Phantasos

by Robert Barnard

  “People have to know, Aaron—they have to know!”

  “Who would listen?”

  Danny threw his hands in the air. “So, what? We just do nothing?”

  “We’re not standing by idly, Danny. We’re doing our part.” Aaron nodded towards the machine. “Tonight. Still have any doubts?”

  “You bet your ass I don’t have any doubts,” Danny said, and he slammed a fist so hard on the prize counter he thought the glass might crack. “Tonight—we’re doing it.”

  Forty-One

  IT WAS HARD DAY OF WORK—damn hard work—harder than Benji could ever remember. In past times that he helped around his father’s shop, he was typically charged with doing menial tasks.

  But the older, stronger Benji was saddled with more laborious duties in his father’s shop than he ever had been before. Heavy machinery was moved. Parts were carried to and fro. And the heat of it all—there was no relief. Two broken fans on either side of the garage creaked and blew warm, muggy air, but did little to cool the workers.

  It was warmer inside the shop than it was outside.

  When the day was finished, Benji’s father tossed his bike in the back of his pickup and drove the two home.

  “You did good today, Ben. I’m proud of you.”

  Benji let out a soft sigh. “Honestly, it was nice to get out of the house.”

  “Yeah? Well. I know it hasn’t been easy lately. How are you holding up, champ?”

  “I’m doing okay.”

  “What was it this morning you said—something about seeing me at home?”

  “It’s nothing,” Benji said. “I was overtired. I was imagining things.”

  “You’ll sleep like a log tonight, I guarantee it.”

  “I hope so.”

  The pickup was approaching a Dairy Queen on the corner of Shady Reach and Little Hollow.

  Benji’s father said, “Milkshake? My treat.”

  Benji smiled. “That sounds great, dad.”

  When he was home for the night, Benji crawled up to his bedroom. He had never felt so exhausted in his life. He certainly had a better appreciation of all his father went through on any given day.

  He climbed onto his bed, a belly full of warm dinner, his eyelids barely able to stay open. Through his window he watched the sun sink lower and lower on the horizon, descending through pastel layers of pink, and purple, and blue.

  There had been no other incidents since the morning, when he swore he was standing in the kitchen with his father. But that could easily be attributed to a waking dream—he was so tired, after all. And that was hours ago. Benji knew he wouldn’t be awake much longer.

  He blinked and looked across the street at Alley’s bedroom. Dark. Quiet. Undisturbed. He hadn’t seen anyone in there since the accident, and didn’t expect to see anyone in there ever again, which is why it was so surprising when Alley’s bedroom light switched on.

  Benji leaned up and squinted. Across the street, in Alley’s room, was Lauren. She stood, framed by the window, in a baseball t-shirt and shorts. She let her hair down and smiled, and it looked like she was talking to someone. There must have been someone else in the room.

  He approached his window and waited. Behind her, sitting on the foot of Alley’s bed, was an unfamiliar face. Whoever it was, he was tall and very handsome. Probably Benji’s age, maybe a little older. Maybe he was from another school? Benji had never seen him before.

  The stranger said something, smiled, and Lauren laughed. He stood up from the foot of the bed, walked behind her, and rested his head between her shoulder and her neck.

  Benji didn’t understand what was going on. Lauren had never mentioned this other boy before—what was happening?

  Unable to control himself, Benji continued to watch. The boy in Alley’s room tugged at the shoulder of Lauren’s shirt, so far that it revealed a bra-strap. A rush of jealousy and anger surged through Benji’s body.

  Half awake, a zombie, he ran out of his room and down the stairs. He passed his parents, who couldn’t get a word out edgewise before the backdoor slammed behind him.

  Benji ran across the street and pounded on the Emerson’s front door. In an instant, Mr. Emerson appeared in the doorway.

  “Benji—everything okay?”

  Benji was panting. “There’s someone in Alley’s room right now, with Lauren.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “They’re up there, I could see them from my room.”

