Paranormalphobia

“Have you finished downloading the game?” I asked Maple.

“Almost there, it’s at 90%! By the way, can we voice chat?”

“I would love to, but with my father in the house, maybe it’s best not to. Let’s stick to the in-game chat.”

“Aww, alrighty, but doesn’t your dad have work?”

“I think so, but I’m not going to check.”

“Understandable given what you’ve told me. It’s his responsibility after all. If he’s going to be the way he is towards you and your mom, then why bother helping him? You’ve already tried enough to reason with him.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. Was it perhaps cruel to ignore Dad? Maybe, but I didn’t care. Once the game finished downloading, I created a private lobby, then invited Maple. But before we could select a map, we had to create our player avatars.

Since her account was brand new, she barely had any cosmetics unlocked. Despite the limitation, she still managed to create an appealing design, featuring a crop top, shorts, and a ball cap. Meanwhile, my avatar stayed the default option.

“Paige, how come you didn’t edit your character?”

“Is there something wrong with that?”

“I mean, don’t you want to explore different options? I love it when a game lets me dress up my character! Have some fun with it!”

“I don’t know… I’m not good when it comes to style, so I don’t bother, especially when it doesn’t impact gameplay.”

“Boringgg! But it’s alright! Let’s pick the map now!”

To make things easy for a new player like Maple, I suggested that we start on the small house map. It was the same location as the tutorial, so it should have been a solid introduction to the game, but Maple, being the person she was, pushed for the school map. Comparing the two, the house was like driving a tricycle, while the school was like driving a sports car in the rain. Maple would just have to learn the hard way.

Loading into the map, we began outside to sort our equipment.

“Wow, that’s a lot of gear in the van! Some of these I recognize from our investigation!”

“It’s good that you noticed. They really put a lot of detail into capturing the essence of investigating. Heck, I wish I had the same setup in real life.”

“So, how do we begin?”

“Well, usually the first thing to do is start placing the equipment inside. Once we have everything set up, we can begin investigating and recording evidence. After collecting enough, we can…” There were about twenty other gameplay topics to teach Maple, but knowing her, I would have bored her to death, so I stopped.

Now in the school, we began our investigation, starting with the cafeteria. As we placed our equipment around the lunch tables, something crashed in the kitchen. I requested that Maple check it out, but she refused unless I came with her, much to my amusement.

“Why can’t you go alone? Are you scared of the dark? I didn’t forget about the nightlight you had in your room, or when you were terrified in the attic back at the house.”

“What are you talking about? I’m not scared of anything! If you don’t believe me, then I’ll prove it!”

“Wait, I was just joking! Don’t go alone, or the spirits might attack you!”

Maple ignored my warning and headed straight for the source of the sound. Two minutes after she entered the kitchen, I saw her flashlight go out, then a notification that she had died. Wanting to see what happened, I followed her trail. It turned out that she perished inside the oven, almost as if she were cooked alive. It was a death method I was familiar with, as I’ve seen it before, meaning…

Oh shoot.

“Whoops! Guess I died, huh? Seems like we have unlimited respawns, so that’s good!”

I didn’t have time to reply to her message. My character was picked up and shoved inside the oven before it switched on. There were no player voices in the game, so my character didn’t scream; instead, she died a horrid death in silence. Respawning, I warped back to the van to find Maple waiting for me.

“You weren’t kidding about how hard it was going to be!”

“Now you see why it’s important to follow my lead. Let’s try again, but this time with an actual strategy. Wait, where did you go?”

Her character was already inside the school again. I pursued her, and in an attempt to unlock sprinting, I mashed the “W” key, but to no avail. Why did the developers only include walking!?

“Maple, what are you trying to do?”

“If there’s no punishment for dying, then I’m going to keep going in until I collect all the evidence we need!”

“But that’s not how you’re supposed to play the game!”

Death after death, she committed to her plan. It was foolhardy, no doubt, but astonishingly, she managed to collect solid evidence with each blitz. In what usually would take me thirty minutes to an hour to identify the spirit, Maple did in ten.

“It’s gotta be a poltergeist! No way in heck it isn’t!”

With the game in chaos, I went along with her vote, hoping to start on a clean slate for the next map.

The results were in.

She was correct.

“Heck yeah, that’s what I’m talking about!” Maple typed while making her character dance. “Oh, oh, let’s vote for the camping lodge next!”

Given how she made mincemeat of the school, I agreed with her choice. I was more curious than anything to see how she would tackle the other maps. Just as we were going to start, we received a text message from the club’s group chat.

“Guys, we have some news! We were doing some research with a historian and discovered some old newspaper articles that might be related to the house!” Daniel texted.

“Uh, send the images over. I can’t meet up in person because of some reasons,” I replied.

When the images finished uploading, they were disorganized beyond belief. Some were upside down, others were covered by Daniel’s fingers, and a handful were completely blurry!

“Daniel, what are these images!?”

“What do you mean? Oh… Hold up, I could have sworn they looked normal when I took them. My bad, haha!” he answered, followed by a laughing emoji.

“Are you still at the library? Can your group meet at the house?” I asked.

“Nick, Samantha, and I are already leaving. Although we can make a U-turn back to the library, then head to the house.”

“Yes, please do that. Thank you.”

I wanted to bang my head on my keyboard, but at least they discovered something. However, since I couldn’t leave the house, I asked Maple to see if she could go in my place.

“I can, but I wanna get in one more map before I go!” she messaged.

“How fast do you think you can do it?”

“Mmm, five minutes, give or take!”

“Five!? Go wild.”

“Heh, thanks! Look out, ghosts, I’m coming for ya!”