Chapter 7: Corporate Disbelief

Chapter 7: Corporate Disbelief

The week after the haunting bled into their homes was a slow, grinding siege. The four of them moved through their shifts at The Pit like survivors in a disaster zone, communicating in low voices and with constant, anxious glances over their shoulders. Maya was the most changed. The bright curiosity in her eyes had been replaced by a haunted, brittle watchfulness. She avoided reflective surfaces, her gaze skittering away from the dark screens of powered-down games and the glass of the prize counter. Ash would see her flinch at sudden noises, her hand flying to her chest, and the guilt would twist in his gut like a knife. He had done this to her. His monster was wearing her mother’s face.

The entity, for its part, seemed to have grown bored with subtle psychological torment. It was getting bolder, its influence seeping into the very machinery of the arcade. It started small. A claw machine would suddenly drop its prize for a crying child who had just lost. The basketball game would register a score of 999 points for no reason. Annoying glitches, easily dismissed.

But then it escalated.

On a Tuesday afternoon, the Skee-Ball machines at the far end of the building all roared to life at once, spitting their wooden balls out in a thunderous, clattering wave that sent a family scrambling for cover. Yesterday, the massive ticket-eater had started running in reverse, spewing a hurricane of shredded paper confetti all over the prize counter. Each incident required a tedious cleanup and an even more tedious incident report.

The breaking point arrived in the form of a six-year-old’s birthday party. The kids were swarmed around the Whac-A-Mole, shrieking with delight. Ash was at the front counter when the game started to malfunction. The cheerful, cartoonish moles began hammering up and down not in sequence, but all at once, a frantic, percussive chaos. The machine itself started to vibrate, a deep, angry hum emanating from its circuits. The plastic mallets, designed for children, were being slammed up with such violent force that they cracked the clear plastic shell meant to contain them.

One of the moles, a grinning pirate, shot upward with a sound like a pistol shot, shattering its plastic housing and flying across the room. The children screamed, this time in terror, not joy. The birthday boy’s mother grabbed her son and pulled him back, her face a mask of fury.

“What is wrong with this place?” she snapped at Ash as he rushed over and killed the power to the game. “These machines are dangerous! My son could have been hurt!”

“I’m so sorry, ma’am, it’s a… it’s an electrical fault,” Ash stammered, the lie tasting like ash in his mouth. He knew it wasn’t faulty wiring. He could feel the smug, malevolent energy radiating from the now-silent machine. It was a performance. A show of strength.

The complaint was the final straw. It went straight to their district manager, and an hour later, Ash was summoned to the back office. Mr. Henderson was waiting for him, his arms crossed over his chest, his thin lips pressed into a line of profound disappointment. He was a man who saw the world in spreadsheets and profit margins, and Ash’s crew was becoming a significant liability.

“Explain this to me, Ash,” Henderson said, his voice dangerously calm. He gestured to a stack of incident reports on his desk. “A ticket-eater running in reverse. The entire Skee-Ball bank malfunctioning. And now, a Whac-A-Mole machine that apparently tried to decapitate a six-year-old. Our maintenance costs have tripled this month. Our customer complaints are through the roof. What is going on in my arcade?”

This was it. The moment of truth. Ash’s desire for a simple, quiet life was a distant memory. Now, his only desire was to make someone in authority understand, to get help, to protect his friends and the customers from the thing he had unleashed.

He took a deep breath. “Mr. Henderson… it’s not the wiring.”

Henderson’s eyebrow arched. “Oh? Then what is it?”

“This place… there’s something wrong with it,” Ash began, the words feeling clumsy and insane as they left his mouth. “Things happen here. Things move on their own. We hear voices. The machines aren’t malfunctioning; they’re being controlled.”

He saw the shift in Henderson’s expression, from managerial concern to cold, clinical assessment. He was no longer looking at an employee; he was looking at a problem to be managed.

“Controlled,” Henderson repeated, his voice flat. “By whom?”

Ash’s throat was dry. He had to say it. He had to try. “We think the building is haunted.”

