Phantasos (10 page)

Seventeen

IT HAD BEEN AN HOUR OR two since Officer King and Officer Drummond left Danny. Danny snuck a few sips from the bottle of Jim Beam that Todd kept hidden in the office, then meandered through his arcade—his dark, lonesome arcade—wandering through the labyrinth of arcade cabinets until he was upon Phantasos.

“You piece of garbage,” Danny muttered, and it didn’t make sense to be degrading an arcade cabinet, but it also didn’t make sense that Todd was dead, so he said it again. “You fucking piece of garbage.”

Danny swung a leg back and kicked the middle of the machine—perhaps a bit off center, the bourbon, though a small dose, was working its magic—and the metal of the machine made a dull
clank
. As if by magic, the speaker on top of the Phantasos cabinet began to play its ridiculous orchestral music, and the goggles in the machine descended downward. Danny almost dared to press his eyes into the goggles, to get a glance at what Todd once saw. Todd never did get around to explaining the game to Danny, and now, he never would.

Before his forehead pressed into the goggles, Danny spit at the machine—he actually spit, and even drunk, he began to feel like a fool for it—and then he swatted at the goggles and they ascended back into the machine. He figured that the small kid, the one who was always sick—Alley—that with Alley’s accident, the kid never got to finish his turn at the machine, so the machine was still offering a game to a patron no longer standing before it, even though hours had passed.

“He’s not here anymore,” Danny said, mocking the cabinet. He almost expected a response. “So keep the free game. I never wanted a thing to do with you, and I still don’t.”

Tired of arguing with an inanimate object, Danny strayed over to the prize cabinet and leaned against it. Outside, the sound of drumming rain had relented. In the absence of dark clouds, the arcade was getting warmer, and at any minute now the air conditioner would kick back on.

Danny found himself thinking of Todd’s parents back in New York, and wondered if they had heard the news yet. Danny didn’t know them personally, so he felt it wasn’t his place to contact them, that it was a job better left to the authorities. He was jealous of them, for a moment, that they might still be living in a universe where Todd was alive and well, happily managing his arcade on the opposite side of the country.

His thoughts strayed to the arcade, and the financials. Danny was the sole proprietor of Planet X now, debt and all. Todd had kept so many of the particulars of their dire straights hidden, whether it be out of embarrassment or to simply keep Danny from freaking out. But now, all of
their
problems were
Danny’s
problems, yet the second of two unexpected, miserable gifts that fate had delivered to him that day.

Danny thought about having another drink, either in the office or at the Frosty Boot—it was just about time for the bar to open for the evening. But he decided against it. He recalled how Todd used alcohol as an answer to his problems, and what a wretch that turned him into, and Danny most definitely didn’t want to emulate the kind of behavior that results in being struck by a train.

So, all out of better ideas, Danny did the only thing he really knew how to do. He walked to the front of the arcade, flipped the sign on the door from “Closed” to “Open,” and unlocked Planet X for the afternoon.

Customers filed into the arcade slowly. By then, the news of the train wreck had already spread. Word travelled fast in Grand Ridge, and Todd’s evisceration by locomotive was primetime news coverage on all three local news outlets. Danny had turned off the television in the back corner of the arcade after seeing the engineer’s interview for what felt like the hundredth time. “He just appeared out of no where, there was no time to stop. No time to stop. I want his family to know they’re in my thoughts and prayers.”
Christ
, Danny thought. He heard the sound bite so many times he had practically memorized it.
No time to stop, no time to stop.
The words played on a haunted, echoed loop in Danny’s skull.
We get it. You’re a train engineer. A practical modern day hero. None of this was your fault. It was all Todd’s fault, right? He’s the one who drove out on the tracks, and you’re just a Goddamn engineer—

“Hey,” a raspy voice said from behind the prize counter.

Danny looked down to see all two hundred pounds of Shane Gardner standing before the glass cabinet.

“I heard about Todd,” Shane said. “And I just wanted to say, I’m really sorry. Really, really sorry.”

“Thanks,” Danny said, and he unlocked the prize cabinet and pulled out a knock-off G.I. Joe action figure. “Here.” He slid the figure across the counter towards Shane.

Shane looked surprised, but he didn’t refuse the free gift. “What’s this for?”

“Just take it.”

“But I didn’t win any tickets today.”

“Who cares? Just take it.”

“Are you feeling all right?”

“Just take the damn toy,” Danny said. “What does it even matter at this point?”

Danny retired to the office, and outside Planet X was just about running itself. Quarter trays would start to overfill, and there were probably kids with tickets waiting to redeem prizes—kids who actually earned it—but Danny didn’t seem to be bothered by that fact, or really care at all.

