night before, the impending rain, the threat of a thunderstorm, and finally the avalanche of fire trucks and ambulances. If he were a superstitious kid, he would have pleaded that the three turned around (in the direction of the storm—some argument that would have been) or, better yet, insisted that they simply never leave the house at all.

  The flipside of his internal argument was this: a life spent bundled up at home anytime one had a nightmare, or the weather outside wasn’t agreeable, wouldn’t be much of a life at all.

  All of that aside, Benji would go on to really, really, really wish that him and his friends had never went to that miserable arcade that day.

  Benji and Lauren locked their bikes into a rack just outside of the arcade and walked inside. The arcade had a particular, unmistakable stench—burnt popcorn, mildew, sawdust (depending on whether or not anyone threw up that day). Today, the sawdust smell was missing, but the unique notes of mold and spinning cotton candy were as pungent as ever.

  Alley’s eyes were immediately drawn to the towering monolith in the center of the room. He had never seen it before.

  “What’s that?” Alley said.

  Lauren and Benji circled the machine, looking it up and down. The oran
ge, backlit quarter panel caught Benji’s eye—particularly the stamped piece of metal beside it that read: 4x 25¢.

  “It’s expensive, is what it is,” Benji said.

  Danny was breezing just behind the trio and overheard their conversation.

  “Yo, you three,” Danny said. “Where have you guys been?”

  “Hey, Danny,” Benji said. Lauren smiled.

  “I thought for sure you scamps would have been here the first night of summer vacation, or at least the first day—why the delay? Thought you all might have up and vanished.”

  “My birthday party was last night,” Alley said.

  “Well all right, all right,” Danny said, and he gave Alley a high-five. “Happy birthday, little dude.”

  “Well, it wasn’t technically my birthday,” Alley said.

  “Oh,” Danny said.

  “It’s not until Saturday.”

  Benji and Lauren gave Danny a look: Don’t bother asking for an explanation.

  Danny adjusted his shirt and said, “Well, happy early birthday, then, dude-a-rino.”

  “What’s with this machine?” Alley said, tilting his head towards Phantasos.

  “Oh. That.” The smile on Danny’s face faded. “It’s a new cabinet. The manufacturer is trying it out at a few arcades to see how the kids like it.”

  “Well?” Alley said, intrigued.

  “Well, what?”

  “Is it worth the buck?”

  “You’d have to ask Todd,” Danny said, “and he’s not in right now. He’s the only one to play it so far.”

  “Get out,” Benji interrupted. “You’ve had a brand new machine during the first two days of summer, and no one has bothered to play it? Must be some game.”

  “I couldn’t tell you one way or the other,” Danny said. “Personally, it gives me the creeps. Can’t figure out why. Doubt it’s giving all the kids the creeps, too; my bet is most have been avoiding it because of the dollar price tag. But I—” Danny held up a key ring, jingling it. “I can put a dollar in myself, play it, then open up the tray and take my dollar right back. And I still won’t play it.”