Work Text:
Statement of Sophie Walten, regarding her experience with a retro arcade game. Original statement given June 28th, 2020. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.
Statement begins.
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The gameplay was like anything you’d expect from a late 80’s arcade machine. It had its glitches, scratcy dialogue, and a cheesy soundtrack to go along with it. Still, I couldn’t get over the fact that something was….hauntingly familiar about this game. Well, I guess it’d be better if I started from the beginning.
I don’t have the best memory, so bits and pieces of this statement may sound a bit convoluted. I’ll try to piece everything together without it sounding like I’m constantly rambling. I’ll start with the small details. My name is Sophie Walten. I live in the small town of Brighton, Wisconsin. Nothing particularly important happens here, except for every once in a while these weird rumors will start to spread. Nothing too big. Just town gossip I guess.
I live in an apartment with my roommate, Jenny. We get along pretty well. I’d go so far as to say we’d actually become close friends. We’re both pretty interested in the same stuff. She takes a real liking to horror movies and franchises and I’m fond of them as well. Sometimes we find ourselves staying up late watching horror movies together. One thing I can say about Jenny though is that she’s…impulsive to say the least.
Memories of our time together fade in and out of my mind but there was this one instance where she showed up the door wheeling what looked like an arcade cabinet inside our apartment. She brandished it with a smile and I could’ve sworn her eyes sparkled as she introduced it to me. The thing was coated in dust but the word I could make out of it was "Bunnyfarm"
Jenny said she’d found the thing at the dump. What she was doing at the dump, I didn’t know and quite frankly I was afraid to ask her about it. She suggested that we give it a whirl. I agreed, given how excited she looked. She plugged it in and I was surprised to find that the thing still worked. It played a happy tune as it started up. I couldn’t exactly explain why but the whole thing seemed just so…eerie. I don’t know whether it was the music or the 2D image of a blue bunny’s face.
Jenny was able to explain the controls to me. As a child, Jenny mostly spent her free time in arcades so it wasn’t surprising that she knew how to operate the machine. The game was painfully bright. The colors made both of our heads hurt. Yet, we were curious to see what this game held. Plus, there was nothing to do except sit inside watch TV all day. I can’t remember all the details of the video game, but the plot went like this:
It featured animatronic characters such as a sheep, bunnies, a clown, and a ringleader I’m pretty sure. They were all excited about what was it….a fruit festival? It was held on a farm, and the characters were given tasks like feeding the animals and whatnot. The game had glitches and it would often freeze or go completely black, except for one character that would just stare at you before it would start back up again. It was pretty creepy, not to mention the rumors that Jenny would repeat surrounding the company that made the game. Something about a murder.
Jenny got tired of the game pretty quickly. She said she had an essay to finish and to continue playing without her. So I did. A decision I regretted later that night when I couldn’t sleep. The glitches almost seemed to get worse when Jenny left. And that’s when I started to feel it. The familiarity as if I’ve played this game before. I convinced myself that it was just nerves and I should probably go to bed. But I didn’t. I was so…curious. I played until my save file unexplainably became corrupted. The glitches made the character’s seem as if their face was…melting off so it was probably best to leave it alone for the night.
The very next evening, Jenny wanted to continue playing the game so we started it up once more. Following the menu screen was a disclaimer saying that my file had been corrupted and asked if I wished to continue playing, even though the glitches were to get even worse at that point. I selected yes, since I wanted desperately to see what happened next. It almost felt like the characters wanted to tell me something. Jenny laughed at this and said it was only because my wild imagination. She believed that I thought the game was haunted. Which…I couldn’t necessarily deny. The game did seem like it had a lot of memories to it.
I was so immersed that I hadn’t realized what time it was. I looked over to find my roommate missing from my side. She’d gone to bed a long time ago. Again, I forced myself to play. The curiosity was like an itch on my skin and I needed to scratch it badly. I needed to see the end. Even when the characters shook horribly. Even when blood poured out of their eyes. Distorted human faces with their skin stretched over their features danced across the screen and screamed terribly. Screamed so loudly that they drowned out my own. These screams. They sounded so human. So familiar. And then. They stopped.
The screen flashed suddenly and faded into a murmuring phone call. I couldn’t really make out anything they were saying. The voices were so convoluted as if they were trying to talk over gravel in their throat. The call was of a man asking his friend to drive his kids home from school. Why was this conversation so familiar? It wasn’t until the video of the car crash that I felt like hurling. Again. The screams played on a constant loop. They contradicted each other, some high pitched while others low. The pain was the only thing consistent in their voices.
"You got a bad ending. You killed them!"
The words flashed across the screen, seeming to mock my fear in bold white letters. I didnt return to the game that night, nor the night after and the night after that. Just looking at the thing in our apartment gave me chills so I had Jenny take it back to where it belonged. The dump. Sure as hell out of my sight.
That happened some time ago but over the years I’ve done a lot of research. I’ve even managed to knock out morse code.
It came as no surprise to me that there was a message hidden in the menu screen of that game.
"Save Our Souls", It said.
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Statement Ends.