Gameology 2.0

Review Of

Williams, Roberta. Mystery House. Oakhurst, CA: Sierra On-line, 1982.

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Terror. Ah, to read that word conveys nothing of it--that rawness, that dreadful "being in the world" electrocution that rips our complacency into bloody pieces and spews it in our face. No one can relate to the terrified--one can only be terrified; and even immediately afterward the experience fades, until terror is once again a word; a half-remembered experience, that no matter how evocatively described, cannot return our heart or our mind to that awful state that wracked it so.

Last night, in the last glowing amber rays of the Minnesota evening sun, I booted Roberta William's Mystery House for the first time. I have recorded, to the best of my ability and as my shivering fingers permit, my recollection of that unholy point in my life. Lest you hate me with a bitter heard until your body is fit for its casket, read no further lest your hubris trump your sanity--for below I document the terror that is playing Mystery House.

Humbly rattled my Apple II, still quaintly fashionable--even resplendent--in its plastic bosom, crafted when even engineers let muses divert them from that mud demon, efficiency. What wonders had that pandora's box already delivered unto me! And now within it lay 5 1/4 inches of data; mere ones and zeroes, my drive's tongue licked over its finite blackness; that slithering thing savored each moment because it new the place it was bringing me, and would delight in watching its slavedriver suffer the torment that I welcomed. I rubbed my hands together. Hurry! And that tongue sped the faster; yes, fool, I rush as never before to bring you doom! The only task it begrudged me not in its thankless, mechanical life.

There are, I think, but two kinds of games: Those that we play, and those that play us. As the words "Mystery House" appeared on that glowing screen, I knew all too well that Roberta had tied her strings to my joints, and with her tugs I would dance to those dark yet lively tunes she knew too well. Dance, then, fool, and if you are unaware of my pullings, then so is my skill, not my lack of mastery--over you, nothing to boast about.

With green and purple lines, smearing and blending cross the screen like an abused child's sick fantasies, I was engrossed; but upon no fridge would these drawings hold betwixt their metal and a mother's magnet--NO. In these scrawlings, so insanely straight-edged, as though the artist could not curve her wrist, so inflexible was the demonic frenzy that ignited her imagination. N. Nothing. GO. Nothing. Enter door. Go up to door. Help. Nothing. "UP" and, yes, I was before that door, and now, a whisper in my ear the sesame if I would listen: "GO DOOR." Dolt. "OPEN DOOR." Yes. "GO DOOR." And I am inside the nightmare.

Nothing moves in Mystery House. The house itself is a ghost, as you become when you enter it. You do not move; the world whisks you off and drops you someplace else. Those fools in Plato's cave--yes, but here those puppeteers make less pretense. Here those puppeteers don't have to. Showmanship is so useless when the world outside becomes a fiction.

Seven people. Seven potential killers. One is most definitely. I stumble through, tripping and somehow always ending up in the next room. I find notes floating in the air as though to get my attention. I am already agitated; my stomach, though empty, begs for my nerves even as they react to those fearful words. Jewels? Hidden? Alas, though people are dying here--death is everywhere and anyone--yet I lust for these jewels; perhaps one a pearl to make a fool like me wise. And why shouldn't I search for them? Aren't I supposed to? Greed is no option; greed is human motion.

I find the gardener first. Beaten to death with a blunt instrument. And you know, you never know what death is--never know what mortality is--never know that such a thing as death really exists, until you see a real-life corpse stretched dead, misshapen before you. There is nothing so wrong--you are not supposed to see. Such things are behind the curtain, always--but if you do just happen to catch a glimpse; then aren't you marked? For to know death is to die one day.

Such things lit by the bright eye of God are unwholesome, yet scorned by that light; but then the sun went down, and that cold, cowardly moon took its place. In darkness, then, I would find falter--yet, amazingly, my shaking hands found matches and that candle I took from the dining table--yes! Oh, and then in candlelight my fear would be protracted.

One by one, my companions...No more. Ten little Indians, all dead but one. And then!

No. We don't experience a knife flying at us--a reflex; instinct, we duck--and that blade sinks deeply into the wall. We only realize much later that a knife had been reaching to open our veins, always so exposed, and narrowly missed. An inch has made the difference.

I hide, cringing in the dining room. A sudden sound--a crash! And I drop my candle. A blaze erupts, and I wonder that death by dagger would be so less painful than this. But I filled that pitcher from the fridge for good reason--providence, providence--and down it goes. I smell burnt carpet and, bending low, find the key. Maybe--yes, that chest?

Inside it is a gun, and I am no longer the hunted. A knife? A knife thrown at me, the gun-toting god? Such contempt. Such impudence! No, no, Daisy, for I know you know--your blonde strand has given you away. Pitiful girl, so ruthless--that, I admire. I will dream for years, embellishing always, each murder your lovely hand committed. Your sins ring louder than mine, my dear, and that is why you are so much more fearful than I was, when it was you who quested for my blood. Hell will welcome your body, all dried to tinder by your evil deeds.

And then, thanks to that telescope in the tree, that tool of star-gazers that so worried the church fathers--oh, for good reason! For I have used that devil's instrument to find my prey! Galileo, you are my accomplice, heathen.

To the trapdoor I go, my gun a little dog all eager to rush when I say "Sick'er." Up goes the portal! And Daisy, all too terrified to move, that brilliant meat cleaver in her hand not to be defiled by my blood. Impudent, foolish, ruthless, Daisy! Fiend! Did you think I was cattle--some clueless, sod-chewing cow whose soul would be stripped from its body by that rusty instrument? How pitiful! Now, eat lead, and in death offer your betters no further insult.

Does a man change after he has killed? I've wanted to ask that of a soldier: You, sir, has killing made you stronger? But, now I know the answer, and I know what the members of that club have so long known. Killing forever separates you from your fellows; not ever again will you dream of togetherness, but only of the terror of not seeing--of everyone else dead but you, left--exiled, a killer knows no remorse, because a killer has forgotten he is a man.

I move the cabinet, take a sledge hammer to the wall, and take the jewels. A run around the forest brings me back, and at last I am on my way out of Mystery House. To face prison. Perhaps a medal. But I already have the metals and the minerals that matter most to me; for these earthly riches are all I can ever hope to soothe me, give me meaning--no, no. Not to give my life meaning. But to condemn it in...mystery.