If we didn’t stop playing the game, those shadow things were coming, and they were going to keep coming until what had happened to the Magician happened to everyone on Earth.
NOTES ON THE GAME:
MISSIVE BY HAZEL
（AUTHENTICATED BY BLOCKCHAIN）
Who is in charge?
Gameplay dictates that someone or something is guiding the players, pointing us toward potential solutions or possible pitfalls, but are these Wardens of the game capable of conscious thought the way we imagine it? Or are they controlling things based on factors outside of humankind’s capacity to understand?
There are some who believe a group of Illuminati-esque secret operatives are out there somewhere, guiding the players from a distance. Others are certain there’s a dark alien race—a species so different from our own that we’re unable to comprehend any part of them with our basic human senses—working behind the scenes to control the players’ movements through the game.
Whatever’s really going on, it’s become clear that these keepers of the secrets of the game are highly dangerous and extremely complicated. And if they actually do exist, none of them is talking.
—HAZEL 8
36
EAST OF BARN
After we’d finished watching that Super 8 film, Chloe entered a kind of manic state. She buzzed around her apartment, darting back and forth between her laptop, desktop, and phone, her mind operating in a wild new gear.
The first thing she did was call every single number connected to the Magician that she could find, and ask if anybody had seen or heard from him. （They hadn’t.） Then she went over that Super 8 movie frame by frame, looking for something that might reveal a location or any kind of clue at all, but nothing stood out.
After that, she asked me to pull up all of the photos I’d found online featuring Silvana Kulig, and the two of us pored over them for anything we might have missed earlier.
Still nothing.
At one point, Chloe called Silvana herself and asked about the Magician. Did he say anything else? How did he sound? But Silvana didn’t have anything new to offer. After that, Chloe asked me to call Russell Milligan, and when I gently suggested we should get something to eat and maybe slow down for a minute, Chloe told me she wasn’t hungry and demanded I make the call. When I suggested that maybe we should wait until tomorrow, she asked me to leave.
Chloe was clearly freaked out by what we’d just seen, and, although I wanted to stay there for emotional support, I could tell that she needed some time alone.
* * *
—
I went home to finish some laundry I’d started earlier, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the Magician. If the woman with the pigtails from the American Hotel was right, and that locker hadn’t been opened for years, how the hell was the Magician in that movie? He looked exactly the same age as he was the last time I’d seen him.
Chloe wasn’t the only one shaken by watching that film.
After I’d finished folding my clothes, I lay down and tried to clear my mind and relax.
I must have fallen asleep at some point, because I woke up to knocking at my door.
I took a look at the time on my phone. It was just after six thirty. Nobody had buzzed up, so I ignored it. If it was Chloe, she’d call.
A few minutes later, there was another knock, louder this time.
I got up and walked over to the door. There was nobody visible through the peephole. They must have left. I was still looking through the peephole into the empty hall outside my apartment when…
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Somebody started hammering on my door. It was so sudden that I stumbled and fell backward.
When the banging ended, there was still nobody visible through the peephole. Was somebody crouching on the floor of the hallway, or hiding around the corner while they hammered on my door? It didn’t seem possible based on the wide angle of view, but either way I took a couple of steps back, predialed 911, and held my finger above the call button.
“I’m calling the police, asshole!” I yelled.
I waited for a minute or so before I yanked the door open, ready to call, but the hallway was empty.
Whoever had been banging was gone.
I thought about making something to eat but I was full of adrenaline, and there was no way I was going to be able to relax enough to focus on cooking. I decided I’d go for a walk. I could always grab something along the way.
* * *
—
I had no idea if whoever had been banging on my door was watching my building, so I decided to leave out the back.
It had recently stopped raining, and the alley behind my building smelled like wet garbage. I started breathing through my mouth as I walked past a row of overflowing dumpsters. At the end of the alley, I jumped a large puddle of rainwater and stepped onto the broken sidewalk that led to a nearby park.