We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Polybius by Collin Armstrong, a horror novel publishing with Gallery Books on April 29th.
October, 1982. Forced to move to the quiet seaside town of Tasker Bay by her mother, the only thing on high schooler Andi’s mind is saving up enough money to return to her old stomping grounds in Silicon Valley. Her self-taught skills with all things electronic make her a perfect fit for a job at the dingy local arcade where she can tune out from life and bankroll her eventual escape.
Pining over the distant and aloof Andi is Ro, the son of Tasker Bay’s sheriff, who begins spending more time at the arcade. Despite promising herself she wouldn’t get attached to anyone in town, Andi finds herself opening up to the thoughtful, like-minded Ro.
When Polybius—a new bleeding-edge game of unknown origin arrives—the shop is suddenly overwhelmed with players fighting for time on the machine. Seemingly overnight, a virus-like epidemic grips Tasker Bay while a violent coastal storm rolls in, isolating it from the outside world. People begin experiencing fits of anger, paranoia, and hallucinations—no one can be trusted. After a grisly act of violence goes unsolved, the town descends into chaos. Is the arrival of this mysterious game and the disorder in Tasker Bay a coincidence? Convinced the dire situation is somehow linked to Polybius, Andi and Ro desperately search for clues that might stop the spread before they, too, begin experiencing side effects…
After a long night spent setting broken bones and stitching lacera- tions at West Bay High’s football field, Rachel was back to work first thing on Saturday, starting with a house call. She piloted her car, back on the road with a new battery she’d installed herself, down a narrow, waterlogged road toward the Purcell home. She knew the family: mother Elise, daughter Samantha, son William. And she’d heard the worry in Elise’s voice when she’d phoned.
Both children were exhibiting symptoms that sounded like the other cases Rachel had been seeing, but Elise hadn’t been able to get them out of the house and over to her office. Ten-year-old William had abruptly turned sensitive to light, while sixteen-year- old Sam wouldn’t stop moving—pacing back and forth over the home’s ancient floorboards at all hours, tapping her fingers and hands in a series of inscrutable, repeating patterns. According to Elise, Sam’s fingertips had been worn raw by the repetitive motion, leaving traces of blood all over. Neither child was eating, sleeping. At this point, Elise wasn’t either.
Being a single mother, Elise sometimes struggled to give her children the attention they deserved. She had to keep the lights on and, even with Sam finding after-school work at Greene’s Market, still caught whatever extra shifts she could at the docks to try to make ends meet. She’d grown up in Tasker Bay, working with her fisherman father every summer to save up for a college education that never came to pass. Instead, Sam was born, and Elise’s path in life was reset. So it was that, on many nights, the kids were left to fend for themselves. Thank God for that arcade, Elise often thought. At least there they couldn’t get in much trouble.
Rachel was quietly alarmed by the state of things when she arrived at the Purcell home. Because of William’s sudden sensitivity, Elise had not only drawn every shade but blacked out the windows with heavy wool blankets. She was keeping most of the light fixtures turned off too. Clearly distraught over the kids, Elise’s nerves were compounded by the two days of work she’d missed as a result of their sudden, strange behavior.
Sam could be heard slowly stalking back and forth in the upstairs hallway, floorboards creaking in a staccato pattern over and over. The sound, coupled with the darkness cloaking everything, put Rachel on edge the moment she walked into the home.
Elise’s thoughts poured out upon seeing her. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I can’t leave them here like this. And I haven’t used a sitter in years—Sam always does it. I don’t even know who to call, and I— What if something happened when I was gone?”
“Can I see them?” Rachel asked. Elise nodded, casting an eye toward the stairs. Rachel realized too late that she wasn’t coming with her.
As she ascended the darkened staircase, Rachel followed the wall with her hand to keep from stumbling. Despite trying to check her nerves, she could feel her skin growing cold, hairs on the back of her neck rising. This place, which days ago had been an ordinary home with an ordinary family, frightened her. As she reached the landing, she caught a glimpse of Sam stepping into a room at the far end of the hall, door closing behind her. Every instinct told her to turn around, but Rachel steeled herself. These are children who need your help. She stepped forward and knocked gently on a door adorned with a wooden sign featuring William’s name.
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Polybius
If a few shafts of light made it past the makeshift barricades Elise had erected downstairs, she’d allowed no such margin for error on the upper floor. William’s room may as well have been a tomb. Even then, with almost no light penetrating the dark space, the boy still sat in a corner with a sheet over top of him. Unsettled at the sight—he would’ve looked more at home on the street for Halloween—Rachel paused in the doorway.
“William? It’s Dr. