The bus rattled and bumped along down the sorry excuse for a road. Either the company hadn’t yet repaved this desolate final stretch, or else they left it like that in the name of authenticity. The latter, I suspected, though even that might have been nothing more than an excuse to cut costs. Staring out the window, I hadn’t seen much other than sedge-grass and sand for several minutes.
They really knew how to choose an out-of-the-way location.
I’d heard once that when Walt Disney wanted to open his park in Florida, he’d bought the land in secret. Maybe this company thought to do the same. All the more appropriate this time, given the macabre subject matter of this park. How they expected to make a profit here, I had no clue.
It wasn’t as if parents would flock from around the world to bring their kids to see Cthulhu or to drown in nihilism. But that wasn’t really my problem. As long as I got paid, the park could spend the next twenty years in the red.
Besides, these days, the drab scenery was almost a relief. I don’t think I could have stomached the bright and hopeful cheer of any other amusement park.
Another pothole jarred the bus and sent my teeth clanking together. Too authentic, maybe.
Working my jaw a little, I turned to the plastic box beside me. Drab gray, like the sky here, and unlabeled save for a circular insignia in the shape of Cthulhu’s head. She’d told me not to mess with it until we arrived, but …
I flipped open the lid. Inside lay a headset that looked like a slimmer version of the 3D rigs I had for my Playstation and Xbox. There was no clear earpiece, but the tiny holes on the frame must act as speakers. Certainly, the headset was sleeker than any VR gaming equipment I’d ever tried. Lightweight, though it felt durable.
As I started to fit it over my head, Elise pushed her way into the seat beside me. “Just wait, all right? We’re almost there.”
She’d been considerate enough to give me space ever since the bus picked me up at Ipswich. Too much to hope that would have lasted. Ever since she’d come back into my life, I hadn’t been able to bring myself to ask her to leave. But then, I’m not sure having her around made things easier, either.
I favored her with what I knew had to be a pathetic smile. It was still the best I could come up with. “How does this thing even work?” I stopped myself from pointing out that paying for a VR park and skimping on the VR set was just pissing money away. I wasn’t here to analyze their financial blunders.
“Well, I mean …” She shrugged. “It’s an augmented reality display. So it … um … augments your reality. You know, I’m not really a techie.” She glanced down at a clipboard in her lap.
“More paperwork?” In case ten thousand confidentiality agreements weren’t enough.
“Just a few last forms. Waivers and stuff. Christ, Bobby, you know how these things work. Cthulhu World isn’t responsible if you walk into a phone pole or something while wearing the headset.”
Phone pole? They were playing up the last-century vibe hard then.
I scribbled my name on a half-dozen more forms and handed back the clipboard a little more forcefully than necessary. Of course, I knew she didn’t deserve the cold treatment. It was just the only treatment I had left for anyone.
“Um, right,” Elise said. “So we’ll be arriving in a few. Once you get checked into the hotel, you can start the game. Until then, hang tight. There’s no AR interface out here so you wouldn’t see shit anyway.” She stood up, then hesitated. “Bobby?”
“Yeah?”
“Just try to enjoy yourself, okay?”
“Yeah.”
The bus lurched over a rickety wooden bridge as Elise made her way back up front to sit behind the driver. Almost there. I kept trying to care, I really did. I used to love this stuff.
Games, and hell, Lovecraft too, back in high school. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember many details from those stories, though. The general sense of dread, sure, and the cosmic horror underlying reality. Well, and obviously Cthulhu himself. These days he was almost like a pop culture icon.
Hence Cthulhu World.
Except the park wasn’t even focused on that story. They’d modeled it on Innsmouth, and I couldn’t seem to remember that one. Everything ran together into a general blur of gothic and cosmic horror.
The bus climbed a steep incline until I was looking down over cliffs to the sea below. On a precipice stood an old-fashioned lighthouse. Below that spread out a town as drab as the scenery. Everything was browns and grays, no decorations and almost no signs of life. Like a damn ghost town out in the middle of nowhere.
Innsmouth, named after Lovecraft’s fictional town.
No billboard to announce we were entering Cthulhu World. No markers of any kind, really, save for a few old street signs as we entered the town proper.
So I admit, it was kind of creepy. I was never too fond of crowds, never much of a people person. But to see the trappings of civilization spread all over without any actual civilization, it creates this vague unease in most people—myself included.
I suppose that was the intent.
As the bus pushed on, the sound of falling water greeted me, growing louder and louder. We drove through a covered bridge that crossed a small gorge. Looking over my shoulder after we passed, I spotted a series of falls down below us.
We passed by a railway, though grass sprang up from the tracks, so it obviously wasn’t in use. Maybe eventually the park would bring guests in by train. The bus turned down another main street and swung along beside the wharves and the waterfront, an area even more uninviting than the rest of this new Innsmouth, if that was possible.
Yeah, they’d really captured the Lovecraftian mood. Kudos on that, I suppose. I still wasn’t sure there’d be enough people willing to pay hundreds of dollars to come and be depressed.
Beyond the wharves, out on the sea, rose a small island, stretching like a thin black line.
Maybe Elise had told the driver to take me this route just to show off the park. And admittedly, seeing the effort they’d put into building this town, I did want to go ahead and flip on the headset and see what the game was all about.
In the heart of town, the road circled a green. Across the street stood a couple of churches, with a hall nestled between them in what looked like the colonial style. Not that I’m an expert on architecture, mind. On the opposite side stood the only inviting building I’d seen in the whole damn town: a yellow-painted hotel. Out front, a sign swung on a post: The Gilman House.
The bus rumbled to a stop.
Elise glanced back at me. “We’re here.”
