If you have ever been interested in any horror game then you are probably familiar with the PC videogame, developed by ID software, known as "Doom 3". It was released for Microsoft Windows on August 3, 2004. It was in fact a huge success for ID software, as it sold 3.5 million copies, and has now been released for the Xbox, and Xbox 360 consoles. The story, in summary, is set in 2145, on Mars where the military has set up a scientific research facility which experiments with subjects such as teleportation, advanced weapon design, and biological research. But, a gateway is "accidentally" opened to hell, releasing nightmares untold. The player is put into the role of a lone marine who is replacing another marine who had died due to unknown circumstances.
The game is actually quite frightening due to pop-out scares and some definitely creepy demon like monsters that the player must face through out the game. Just recently, I had received a letter from a friend, which was odd enough, knowing that he could have texted, emailed, or even facebooked me. But, he instead chose to write out a letter and send it to me through normal means, not even express mail, just threw it in a mailbox. When I received this letter, it was in a slightly bigger envelope that any normal letter. So, naturally, I was curious as to why he used this big of an envelope to send it. When I opened it up, a copy of the game, "Doom 3", for Microsoft Windows, fell out of it before I could even pull the letter out. At least I thought it was, the disk looked a bit different from the normal disks that I had seen though. I thought to myself, "Oh, well that is cool of him to send me a copy of this. I have really wanted to play it." That, was before I read his letter. It read: Dear Lock, I got this game from an old game shop. The clerk at the register said if I handed over ten bucks the game was mine, and I could just take it.
It happened to be the only copy he had, that had no case. Finding that to give the game an even more eerie feeling about it, of course I bought it. You know me, being the big horror geek, I just had to have this game. Immediately, like any other gamer who had just gotten a hard on from an eerie copy of a horror game, I drove straight home to play it. When I got home, like always, Reisch was barking at the door and then quieted down when I walked inside. I sat right down at my computer and popped in the game. Before I did though, I noticed something a bit odd. The top of the disk, where the label was, looked a little bit weird. Where normal Doom 3 copies were just black with that cool lettering and all the little logos, this disk was red and said Doom 3 in a very creepy, and yet very cool looking black lettering, with no logos around it, almost like somebody hand painted it. I figured, hell, it must be like a special edition, right? So, I put the disk into the drive with ease. When the game started up, it was very cool. The main menu had a very nice heavy guitar jam on it, and that expansion, "Resurrection of Evil", with it. Overall, it looked like it would be a great time, and some great fun, especially for a jump scare fan. I started to play and everything was great, that creepy feeling as you first started as the marine. The first objective was to go underground and find a missing scientist which led into the whole "Hell portal and demon" stuff, ya know? I was loving it.
But, when I got past the first boss, which was basically a spider Medusa looking thing, that is when things started getting weird. And, I know what you are thinking, Doom 3 is supposedly one of the scariest horror games out there, how much weirder could it get, right? But, no, I mean things got genuinely weird. I stopped playing that night after I had killed the spider boss, and I went to bed. Now, this is the first trippy part, the graphics on the game were great, believe me, they were awesome. But, they were not exactly to the point of...life like, ya know? Well, I woke up the next morning and looked out my bedroom window, and I could have sworn I had seen one of those demons looking right at me from across the street.
I turned away and then looked back, and it was gone. I know they say, if you have a history of epilepsy don't play, but hallucinations, too? Through out the whole day, my mind kept going back to that game. I couldn't stop thinking about how I had thought I saw one in real life. I was almost laughing at myself.
I told my co-workers about it, and they had laughed too, saying that I needed to stop pulling all nighters and drinking so many energy drinks. I thought nothing could scare me, and yet. Ha! Well, that night, I started playing again. I got to about the second boss this time when you retrieve this thing called the soul cube. It is a pretty nifty little treasure in the game. When I turned it off that night, like I always did, I shut off my monitor. Immediately after I did, I saw one of those faces that float around as an enemy in the black, blank screen and I screamed as I fell backwards. It had to be real, I saw it this time, up close. It WAS there. When I finally forced myself to lay in my bed next to the dog that night and fall asleep, I had all these weird dreams about pentagrams, demons, hell, etc.
