Chapter 1
“I want to tell you a story. A story about death, about danger, and about an item so cursed that most people think it’s not even real. Time and again it appears unexpectedly, and when it pops up, mayhem is sure to follow. You might be asking yourself, what could be so dangerous, so deadly? Maybe it’s a creepy doll containing the souls of the dead . . . or a forgotten relic from ancient times. But no, this cursed object is something that no one would ever suspect . . . an arcade game.”
Danny had to laugh. He was sitting in the front passenger seat of his mom’s SUV with one earbud in. The other one was currently missing in action, probably somewhere in his room lost in a sea of video games and action figures.
His mom glanced over at him from the driver’s seat. “What’s so funny?”
“Just this YouTube guy,” Danny said. “He’s so dramatic.”
The YouTuber was in his twenties and went by the name Mr. Griller, and Danny was his biggest fan. His focus was on horror video games, the more obscure the better, with occasional Twitch live streams and longer, story-driven videos about game legends and lore.
It was the kind of thing Danny lived for.
The image onscreen transitioned from a series of black-and-white crime scene photos to a shot of Mr. Griller in his usual spot, the small corner of a well-lit room. Over his right shoulder a massive HD monitor played a loop of a bloody first-person shooter. Mr. Griller had a thin black beard and a head full of shaggy curls that fell out from underneath a baseball cap with a logo for the Raccoon City Rangers. According to a video from the previous year titled “Get to Know Me,” his parents were from India, and in his words, “They really want me to go back to college.”
“Imagine a game,” he said, talking directly into the camera in a hilariously serious tone, “so disturbing that everyone who has ever played it has died at some point.”
Wait, Danny thought, doesn’t everyone die at some point?
“Most people wrote it off as an urban legend. For years, people in the arcade trading and restoration scene would whisper about it, trying to convince themselves that they were safe, that the danger wasn’t real. But in my research, I’ve been able to uncover the truth, which has never been seen before now.”
Danny would often laugh whenever the videos got too dramatic, but he could easily get sucked into the storytelling. He leaned forward, squinting at his phone.
“This,” Mr. Griller said, “is the only known photo of the game to exist online.”
A blurry picture appeared. The arcade machine looked like a six-foot-tall box made out of particleboard, big and unwieldy. The photo didn’t include the machine’s screen, but Danny could make out the side panels of the wooden cabinet, which showed off the game’s art.
“Whoa . . .”
A single word was splashed across the machine’s side in scrawled green letters.
“Grin,” Danny whispered.
“What’s that?” his mom asked.
“Shhh,” Danny said. He didn’t want to miss this.
“This,” Mr. Griller continued, “is Grin.”
Beneath the name, painted in a rough, sketchy style, was a huge, gruesome smile. No eyes, no nose, nothing but that ominous, mocking grin with huge, hungry teeth that seemed to leap from the black background.
“No one knows where it came from, and there are no records of any major video game company making an arcade game with that title. It’s a true mystery, passed down from seller to seller like a rumor. I haven’t yet tracked down the names of any of the owners, but the whispers persist on message boards. For every person who says it’s a hoax, there are just as many who believe, and they all tell the same story. Where this game goes, death soon follows.”
The camera zoomed in, moving ever closer to that mocking smile, and Danny felt a cold sweat break out across the back of his neck. The video’s creepy soundtrack was building and swelling, and though the faceless smile may not have had eyes, he still felt like he was being watched.
“Is it just an urban legend? Or maybe some harmless prank? Either way it’s a lot of work just to trick people, and as I always say, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. I can’t tell you if it’s real, but I can give you this warning. If you ever come across this machine in an arcade, you may want to think twice before putting a quarter in it. It might be the most important decision you ever make.”
The screen flashed red, and a stock sound of a woman screaming blared in his ears. It was enough to snap Danny out of his momentary daze, and he snorted another laugh.
Mr. Griller always put on a good show.
The camera cut back to the host, who sat in a gaming chair surrounded by detailed action figures from Resident Evil, Five Nights at Freddy’s, and too many others to count.
“My promise to you, my faithful viewers, is to continue my research into this game. I’ve been so hyped up ever since I found this picture that I just had to share it, but I’m hoping to have a follow-up video soon. Don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe.”
Danny looked out at the highway for the first time in probably an hour. It was about a two-hour trip from his house to Uncle Bill’s, but Danny hadn’t really paid attention to when they left.
“How much longer?”
“About half an hour,” his mom said. “And welcome back to the real world.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I mean when you’re staring at your phone, you might as well be on another planet.”
“What’s wrong with other planets?”
She laughed. “Nothing . . . unless you like breathing oxygen. You know, small stuff like that.”
Danny yawned. “Eh, breathing is overrated.”
He leaned his head back and watched the fields and trees fly past. It was the dead heat of a Tennessee summer, and everything between the parking lots and rest stops was yellow and crunchy from lack of rain. As the sandpaper horizon drifted by, he couldn’t help but think that his choice to stay indoors during the height of summer was the right one. No matter what his coaches, teachers, or parents said, it was always nice inside, and every video game came with a side order of air-conditioning. Most adults didn’t understand that, but thankfully his uncle was the exception.
“You excited?” she asked.
“What do you think?”
“I’m just trying to keep the conversation going so you don’t go back to your phone.”
“I’m a thirteen-year-old nerd who’s about to spend a week with his uncle, who just happens to own the biggest arcade in the state. Uh, yeah, I’m pretty pumped.”
“You’re just like him, you know,” she said. “Bill was such a weird kid growing up.”
“Hey!”
“That’s not what I meant,” she said, laughing. “Just . . . different. I was always into softball, cheerleading, basketball. He was just the perfect example of an indoor kid. You could leave him alone for a month with a stack of Nintendo games and a case of Mountain Dew and he’d never even know you left.”
“Not sure if I should be offended or take that as a compliment.”
“Well, he made it work,” she said. “He didn’t go to college, and he always seemed to just bounce along from one thing to another, but his arcade is a success. People come from all over. If you told me that an arcade like that could make money nowadays, I wouldn’t have believed you.”
Danny was genuinely confused. “What do you mean?”
“When we were kids, arcades were huge,” she said. “But over time kids stopped coming and they just died out. All the games you could play at home got better, I guess. It’s like records and video stores and whatever else you can think of. Eventually something better always comes along.”
Danny tried to picture a world where people didn’t love arcades, but his imagination failed him. Sure, video games at home were fun, but there was something different about being in an arcade. It was like taking a time machine back to an era that he missed by simply being born too late. “You know they still make records, right?”
“Yes, smarty-pants, I know that,” she said. “But it’s different. It’s just a niche thing now. I guess people miss what they had when they were younger, and it’s turned us all into collectors.”
Danny considered this for a moment. “So you and Dad watch college football.”
“Every single chance we get.”
Danny rolled his eyes. “So football is like your favorite thing, and games are my favorite thing. For just a second, think about how different our worlds are. You can just bump into a random person and talk about football, because hey, they love it too. And you can go to a store and just buy football shirts—”
“Jerseys.”
“Whatever! And once a year you can drive to a stadium and sit in uncomfortable seats with like eighty thousand other people who all love the same thing you do, right? Basically the entire world is a buffet for you. Meanwhile people like me and Bill have a handful of places on the entire planet where we can really just soak up this thing that we love. That’s arcades!”
Danny finished his mini-rant, and his mother furrowed her brow. “I thought you liked the UT game we went to.”
“It was . . . fine.”
“I guess I never knew what it was like to not be, well, like everyone else,” his mom said. “Like I said, you’ve got a lot of Bill in you. Honestly, you could both use some sun.”
