Chapter 2: The Hunter's Burden

Chapter 2: The Hunter's Burden

Eighteen years had passed. Eighteen years of sleeping with the lights on, of flinching at the sound of metal on pavement, of seeing that distorted, smiling face in every flickering screen. The eight-year-old boy who sat paralyzed in his family room was gone, buried under layers of scar tissue, paranoia, and a singular, all-consuming obsession.

Now, at twenty-six, Liam Carter was a ghost haunting the shell of a man. His apartment was a tomb of forgotten technology, a chaotic shrine to the ghosts of gaming past. Stacks of dissected consoles—NES, Sega Genesis, Dreamcast—lay in heaps, their guts exposed like anatomical models. Wires snaked across the floor like metallic vines, all leading to a central command station: a desk cluttered with three mismatched monitors, their glow casting a pale, sickly light on his gaunt face. Sleep was a luxury he hadn't been able to afford since childhood.

He lived on cheap noodles and black coffee, his only real sustenance the frantic, desperate hunt. His true profession wasn’t the freelance IT work that paid his rent; it was his nightly vigil. He was the sole proprietor and operator of a one-man watchtower, scanning the deepest, darkest corners of the web. On these fringe forums and encrypted chat rooms, he wasn't Liam Carter. He was 'Wii-reaper,' a myth, a cautionary tale, a name whispered with a mix of reverence and fear. He was the one you messaged when a game started playing you.

His fingers, thin and restless, danced across a keyboard as a custom-built web crawler script scrolled endlessly on the main monitor. It searched for a litany of keywords: "haunted Wii game," "creepy smiley face," "game shows my room." Most hits were duds—creepypasta fan fiction or edgy jokes. But every so often, the script would find a thread of genuine, terrified confusion. Those were the ones that made the acid churn in his gut.

A sharp, piercing PING cut through the hum of the cooling fans.

It wasn't one of the usual notifications. This was his high-priority alert. His blood turned to ice. He leaned forward, his paranoid eyes, perpetually ringed with dark circles, zeroing in on the highlighted text.

It was a post on an obscure retro-gaming forum. Username: RetroGamer_15 Subject: Weirdest Garage Sale Find EVER - 'Getting Closer'

Liam’s breath caught in his throat.

The post read: “Hey guys, picked up a blank white Wii disc today for a buck. When I put it in, it installed a channel called ‘Getting Closer.’ No music, SUPER basic graphics, just a stick figure in a maze. The only sound is this weird… scraping noise? Like dragging metal. It follows you. Kinda creepy but also cool. I’m on the third level now. It’s a map of my house. LOL. Has anyone ever seen this before?”

Below the text was a shaky cell phone picture of a TV screen. On it, a crude, blocky replica of an upstairs hallway. And at the end of that hall, a single open door. Liam didn't need to guess which room it was.

He checked the timestamp. Posted two hours ago.

"No," he whispered, the sound raw in the silent room. "No, you idiot kid. It's not cool."

Two hours. An eternity. The first level, the basement. The second, the ground floor. The third, the upstairs hallway. And the final level… the bedroom. Where the game shows you yourself. Where the final text appears. Liam slammed his fist on the desk, rattling a tower of dusty CD-ROMs. Survivor's guilt, a familiar, bitter poison, flooded his system. Every new victim was his failure. Another ghost to add to the chorus in his head.

There was no time for despair. The hunt was on.

He moved with a practiced, frantic efficiency. A heavy-duty duffel bag, his 'go-bag,' was pulled from under the desk. He didn’t pack clothes or food. He packed tools of a trade no one else on earth knew existed. A handheld EMF meter modified to detect specific energy frequencies. A compact, high-discharge EMP device of his own design—crude, but effective at frying nearby electronics. A twenty-inch solid iron crowbar, cold and heavy. He’d learned the hard way that the entity had a strange aversion to cold iron. It didn’t kill it, but it slowed it down, made its form less stable.

He shoved a laptop loaded with diagnostic software and hacking tools into the bag and grabbed a small, worn flask from a drawer. It was filled with holy water, a gift from a terrified priest in another town, another life he’d failed to save completely. Liam wasn't a man of faith, but he was a man of results, and sometimes, the old ways had teeth.

He pulled on a dark hoodie, the fabric a familiar shroud. A quick glance in a darkened monitor showed him a stranger: a wild-eyed man with a haunted past etched into every line on his face. He didn't recognize the boy from that family room anymore. The Glitch had taken him, too. It just hadn't finished the job.

His car, a beat-up sedan that rattled on good days, tore through the sleeping city streets. The forum post had mentioned the town name: Havenwood. The irony was so cruel it was almost funny. There was no haven from this thing.

While he drove, he worked. One hand on the wheel, the other flying across his phone's screen. Cross-referencing the username 'RetroGamer_15' with social media profiles tagged in Havenwood. It was a digital breadcrumb trail he had followed countless times. He found him in under ten minutes: Josh Miller, a fifteen-year-old whose profile picture showed him grinning, holding up a vintage Nintendo 64 controller. An address was linked to his mother's public profile. The GPS was set. Ninety minutes away.

He pushed the car harder, the engine screaming in protest. The rhythmic thump of the tires on the highway asphalt was a countdown timer. In his mind's eye, he saw the blocky white text appearing on Josh Miller’s screen.

I’M HERE.

He arrived in Havenwood just after 2 a.m. The town was dead silent, a postcard for forgotten Americana. Streetlights cast long, skeletal shadows from barren trees. He found the street and killed the engine a block away, gliding the last few hundred feet in chilling silence.

He spotted the house instantly. A two-story colonial, a perfect copy of a thousand other suburban dreams. And just like his nightmare, there was a single light burning in an upstairs window. A bedroom.

Liam grabbed his bag and slipped out of the car, a shadow moving through shadows. He crept across the manicured lawn, the iron crowbar cold in his hand. Every sense was on fire. He was listening, waiting, praying he was wrong. He stood under the looming silhouette of a great oak tree, staring up at that illuminated window, planning his next move. Break a window? Kick in the door? How do you explain to a terrified family that you’re there to fight the monster from their son’s video game?

And then he heard it.

It started faintly, a whisper on the edge of hearing, weaving through the cold night air. A dry, grating sound.

Scrape. Drag.

His heart seized. It wasn't coming from the house. It was coming from everywhere. It was the sound of the world’s texture being ground away, the audio track of reality itself beginning to skip. It was the sound that had haunted his sleep for eighteen years, a permanent, metallic scar on his soul.

Scrape. Drag. Scrape. Drag.

Louder now. Closer. The Glitch wasn't just in the game anymore. It wasn't just in the house. The final level had begun, and its borders were bleeding out into the street.

Liam looked from the glowing window to the empty, shadow-drenched street around him, his blood running cold with the horrifying realization.

He wasn’t just late. He was walking right into the game’s final frame.