  Mr. Emerson smiled. “Ben—that’s highly unlikely.”

  “You have to check.”

  “I’ve been here all night, Ben.” Mr. Emerson studied the dark circles under Benji’s eyes. “You should get some rest, son.”

  “Please,” Benji said, and he tried to look over Mr. Emerson’s shoulder. For a moment he swore—he would swear on anything—that he watched Alley walk from the living room to the kitchen.

  “Get home, Ben,” Mr. Emerson said, and he started to close the door before a minivan parked in the Emerson’s driveway.

  Benji spun around. Mrs. Emerson was driving; Lauren was in the passenger seat. Lauren hopped out of the van and called out, “Dad? Benji? What’s going on?”

  Mr. Emerson grinned and told Benji for the final time to get home and get some sleep.

  Benji slumped off of the Emerson’s porch towards home, before Lauren caught him by the shoulder.

  “Benji? You look like hell.”

  Benji licked his lips, looked up and said, “It’s happening. It’s happening to me.”

  “What is?” Lauren said, but her parents were already calling her into the house.

  “What happened to Alley…now I know it’s happening to me, too.”

  “Benji—” Lauren said, but her parents were demanding that she help set the table for dinner. “I’ll call you later, okay? Go home. Relax. You look like you need it.”

  Benji walked through the back door of his house. His parents were waiting for him at the kitchen table.

  “We need to talk,” his father said.

  “About what?”

  “About the way you run out of this house without ever telling us where you’re going. It’s not going to happen again, Ben. You understand that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  His mother sat beside his father, looking on disapprovingly.

  “And another thing,” his father added. “I just had a very interesting phone call from Bill Emerson. Anything you’d like to mention?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay,” Benji’s father said. “Lauren’s dad seemed a little surprised that you were just at his house, yelling at him that Lauren and a boy were in Alley’s old room. The only problem with that being Lauren was grocery shopping with her mom just before you showed up. Care to explain?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  “Really, you wouldn’t.” Benji wanted to collapse, wanted to sink into the kitchen floorboards.

  “You need some space for a while, Ben. I know how good of a friend Alley was to you, and I know how close you and Lauren are. But it’s in everyone’s best interest if you take a breather for a few days, okay? There’s been a lot of tiring and trying events these past couple of weeks. Everyone needs some time to cope and heal. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir,” Benji said.

  “Good. Go to bed. And no video games, I mean it—get some rest.”

  Benji lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, praying for sleep. But sleep refused to come. Instead, his mind tossed through thoughts of Alley and Rodney for what felt like hours.

  After an eternity, Benji at last slipped into slumber. But his dreams were dark and twisted and awful.

  He found himself standing in a hospital room. The floor was covered in a thick, milky fog. In the rear corner of the room was a massive oak tree, inexplicably growing out of the tiles and up into the ceiling.

  In the middle of the
room, on a gurney, was Alley. Alley was cold, and pale, and motionless. Eyes closed.

  Hanging from the tree beside the gurney was Rodney Frye. Rodney swayed back and forth slowly, the tree branch creaking and groaning as he swung.

  Alley’s eyelids shot open, revealing two dark recesses.

  “You promised you’d never play the game, Benji. You promised me.”

  Benji said, “I’m sorry, Alley. I’m so sorry I let you down.”

  Rodney’s eyes opened, too. Again there were black, bottomless pits where eyes should be. Rodney grunted and said, “Good job, Bauer. Fine mess you got us all into.”

  Alley interrupted, “Are you happy, Benji?”

  Benji shook his head. “No.”

  “So you understand then?”

  “Understand what?”

  Alley’s gaze shifted from Benji to the right of Benji’s shoulder. “She’s right beside you, Ben.”

  “What?”

  “She’s right beside you.”

  Hanging from his branch, Rodney started to laugh. “She’s right beside you, Bauer. Hah!”

  Benji sat up in bed, wheezing uncontrollably, relieved to be freed from the damn nightmare.

