Phantasos

by Robert Barnard

  The paramedic at the end of Alley’s gurney said, “He’s just confused. He’s coming to. Back up, give him a little room to breathe.”

  “What did you mean just now, Alley?” Lauren said. “What does ‘you’re not him’ mean?”

  Alley said, “It’s nothing. And I’m not confused.”

  Lauren leaned back away from her brother, following the paramedic’s advice. Benji sat in the rear of the ambulance, arms crossed, where there was hardly any room for him, and stayed silent until they arrived at the hospital.

  Benji sat outside of Alley’s room, waiting. Waiting for news, waiting for one of Alley’s parents to show up, waiting for anything. It was dreadful—not only because it was painfully boring, but because there was so much uncertainty.

  Lauren appeared at the end of the hallway. Her hair was a mess; her shirt and shorts were still wet with rain.

  “Well?” Benji asked.

  Lauren said, “I finally got through to them. My mom at least. She should be here in a bit.” She plopped down next to Benji, crossed her arms, and let out a long sigh. “Any news?”

  “You’ve only been gone five minutes—”

  “Jesus, Benji, was there any news or not?”

  “No.”

  Another sigh.

  “Not that they’d tell me anything, anyways. Everyone here is treating me like an obstacle they have to step over.”

  “Well, you’re not going anywhere, don’t worry. We’re all Alley has right now.” Lauren twirled a lock of hair around her index finger. “I just wish I knew what happened.”

  “Has anything like this happened to him before?” Benji said.

  “In different variations, of course. Sometimes bleeding, sometimes he just checks out. But never both at once. Never anything as bad as how he looked today.”

  “I should have stayed with him while he played his game,” Benji said.

  “I should have too,” Lauren said, and she shrugged. “How were we supposed to know? He was having a good day. I wonder if one of his new medicines caused it.”

  “He was babbling the whole ride over.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ve never seen him act that way before.”

  “Me neither,” Lauren said. “He wasn’t making any sense.” She curled up into her chair. “‘You’re not him.’ What the hell did he mean by that?”

  “Maybe he thought you were me, or, I don’t know,” Benji said. “Maybe he thought you were the paramedic.”

  “He looked scared, Benji.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ve known him his whole life. Through all of his problems. He’s never looked scared.”

  “I know,” Benji said.

  “Benji?” Lauren said, weakly.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m scared, too.”

  “So am I, Lauren. So am I.”

  And he held her hand.

  Less than twenty minutes passed before Mrs. Emerson arrived at the hospital. Benji saw her, a spitting image of Lauren in twenty years, come barreling down the hallway towards Alley’s room, a team of nurses chasing behind her.

  “Where is he, where is he, where is he?” she kept repeating, until finally one nurse managed to grab her by the sleeve.

  Mrs. Emerson recoiled, and slapped the nurse’s hand away. Benji realized she was still wearing her apron from the diner. She looked positively petrified.

  Mrs. Emerson exploded into Alley’s room, Benji, Lauren, and the team of nurse’s following behind her. A doctor stood next to her son’s bedside, filling out a long white form attached to a clipboard. Alley was sitting upright in bed, an IV dangling from his wrist, his face drained of all color, his lips pale and chapped.

  His mother fell beside his bed, wrapped an arm around him, squeezed him tight and kissed him hard on the cheek. “My Alley,” she said softly, “my little Alley, what happened?”

  “I’m fine, mom, really,” Alley said. “I’ve had some pudding, some orange juice. I feel fine. Let’s go home.”

  The doctor looked up from his clipboard, made eye contact with Mrs. Emerson, and shook his head. Not yet.

  “I presume you’re Alec’s mother,” the doctor said, walking to the other side of Alley’s gurney and extending a hand. “My name is Dr. Solomon.”

  Mrs. Emerson shook his hand.

  “Please,” he said. “Can we step outside and talk for a moment?”

  Mrs. Emerson nodded and stepped outside. Benji and Lauren followed, uninvited.