The next few days were pretty terrifying, because of all of these hallucinations that I kept having. I even went to a doctor, they just said get enough rest, drink plenty of water, and stop playing it. Of course, what every doctor would say, right? I went back to the game shop to tell them of the problems I had been having and I said I would like to return it. He just said that he could only take it back if something was wrong with it, and he could only exchange it for another copy of the same game. So, I figured if it was the same game, it wasn't even worth returning it. Then, about a week ago, I started feeling all these cold shivers start to run up and down my spine. All the co-workers started saying things like I was getting paler each day, I was a lot more jumpy that I usually was, just a whole bunch of things. Supposedly, one day, Sarah (a woman I work with) found me scratching a pentagram into my desk.
I had no memory of doing it, yet it was really there. Naturally, out of stupid curiosity, I started looking into this disk and all I could find out was that it had belonged to this guy who had recently died in a car accident. His son was the one who had sold the game not knowing what it was. So, of course, I looked into the guy more. Apparently he was just a normal, everyday life, family man guy. But, before he died he too started getting this strange obsession over this game. I managed to contact his son, out of pure fear that the same would happen to me, and asked him a few questions.
The one thing that caught my attention was that when I asked if it was a special edition, he said, "No, what are you talking about? It is just the normal game. We bought it at Wal-mart like everyone else." He hung up after I pleaded to him about how it was red and looked hand painted, and just so different. He just said I was tripping and needed to sober up. But, I wasn't on ANYTHING, I hadn't even drank an energy drink in days. When I had finally had enough of the hallucinations, the dreams, and the blackouts in which I would draw and carve pentagrams everywhere, I burned the disk. Just to be sure it was out of my life, maybe I am starting to lose it, I don't know anymore!!! I burned it, but when I did, I quickly pulled it back off the flame.
Why?! I had realized that there was a pentagram drawn under the red paint on it and a weird satanic looking writing, like I had seen in the game, all over it. I am sending it to you, because I know I can trust you to keep it hidden. Destroy it, if you feel like you must, but please for the love of -----d-n--play the game. -end letter That was all the letter said, and it looked like he had struggled after he had written, "for the love of". Something odd I noticed, was that he said he had burnt it, but it looked like he had explained it did when he bought it. I didn't understand it, at all. A few days passed, and that disk had started gathering dust on my book shelf. The last day I looked at it, was the very same day that his mother showed up at my door.
He really only did live a few hours away, and his mother only lived right up the road from me. When I answered the door, she was in tears and hugged me almost immediately as she saw me. I sat her down, got her a cool cup of coffee and asked what was wrong. She explained to me that he was found dead, lying in his living room. He had apparently had four large gashes going down his chest, like something had scratched him. But, it had scratched deep enough to penetrate every organ in his body at least once.
She really started sobbing as she told me, that the officials had been saying that if it was not a murderer, then it had to have been his dog that had basically gone mad. There were no signs of forced entry into his home, meaning he would have had to let the killer in, but his door was locked, meaning they would have had a key to lock it after they left. He had no back door, because he was in a very cheap apartment building, on the fourth floor.
I told her of his recent obsession over this game, and she stated that he did in fact have a scratch in his wrist, that when connected, formed a pentagram. She also pointed out, that each of the cuts, including his wrist, looked like they had been cauterized shut. Again, the officials, not knowing what happened, wrote it off as he tried to basically stitch himself back up before he collapsed to his death in the living room. I asked her, "Could it have been him who did this to himself?" She explained that she had asked the doctor that as well, and he said it was done in a downward motion, meaning he would have been dead before he got that far down anyway, because it had scratched all the way through the chest cavity.
I understood that he had probably been killed, but a murderer seemed so unlikely, due to the evidence surrounding it. I will admit, Reisch was a very large dog, with a lot of strength, so he just might have been able to scratch that deep, but that was unlikely also. As I walked her to the door and sent her off though, that is when it struck me. The only "hallucinations" he had seen, were the demons, his dreams were of hell, and his wounds were somehow burned closed? Plus, Reisch had been declawed when he was just a puppy. He was only turning 2 this year. A few days later I had gone over to his home with his family, and they gathered the important items, like photos, trophies, things like that. I, however being curious, went to his computer.
I was shocked, and scared to find that when I turned on the monitor, the screen had frozen on a scene in Doom 3, in which the marine had been attacked and killed by a demon while still in the hell level, right after the second boss. The way that the demon stood signified he had struck in a downward motion, aiming right for the chest.
''Written by LockKazer''