Officer Jeff
There wasn’t a single cloud in the night-sky.
The stars shone like an ocean of lights in the heavens.
The siren of a police car echoed through the darkness as blue and red lights flooded the otherwise gloom village streets. Jeff saw a shadow sprint through the night, move into the side street between two rather old buildings. He stepped on the gas, did a sharp turn to the right as the police car barely fit in between the towering walls of concrete.
He saw the shadow attempt to escape, drove faster as he caught up with approaching speed. The next turn was right ahead, but the car wouldn’t fit in there. If he was hesitant now, that bastard would get away with what he had done.
He couldn’t let him get away with this. He just couldn’t.
Jeff felt his hands clutch the steering wheel tight as he drove forward, his gaze locked on the shadow, then violently stepped on the brakes in the last moment possible.
The car came to an abrupt stop right after it hit the person with decreased speed. The shadow flew around three meters through the air before hitting a concrete wall. Jeff pressed a button on his walkie-talkie, got out of the car with his gun clutched tight in both hands. He moved closer to the shadow, which was already attempting to get up. The lights of the police car lifted the shroud of anonymity off the shadow, revealed it to be human. As the person saw the weapon, he stopped moving.
Jeff stared into the dark, sunken eyes of the male in front of him. The man was covered in blood not his own, his eyes gleaming in ecstasy as a wide grin formed on his face.
Jeff was now sure he had caught the right one.
“Mister Hoffner,” he said as more police cars were audible approaching in the distance.
“You are under arrest.”
---
3 years later: Present
Jack
Jack was laying on his back, hands behind his head to make up for his lack of pillow. He was staring up towards the reddened horizon, his mind circling about past events. He had moved on top of the massive climbing frame about one hour ago, couldn’t rest.
The roof was accessible through a ladder on the highest floor of the building – a room where Hendrick and Jim were currently sleeping in. The flat roof was surrounded by a roughly one meter high fence out of wooden slats. Hendrick had assured them that they would be safe here, that the beast wouldn’t find them here, yet he didn’t feel safe. How could they sleep even though Anna was still gone? And why did this adventure not feel like he had always imagined it?
The starless sky towered high above his head like a colossal red curtain keeping reality shut out. Now as he thought about it, it looked a little like the sky-box of a video game – a placeholder to hide nothing was beyond it. It should encourage his creativity, make him wonder what laid beyond, but it just felt empty for some reason.
The sound of someone climbing up the ladder interrupted Jack’s pondering. It was Hendrick. He made his way to Jack, laid down next to him and looked up into the sky as if in search for stars.
“I expected to find you here,” he said.
Jack responded, voice rather quiet, “How come? I thought you were asleep already. I don’t get how you can just rest after… what happened. We don’t even know where she is…”
“Back in fourth grade,” Hendrick said with his gaze fixed on the horizon, “we met up every weekend for sleep-overs, you remember?” Hendrick turned towards Jack, his right palm keeping his head off the ground.
“Yea, why?” Jack asked, his head lightly tilt to the side as his eyes met Hendrick’s. There was the usual light blue which complimented his rather pale face, yet something in his eyes seemed to be distant. It was as if they had lost some of their magic.
“We changed the place where we stayed the night every weekend. Every house had its own highlights… Anna’s place had the pool. We swam there every time, fooled around and pushed each other into the water. Her parents told us to stop so many times but we didn’t really care.”
Jack returned to facing the sky, thought: What the heck is he talking about? He acts like it’s all just fun and games, but his eyes state otherwise. This beast had looked terrifying. How can he be so relaxed about it?
“Jim had the video game consoles,” Hendrick continued. “We played little tournaments all night long. We ate way too much frozen pizza... Jim even gained a few kilos from that.” Hendrick chuckled for a moment, and Jack couldn’t help it but lighten his expression a little.
“My house had the big yard on the back for playing football and stuff. We ran around until we fell into our beds in exhaustion. And we always acted like we were our favourite characters, going on big adventures and stuff.”
Jack turned to face Hendrick again, set up a stern voice, “Listen, Hendrick. It’s not the right time for stories like that ri-”
“And lastly, your house. Sleepovers there were always the best! We played tabletop games inside of your tree-house, told each other horror stories, and spend the night there. And you know who was never able to sleep and always laid on top of the roof near the branches?”
Hendrick pointed at Jack, “That’s how I knew you were up here.”
“Listen, Jack. I know you worry about her, and I also know it was my fault since I sneezed as we were hiding. That was dumb and I’m sorry for that, but Anna will be fine. The Doll-Maker never attacks its victims until a few days after it has brought them to its cave.”
Jack softened up a bit, said, “We go in there tomorrow as soon as the sky is white again… and we will get her out of there immediately, promise?”