  “Mrs. Emerson, I’ve read your son’s file. I’m all caught up on his condition. Considering his history, this could have been a lot worse—in fact, his file seems to suggest that he’s had worse spells in the past. All things considered, we stopped the bleeding right away, and he’s stable. His cat scan came back clear, too. So, let me preface everything I’m about to say with this: he’s going to be fine.”

  “That’s terrific,” Mrs. Emerson said. “Then what’s the problem?”

  “Well, like I said, I know I’m not Alec’s primary physician, but I brushed up on his records fairly well after he arrived—and I have to say, I see no mention of photosensitivity in his file.”

  “Photo what?” Mrs. Emerson said.

  Dr. Solomon crossed his arms. “Photosensitivity. It can be triggered by flashing lights, or images. Your daughter and your boy’s friend,” he motioned towards Benji and Lauren, “said that they were at an arcade playing video games this afternoon, when this incident occurred.”

  “Okay,” Mrs. Emerson said. “So what?”

  “Well, Alec has had a long history with seizures, mostly generalized. Absent seizures and myoclonic seizures. It’s with a heavy heart that I have to tell you this, but you may have to add another one to that list.”

  “What?” Mrs. Emerson said. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m fairly positive that your boy experienced an epileptic seizure today, and it was triggered by a photosensitivity to the video game he was playing. Your son plays a lot of video games, Mrs. Emerson?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, we’ll wait for more tests to come back. And I’ll discuss all of this with your pediatric physician, Dr. Yates. But, for now, my one prescription to you will be for simply this: no more video games for the time being.”

  Lauren shot up in her chair, unable to bite her tongue.

  “You can’t do that,” Lauren said.

  Mrs. Emerson said, “Lauren, sit back down.”

  “Video games are all that kid has,” Lauren continued. “You can’t take that away from him. You don’t understand what a big piece of him you’d be taking away. You can’t do this!”

  “I’m afraid that, unless your brother wants a repeat incident of this afternoon, it’s what must be done,” Dr. Solomon said. “Now do what your mother tells you to do, and sit back down.”

  “You’ll break his heart,” Lauren shouted, “you’ll break his heart if you tell him he can’t play video games,” and from behind the door Alley could hear the muffled conversation and his sister starting to cry.

  Seventeen

  IT HAD BEEN AN HOUR OR two since Officer King and Officer Drummond left Danny. Danny snuck a few sips from the bottle of Jim Beam that Todd kept hidden in the office, then meandered through his arcade—his dark, lonesome arcade—wandering through the labyrinth of arcade cabinets until he was upon Phantasos.

  “You piece of garbage,” Danny muttered, and it didn’t make sense to be degrading an arcade cabinet, but it also didn’t make sense that Todd was dead, so he said it again. “You fucking piece of garbage.”

  Danny swung a leg back and kicked the middle of the machine—perhaps a bit off center, the bourbon, though a small dose, was working its magic—and the metal of the machine made a dull clank. As if by magic, the speaker on top of the Phantasos cabinet began to play its ridiculous orchestral music, and the goggles in the machine descended downward. Danny almost dared to press his eyes into the goggles, to get a glance at what Todd once
saw. Todd never did get around to explaining the game to Danny, and now, he never would.

  Before his forehead pressed into the goggles, Danny spit at the machine—he actually spit, and even drunk, he began to feel like a fool for it—and then he swatted at the goggles and they ascended back into the machine. He figured that the small kid, the one who was always sick—Alley—that with Alley’s accident, the kid never got to finish his turn at the machine, so the machine was still offering a game to a patron no longer standing before it, even though hours had passed.

  “He’s not here anymore,” Danny said, mocking the cabinet. He almost expected a response. “So keep the free game. I never wanted a thing to do with you, and I still don’t.”

  Tired of arguing with an inanimate object, Danny strayed over to the prize cabinet and leaned against it. Outside, the sound of drumming rain had relented. In the absence of dark clouds, the arcade was getting warmer, and at any minute now the air conditioner would kick back on.

