The wind cuts like a shark’s teeth.
Howling gusts of cold air sound like they could flay the flesh from an animal’s bones.
Wouldn’t be much of a story if I had come here merely to complain about the wind.
But yeah, windy as all fuck in Colorado right now. I live on Fossil Creek drive in Clarendon Hill, Fort Collins. It’s a quiet suburban cul-de-sac. So I usually can hear every single car that comes down our street. Which is weird, because I heard nothing the day the game was delivered. I’ve got a pretty good view from my lounge room window, and never saw anyone walk past my drive. I have been watching too, because the wind has blown over a few bins, sweeping up papers and junk.
The disk was wrapped all in black packaging, with some white writing on it. Knew it was unusual straight away, Ill share the video I took in a moment.
Was very suspicious from the beginning, and when I found a disk for the Sega Saturn, I was right away like ‘What kind of fucking joke is this? The Saturn?’
I thought it must’ve been a gift from my nephew John Phillip, because he actually owns a Saturn. He’s one of these Gen Z hipster types, and really into all that retro gaming stuff. Still, I called JP, and he said he knew nothing about it. JP reckons the whole thing is a practical joke somebody is playing on me. Which would make sense. But can’t think of anyone who dislikes me enough to go to that much effort. The game sat on my bench for a week before I got around to borrowing JPs machine. In that time of course, I’d finally done my own research on the game, but there was very little to discover. Not listed on any archive or database of the SEGA company, or their affiliates Konami or Midway. I searched the seven seas of the internet, high and low, and found nothing.
Horrible storm since I sat down to play. As you will see in my video, I tried to screen capture to give full detail. The game straight away loads to this character select screen. But the buttons won’t allow you to select anything. I thought it might be a glitch or a demo version.
Until I worked out that if you reset the console, when it reloads the character select screen has variations. Like, there’s multiple start up codes.
https://twitter.com/DeathCult3/status/1540993709084639232?s=20&t=vgqs2ov8K9-BdWpBHhemAA
https://twitter.com/DeathCult3/status/1541002754872983552?s=20&t=45BirQzeu5-_focmPp0urw
https://twitter.com/DeathCult3/status/1541003675694682113?s=20&t=45BirQzeu5-_focmPp0urw
https://twitter.com/DeathCult3/status/1541004262784004097?s=20&t=45BirQzeu5-_focmPp0urw
The characters names mean nothing to me, but I do reckon many of them sound Japanese.
Otsaya Fukira - the Samurai’s son
Leshelle Junjiro - the woodmaker
Tatsi Oyano - owner of the well
Laku Shianu - The Metal smith
https://twitter.com/DeathCult3/status/1541005862109868032?s=20&t=45BirQzeu5-_focmPp0urw
I do know SEGA released a lot of games in Japan that were never released in the states.
Anyway, my initial hunch was probably right… that this was some unreleased dev or prototype that someone has fucked with as a joke. The weirdest thing happened when I reset the game a third time. Finally, it allowed me to select a character. I swear to God, the storm picked up and there was some kind of electric surge. It blew several fuses in the main box, and my microwave has completely died since.
https://twitter.com/DeathCult3/status/1541010154883547139?s=20&t=45BirQzeu5-_focmPp0urw
There were some horrible audible crunches, and as I went outside later, that was when I found the dead birds. Looked like they hadn’t been dead for long.
https://twitter.com/DeathCult3/status/1541012762578796544?s=20&t=45BirQzeu5-_focmPp0urw
There was a weird smell, like burnt almonds at nonna’s house, or spilled citronella oil. Was having trouble breathing, the air was so thick it was suffocating, thick particles of air, demonic little micro-organisms.
I don’t know how well the sound came out on the video, but I had heard the thumping at the time. Just dull little thuds on the roof and dirt. Later I saw even more birds out on the road.
They’d just plumetted out of the sky. The only explanation I can give is it was an electrical storm and that was what killed the birds. Couldn’t see anything on the news to confirm this.
https://twitter.com/DeathCult3/status/1541014781062426624?s=20&t=eULAtvuY6w1SgnBRN-N-8Q
I work at Ace Hardware of Firestone. The week following was slow, the wind has been around non stop since then too.
