Rabbits(8)

That night I had a dream about Emily and Annie Connors.



* * *



—

I dreamt that we were back on the road that led up to the Petermans’ house, but this time it wasn’t a bull elk standing in the middle of the road. This time, it was a tall twisted gray figure.

As we moved closer I could see that the gray figure was actually made up of much smaller things, broken swirling shapes that wiggled and blurred together to form the shape that was standing in the middle of the road.

I wanted to scream but I was frozen, unable to move or speak.

At that point, just like it had happened in the truck, the static from the radio filled every part of my mind, my head began to ache, and my mouth dried up. The gray thing in the middle of the road slowly started to turn.

I tried to close my eyes, but I couldn’t.

Emily was still driving, looking ahead as if the road were clear, and Annie had her head down, trying to hear the message Emily had been convinced was hidden somewhere in the static.

At this point, everything slowed down.

The buzz and static from the radio became deafening, and I felt the strange hum complete some kind of horrible circuit in my mind and body.

The truck continued speeding forward, and just as we were about to slam into the gray figure, I finally saw its face—or, at least, the place where a face should have been.

There was nothing but dark empty space.

This is when I heard the woman’s voice—the same sound I’d heard cut through the radio static that night in the truck.

In a voice like dry, sharp crackling fire, she said the words—the exact same words I’d heard her say on that road back in 1999.

She said, “The door is open.”





NOTES ON THE GAME:

MISSIVE BY HAZEL


     (AUTHENTICATED BY BLOCKCHAIN)


Gaming disorder is defined by the World Health Organization as “a pattern of gaming behavior characterized by impaired control…to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other interests and daily activities, and continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences.”

Negative consequences are real.

Don’t forget to hydrate, and remember to tell somebody where you’re going when you leave the house to follow a strange clue that nobody else believes is a clue.

Be careful out there.

—HAZEL 8





3


    IF YOU LISTEN CAREFULLY, YOU CAN TOTALLY HEAR THE RHUBARB


There were three hundred and ninety-five white tiles on the floor and four hundred black. It took me twenty-one steps to get to the booth.

Two professional sports teams of some kind were playing celebrity dodgeball on the small television that hung above the milkshake machine. There was a neon green Dodge Challenger visible outside on the street.

Dodge.

Alan Scarpio smiled and waved his fork in the air. “Can you believe this place?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty great.”

“I got you coffee,” he said, nodding to an off-white ceramic cup sitting on the table in front of me.

“Thanks.” I slid into the worn vinyl booth.

It was an old diner from the 1950s, located directly across the street from the Magician’s arcade. It was exactly the kind of place you might hear referred to as a joint or a greasy spoon. There were tiny jukeboxes on the tables in each of the booths. I think a few of them actually still worked.

I couldn’t believe I was sitting across from Alan Scarpio—one of the richest men in the world—watching him devour a piece of rhubarb pie.

Dodgeball.

Was that woman in the back of the diner wearing an L.A. Dodgers baseball cap? Groups of tiles on the wall—four, fifteen, seven, five—numbers corresponding to the letters in the word “Dodge.”

I was nervous.

As a kid, whenever I felt anxious, I found myself unable to stop picking out patterns—often to the point that I became incapable of focusing my attention on anything else. As these bouts of anxiety became more intense and frequent, I was forced to develop certain coping mechanisms in order to deal with the stress. The majority of these involved repeating familiar patterns from memory. The most effective involved tennis.

I’ve always loved tennis. I can recall entire matches with remarkable clarity. I’m able to do the same thing with baseball games and horror movie dialogue, but when it came to my homemade brand of pattern-recall therapy, tennis was always the most effective. One of my favorite matches was the 2001 U.S. Open quarterfinals match between Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi. On my legs, I would tap once for each player—Sampras on my left knee, Agassi on my right. I visualized every single shot, every serve and point, and eventually whatever was making me anxious would lose its potency and I’d be able to relax.

This technique had been extremely helpful after the accident with Annie and Emily Connors, and later when my parents were killed in a ferry accident while on vacation in Greece.

In the years following my parents’ death, I would go on to develop a number of deep-breathing and relaxation techniques that were effective in combating my anxiety. Those exercises, along with medical advances in anti-anxiety medication, eventually allowed me to stop tapping out tennis matches on my legs entirely.