The Thing That Lives Under the Hill (Chapter 1)

This is the opening to a novel. The title is very much provisional. No clue what it will be called yet.

Enjoy.

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SOLOMON

 

The video game I made in 2013 represented, in many ways, an attempt to recreate my childhood.

It included everything: the grisly bits, the sad bits, the boring bits, the funny bits. All of it.

Everything from the time I wet myself at Jordan Spader’s house and swore him to secrecy (only for his mother to tell the other playground mums and have it come out that way instead) to the time my father returned in the night for the first time in months (only for him to beat my mother half to death on the staircase just outside my bedroom door).

Yep. Fun stuff.

You could say that the experience of making the game, really, was an exercise in blood sacrifice.

It was like taking a kitchen knife and slicing open my own throat, then watching as the blood poured gloriously out of me, at first a steady stream, then a ragged and faltering tide, until every last drop was out there.

The little room in which I’d spent 2 years, 7 months, and 11 days making the thing looked like a murder scene by the end of it all.

Blood on the carpet.

Blood on the walls.

Blood smeared into the window.

Blood on the door handle.

Blood dripping from the curtain rail.

Blood everywhere.

The first thing I did when I was satisfied I’d finally finished the game – really finished it, although of course any game is subject to countless re-jigs and re-boots after release – was to take a bath.

When I stepped into the water, it was clear.

When I got out, it was red.

For months, I could not wash without bathing in red.

Then, finally, the day came.

The game was released.

And the Gods, for once, were accepting of my sacrifice.

They had heard my call.

 

*

 

The game was met by instant success.

It hit the top of the indie game sales list within a few hours of release.

It stayed there for weeks.

It was nominated for a dozen awards.

A WikiGame page was magicked out of the cracks of the internet, detailing all the items, monsters, cheats, codes, and secret rooms that you could find in the game.

Artwork inspired by the game was shared all over the web.

People I hadn’t spoken to for years started noticing me in bars, started coming up to me for chats, shaking my hand, patting me on the back.

Interviewers asked me how much of the game was autobiographical and how much was just my messed-up imagination.

And, to go with all that, somewhere in a dark vault sat a pile of money growing higher and higher every day.

The first thing I did when I became rich was not set about recreating my real childhood, as I had done for the game, for the sacrifice, but set about creating the life I had fantasised about as a child – the life I had lived in my head when my mum locked me in the basement when her ‘serious’ friends came round, the life I had lived in my head when Reverend Paul was delivering one of his Sunday sermons.

I bought a house.

I bought a car.

I bought a python.

I bought an annexe and made it into a cinema room.

I bought a popcorn machine.

I bought an oak table in the shape of Middle Earth.

I had never been slim, but I was now running to fat big time, so I bought a treadmill.

When I couldn’t find the motivation to use the treadmill, I bought a personal trainer.

I bought another annexe and made it into an arcade hall.

I bought a life-size Chewbacca, had him stand sentinel at the foot of the stairs.

And as I sat in this big, big house, the one built on blood and dark magic, the phone didn’t stop ringing: interviewers, relatives, fellow game designers, the whole world wanted a piece of me.

Then, one day, there came a very different kind of phone call.

 

*

 

'Is this Solomon Davis?'

The voice was a man's: plummy and well educated. The sort of voice you could imagine talking about Virgil around the dinner table. A Radio 4 voice. A voice that hosted parlour games. The sort of voice that I had never heard on the telephone before, and so which sounded as if it were being uttered into my ear directly from another world.

'It is,' I said, a little uncertainly. 'Can I ask who's calling?'

'You may, Solomon.' The use of my name felt a little too familiar, like some sickly sales technique - one that some lowly, reptilian part of the brain can't help but fall for. I fell. 'My name is Horatio Blair, assistant to the author A.H. Black. I'm calling to enquire about arranging a meeting with you, Solomon. I'm sure you're a well occupied man these days, but there is a matter of the highest import that I wish to discuss with you.'

I didn't know what to say to that. Were it not for the accent, and the authority it commanded, I would have put the phone down.

'I've been playing your game, Solomon. Playing it a lot, actually.'

He didn't sound like he played video games.

'On Level 3 – the Caves – in the room farthest to the left, Solomon, there is a crack in the wall. If equipped with the Hickory Stick, you can tap this crack three times, and upon the third tap the crack becomes a fissure, the fissure becomes an opening, the opening becomes a door, the door opens onto …’

There was silence for a moment.

I didn’t understand how he …

‘What does the door open onto, Solomon?’ He said it the way you say to a child, What noise does the cow make?

‘Solomon. What does the –’

‘Who are you?’ I blurted.

He cleared his throat. ‘I’ve already told you that, Solomon. My name is Horatio Blair.’

‘Yes, but what do you do? What is this about?’

‘Well you could say that I'm no more than a minion, Solomon. A.H. Black’s minion. Although I suppose ‘minion’ rather suggests that there are a lot of us, which isn’t the case at all. I am the only one. Sole minion. A.H. Black is a very private man, after all. He wouldn’t let just anyone near his personal affairs. Anyway, he wrote a children’s book a few years ago called Follow the Black Cat. Perhaps a tad below your age range, Solomon, but I can assure you it did rather well. Film adaptation is currently in the works.’

‘Right, and so what, he wants to collaborate?’

‘A collaboration of sorts, Solomon, yes. But if we could just return to my question and the matter of what lies on the other side of that door ... then my purpose in contacting you will become ever so much clearer.’

I gave him silence again.

‘You’re a little wrong-footed by the question, Solomon. I can understand that. It is an unusual one, after all, so fine: I’ll answer it for you.’

I breathed.

‘On the other side of that door is an empty room. Empty but for a symbol drawn on the floor – drawn in blood, of course, I know you have a sensibility for that sort of thing – and this symbol … hmm, how might one describe it? It’s rather like a –’

‘It’s a face,’ I heard myself say. ‘A crude one, just a few childlike lines. But still a face. Both eyes crossed out, the mouth stitched up.’

Horatio Blair waited a satisfied beat. ‘Ah. There we go. Knew you had it in you, Solomon. Now,’ I heard something being adjusted on the other end of the phoneline, ‘this symbol, this image, Solomon, it’s not your own, is it?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘You didn’t conjure it up yourself.’

‘What are you trying to say?’

‘I’m saying you didn’t conceive of it. It’s not an artistic invention. A product of the imagination. Anything like that.’

‘Are you … are you saying I stole it or something? From this author of yours?’

He sounded amused. ‘No, no, Sol –’

‘Are you taking me to court? Over something as small as that? Is that what this is about?’

There was that sound again. A scratching.

‘There will be no lawsuit, Solomon, I can assure you of that. And ‘steal’ is a little strong. I prefer ‘borrow’. I put it to you that you borrowed that image not from some book, but from your memories. You saw it when you were a child, didn’t you. And, I would wager, you saw many of the other things that take place in your video game, monsters and all. I know this because I’ve been talking to people, Solomon. Talking to people like you. They saw that image too, once upon a time: the drawing of the little child with no eyes and no mouth. I’ve helped them, Solomon. And now I want to help you.’

The scratching was louder now.

‘Shall we exchange email addresses, Solomon. Ought to make the next few steps easier.’

I sat there, in my big house, wondering if success had made me go mad, wondering if I would live out the rest of my days answering phone calls from the voices in my head and watching blood blossom at the cracks in the floorboards.

Then I nodded.

But Horatio Blair couldn’t see that, so finally, grudgingly, I said, ‘Yes. Let’s do that.’