  He let his eyes readjust to the dark room, and turned to check his clock. Just after eleven. Before he rested his head back down on his pillow, he saw her. A silhouette, hovering in the corner of his room.

  Danny had locked the front door of the arcade. He was pacing in circles. “Are we good?”

  “A few more adjustments,” Aaron said. He unplugged Phantasos from its power strip. Since it was after business hours, the fact that it turned off shouldn’t have alerted Vidtronix. But Aaron was still so weary around it, as if at any moment the machine might grow a pair of arms and club him for tinkering around.

  Danny said, “I’m nervous.”

  “So am I.”

  “Will this work?”

  “It should.”

  Aaron carefully swapped the power strip behind Phantasos with a new one. The new strip had been masterfully tampered with in the days leading up to their planned arson. Aaron had cautiously removed the circuit breaker in the strip; after that, he modified the wiring within so that power in the strip would be mismanaged and surge.

  Phantasos should only draw power for two or three minutes before the overwhelming electricity consumption would cause devastating problems.

  “I did it,” Aaron said, and he stood up triumphantly.

  “So now what?”

  “Now we get the hell out of—”

  The lights in the arcade flickered, then went off.

  “Shit,” Aaron said.

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  “That’s no good. The circuit breaker tripped.”

  “That’s bad?”

  “That’s very bad. If it trips, the power won’t surge. If the power doesn’t surge, we get nothing.”

  Benji wanted to scream, but he could not. He opened his mouth—nothing. Wiggled his tongue—nothing. The air was escaping, he was breathing, but no sound would leave.

  Gracefully, silently, she floated over. She was as beautiful as she was terrifying. She gently landed at the end of Benji’s bed, then patted his foot.

  “You know what’s next,” she said.

  Benji shook his head.

  “No…no. Don’t play coy, child. You’re a clever one. Clever enough to call upon my services, so that I’d dispose of that little runt Rodney.”

  Benji whimpered. Downstairs, he could hear Carson’s monologue playing in the living room. His parents were so close. If one of them could just come up and check on him—

  “How clever did you think you were, boy, when you looked into my machine and closed your eyes? Were you certain I’d spare you? Did you think you’d found some hidden loophole?” The ethereal girl smiled.

  “I just…I…I just—”

  “Let your emotions get the best of you? I know. I watch. I’m a watcher—I’ve been doing it for a very long time, and I’m good at it. I watch people so that I know what makes them truly vulnerable. And in that moment at the arcade, you were so very vulnerable. Little Benji. You were so focused on your revenge that you’d forgotten a sacred promise you had made to your one true friend.” She smiled, then scoffed. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t admire it.”

  “Just…go. Please.”

  The girl shook her head slowly and clicked her tongue. “If I left now, that wouldn’t be very fair to Rodney, or to Alley, or to Todd…would it?”

  “I didn’t even play the game!”

  “It doesn’t matter!” She said, and she slammed her hand on the foot of the bed. Angry. “You knew very well what could happen to you the moment you sunk your quarters into Phantasos. And you didn’t care! You didn’t care because you’d convinced Rodney to play, and you felt like you had won.” She bit her bottom lip almost seductively, then slid closer to him on the bed.

  “Tell me, Benji. Do you still feel like you’ve won?”

  “I wish I hadn’t done it. I regretted it the moment that Rodney played! If I could go back and change it, I would.”

  She crawled towards the head of the bed, where Benji lay frozen in terror. She glided her fingers softly across his cheek. “You look so tired, Benji. Everyone noticed how tired you were today, too. Didn’t they?”

  “I just want to sleep.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that,” she said, and inexplicably Benji could hear the sound of the bathtub faucet beginning to run in the upstairs bathroom.

  Aaron fiddled with his toolbox in the dark. He pulled out a flashlight, a pair of pliers, and a screwdriver.

  “I was afraid of this,” Aaron said.

  “Can you do anything about it?”