  Danny found himself thinking of Todd’s parents back in New York, and wondered if they had heard the news yet. Danny didn’t know them personally, so he felt it wasn’t his place to contact them, that it was a job better left to the authorities. He was jealous of them, for a moment, that they might still be living in a universe where Todd was alive and well, happily managing his arcade on the opposite side of the country.

  His thoughts strayed to the arcade, and the financials. Danny was the sole proprietor of Planet X now, debt and all. Todd had kept so many of the particulars of their dire straights hidden, whether it be out of embarrassment or to simply keep Danny from freaking out. But now, all of their problems were Danny’s problems, yet the second of two unexpected, miserable gifts that fate had delivered to him that day.

  Danny thought about having another drink, either in the office or at the Frosty Boot—it was just about time for the bar to open for the evening. But he decided against it. He recalled how Todd used alcohol as an answer to his problems, and what a wretch that turned him into, and Danny most definitely didn’t want to emulate the kind of behavior that results in being struck by a train.

  So, all out of better ideas, Danny did the only thing he really knew how to do. He walked to the front of the arcade, flipped the sign on the door from “Closed” to “Open,” and unlocked Planet X for the afternoon.

  Customers filed into the arcade slowly. By then, the news of the train wreck had already spread. Word travelled fast in Grand Ridge, and Todd’s evisceration by locomotive was primetime news coverage on all three local news outlets. Danny had turned off the television in the back corner of the arcade after seeing the engineer’s interview for what felt like the hundredth time. “He just appeared out of no where, there was no time to stop. No time to stop. I want his family to know they’re in my thoughts and prayers.” Christ, Danny thought. He heard the sound bite so many times he had practically memorized it. No time to stop, no time to stop. The words played on a haunted, echoed loop in Danny’s skull. We get it. You’re a train engineer. A practical modern day hero. None of this was your fault. It was all Todd’s fault, right? He’s the one who drove out on the tracks, and you’re just a Goddamn engineer—

  “Hey,” a raspy voice said from behind the prize counter.

  Danny looked down to see all two hundred pounds of Shane Gardner standing before the glass cabinet.

  “I heard about Todd,” Shane said. “And I just wanted to say, I’m really sorry. Really, really sorry.”

  “Thanks,” Danny said, and he unlocked the prize cabinet and pulled out a knock-off G.I. Joe action figure. “Here.” He slid the figure across the counter towards Shane.

  Shane looked surprised, but he didn’t refuse the free gift. “What’s this for?”

  “Just take it.”

  “But I didn’t win any tickets today.”

  “Who cares? Just take it.”

  “Are you feeling all right?”

  “Just take the damn toy,” Danny said. “What does it even matter at this point?”

  Danny retired to the office, and outside Planet X was just about running itself. Quarter trays would start to overfill, and there were probably kids with tickets waiting to redeem prizes—kids who actually earned it—but Danny didn’t seem to be bothered by that fact, or really care at all.

  He shuffled through some papers on Todd’s desk. There was one, a receipt from Vidtronix, and next to the printed phone number on the invoice were the words “Amy Armstrong” scribbled out in Todd’s familiar handwriting. Some more shuffling, and Danny came across the camel colored envelope from the day before. He opened it, then inspected the words “Miss You” in their feminine scrawl.

  It was too much to take in, and it didn’t make any sense. Was someone messing with his best friend’s mind? Was someone impersonating Todd’s fiancé? If so, why would Todd ever agree to meet them? Todd seemed to sense that he was in danger, judging by the notes he left.

  Maybe Todd just didn’t care about whatever risk was involved in meeting the Shelly impersonator. Maybe Officer King and Officer Drummond were right—maybe Todd had been troubled, and Danny was simply too blinded by grief to acknowledge it. Although Danny and Todd got along just fine, with many laughs and good times to be had, Todd could feel so vacant and so distant sometimes. He rarely saw Todd go on any dates, or have any romantic interests at all, really. Todd was sometimes a shell of a person, and it made Danny wish that the two had known one another before Shelly’s passing. It would have been nice to have known him then, Danny thought.

