The Complete Game Trilogy: Game, Buzz, Bubble. Литагент HarperCollins USD

alternative was obviously that Erman had been lying, and had just been talking a load of crap.

      Okay, he was clearly a nut, but he didn’t seem like a liar. The hillbilly obviously believed one hundred per cent in what he had said, and most of it also fitted in with HP’s own experiences. The problem was that he just couldn’t take it all in, it was too much.

      But if he split the story into two, it worked better. If he bit the rotten apple and accepted that he’d merely been a crazy puppet leaping happily into action whenever the Game Master pulled the right strings, and if he bought all the stuff about betting and the way the Game was set up …

      If he did that, then the first part of what Erman had told him pretty much explained everything he had been through.

      Even if it stung badly to accept that he had been some sort of court jester in a virtual casino, the explanation made sense, unlike the rest of the story. At least it kept more or less on the right side of crazy.

      But he was still having trouble buying the conspiracy theory.

      The idea that the Game spanned the whole world, took on all manner of dirty jobs and also had ears and eyes everywhere – that was impossible to take in!

      Erman himself had said that he had reached those conclusions all on his own, not based on anything he had seen or experienced directly. Possibly one result of too many lonely hours spent out in that cottage with no contact with the civilized world. You really had to feel sorry for the poor bastard. Even if Erman had practically scared the shit out of him out there in the forest, HP still felt some sort of weird connection with Erman. They actually had quite a lot in common. The Game Master hadn’t exactly been particularly lenient towards either of them. Tracking them down, making them feel special and then, once the Game had had enough of their talents, dropping them like they were yesterday’s news.

      So what if Erman had lost some of his marbles? To be honest, he was genuinely fucking grateful that the poor reclusive bastard had helped him along. Opening his eyes, and possibly even giving him a way of accessing the Game.

      Whatever, he was feeling considerably calmer now. The nausea had almost gone and he was starting to feel hungry. Some Heinz baked beans was all he managed to find, and he ate them straight from the tin.

      What about the plane, then, trying to cut him down? How the hell could you explain that?

      No-one had followed him out there, he was absolutely certain of that, so what the fuck had happened?

      Okay, in theory it could all have been a mistake. He and Erman were roughly the same height and had the same colour and length of hair. From a distance you might get them mixed up, and from a height of a couple of hundred metres it was probably impossible to tell the difference.

      The nutter lived alone out there, so maybe the pilot simply assumed that the person emerging from the trees had to be Erman, – the description would have seemed to match.

      That’s what must have happened!

      Whoever it was in that plane, he must have had some beef with Erman, not him.

      Maybe some angry neighbour or inbred local who had run into the psycho in the Co-op? And decided to scare the shit out of the crazy fucker, Alfred Hitchcock-style when the opportunity suddenly arose. Stuff like that happened sometimes, you just had to take a look at TV3. Christ, there was a whole fucking series about people who did shit like that …!

      The more he thought about it, the more likely it sounded. Some sort of sick neighbourhood dispute that had got out of hand. It was a considerably easier to accept that explanation than the alternative.

      ‘Global conspiracy, my ass,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Yeah, right!’

      He’d never even been close to falling for that.

      Relieved, he leaned back in the kitchen sofa and turned on his laptop. There was nothing like a bit of television to make you forget your problems. You could always find some poor bastard out there who was in a worse state, and made you feel better about things. Once everything had calmed down a bit, he’d think about what to do next.

      Even before he heard the voice coming out of the speaker he realized what had happened. The local television news pictures were enough on their own for him to get it – the burning house, flashing blue lights and fire-engines parked among the nettles.

       ‘… fire-fighters were called to an isolated property just west of Sigtuna. It is not currently known if anyone was in the building when the fire broke out. The property is listed as uninhabited since the death of its last occupant, but according to witnesses someone has been living in the house in recent months. The police would like to contact a man in his thirties who was involved in a minor collision with a local bus at a nearby bus stop earlier in the day …’

      Half-digested baked beans all over auntie’s sink. HP was vomiting like a champion.

      It had taken him several days to recover. He must have picked up some sort of virus or some other crap, he had a fever and the projectile vomiting didn’t let up until there was nothing left but bile.

      As usual, it was Manga who came to his rescue, when he turned up to see why he hadn’t been in touch and found him flaked out on auntie’s rib-backed sofa. Totally fucking embarrassing, but Manga had shown he was a true friend. He’d taken him off to the Eriksdal pool so he could get cleaned up, then conjured up some clean clothes and rosehip soup, and he hadn’t even minded cleaning up the disgusting kitchen.

      Yep, Manga was a true friend, a BFF actually. And from now on HP would actually treat him like one. To start with, he’d call him Farook. If the name was important for Manga, then he’d use it from now on and stop taking the piss.

      He’d had loads of dreams while he was sick, fevered dreams about all sorts of things. He was pretty used to weirdo dreams anyway, they almost came as standard a few days or a week after a decent trip. He’d read that the THC in grass got stored up in the fatty tissues of the brain and could make its presence felt some time afterwards, a bit like a bomb on a timed detonator. Often his dreams were spaced-out Lord of the Rings affairs with giant butterflies and talking trees, which was pretty cool.

      But these dreams were different, far darker and less pleasant than his Miss Mary Jane fantasies.

      He remembered one particularly vivid dream that involved him running naked through the Klara Tunnel. Erman’s charred, blackened corpse was chasing him on the flatbed moped, at the head of hundreds of stampeding, riderless horses.

      The tunnel exit on Sveavägen was getting closer and closer, but his pursuers were gaining on him. His steps were getting heavier and heavier as the slope got steeper and steeper, and he realized that he wasn’t going to make it. The moped’s engine rose to a rattling falsetto, along with the clatter of hooves.

      They’re everywhere!! It’s all a fucking Game!! The corpse’s charred mouth howled, but the last word was distorted and bounced around him like an echo off the walls of the tunnel.

       Geim

       Geim

       Geim

      He woke up with his heart pounding in his chest just as the moped was about to smash into the back of his knees.

      But now he felt better.

      No fever, clean again, and he’d eaten his fill. Maybe his legs felt a bit stiff, but that would pass.

      The question was: what was he going to do now?

      He wouldn’t be able to move back into his flat for another week or so, evidently there was some sort of delay with the new door. In a way he was almost glad. There was no point denying it really, he wasn’t looking forward to moving back home. The fact was that after what had happened out near Sigtuna he was … frightened.

      Yes, he’d admitted it. Henrik HP Pettersson, the man, the myth, the legend – was scared.

      So the