The rain hadn’t stopped for three days. Not since I’d found the key—a brass, old-looking thing—under a loose board in my own backyard. It didn’t fit any lock in my house. So, of course, I tried the Neighbor’s.

I woke up in my own bed. The brass key was gone. But under my pillow, I found a fresh child’s drawing: a single figure in a green sweater, standing over a basement door, waiting.

Alpha 1. That’s what the forums called it. The “broken build.” The one where his eyes were too big, his house a maze of placeholder textures and doors that opened into white nothingness. But I didn’t know that then. I only knew the thrill.

I found the basement stairs behind a fake bookshelf. The door groaned open, revealing a single light bulb swinging over concrete steps. Halfway down, I heard it—a wet, rhythmic thumping. Like something large in a cage.

Then the game glitched. His model stretched—arms elongating, neck snapping upward—and the screen flickered. I tried to run, but the basement door slammed shut. The lights went out.