Games of 2024: Grunn was the best vehicle for reliving childhood fears
Being a weed.
Growing up I was afraid there was something living in our garage. I can't tell where this fear came from. I can't even tell you what my child self thought it was - the exact creature was boringly undefined, labelled simply as 'Very Bad' (and it certainly didn't help that my Dad kept one of his old wetsuits hanging from the rafters like a piece of eternally damp shedded skin).
All I know is when I was sent outside to grab something from the freezer one night, I found myself paralysed by a sense of wrongness. It chased itself down my nerves, gluing my feet to the ground and making my fingers clench around the garage key. A second before life had been about completing the usual two minute chore before dinner. Now a set of jaws were grazing my neck.
I did not want to go inside the garage. It was the worst idea in the world. If I didn't though, I would just be sent back out again.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I slammed the key into the lock with my right hand, lifting it slightly to prevent it from sticking, while my left gripped the doorframe. I kicked the door open after unlocking it before sending my left hand groping in the dark for the light switch. I half suspected a beastly claw to rip it off, which was why I was fine sacrificing my non-dominant hand. All that came, however, were blotches swirling across the insides of my eyelids from the light hitting my face. Still, I risked taking a couple of steps inside before peeking open one eye. Better to be eaten unseen.
Of course, the only thing amiss was the wetsuit slowly swaying back and forth from its rafter perch. Everything else was as it should be. From the smell of rust to the burgundy paint stains on the floor. Despite this display of normalcy, I couldn't shake the feeling of being watched by hungry eyes. Quickly I grabbed what I needed and ran back into the house, never once glancing up into the small attic space above the door… Mice. Always mice.
My 'Fear of the Garage' did eventually ebb away. The garage has stayed the same since I was a child, except the wetsuit has a companion now, and I've grown to have new adult fears. Like global warming and dropping my phone down a drain while playing Pokémon Go (Seriously, what do I do if this happens? Call the council? Open the grate myself? Accept this is the end and evaporate?). I'll never have to experience a silly childhood fear again. Right?
Wrong. Thanks video games.
From the moment you begin Grunn, everything feels a little out of step with reality. There's a bathroom which defies the laws of physics by being bigger on the inside, grass that makes the world look like you've been smoking it rather than cutting it and a garden gnome. Never trust a garden gnome.
The gentle task of gardening, however, quickly pulled me in, making the existence of anything spooky completely slip my mind. After all, it's hard to remember there might be monsters lurking around the corner when you're trying to trim a perfect hedge. It's for this reason, though, that I was fully unprepared for the moment that Grunn's ghostly undercurrent properly rose to the surface.
Early on you can bash a hole through a wooden fence to access a back room in the garden. It's an action I'm sure every professional gardener performs on a regular basis, but unlike the lush, overgrown area behind me, this rear little patch of land felt rather unwanted. Sure, the scattered collection of flower pots and bushes proved someone had been trying to cultivate life here, but there was also a car. A car which physically couldn't enter this area. Its presence grew even stranger when I found a hammer decorated with suspiciously red strains inside its boot.
The unwanted feeling was slowly transforming into foreboding. An evolution which completed when I opened the nearby door.
The room beyond looked normal enough: stone floor, nearby sink, drain with a strange smell. Everything you'd traditionally find in the bridge between a home and the outside. What worried me, however, was the shiny key I could see hanging on the far wall. A trap if ever I saw one. I knew - just knew - the moment I picked that key up something would appear behind me. I could feel it in my bones. It was as inevitable as my desire to discover what the key opened was inescapable.
Mentally prepared, I walked across the room and picked up the key. I turned around.
Dominating the doorway was a man. He was leaning casually as if he was a friend dropping by for a quick hello, but his neck was far too long. It stretched into the room, threatening to grow even closer. The moment my brain registered what I was seeing, and I heard the loud, violent piano clang accompanying the sight of him, Mr. Long Neck slammed the door shut.
I may have, ever so slightly, fallen out of my chair.
Old Stretchy Neck didn't make this his only appearance. I ran into him while exploring the church, and he even stopped by my shed for a late night visit. Left me a severed hand as a present. Lovely. I may have even spotted him watching me in the hedge-maze-within-a-hedge and hanging out by a tree near the ferry. None of these visits hit as strongly as the first time I saw him though. When, for a slither of time, I returned to being a child shivering in a garage convinced a creature was about to tear me open.