“I promise.” Hendrick smiled. “And after we rescued her, we can go on to the second stage together. This is going to be awesome, believe me. Also, you know Anna well enough. She doesn’t let things get to her easily, and maybe she already hid somewhere or tricked that thing to lead her to its cave.”
Jack sat up, yawned. “I see.” He sighed, had to readjust his buttoned shirt.
Hendrick had explained the core rules earlier, yet Jack had to admit he wasn’t really able to understand much besides the key concept. Clear the stages with any remaining team members, you win; don’t clear all the stages, you lose. Oh, and there also appeared to be eldritch horror beings roaming around a fucking oversized dump filled with giant playthings towering till the reddened horizon, neat.
“We need to beat all three stages, then we win. All of our team members who didn’t make it get revived after we won the game. Also, there is no real pain, you remember?” Hendrick had gotten up, was now leaning against the wooden slats of the fence. “Just view it like a real-life pen and paper. It will be sick.”
How did Hendrick know all these things about this place? Maybe he already had been here before? It didn’t make sense to Jack, but he trusted Hen, and Hen appeared to know what he was doing. There also were some facts Hendrick wasn’t allowed to share, which he had pointed out to the group earlier, so Jack figured there might be a good explanation for the secrecy with which his friend acted.
“Hm, yea…” Jack said.
Hendrick turned around, looked down at Jack with a worried expression. “Anna isn’t the only reason you are up here, am I right?”
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“…”
“Come on, dude.”
“It’s just… so illogical.” Jack got up, walked over to Hendrick and leaned against the fence with his back.
“Go ahead. You know I don’t mind you info-dumping… or thought-dumping… whatever, you know what I mean.”
“Well, you know…” Jack pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I have always dreamed of going on an adventure like this. I have made up stories in my head, played tons and tons of video games, pretended to be characters from fiction, and so on. I have enjoyed this kind of stuff my whole life, looked up to the people in these stories and dreamed of living an adventure like they do. And I daily let my thoughts wander at school and play scenarios in my head, telling myself I would give anything I had for an experience like this one, to find out what it would be like…” Jack looked up once again. He still couldn’t see nor feel what was beyond the horizon.
“And now it just doesn’t feel right?” Hendrick asked.
Jack nodded, pointed upwards. “The sky doesn’t even have stars. Everything seems to be a little off here, almost fake. It’s like nothing of this is real, not even pretending to be real. And I somehow can’t get myself to believe it is. It just is too far from reality for that.”
“Does it really matter all that much if it is real?”
“Well…” Jack took a deep breath, tasted plastic and wood. “If it’s not real, then why would it matter?”
“You serious?” Hendrick asked. “Are the video games you play real? Are the stories you read? Of course not, but you enjoy them anyways. It’s the same around here. Just treat it like a game, have some fun.” Hendrick’s expression was as simple as ever, the freckles around his cheeks underlining his light-headedness.
Jack sighed once again. What Hendrick said was – as usual – very straight forward. He had already expected a simple answer to his question, since he was used to it from him. Hendrick wasn’t a deep thinker, always just living on the surface of life. But his words made sense, which struck him even harder. It certainly wasn’t the first time his deep thoughts had hidden a simple answer from him.
Finally, he said, “You might be right.”
Hendrick scratched himself on the back of his head, said in a distant voice, “You think so? I had already expected you to dissect my argument.”
“Nah, you’re right. This might be the only chance I get to live through something like this. I might as well enjoy it. Even if there are no stars I can see, I can still fill in the gaps to imagine something even bigger up there. Let’s find out what this game is all about.”
Hendrick smiled, and his shy expression was washed away in an instant.
I can still ask more questions tomorrow, Jack thought. But I should really get some rest now. Somehow I feel tired now.
Jack managed a smile, got up, and walked to the ladder. “A real-life pen and paper, huh? Thanks for clearing my head, Hen. I will head downstairs now, since a day filled to the brim with adventure will be awaiting us tomorrow.” He started descending the steps accompanied by silent wooden squeaking, then stopped midway.
He looked at Hendrick, said, “Oh… one more thing, Hen.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I get to be the group leader.”
Hendrick rolled his eyes. “If you manage to convince Jim, go for it.”
“Nice. You can both be berserkers then.”
“Nah… I’ll think of another role which fits me better. I’m certain Jim will be the most capable berserker in our group.”
“Yea… at least if ‘Swash Bros’ combos work in here,” Jack said, gestured with one hand like swinging an axe.
Both of them laughed as the red filter woven into the sky covered the landscape like a blanket of colour. Not a single breeze of air was moving through the massive paths between giant walls close by.
