The words fell away like rain on a window pane, dissolving again into the same jumble of text as before. Sometime during the story, the room had gone as silent as a placid sea at midnight. The wind had died away, and the fire was nothing but embers that glowed quietly in the hearth.
Conrad shivered. He could not say why, though he told himself that it was from the cold. He stood up and walked to the bin where the firewood sat in the open. He picked out two split logs, both dry and sinuous, and threw them into the fireplace. Smoke rose for only an instant before the wood sputtered and hissed into flame. He rubbed his hands together, suddenly painfully aware that he was not cold at all. He was, however, thirsty. The flagon of ale was long empty, and perhaps on any other night, he would have considered whether perhaps he had already consumed more than he should. But not tonight. Tonight he had too much on his mind.
He walked into the darkened kitchen of the inn and jerked open the refrigerator door. He’d been there so long that this sort of familiarity was fully condoned. He grabbed a Budvar and threw a dollar—more than enough—on the counter. He popped the top and took a deep, long pull. And his thoughts were deep and long as well.
He thought of the stories, of the impossibly long block of text on his computer screen. Of the riddles, the post that no one else seemed to have seen or opened, of the prehistoric men in the story he had just read, so eerily similar to the man he had seen in the snows earlier in the night.
It’s all for me, he thought. He coughed out a laugh. “Absurd,” he said to himself. It was just a game, a clever scam. Like so many others he had seen—and occasionally fostered—over the years. It was, after all, the way of the deep net. Layers of bullshit obscuring the truth.
And yet, it all seemed so familiar to him as well. Especially Limbus. He could have sworn he’d seen it before, or heard of it at least.
“Maybe I should Google it.”
He walked back into the other room, intending to do just that. But then he saw her, and he forgot all about Limbus.
She was standing in front of the fire, shadows dancing across her face. Normally, when he saw her, she was dressed in the modesty her parents demanded. Not tonight.
Her dark hair hung long and loose, spilling over her breasts. And it was a good thing, too, as nothing much else did. Her blouse hung from her shoulders threatening to slip off at the slightest movement. The two cloth ties meant to keep it closed swung limply from the neckline, leaving her bare chest all but exposed. The simple skirt she wore was modest enough, but Conrad suspected there was nothing underneath.
“Hi, Veronica,” he muttered, immediately feeling foolish.
She smiled sweetly. “Hi, Conrad.”
There was probably a time in his life when he would have given into his basest desires in a situation like this, without a second thought. It was, in fact, the easy thing to do. Much easier than saying no. But he had matured. Or at least, that’s what he told himself. In the moment, he wasn’t so sure.
She stepped toward him, and as she did, Conrad was critically aware of just how young she was. A child who wanted to be a woman. And in that instant, the not insignificant temptation Conrad felt to take this girl and take her then and there melted away.
But she didn’t know she’d already lost. Not yet. And as she took one graceless step after another toward him, as she tossed her hair in a comical imitation of a Hollywood starlet from twenty or thirty years before, Conrad realized how painful this was about to get.
“You have been with us for a long time,” she said. “Will you stay much longer?” She rested one hand on the table, her other she placed, very deliberately, on her hip. Conrad stifled a laugh at this clumsy attempt at small talk, mixed with an even more clumsy attempt at sensuality.
“Veronica… darling…” He started to explain, but then he fell silent. He searched for the words to justify this rejection to her, to tell her that it was not her fault, that she would live a beautiful life without him.
But the words didn’t come, and in the end, they didn’t have to. She saw them in his eyes. Her own began to quiver. She reached up and pulled the top of her shirt closed. Shame and embarrassment spread from the top of her face, down her neck, and, Conrad was sure, all the way to her toes. She murmured something under her breath—not in English—spun on her heals, and veritably ran out of the room.
“Veronica, wait!” Conrad said, somewhat half-heartedly. But she did not wait. She disappeared into the back and into darkness.
Conrad felt like shit. That would pass, though. If he had given her what she had wanted? Now that was the kind of regret that didn’t go away. He was painfully aware of that fact from past experience.
“Well,” he mumbled, “I guess I’ll be getting my own beer from now on.” He chuckled joylessly to himself, and it echoed off the barren walls with such force that it scared him. The quiet of the place was immense.
Conrad took himself and his beer back to the table where sat his computer. He plunked down in front of it, having forgotten altogether what he had intended to do before. What he saw on the screen chilled him to his core.
He spun in his chair, expecting to see someone standing behind him. But there was no one, and so he leapt up, running to the window and peering out into the snowy night. The streets were empty. Chills coursed through his body so intense that his arms could have doubled for sandpaper. He turned and leaned his back against the wall, the cold from outside seeping into his bones. He stared at the electronic demon sitting on the wooden table across from him. The curser blinked furiously, demanding an answer. Even from here, he could still make out the words.
Every good deed deserves a reward. No riddle this time. Just hit enter.
His rational mind rebelled. How could they know? Were they watching him? Was this some kind of trick? He appealed to Ockham’s Razor, but for once, conspiracy was the logical option.
Conrad shook his head. Really, he had no choice. Curiosity, after all, was his drug. And he needed a hit. He walked over to the table. He pressed “enter.” Once again, the mass of symbols reformed, this time into the image of a grotesque figure—a man, but one with the face of a pig. Then it dissolved into words that Conrad could not help but read.