The silence that followed was heavy and suffocating. Henderson stared at him for a long, unwavering moment. Then, he let out a short, sharp laugh devoid of any humor.

“Haunted,” he said, shaking his head as if shedding a ridiculous idea. “Mr. Miller, are you telling me that our quarterly profits are being impacted by… ghosts?” The word was laced with a withering, dismissive scorn that made Ash’s cheeks burn.

“It’s more than a ghost,” Ash pressed, his desperation making his voice shake. “It’s intelligent. It’s malicious. It’s a…” He stopped himself. He couldn’t say the word. If ‘haunted’ earned him ridicule, ‘demon’ would earn him a straitjacket.

“Let me be perfectly clear,” Henderson said, leaning forward, his voice dropping to an icy, corporate whisper. “The official explanation for these events is faulty wiring, aging hardware, and staff incompetence. I will not have my employees spreading ghost stories that could damage this franchise’s reputation. Is that understood?”

Ash felt the last of his hope wither and die. He was alone. Utterly and completely isolated. He had tried to reach out to the sane, logical world for help, and it had laughed in his face. “Yes, sir,” he mumbled, his gaze fixed on the floor.

“Good,” Henderson said, leaning back in his chair. He steepled his fingers, a smug, satisfied look on his face. “Now, since my staff can’t seem to keep their stories straight or the machines running properly, I’ve taken matters into my own hands. Corporate has approved a full surveillance upgrade. We’re having a state-of-the-art, high-definition camera system installed tomorrow morning. Eight cameras, covering every inch of this floor, all feeding directly to a monitor in this office and to my tablet at home.”

Ash’s head snapped up, a new kind of horror dawning on him.

“We’ll have eyes everywhere,” Henderson continued, a cruel smile playing on his lips. “It will allow me to properly monitor staff performance and get to the bottom of all this… nonsense. This will put an end to these fantasies.”

The irony was so thick it was suffocating. Henderson, in his blind pragmatism, was not installing a tool for observation. He was building a brand-new playground for the entity. He was giving it a new set of eyes, a new way to watch them, a new stage on which to perform its horrors.

The installation was brutally efficient. By closing time the next day, eight small, black domes were mounted on the ceiling, their dark lenses staring down like the eyes of predatory insects. That night, after locking the doors, Ash, Maya, Zach, and Josh gathered in the back office, huddled around the glowing new monitor.

The screen was split into a grid of eight perfect, crisp images of the silent arcade. The prize counter. The food court. The main entrance. The long aisle of racing games. It was unnervingly clear.

“Well, this is creepy as hell,” Zach muttered, rubbing his tired eyes.

They watched in silence for ten minutes. Nothing moved. The arcade was as still and quiet as a tomb. A part of Ash almost dared to hope that the presence of the cameras had scared it away.

Then, it happened.

On the screen, the camera pointed at the prize counter—camera three—began to move. It wasn’t a glitch. It was a smooth, deliberate pan to the left, tracing a path along the empty walkway.

“Did you see that?” Josh whispered, pointing a trembling finger at the screen.

Before anyone could answer, camera six, aimed at the food court, tilted down, its view descending from the tables to the floor, as if looking for something it had dropped.

“Oh my god,” Maya breathed, her hand covering her mouth.

They stared, mesmerized and horrified, as one by one, the cameras began to stir. They panned, tilted, and zoomed, their movements not random, but coordinated. They were following something. Something invisible that was moving through the arcade. Something that was walking from the prize counter, through the food court, toward the back of the building.

Finally, the last camera, camera eight, the one pointed directly at the black, imposing door of the laser tag arena, swiveled to center it perfectly in its frame. And then, with a chilling, mechanical slowness, it began to zoom in. Closer and closer, until the single, dark handle of the door filled the entire screen.

The message was clear. Henderson’s attempt to assert control had been hijacked. They weren’t the ones watching anymore. They were the ones being watched. And the demon was letting them know it was ready for its close-up.