  “I can try. Hold the flashlight for me.”

  Danny did as he was instructed and followed Aaron to the rear of the arcade.

  Aaron opened up a small metal door and searched through the breakers. He switched each one back, and the lights in the arcade flickered to life.

  “Is that good?” Danny asked.

  “It’s good.”

  Danny shut the flashlight off.

  “Now I just have to pop out the breaker that Phantasos is running on, so it doesn’t trip. This could be tricky.”

  Danny nodded. “Let me know if I can help.”

  Aaron started to unscrew a small metal panel and said, “Just stand out of the way—”

  Aaron started to jerk up and down wildly, making an awful gurgling noise as he did.

  He was being electrocuted.

  “Oh, God!” Danny shouted.

  Aaron’s movements slowed, and he smiled.

  “I was just messing with you, dude.”

  Danny slapped Aaron on the shoulder.

  “Why would you do something like that at a time like this?”

  “You looked like you needed to lighten up. Relax.”

  Benji didn’t remember ever standing up from his bed, but he must have. He must have stood and crossed the second floor hallway, because he was no longer lying in his bed. He was sitting in the second floor bathtub.

  The water was high enough to cover his knees, and chest, and neck, and come all the way up to his chin.

  On the porcelain ledge of the bathtub she sat, drumming her fingers in her lap.

  “How did I get here,” Benji begged.

  “Sh,” she said. “Just relax. Enjoy the nice, warm bath I’ve drawn you.”

  “Please—”

  “Don’t you beg. Don’t you dare beg. I’ve let you off easy, Benji. I’ve enjoyed your flare for the dramatics and your thirst for revenge. You’ve had both long before I ever showed up in your life. Because of that, I’m letting you off easy. I could make this so much worse. Don’t tempt me.”

  She reached down, turned off the bathroom faucet.

  “My parents will find you.”

  “They won’t. They’re fast asleep on the couch.”

  “They’ll know something’s wrong. They’ll hel
p me.”

  She laughed. “I’m a very careful planner, Benji. They won’t. They won’t find you for a tragically long time. Imagine how long you’ll float up here before they pull you out. It’ll be a while, clever boy.” She splashed him with water, playfully; a kitten toying with a mouse before the kill.

  “Little Benji, so tired, so exhausted…just fell asleep in his bath.”

  Benji tried to fight it, but he couldn’t. His eyelids were growing heavy. His body was slipping and sliding deep into the tub.

  The water rose above his chin. Above his lower lip.

  Then up into his nostrils.

  He slid into the tub, fully submerged, unable to fight the invisible chains pulling him under.

  He looked up above him at the figure sitting on the edge of the tub, laughing.

  “Okay,” Aaron said. “I’ve got it.”

  Danny nodded. “We’re good?”

  Aaron smiled. “I told you I prepared. Remember what I said? There’d be a red flag if the breaker went missing?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So since it couldn’t go missing, I replaced the working breakers in the arcade with bad ones. I should have done that first, but I got so excited, I forgot! No breakers, we go to jail. Bad breakers, we’re the unfortunate victims of poor fire inspections and lucky to be alive. Got it?”

  “Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Danny yelled. “Did you forget anything else?”

  Aaron said, “Nope. That’s it.”

  “Then we’re definitely good?”

  In the center of the arcade, a sudden burst of electricity erupted, cutting off Danny midsentence. Sparks began to fly in all directions behind Phantasos.

  Aaron smirked. “Does that answer it for you?”

  The two hurried out of the back door, hopped into Aaron’s Buick, and barreled down the alley behind the arcade.

  Inside Planet X, a fountain of sparks had spouted up behind Phantasos. They shot into the air, shot into the neighboring machines, shot into the carpet, singeing it.

  The power strip that Phantasos was plugged into heated up to the point that the plastic casing started to melt and boil. A small fire soon formed behind the machine, swelling exponentially as it feasted on dust and carpet and wires and the wood of arcade cabinets.