Jack descended the stairs and laid down inside of the wooden room. Now that Hendrick had mentioned it, it almost looked like his old tree-house back at home. He fell asleep quickly, a familiar feeling comforting him as he drifted towards tomorrow.
---
Hendrick
Hendrick ascended the white marble steps of the temple like structure, his two friends accompanying him. Jack spent most of the time looking around while Jim kept his gaze down, probably attempting to not vomit.
They had spent a couple of hours navigating through the never-ending plains of this realm, using the map he had drawn in school assisted by easily recognizable parts of the maze. To his luck, everything had worked out as planned so far. The others didn’t have much questions, followed his guidance.
The building they were currently ascending stood out pretty obvious compared to the rest of the area, which had made it easier to to find. A huge pyramid shaped structure built entirely out of smooth white marble – a relaxation for the eyes between all the bright colours.
As the group of three got closer to the top, now around 100 meters above the flat colourful ground, Jim raised his voice.
“Did I ever mention that I hate staircases?”
“Yea, around 3 times already,” Jack said. “Also, Hen is the fat one, so stop complaining.”
Hendrick shot over an ironic glare to Jack, then smiled thinly. “Very funny, mister leader. Tell me how you would have found this place without the help of my map?”
“Unfair dude, you just copy pasted it somewhere,” Jack said, started scratching his forehead. “Now that I think about it, how did you know the layout?”
He’s asking questions again, he thought. Hen cleared his throat, responded, “I will explain everything once the time for it comes. You guys don’t want to ruin the experience of our adventure, do you?”
Jim, who still had his gaze locked at the stairs in front of him, raised his voice, said, “Yea, sure mister ‘hacker-man-I-cheat-myself-through-the-giant-toy-maze’ guy.”
“Shouldn’t you focus on not looking down?” Hendrick asked. “Pretty high up here, isn’t it?”
“Shut up.”
They laughed.
After he had ascended the last couple of stairs, Hendrick found himself in front of a marble platform. 4 pillars stood tall on the edges of the platform, showing symbols of unknown origin. Hendrick had no idea what they meant.
Echoing footsteps on hard flooring were the only sounds audible for a moment, then Jack started talking. “Didn’t you say the Doll-Maker lives in a cave? How come we are up here now?”
“Just watch.”
Hendrick walked to the middle of the platform, moved on top of a pressure plate which caused some of the marble stones to slide out of place and cause a marble table to get elevated out of the ground. On the table rested three giant scissors and a toy gun.
A couple of meters behind the table, two more pillars – their shape aligning towards each other as they moved upwards – raised out of the moving blocks of massive stone and formed a half-circle five times as tall as Jack, who already was the tallest one of their group. Then small blue clouds started spinning inside of the half circle, fastened and spread themselves until a portal out of blue particles was created.
“That’s so fucking cool…” Jim said with his jaw dropped.
“This will take us directly to the cave where the Doll-Maker lives. Take these. We are going to need them for our plan.” Hendrick had picked up two of the big scissors, threw them toward his friends, who caught the blades with surprisingly good reflexes. He saw the sceptical expressions on their faces, explained: “It hunts with strings, you can cut them with these scissors. We also might need them to set Anna free.”
Jim beamed as he held the pair of scissors like a sword. It was clearly visible that he felt way cooler than he actually was, but Hendrick decided to keep him inside of his delusion.
“It’s dangerous to go alone. Take these oversized fucking scissors,” Jack said, acting like he was a lot older than he actually was.
“I’m going to run with this thing in my hands and there's no break supervisor who can stop me.” A maniacal laughter followed Jim’s words, which could be clearly interpreted as a threat.
Hendrick took the toy gun for himself, opened it up to reveal one bullet inside of the chamber. He showed it to the others, flicked the cylinder back with a jerk of the hand. “This is not a toy. We only have one bullet, but if I aim it right, it might kill that thing.”
“Shouldn’t we take the other scissors as well?” Jack asked. “We might need a weapon for Anna later on.”
“No. It would mean extra weight, and we can’t afford that for our plan. We need to be fast.”
Jack stepped forward, scissor in one hand as he gestured with the other, said, “Alright, then let’s get moving now. I really want to see Anna safe.”
“Fine, I’ll tell you about the details once we are inside of the cave. As long as you follow my plan, everything should go well.” Hendrick turned, moved towards the portal.
He heard footsteps follow him, then Jim’s mumbled voice, “Okay, deep down sounds better to me than high up. Let’s get this started.”
“The leader accepts your decisions and allows you to continue,” Jack said.
Hendrick took a deep breath.
He was now certain.
And he stepped through the misty clouds of the portal, blue void enveloping him as he felt his body getting transported to a different location.
He was going to make it.
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