He shuffled through some papers on Todd’s desk. There was one, a receipt from Vidtronix, and next to the printed phone number on the invoice were the words “Amy Armstrong” scribbled out in Todd’s familiar handwriting. Some more shuffling, and Danny came across the camel colored envelope from the day before. He opened it, then inspected the words “Miss You” in their feminine scrawl.

It was too much to take in, and it didn’t make any sense. Was someone messing with his best friend’s mind? Was someone impersonating Todd’s fiancé? If so, why would Todd ever agree to meet them? Todd seemed to sense that he was in danger, judging by the notes he left.

Maybe Todd just didn’t care about whatever risk was involved in meeting the Shelly impersonator. Maybe Officer King and Officer Drummond were right—maybe Todd
had
been troubled, and Danny was simply too blinded by grief to acknowledge it. Although Danny and Todd got along just fine, with many laughs and good times to be had, Todd could feel so vacant and so distant sometimes. He rarely saw Todd go on any dates, or have any romantic interests at all, really. Todd was sometimes a shell of a person, and it made Danny wish that the two had known one another before Shelly’s passing. It would have been nice to have known him then, Danny thought.

Outside, a line of screaming kids and upset parents at the prize cabinet snapped Danny out of his trance. He rubbed the temples of his forehead and thought about how he should move forward. The arcade was too much for him to manage on his own. It was sometimes too much to handle when both he and Todd were working together, firing on all cylinders. Without some help, Planet X would surely fall to ruin, and a succession of very bitter and very non-understanding debt collectors would be knocking on Danny’s door to collect what was owed to them.

Yes, far too much for one person to handle.

But Danny knew someone who might be able to help.

Eighteen

BENJI AND LAUREN SAT ON THE couch in the Emerson’s living room, watching television but not
really
watching it. Their eyes were aimed at the TV set, but their gaze seemed to fall past it, through it, the images on screen just a blurry mess of incoherent nonsense.

They had holed up in the living room all afternoon. Mrs. Emerson had to return to the diner to make up for hours she lost when she left her shift earlier in the day, to be with Alley. Mr. Emerson was already assigned to work a double shift at the factory. He should have been more upset that he couldn’t be home with his son, but the overtime would more than help towards the huge copay on Alley’s ambulance ride and hospital visit, so at least there was that.

Before Lauren’s mom returned to the diner, she asked Benji and Lauren if they wouldn’t mind hanging around the house, keeping an eye on Alley, and making (or ordering—more likely ordering) dinner. Benji and Lauren of course agreed, and they had been mulling around the living room ever since, as torrential rains came and went outside and Alley slept in his bedroom upstairs.

“It’s cruel,” Lauren said, talking over an episode of 21 Jump Street. “He’s been playing video games since he was five. It’s all he has to look forward to, sometimes. They’ve never been a problem before, and it’s cruel to take them away now.”

“I know,” Benji said, looking across the room at Alley’s Nintendo. “But we promised we wouldn’t let him.”

“To hell with promising,” Lauren said. “You got him that stupid Mario game just last night. He waited
months
for that miserable game, and for what? He got to play it for a few hours with you—and now what, he’ll never be able to play it again?”

“No one said that he can never play them again,” Benji clarified.

“They might as well have,” Lauren said, and Benji shot her a glare. He knew what she meant, and he thought her comment was in poor taste, even if it was made out of passion and frustration. Two summers prior, Alley’s doctors had updated his prognosis. If he lived to his seventeenth birthday, it would be a miracle.

“We just need to wait a few days,” Benji said. “Just wait and see.”

Lauren crossed her arms. “I don’t mean to keep saying the things I’ve been saying. I’m a wreck.”

“We all are,” Benji said. “It’s all right. We’ll get through this.”

Upstairs, Alley had been slipping in and out of naps since his mother brought him home. His bedroom curtains were pulled taught and that, coupled with the intermittent storms and lack of sunshine, meant his room was nearly pitch black. Mrs. Emerson was so rattled, so upset by the doctor’s strange remarks—photo
sensitivity?—
that she didn’t so much as allow Alley to keep a light turned on. His room was absolutely cavernous.

Left alone with nothing but his thoughts, Alley drifted in and out of consciousness. He was forbidden from playing video games—even handheld devices—and was supposed to stay away from television, also. No light meant that he couldn’t even entertain himself by reading—a last resort, of course, in any scenario where television and video games weren’t in abundance—or flipping through old stacks of baseball cards or magazines.

He thought of Phantasos and wondered if it would be the last video game he’d ever play.
What a bummer that would be.
He couldn’t even recall the details of the game, or what the objective was. One moment he was standing in the arcade, goggles descending from the cabinet; the next, he was lying on his back, jerking about wildly, a prisoner in his own body.