Jessie at work laughed at me for being scared of a video game, and of course I know the events are unrelated, just a coincidence. I was playing the game when the electrical storm happened. Just a coincidence.
But the video also kind of creeped me out. Must’ve been filmed years ago, and then recorded back off on an old VHS cassette.
Then someone had programmed it into the game. Lot of work for a practical joke.
Jessie is cute, I think she knows I’m attracted to her. Its a bit embarrassing, I did ask her if she wanted to research the game with me, but she declined.
That Thursday night, I jumped on all the SEGA forums to ask about the game.
https://twitter.com/DeathCult3/status/1541016172044632064?s=20&t=45BirQzeu5-_focmPp0urw
Nobody was very helpful at first. But then a user named Raekwoon5 pointed me in the direction of another forum called NRGiseternal. He told me that Death Cult wasn’t a real video game, and it was part of an old ARG, but that these guys on this forum would apparently be able to give me info about it. He also put me in touch with a group on discord to get the login details.
They were very accommodating, and did basically share this history of the game with me. They told me Death Cult was in fact a real game, in contrast to what Raekwoon5 seemed to think (that the whole thing was an ARG), so there you go.
Here’s the thread they shared with me.
https://ibb.co/nMxvtfk
Basically to summarise, the thread talks about a friend of the famous game creator Hideo Kojima.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hideo_Kojima
Kojima’s friend was a man named Ganamata Fakiro (who worked at SEGA) he is supposedly the creator of the game that was sent to me in the post. Long story short, he fell out of favour with the CEO of SEGA, and although hundreds of copies had already been sent to the public, the game was pulled from shelves and erased from SEGAs catalogue.
I felt strange, sitting in my garden and looking at the creepy cover of the game. With the feminine figure in a silver mask staring up at me. Whether the story was real, or the whole thing was just an ARG, it still felt unbelievably odd and made me anxious.
The dead birds were still scattered around because I hadn’t had the heart to go and dump the corpses in my wheelie. My garden was also getting overgrown, and the tall grass blew eerily in the breeze.
I’d been looking up at the passing clouds when I heard the croak, and looked back down to see the black frog hopping across the grass. The only explanation I can give from here on in is to say that I was experiencing a hallucination from shock.
It was only for a fraction of a second before the frog had hopped away, that I’d noted the insidious and maddening detail. The frog appeared to have a man’s face. A strange Japanese man with pointy cheekbones. That’s what I thought I had saw. That’s what my mind had seen.
My over active imagination was playing tricks on me, surely was all it was. So I decided to take a walk around the neighbourhood and clear my head.
Fossil Creek was very heavy from the recent rain. The river was whispering like some damned soul, and I could hear a dog barking, echoing over the rooftops. I wandered up the river towards the bush, hoping to clear my mind. Trampling dried leaves beneath the soles of my shoes. The long walk up the winding river had done me some good. Chirping insects sort of balanced out the impending jump start of my heartbeat caused by playing the game.
When I got back to the straight, I could hear this noise coming from the storm drain. Sounded like a grown man crying, or screaming softly. I felt weird and wanted to go home.
My heart was pulsing again, pressing thumb tacks into my chest like a shaking maraca stick as I got in the car, driving home in the dark.
More dogs around the neighborhood were barking. It’s not unusual for dogs to bark I know, but this was like something was gearing them up. Like, they could hear something that I couldn’t. Then, I swear my gentle eardrums caught the same insane disease. Heightened sensitivity— the hollow barks were not just empty syllables, but the consonants carried to the wind so the barking continued in some combination of audible sounds, that I swear could have been the word death repeated over and over again.
I locked myself inside my home, feeling stricken with paranoia. I grabbed the Death Cult game and tossed it into the garbage bin under the kitchen sink.
I then sat on the couch for some time, staring at the blank TV. Wondering if I had gone completely mad. It started to come to me, wafts of the most horrendous smell. Worse than the dead birds, this was a putrefying smell of fermenting flesh. Black mould on the carrion of angel fingers.
My ears pricked up to a dull, monotonous hum and I wandered over to the source of it. Opening the cupboard door beneath the sink, to find the buzzing flies and maggots hoarding like an Old Testament plague. I tried to waft away the demented insect life and peer inside the bin.
