The Never Game

The big man’s eyes went squinty. “You’re not a cop. You’d’ve said so. They gotta do that; it’s the law. So what’s the little shit done now? He can’t’ve fucked your little sister. Not unless she’s a computer.” He grimaced. “Over the line. About your sister. Sorry. He owe you money?”

“No.”

He sized Shaw up. “He couldn’ta beat you up or anything. Not that boy.”

“I just have a few questions.”

“Why should I tell you anything about Brad?”

“I’ve got a proposition for you. Let’s go inside.”

Shaw walked past Brad’s stepfather toward the front door. There, Shaw paused, looking back. The man slowly walked toward him.

The air within the bungalow was heavy with the scent of mold and cat pee and pot. If Frank Mulliner’s décor was a C, this was a grade below. All the furniture was shabby and couch and chairs indented with the impression of bodies sitting for long periods on the ratty cushions. Cups and plates encrusted with food sat stacked on the coffee and end tables. At the end of a corridor, Shaw believed he saw the fast passage of a heavyset woman in a yellow housedress. He guessed it was Brad Hendricks’s mother, startled that her husband had let an unexpected visitor into the home.

“So? Proposition?”

No offer to sit.

Didn’t matter. Shaw wouldn’t be here very long. “I want to see your son’s room.”

“I don’t know why I should help you. Whoever the fuck you are.”

The woman’s face — a round pale moon — peered out. Below the double chin was the burning orange dot of a cigarette tip.

Shaw reached into his pocket and extracted five hundred dollars in twenties. He held it out to the man. He stared at the cash.

“He doesn’t like anybody to go down there.”

This wasn’t a time for bargaining. He glanced at the man, his meaning clear: take it or leave it.

Brad’s stepfather looked into the hallway — the woman had disappeared again — and he snatched the bills from Shaw’s hand and stuffed them into his pocket. He nodded to a door near the cluttered, grimy kitchen.

“Spends every minute down there. Fucking games’re his whole life. I’d had three girlfriends, the time I was his age. I tried him on sports, wasn’t interested. Suggested the Army. Ha! Figure how that went. You know what me and the wife call him? The Turtle. ’Cause every time he gets outside, he goes into this shell. Closes down. Fucking games did that. We took the washer and dryer and moved ’em to the garage. He wouldn’t let Beth go down there for laundry. Sometimes I think it’s booby-trapped. You be careful, mister.”

The unspoken adjunct to that sentence was: I don’t want the inconvenience of having to call the police if you touch something that blows your hand off.

Shaw walked past him, opened the door and descended into the basement.

The room was dim and it seemed to be the source of the mold stench, which stung Shaw’s eyes and nose. Also present was the scent of damp stone and of heating oil, unique among petrochemical products. Once smelled, never forgotten. The place was cluttered with boxes, piles of clothing, broken chairs and scuffed tables. And countless electronics. Shaw paused halfway down the creaky stairs.

The center of the room was a computer workstation, featuring a huge screen and keyboard and a complicated trackball. He recalled what Maddie had told him about those who had preferences for playing on computers, versus those who liked consoles, but Brad also had three Nintendo units, beside which were cartridges of Mario Brothers games.

Nintendo.

A shrine to the chivalrous who protect the weak. I like that one better...

Ah, Maddie...

A half dozen computer keyboards lay in the corner, many of the letters, numbers and symbols worn away, some keys missing altogether. Why didn’t he throw them out?

Shaw continued down the uneasy stairs. Nails were needed in three, maybe four, places to keep the structure safe. Some boards sagged with rot. Shaw clocked in at about one hundred and eighty pounds. Brad’s stepfather was clearly two hundred and fifty or more. He presumably didn’t come down here much.

The cinder-block walls were unevenly painted and gray stone showed through the swaths of white and cream. Posters of video games were the only decorations. One was of The Whispering Man. The pale face, the black suit, the hat from a different era.

You’ve been abandoned. Escape if you can. Or die with dignity.

There was a flowchart on the wall — measuring three by four feet. In handwriting as small as Shaw’s yet much more careless, Brad had detailed his progress through the levels of The Whispering Man, jotting hundreds of notes about tactics and workarounds and cheats. He’d gotten as far as Level 9. The top of the chart, Level 10, Hell, was blank. The level no one had ever attained, in the history of the game, Shaw recalled.