Every so often he would toss and turn and hear Benji and Lauren’s conversation downstairs. Sometimes he heard talking, and he almost never heard laughter. It was mostly silence and the muffled sound of whatever was playing on the family television. During the quiet lulls he’d wonder if, after three years or so of fluctuating teenage hormones, the two nerds were finally making out.

Then, in the more vulnerable spans of silence and emptiness, he wondered if he’d ever come across to someone the way Benji came across to Lauren (even if Lauren wouldn’t admit it). Or, if he was forever cursed to be an object of pity in the eyes of all those around him. Those who ventured close usually brought the same tired remarks of:
Oh, you poor thing
or
It must be all so hard to deal with.
Those who got any closer than that wondered if Alley’s illness might jump from his body to theirs, whether they said it out loud (“You’re not contagious, are you?”) or worried about it in a more passive way (“I just have to wash my hands quick, I’ll be right back”).

Which is why Benji was such a fantastic friend—in Benji’s eyes, Alley had always been
normal,
and his affliction was an afterthought, rather than the other way around. They were always equal.

Still, Alley sometimes wondered, it wouldn’t hurt to have a girl around who was as comfortable around him as Benji was.

In this last thought, Alley rolled over in bed at the sound of his bedroom door squeaking open. The light from the hallway shone in, almost blinding him after so many hours in the dark. The hinges groaned as an outline appeared in the outer hall.

“Mom?” Alley said.

“Honey, my Alley Cat, how have you been feeling?” she asked.

“Much better. Much, much better. I’m probably okay to play video—”

“Games?” his mom said, finishing his sentence for him. “I don’t think so, Al. Doctor’s orders. Not until we know what’s going on.”

His mom leaned in the doorway. He could see that her apron was still tied on tight, could see the dirt on her hands even with her arms crossed. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, just as he remembered seeing her last, and she was wearing big, gaudy hoop earrings that glinted in the light.

“How was work?” he asked.

“Oh,” Mrs. Emerson said, and she laughed. “Just wonderful. Elena called out sick, so it was just Patty and me all afternoon, until the night shift decided to show up. They bust my chops for leaving for the hospital—for my sick son—but Elena calls out and it’s no problem.”

“I’m sorry,” Alley said.

“For what, honey?”

“That I’m such a burden.”

“What?” Mrs. Emerson said, and she gasped and put her hands on her hips. “No, Alley, you’re not a burden. Not a burden at all. Don’t ever say anything so ridiculous.”

“I ruined your shift. You had to work bad hours because of me, and do extra work. Because of me.”

Mrs. Emerson said, “Well, it’s cute of you to worry like that. But, it’s not like it will be a problem for much longer anyways.” She smiled.

“What’s that mean?” Alley asked.

“Oh, Alley. Sweet little Alley.” Mrs. Emerson crossed her arms again, and leaned a little further into the hallway. “I just got off the phone with Dr. Yates. You won’t be around much longer.”

“What did you just say?” Alley said.

“You won’t be around much longer. You are one sick little bastard, you know that? Thank goodness, too. This family is sinking in medical bills and driving itself to madness, waiting on you hand and foot, day after day. What a relief it’ll be.”

“Mom, what are you saying?” Alley said.

“Not much longer,” she said, and she turned down the second floor hallway.

In a flash Alley leapt out of bed, his top sheet and comforter falling to the floor beside him. He bolted out his bedroom door, then down the hall and down the stairs in the direction of his mother. “Get back here,” he screamed. “You don’t mean that. Tell me you don’t mean any of that!” And he felt like crying but he was too angry to cry.

When he reached the landing of the stairs, Benji and Lauren had already sprung up from the couch, preparing themselves to answer Alley’s desperate pleas, whether it be by catching him and calming him down or by dialing 911.

Alley jumped into the living room and looked side to side, scanning the room for his mother.

“Where is she?” he yelled, “Where did she go?”

“Where did
who
go?” Lauren asked, and she caught her younger brother in her arms, feeling his head for a fever and then inspecting each nostril for traces of blood.

“I’m fine, let me go. Where is she, where is mom?” Alley started pushing and grabbing at Lauren so that she’d loosen her grip.

Lauren shook her brother—carefully, just slightly. He was hysterical and he wasn’t making any sense.

“Alley,” Lauren said. “Listen to me. Mom won’t be home from the diner for another hour or two; dad won’t be home ‘til even later after that. Benji and I are the only ones home.”

“Shit, is there someone in the house?” Benji butted in. He was holding a cordless phone. “Should I still call 911?”

Lauren shook her head and glared at Benji;
He’s just confused, you idiot,
and she almost called him an idiot out loud for entertaining Alley’s confused thoughts.

“It’s just us three,” Lauren reaffirmed, rubbing Alley’s back and holding him close. “What’s wrong, Al? Did you have a nightmare?”

“I don’t know, Lauren. I don’t know.”