As I gazed into the abyss of the dank bin, I could see right away the horrible carcass, where I had just thrown the Death Cult game. Skinned and wet with gore, the dead animal, probably a possum or a cat was far along the stage of putrefaction and decomposition. Cells breaking down, like acidic globules of pus and blood swimming with the larvae of Brachycera flies.
With all the energy I could muster I grabbed the maggot ridden bin and ran, depositing it at my doorstep and slamming the door behind me. Coughing and trying to block my nose from the blasphemous smell of rotting organism. Breathing heavily, and sliding down, until I was curled up on the floor.
After a short period of resting, I was hit with a wave of malaise. I stumbled upstairs and lay down on my bed.
Staring at the peeling plaster on the roof.
This was the feeling I was trying to express earlier. Have you ever had this? When you’re alone with your thoughts and you get this kind of tormented vision. Like this horrible sense that you’re alone, and all the multi dimensional stuff is a riddle, just designed for you, if you can decode it —maybe, just maybe you could break free. Or maybe there never was a way, maybe it was all some Demiurge’s conjuring trick.
It was happening again… I knew I had to act.
I knew if I was too much of a coward to act I could be trapped in the illusion forever.
The answer was at my front doorstep, inside that festering bin.
I cautiously made my way back down the stairs, lungs up inside my throat. The lump ached and I couldn’t make any noise except for limp whimpers.
Had to face the music. The unreality. Unlocked and opened the front door, the bin was still sitting where I had left it.
But now, the insects chirping brought reality back. There were no flies or maggots inside the bin. No mutilated animal corpse. Just the same game, wrapped in plastic.
I carried the bin back inside, and pulled the game case back out, placing it carefully on the kitchen bench. It was as if I was damaged by the hallucination, and the warning. Too scared to throw the game out now for fear of repercussions.
That night I tried to distract myself with an old ARG. Reading through ‘The Sun Vanished’ on twitter. Its familiar creepiness was far removed from the all too real lingering madness hanging around my house.
https://mobile.twitter.com/thesunvanished
My nephew JP messaged me asking if I had tracked the delivery of the package. I looked at the packaging again and the weird message on the packaging ‘Demon’s Crest’. Think that was an old NES game mentioned on the thread I’d read at NRG is eternal.
Messaged JP ‘No delivery information. Someone must’ve just dropped the package by hand. No stamp. No address.’
I opened up a walkthrough of Demon’s Crest on youtube and watched the weird intro and mythology of the gem stones and the rise of Firebrand.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsCPOJA8MCg&t=5002s
Weird old game. Wonder if there’s anything to decode, if the whole thing was an ARG, that would make sense. But it didn’t feel like an ARG, after the birds dying and those other hallucinations.
‘You should ask the Post man, or your neighbours. Maybe they saw something?’ JP wrote.
The kid had a point.
Later that night I went around to Tony’s house, and knocked on the door with a six pack of Great Divide Yeti Imperial Stout. Tony’s wife Geraldine answered and invited me in.
I slumped on their sofa, waiting for Tony to get out of the shower. He gladly cracked a beer and we sat on the deck on a hanging bench.
‘You been home nights the last week or so?’ I asked.
‘Sure. I’ve had the week off, Geraldine has been sick. So taking care of some errands.’
‘Listen. Did you hear anything on Monday night?’
‘Of course. That was the night of that big electrical storm. There was a crazy hissing sound. We lost power for about a minute.’
‘No. Not last Monday. The Monday before.’
‘Oh. Let me think. Nope, nothing unusual.’
‘Oh.’
‘Why do you ask?’ Tony inquired with genuine concern.
‘Had something weird dropped in my mailbox. Was wondering if you’d seen or heard anyone shady lurking out the bottom of my driveway…’
‘Sorry Alex. No such luck.’
We finished the six pack and complained about the weary and strange story arcs of life.
The next morning I caught the postman at 6:20am doing his morning run. He seemed startled as I ran down like a madman, in my yellow dressing gown waving something in the air.
I’d thought maybe he was going to attack me, the way he sat up defensively on his high vis neon coated bike.
‘Excuse me… i’m sorry’ I said panting and out of breath.
‘Nothing for your place today–’ he prempted.
‘Yes—inconsequential…. what I wanted to ask…?’
‘Go on—-‘ he said, still raising his hands defensively.
I held the plastic game cover in front of his eyes. Also waving the black packaging in my other hand.
