The Persistent Player

June 18, 2012

by Pamela

I don’t expect you to believe me. It’s fine if you think we’re crazy or that we made it up. But what happened to my friend Maya and me last fall is as real as the scratches on my arms. We’re still trying to make sense of it, but we’re both certain of one thing: we weren’t alone in that cabin.

It was our senior year, and Maya and I had been best friends since we were kids, but we were about to go to different colleges. We wanted one last adventure before everything changed. My folks had a ramshackle cabin on a lake that was miles from anywhere, and we convinced them to let us spend the weekend there. The cabin was old, with creaky floorboards and a fireplace that hadn’t been used in years, but it was perfect for us. We brought along a stack of board games and my old Nintendo Switch, intending to play through every game we loved in one last marathon.

Friday night, we played Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros under a blanket fort we built in the living room. The only light came from the TV and the flickering candles we’d lit for the aesthetic. It was around midnight when Maya said she felt like we were being watched. I laughed it off, chalking it up to the spooky vibe of the cabin. But then, on the third race, I saw a third player named “C” appear in the lobby. Neither of us had added it. We just stared at each other, and Maya reached for the remote to close the game, but the console wouldn’t respond. We tried to turn it off, but the switch just blinked. Then, in the game, the character “C” chose a spot, and the race started with us playing as if everything was normal. We played for hours, losing every game to “C.” We never saw its character, but its name stayed at the top of the leaderboard. The more we played, the more uneasy we felt. We tried to ignore it, but the sensation of being watched grew stronger.

Finally, we decided to go to bed. The only bedroom was upstairs, and we both felt a sudden reluctance to leave the living room. But we were exhausted, so we dragged ourselves up the creaky stairs. As we lay in our sleeping bags, we heard a faint sound from below: the distinct crackle of a controller being used, the clicks of buttons. We froze. The TV had been turned off, but we could see a faint glow coming from the stairway. We slowly crept back down, and there, on the TV screen, the game had resumed. The character selection screen showed “C” again, and the game was loading. We screamed and scrambled for the light switch. The moment the lights flickered on, the screen went black. The console was off.

We didn’t sleep that night. We sat in the living room with every light on, talking in hushed tones. Maya joked that it was just a glitch, but neither of us believed it. The next morning, we decided to leave early. We packed our things in a hurry, but as we were about to walk out the door, I noticed something odd on the coffee table. It was Maya’s extra controller, the one she’d forgotten in the original story—but here, it was a different one. It was coated in dust, as if it had been sitting there for years. We hadn’t brought it. We looked at each other, and without a word, we ran to the car.

We drove for hours in silence. When we finally got to a gas station, we checked the controller. It was an old model, one we didn’t own. On its back, scratched into the plastic, was the name “C.” We never went back to that cabin. We still talk about it sometimes, but we can’t explain it. The weird thing is, every once in a while, I’ll turn on my Switch at home and see a third player in the lobby. Always named “C.” And when I look at the screen, I see my character’s health bar drain, even though nothing is hitting me. I don’t play online anymore. But sometimes, I can feel it watching, waiting for me to pick up that dusty controller again.

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