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Paul sits on the edge of his bed, burning his eyes out on a CRT. The silence of Anna’s neighborhood hangs outside the house, pushing up against the window just behind him. Rattling the glass.
Something about that window made him feel threatened. On his first night in this house, he found himself trying to cover it up with construction paper. Anna had walked in, and he expected her to laugh at him, but instead she wordlessly assisted.
Of course, it blotted out the sunlight as well. It could be the middle of a particular quiet day for all Paul knew. He could check his phone, but something kept him stuck to the TV. Recently there seemed to be nothing to do in the game. Walk into the master bedroom, crash. Walk into the garage, crash. Walk too far away from the house, crash. His eyes blur, and he lets his body tilt backwards until he lays flat on the bed.
Slowly, Paul is pulled forwards into a dream.
The night air is cool on his skin, and there is damp dirt under his fingernails. There are no stars in the sky, no moon, just him and a grassy field stretching in all directions. He walks aimlessly for hours, until suddenly he finds himself tripping over a shovel and staring down into an open grave. It recedes absurdly far into the earth, and he backs away from the edge just enough to feel assured that he won't slip in.
A girl sits at the bottom of the grave, clad in earthen brown tones. She looks up, and instead of calling out for help, only stares at Paul with a look of complete terror.
“PAUL- PAUL, WAKE UP!”
As usual, morning comes to Paul in the form of Anna’s voice calling for him to come to breakfast. Groggily, he shambles out of bed and into the kitchen. He looks like roadkill. He feels like roadkill. He snatches a cold glass of OJ off the counter and downs it as though it was the mana of heaven.
“Morning”
Breakfast with Anna is always uncomfortable. She's not inhospitable or cold. The pancakes are divine. Paul can’t put his finger on what’s wrong.
After a painfully quiet breakfast, Paul showers. The bathroom is the only part of the house that looks distinct from its rendition in the game. There’s a walk in shower that looks like it was installed around the turn of the millennium. No bathtub.
With his daily medication taken and a fresh set of clothes on his back, Paul feels and looks somewhat less like a corpse. Anna sits at the coffee table, hunched over a crossword.
Paul looks at the door to his room. If he goes in, he will play the game, and nothing will happen. His eyes will hurt, he will fall asleep, dream, repeat. He looks back at Anna.
“Hey. The game hasn’t been giving me anything new for a while, so, i wanted to ask you a few things. If thats ok with you.”
Anna looks up and nods. She somehow looks both eager and terrified at the prospect of this discussion.
“Of course!”
“So.. in the game, marked on the calendars, it says Care came home on my- her birthday.”
She nods. Paul can feel the same pressure that hangs around the breakfast table, but stronger. Anna clearly wants to say something, but holds it back.
“But. And maybe I'm wrong here but. In the child library stuff, which i think was added after that, it says ‘Care is missing’. So.. did she go missing again?”
Anna is biting her lip. It looks painful
“And.. why are you and jill and mom so cagey about where Care is now?”
“Paul.
Do you remember what we told you a few months back, before you moved in here?”
“..that me and Care are exactly the same age, and that we look really similar.. and, you put a weird emphasis on exactly.”
“Exactly the same age, down to any unit of time, no matter how precise.”
“How would you even know that? You already said you never had twins, so.. I don't. I don't know. Clearly you know, mom knows, jill knows, even Belle clearly knows what’s up! I don’t understand this, why is everyone in my life refusing to tell me things that they also seem to think I need to know!”
Anna sighs, and looks pale as she grasps for a way to defuse the bomb she just lit.
“Because, we’re afraid it could harm you if we told you outright. We can’t be so Careless with those we love, especially after everything this family has been through.”
“….?
…why… why would knowing where Care is harm me? Anna? Anna why would-”
There is no response, save for the trickle of blood running down from Anna's lower lip. She knows that if lina ever got one whiff of this conversation, she would drag Paul into her car and rush home. She understands her sister's trepidation, and respecting it, resigns herself to her room.
Leaving Paul alone, disoriented. The imagery of his dream jumps back to him- the shovel, the dirt on his hands. He doesn't know what it means, but it makes him feel sick.
He’s thrown out of his stupor by Belle, who has just walked through the front door and tackled him into a bear hug. “Hiii bro! Thought I'd check in on you today, get you out of this dismal house for a bit!”. The only response Paul can manage is a stutter as he gets the wind crushed out of him. Her visit is far from unwelcome, but Paul is hardly prepared to leave the house. Sensing this, Belle leads him to the couch and the two slump down into it.
“Sorry, im. Really really out of it right now. Was just talking to Anna.”
“She’s not being pushy with you is she?”
“No. No, not at all. …Belle, uh, can i ask you something?”
“Shoot.”
“Did you.. know Care?”
Belle’s expression scrunches slightly, agonizing over what to say in response. She looks at Paul- he looks like he's about to cry.
“Just talk to me, please! Everyone keeps treating me like i’m gonna explode or something, it scares me!”
She breathes out.
“I did know Care, me and her went to the same school when we were really little. …she loved drawing, always carried a pack of crayons with her. I was one of her only friends there, me and mike and.. and Tiara.”
“You knew her too??”
Belle sighs, shifting in her seat. “Know her. I know her. We.. lost contact for a long time, but recently that changed. She might be able to… to visit, sometime.”
Paul stutters, reaching for some sort of question, any question that could make this make sense. He grasps at nothing, and leans back against the couch in defeat.
“Hey.” Belle says “I know this has been super rough for you. But you’re going to be ok. Care, Tiara, me? We're all going to be ok.” She puts her hands on his shoulders, looking him dead in the eyes. “I think you should let the game go for a bit and just.. think over what you’ve been shown so far. I’ll visit again tomorrow, alright?”
Paul nods, desperately trying to dam the tears welling up in his eyes as she stands up and leaves. After a while of sitting in silence, he plies himself off the couch and wanders back into his room, only to fall face first into the bed.
He’s staring down into the grave again, and Care is staring back up.
__________________________
It’s impossibly dark.
Care is unsettled as she feels the window over her head. It’s presence is one of few details that comes through to her, like a shard of glass cutting through an ocean of cotton balls, the tip of the blade leering at her. It wants to cut her into ribbons of film, photographs, flat memories that don’t think or feel, and she knows this.
It unsteadily recedes, and the sensation of her bedroom carpet sings through like an old tune rushing through an unsteady radio receiver. Then it’s gone, fading into a pencil sketch. She tries to hold onto it, keep the boundary of the carpet marked as she is pulled away from it by footsteps that she does not make.
Everything is only an impression, like a photo taken without color film, everything a thumbnail sketch too small to have detail. Her thoughts slip and the imprint of the carpet is gone.
Voices that she knows, deep dark blue flowers flicker and spark. She strains to hear the words, but no one will translate for her, and so it means nothing save for the solace of hearing her mothers voice, which is no small thing. Blue turns to purple. She can snatch her name, a tone of reassurance. She remembers a girl who hugged her tight, passed notes with her in class. She tries to cling to the memory, step into it and wait there to be found, but the surface won't give.
It’s impossibly dark.