I nodded. “I understand.”
“Plus,” she said, lowering her voice to a whisper, “we need to make sure the game isn’t…following us.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
But just then, Easton called Darla back into the house.
“Sorry,” she said. “Gotta run.”
* * *
—
Chloe had to work, so she dropped me off at home and the two of us agreed we’d reconnect in the morning. She said she’d try to look into Zompocalypso during her shift if the arcade wasn’t busy.
I put some water on the stove for pasta and chopped up some garlic. While I was waiting for the water to boil, I thought about what had happened with Easton Paruth and her group. Had they actually retired from the game, or was something else going on? The possibility that we’d just met an infamous player was exciting, but if one of those people really was Murmur, we had no idea which one.
Sitting around talking about the game with like-minded humans felt good, and even a little bit inspiring, but we were no closer to figuring out what to do next.
After I’d finished eating （spaghetti aglio e olio with tiger prawns and a glass of California Zinfandel）， I sat down to take a look at the strange numbers and symbols that Darla and her friends had found hidden in that secret level of Zompocalypso.
I turned on my console, downloaded the game, and quickly navigated my character to the hidden level, per Darla’s instructions.
After hours staring at those images and getting nowhere, I went into my bedroom and flopped down onto my bed face-first.
It didn’t take more than a few minutes to fall into a deep and dreamless sleep.
* * *
—
When I woke up, it was completely black.
I sat up and reached for my phone to find out how long I’d been sleeping, but it wasn’t there. I must have left it in the living room.
As I sat there in my bed, I began to feel strange.
I knew that I was in my bedroom, but something felt different.
There was enough ambient light coming in through the windows to illuminate the familiar shapes and shadows of my stuff. I could see the back of the old wood-and-leather chair I picked up from the side of the road the week I’d moved in, the overstuffed clothes hamper leaning out of my closet, and the crack of moonlight beneath the blinds that didn’t reach far enough down to properly cover the window. I was definitely still in my bedroom. But something wasn’t quite right. Was it the quality of the air or the humidity again?
As the sleepy feeling slowly left my brain and my senses became sharper and more focused, I knew it wasn’t the humidity. It was more than that.
I had the very distinct feeling I was somewhere else entirely. And as strange as it might sound, I didn’t want to turn on the lights.
It felt scary, but it was also exhilarating, and I really didn’t want to lose that feeling.
* * *
—
As a kid I’d been interested in （read: obsessed with） things that fell outside of our normal human experiences—not only paranormal and supernatural things like ghosts, ESP, and UFOs, but also stuff like religion, astrology, and mythology. I tried Ouija boards, séances, even whispering “Bloody Mary” into a mirror, but I was never able to conjure anything paranormal.
I would have given anything to have seen a ghost. That would have been confirmation there was something else out there.
As I grew older and my experiences led me to believe that things like ghosts and ESP were almost certainly fictional, my obsession with uncovering real-life mystery and weirdness in the world slowly began to fade.
But it never disappeared completely.
That night in the truck with Annie and Emily, the world felt different.
Something had changed.
Now I was feeling something eerily similar as I made my way slowly down my hallway in pitch-blackness.
My eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness as I entered the living room. The cool soft glow from the lights of the city coming through the large window dimly illuminated everything. Nothing appeared to be out of place.
I was in my living room, but still, something felt off.
I couldn’t see my clock from where I was standing, but something told me, if I could have seen it, it would have read 4:44 a.m.
I stood in front of the window and looked out over the city. I could see a young couple stumbling along the sidewalk below. They were arguing about something that seemed extremely important to him but meaningless to her.
I could tell by the weird buzzing and fluttering in my upper stomach that there was no way I’d be getting back to sleep—at least, not for quite a while. So I decided I’d make some coffee and do my best to get ready for the day.