by Terry Miles
“What is it?” I asked.
“Those are three really famous Rabbits players.”
“They sure are,” I said. “Do you think that means something?”
“Why did Baron write down their names?”
“No idea.”
“And look at this,” Chloe said as she leaned closer. “Here they are again.”
Chloe had zoomed in on a small scrap of paper featuring the same three names. Only here, Hazel and The Dark Thane’s names had a line through them, and Murmur’s name was circled. “Why is Murmur circled and the other two names crossed out?”
I shook my head. “Baron wasn’t in the most…logical frame of mind. It’s probably just nonsense.”
“Maybe,” Chloe said, “but what if he was looking for help?”
“From Hazel, Murmur, and The Dark Thane?”
“Why not? They’ve all played the game at the highest level. If Baron was looking into something specific about the game, any one of those players would be a great place to start.”
“What does it say here?” Chloe zoomed in on another scrap of paper.
“Where?”
“Baron’s drawn an arrow from Murmur to this printout. It’s titled: ‘Rabbits Groups: Seattle.’ This one is circled.”
I leaned forward. “The Navidsonians?”
“House of Leaves reference?” Chloe asked.
“Probably…but you don’t really think this is some kind of clue, do you?”
“Well, K, it is some kind of clue. But what kind of clue it is sort of depends on your perspective, and maybe your attitude.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Well, it’s not supposed to mean anything, but what it does mean is that I think you need to get up off your ass and help me find these fucking Navidsonians so we can ask a famous Rabbits player a couple of questions.”
“You think we’re actually going to be able to find Murmur? Why not just try to track down Oprah or Bono?”
“Baron left us a clue to find Murmur, not Oprah or Bono. Don’t be a smart-ass. Didn’t Hazel pick you up in a van earlier?”
I was pretty sure that guy wasn’t actually Hazel, but Chloe had a point. We had called a number that allegedly belonged to Hazel, and somebody (perhaps it actually was Hazel himself) showed up in a van and saved me from getting squashed by three cars simultaneously.
“Fine. Let’s say this does lead us to Murmur, which is incredibly unlikely.”
“Agree to disagree.”
“What about the rumors?”
“I think the rumors are probably overstating things.”
“When you say things, you’re talking about pesky little things like ruthless and dangerous behavior, betrayal, and most likely murder?”
“That stuff has to be exaggerated,” Chloe said.
“Does it though?” I asked.
“Those three names mean something, and we’re looking into it.” She loaded a popular Rabbits chatroom in a Tor Browser and angled her screen away from me.
I sat there for a moment while Chloe typed away, her fingers hitting the keys a little bit harder than normal.
I shook my head. “Fine,” I said.
I could see Chloe smile a little from behind her screen.
“We’ll look into it in the morning, but right now the two of us are going to get some sleep.”
30
ZOMPOCALYPSO AND THE BEAR
The next morning, we ate croissants and eggs while we scoured all of the Rabbits darknet websites we could find for any information on past or present players tied to a Seattle-based Rabbits-related group called the Navidsonians. We cross-referenced every mention and rumor until we had ten names we’d seen listed at least four times in four completely separate and seemingly unconnected instances. Then, we stuck those ten names up on the wall of my dining room using color-coded Post-it notes and began compiling all the information we could find.
Five hours later, after looking into every mention we could dig up and eliminating as many questionable pseudonyms as possible, we had our list of potential members down to four names:
1. Karl Yasserman
2. Darla Chung
3. Carla Yu
4. Trenton Hall
Could one of those four people be the infamous Rabbits player known as Murmur?
All four of the names had been mentioned in connection with the Navidsonians at some point or another, although we couldn’t find anything that connected any of them to Murmur.
We decided to focus on Trenton Hall from Vancouver, British Columbia, and Darla Chung from Tacoma, Washington. Both Chung and Hall were rumored to have taken part in more than one iteration of the game, so there was a bit more speculation online surrounding their participation in Rabbits and potential membership in the Navidsonian group.
We were unable to find any current geographic information on Trenton Hall, but Darla Chung had a Facebook page that included a number of photographs. Darla was slight, about five feet tall with a bright photogenic smile. She was definitely not what I had in mind when I pictured the infamous—potentially murderous—Rabbits player known as Murmur.
* * *
—
As with Hazel—the most famous Rabbits player of all time—nobody really knew all that much about Murmur. There were certain “higher-level” players we’d heard rumors about like Californiac (allegedly billionaire Alan Scarpio), Vampire Billy (might be a well-known actor from a long-canceled television series), and Sadie Palomino (rumored to be Silicon Valley venture capital legend Vera Spiotta). But Murmur, like Hazel—by design or otherwise—had always been surrounded by an air of mystery and danger.
Everyone seriously interested in the game had heard stories about Murmur. That they had purchased four hundred tickets to a concert rumored to contain a clue, just to make sure nobody else could attend, or that they had turned a close friend in to the police in order to gain an advantage during the ninth iteration.