  Outside, a line of screaming kids and upset parents at the prize cabinet snapped Danny out of his trance. He rubbed the temples of his forehead and thought about how he should move forward. The arcade was too much for him to manage on his own. It was sometimes too much to handle when both he and Todd were working together, firing on all cylinders. Without some help, Planet X would surely fall to ruin, and a succession of very bitter and very non-understanding debt collectors would be knocking on Danny’s door to collect what was owed to them.

  Yes, far too much for one person to handle.

  But Danny knew someone who might be able to help.

  Eighteen

  BENJI AND LAUREN SAT ON THE couch in the Emerson’s living room, watching television but not really watching it. Their eyes were aimed at the TV set, but their gaze seemed to fall past it, through it, the images on screen just a blurry mess of incoherent nonsense.

  They had holed up in the living room all afternoon. Mrs. Emerson had to return to the diner to make up for hours she lost when she left her shift earlier in the day, to be with Alley. Mr. Emerson was already assigned to work a double shift at the factory. He should have been more upset that he couldn’t be home with his son, but the overtime would more than help towards the huge copay on Alley’s ambulance ride and hospital visit, so at least there was that.

  Before Lauren’s mom returned to the diner, she asked Benji and Lauren if they wouldn’t mind hanging around the house, keeping an eye on Alley, and making (or ordering—more likely ordering) dinner. Benji and Lauren of course agreed, and they had been mulling around the living room ever since, as torrential rains came and went outside and Alley slept in his bedroom upstairs.

  “It’s cruel,” Lauren said, talking over an episode of 21 Jump Street. “He’s been playing video games since he was five. It’s all he has to look forward to, sometimes. They’ve never been a problem before, and it’s cruel to take them away now.”

  “I know,” Benji said, looking across the room at Alley’s Nintendo. “But we promised we wouldn’t let him.”

  “To hell with promising,” Lauren said. “You got him that stupid Mario game just last night. He waited months for that miserable game, and for what? He got to play it for a few hours with you—and now what, he’ll never be able to play it again?”

  “No one said that he can never play them again,” Benji clarified.

  “They might as well have,” Lauren said, and Benji shot her a glare. He kn
ew what she meant, and he thought her comment was in poor taste, even if it was made out of passion and frustration. Two summers prior, Alley’s doctors had updated his prognosis. If he lived to his seventeenth birthday, it would be a miracle.

  “We just need to wait a few days,” Benji said. “Just wait and see.”

  Lauren crossed her arms. “I don’t mean to keep saying the things I’ve been saying. I’m a wreck.”

  “We all are,” Benji said. “It’s all right. We’ll get through this.”

  Upstairs, Alley had been slipping in and out of naps since his mother brought him home. His bedroom curtains were pulled taught and that, coupled with the intermittent storms and lack of sunshine, meant his room was nearly pitch black. Mrs. Emerson was so rattled, so upset by the doctor’s strange remarks—photosensitivity?—that she didn’t so much as allow Alley to keep a light turned on. His room was absolutely cavernous.

  Left alone with nothing but his thoughts, Alley drifted in and out of consciousness. He was forbidden from playing video games—even handheld devices—and was supposed to stay away from television, also. No light meant that he couldn’t even entertain himself by reading—a last resort, of course, in any scenario where television and video games weren’t in abundance—or flipping through old stacks of baseball cards or magazines.

  He thought of Phantasos and wondered if it would be the last video game he’d ever play. What a bummer that would be. He couldn’t even recall the details of the game, or what the objective was. One moment he was standing in the arcade, goggles descending from the cabinet; the next, he was lying on his back, jerking about wildly, a prisoner in his own body.

  Every so often he would toss and turn and hear Benji and Lauren’s conversation downstairs. Sometimes he heard talking, and he almost never heard laughter. It was mostly silence and the muffled sound of whatever was playing on the family television. During the quiet lulls he’d wonder if, after three years or so of fluctuating teenage hormones, the two nerds were finally making out.