Someone dropped this off to me Monday the 14th. I know it probably wasn’t on your run, but….’
The postman suddenly seemed to take actual notice for the first time. He squinted, and his eyes narrowed in heavily. Not on the game, but on the black packaging with the white writing.
‘The packaging…. now that is something. I’ve seen it before. That is….. i’ve had someone complain to me of the same thing.’
‘You had someone else on your round complain about being sent a package like this? Do you remember who?’ I asked with passion.
‘God. This was over a month ago.’
I watched his face wrinkle as he thought it over. That was on my route in Northglenn Denver. Sure, I can still remember the guys face as clear as day. Larger guy. Black guy. Face was white when he came up to me though. Not unlike you now.’
After some begging I finally persuaded the postie to hand over the address in Pearl Crescent.
I made the hour long drive in my Land Rover— down Eisenhower Freeway. Past the weird Centerra monument. There was a coldness and a void that day. As if some dying giant who breathed our air was choking on humanity’s polution and the planet was dying with him. Past roaring trucks and vast quarries of construction yards. Clouds and arid, dry grass.
Finally, I arrived at the address. It was awkward and sort of illegal. I didn’t even have a name. Just an address. Gazing like a stalker through the passenger window up at the immaculate lawn and palatial mansion. It was a bit of a whim, and in the end I was relying on the postman’s memory. Which only had to be a number out –and it was a dead end. I waited for an hour, watching. Finally the front door opened, and a tall man with tan skin, Nike clothes and a bald head exited.
I seized the opportunity, and jumped out of the car hurrying up to the garden path. The man noticed me coming, and halted, he had the presence of a big league sports star.
I tried to be casual, so as not to scare him off. Raising my hand slowly as if I was someone he was expecting.
‘Hello there. What a funny coincidence this is.’
‘Funny? Coincidence?’ The man didn’t look impressed.
‘We have something in common—’, I could sense that if I kept beating around the bush he’d be gone.
With purposeful direction, I reached into my bag and pulled out the black packaging. The man’s eyeballs bulged in his head, like white dumplings.
‘Where’d you get that?’
I had his attention.
‘This was sent to me in the mail. Had a game in it.’
‘Death Cult?’ He asked, with horror.
‘So…you got the same package.’
We sat for a while at an outdoor table in the man’s backyard. He showed me photographs of his package. Same white writing— that looked like it was written with a correction pen. Slightly different wording, his said:
‘RED CIPHER 002.RAR
DAI MAKAIMURA PRIN PRIN KAWAMOTO X68000’
Pretty soon we were both engrossed in each other stories.
The man’s name was Leon Parkes. Leon told me that his version of the game actually worked beyond the select screen. Which impressed me. He couldn’t show me. Didn’t have it anymore. But he could describe the game in detail.
Seemed to be the Japanese version of the characters I’d seen. The way Leon described, the game was based in this small village of Yamanashu near Mt Fuji, Japan. Each character you played as had this simple journey where you had to fulfil your routine. The owner of the well would dredge water everyday. The painter had to finish six canvasses and so on.. meanwhile the character would encounter these markings painted around the town. Leon said he got up to the point in the game where you discovered the occult symbols were being orchestrated by an organisation run by a villain, and the plot centred around working together to expose the cult leader’s activities.
Mr Parkes said he couldn’t get much further into it. But also bigger things had happened in his life which had distracted him from the game.
I was afraid to ask if he’d had similar hallucinations, in case he’d think I was crazy. Or if there’d been anything like the storm killing those birds when he first turned the game on. But Mr Parkes had already started to delve into the tragic story of his family in this period. His wife had developed Crones disease and his daughter diagnosed with Leukemia all around the same time. Not weeks after he had first received the game in the mail. Tragically his daughter Liella had passed away only four weeks ago.
Asking if he thought the family illness had any relation to the game suddenly seemed absurd, or offensive. The conversation had also become quite heavy and I could see that Leon was getting very emotional, so I got his contact details and left him to his solitude.
That was yesterday.
I feel a bit sick, and part of me wants to keep investigating this, while the other part is starting to wonder whether I wouldn’t be better to leave the whole thing well enough alone.
I guess I wanted to ask what other people think?
Should I try to play the game again? Or just throw it out?