But the most common (and alarming) rumor by far was that Murmur once threw another player off a nine-story roof to prevent them from finding a clue connected to Rabbits. That player was also, allegedly, Murmur’s spouse.
I was pretty sure Darla Chung wasn’t Murmur. Judging by the photos on her Facebook page, there was no way Darla was capable of throwing anybody off a roof.
* * *
—
A number of Darla’s photos included a close friend named Alison, a real estate agent who’d recently sold a condo that had been featured on Zillow.
Alison’s professional website featured photographs of her sales. Those photos included that condo: a nicely renovated two-bedroom located about fifteen minutes from my place. Alison was smiling in the picture, her arm around the buyer.
The buyer was Darla Chung.
According to everything we’d been able to dig up, the Navidsonians met on Thursdays and Sundays.
It was Wednesday. Chloe and I decided that the two of us would head over to Darla Chung’s condo first thing in the morning.
We were going on a stakeout.
* * *
—
Early the next morning, we parked outside Darla’s building, drank coffee, and rewatched all three episodes of the first season of Sherlock on my laptop as we waited.
Darla finally stepped out of the front door around two p.m.
We got out of the car and followed her on foot.
Darla led us up her street, through Volunteer Park, and into a quiet residential area. After we’d been walking for about fifteen minutes, she stepped off the sidewalk and jogged up the stairs of a midsize craftsman-style house. She knocked, and somebody we couldn’t see clearly from where we were standing opened the door and let her in.
The moment Darla was through the door, Chloe yanked me up the stairs
and knocked.
Two seconds later, Darla opened the door. She’d barely had time to step inside.
“Hi,” Chloe said.
“Hi,” Darla replied, surprised. “Who are you?”
“I’m Chloe, and this is K.”
I waved hello.
“We’re playing Rabbits and we need some help,” Chloe said.
“Who is it?” a voice called out from inside the house.
“It’s Chloe and K. They say they’re playing the game.”
There was a long pause and then we heard a woman’s voice.
“Well, don’t just stand in the doorway, take your shoes off and get your asses in here.”
* * *
—
The woman who’d spoken was Easton Paruth. She was South Asian, around fifty years old. She had short gray hair with bangs that reminded me of the window in a prison cell door. She was sitting at the head of a long rectangular table in a narrow dining room. There were four other people sitting around the table with Easton: the Colonel, a man who looked to be about sixty-five with wild white hair and round wire-rimmed glasses; Alberto, a Brazilian who had probably been some kind of athlete a decade ago; and a young married couple from Ireland named Jenny and Hugh. Jenny was aggressively tattooed from her wrists to her neck with bleached-blond pink-tipped hair, and Hugh was thin and pale, with extremely short-cropped red hair and sharp green eyes. The house belonged to the two of them. Chloe and I shared a look.
Could one of these people actually be Murmur?
“You know you’re not supposed to talk about the game,” Easton said in a very slight Indian accent. She had a mischievous twinkle in her eye.
I liked her immediately.
“Is that what you’re doing here? Playing the game?” I asked.
Darla took a seat at the table and looked nervously over at Easton and Hugh.
“Oh, we’re not playing,” Darla said. “We’re a kind of…a support group, for those who used to play.”
“Darla, what are you doing?” Hugh demanded.
“It’s okay. We’re among friends,” Easton said.
“Are you sure?” the Colonel asked.
Easton stared at Chloe like she was trying to make up her mind. “You two are friends, aren’t you?”
“We are, yes,” Chloe said.
Easton turned her attention to me.
I nodded. “Friends,” I said.
The Colonel and Alberto grumbled their displeasure.
“Well, you see,” Easton continued, “the game has a way of swallowing your life, and what we’re doing here is trying to keep our explorations…contained. Supporting one another and making sure we don’t…”
“Spiral out of control,” Jenny added.
“Exactly,” Easton said. “The game has become far too dangerous. So we meet here to keep one another…safe.”
Judging by the way the others looked to her before they spoke, I had the feeling Easton might be the leader of the group.
“But you are playing?” I looked directly at Easton as I asked this question, but her eyes betrayed nothing.
“No,” Hugh said. “We’re just…comparing possibilities.”
“We get together to discuss a few rabbit holes and try to figure out one or two puzzles. We solved quite a few during the ninth iteration,” Darla said.
I continued to look over at Easton Paruth, but her face remained expressionless. Was it possible this woman was actually Murmur? She seemed so…nice.
“What are you working on now?” I asked, turning my attention to Darla.
She smiled as she spoke, clearly excited. “It’s pretty cool, actually. A new video was just released on YouTube and we found a hidden—”
“Darla!” Jenny interjected. “What the fuck?”
“It’s okay,” Easton said, glancing over at Jenny, who quickly averted her gaze. I was right. Clearly, Easton was in charge here.
“Somebody found a hidden level in a videogame called Zompocalypso,” Easton said. “We’re just trying to ascertain whether it’s safe to explore that mystery, or if it might be a trailhead connected to Rabbits.”
“So if it was connected to Rabbits, you’d want to avoid it?” I asked.
Easton just smiled.
“Zompocalypso? Isn’t that the Fortnite rip-off?” Chloe asked.
“Well, that description is a bit reductive,” Hugh said, clearly a fan of what was definitely a shitty derivative version of Fortnite. There was no way Hugh was Murmur.
“What’s special about this hidden level?” I asked.
“It contains an image—a collage of symbols and numbers, obviously clues of some kind, but we’ve been unable to figure out exactly what it all means,” Easton continued.
“Can we see it?” I said.
“I don’t see why not,” said Easton, “if the entire group is in agreement.”
There were whispers around the table.
“We could step outside for a moment, if that would be better,” I offered.
“That might be for the best,” Easton said. “We’ll call you back in.”
Chloe and I stepped outside, onto the front porch.
“You wanna take off?” she asked, once the door had closed behind us.
“What? Why would we do that?”
“We can just play Zompocalypso ourselves. We can easily find that secret level,” Chloe said.
I’d been thinking the same thing. We would almost certainly be able to find that hidden level on our own, especially now that we knew it existed.
“Come on,” Chloe said as she started walking down the steps. “There’s no way any of those people are Murmur.”
But I wasn’t so sure. “I don’t feel like Easton’s being completely honest,” I said.
“You think she’s playing the game,” Chloe said.
“I do,” I said as the door behind us opened with a slow wooden creak.
“You guys can come back in now,” Darla said.
Chloe came back up the stairs, and the two of us reentered the house.
We were guided to a couple of seats that had been set up for us at the far end of the dining room table. There, visible on a laptop, was the hidden screen from Zompocalypso.
It was exactly as Easton had described it: light-colored numbers and symbols atop a dark blue background.
Everything was arranged around one symbol that was much larger than the rest. That symbol sat in what appeared to be the geometric center of the screen.
It was a triangle with a small circle on top—the symbol from my elevator dream and the front door of the Gatewick Institute.
What were the odds that a symbol from a recurring dream I’d been having since childhood was just randomly part of this thing? I’d never played Zompocalypso in my life.
“What do you think?” Easton said.
I leaned forward and touched the screen, checking out the tiny symbols and numbers. “It’s kind of beautiful,” I said, which was true. The graphics were extremely sophisticated and detailed—completely different from the cheap patchwork graphic design of Zompocalypso.
“What can you tell us about these?” I asked, pointing to the tiny symbols.
“We think the little ones are meaningless, just creepy for creepy’s sake. The same arcane background art is available online for ninety-nine cents.”
I nodded. “What about that?” I asked, pointing to the middle of the screen. “Any significance to that symbol, the circle and the triangle?” I asked.
“Not that we know about,” Jenny said, but I thought I may have seen a brief flash of something pass across Easton’s face.
“How did you find the hidden screen?” Chloe asked; there was no point in us spending time solving the game-within-the-game ourselves if these people had already figur
ed it out.
There were rumblings from the table.
“Should we step outside again?” I asked.
“You have to bring the golden war hammer to the blacksmith’s shed in the lower quadrant, and then you can walk through the back wall into a hidden room,” Darla said. Jenny and Hugh gasped, clearly upset Darla was sharing this information with us.
“What?” Darla said. Jenny and Hugh shook their heads.
Easton smiled a tiny, bemused smile. “It’s okay,” she said. “We’re a group of like-minded people, all interested in learning more. And if we can help one another in some small way”—Easton looked over at me—“well then, where’s the harm in that?”
“We found this screen of symbols on the back wall of that room.” Darla zoomed out and revealed that what we’d been looking at was indeed the back wall of a hidden room.
“Cool,” I said.
“What do you make of it?” Easton asked.
“No idea,” I said. “Do you guys have any theories?”
“We do have some thoughts,” Darla said.
“Thoughts that we’re not prepared to share,” the Colonel added, the tone of his voice suggesting that perhaps Darla should stop talking.
Alberto nodded in agreement with the Colonel. He also appeared to have had just about enough of the sharing.
Maybe Alberto or the Colonel was Murmur?
I looked over at Chloe and she nodded. It was time to ask.
“Have any of you heard of the Rabbits player known as Murmur?”
As I asked the question, Chloe and I scanned the faces of everybody at the table. We were looking for any kind of reaction.
But there was nothing.
They’d all heard of Murmur of course, but—according to them—they didn’t know any more than we did.
* * *
—
We stayed there for about an hour and a half, swapping anecdotes about the game. We told stories about the puzzles we’d encountered and compared notes on The Prescott Competition Manifesto. I offered to share the version of the PCM that I played during the informal Rabbits information sessions I ran in the arcade, but they’d all heard that version already.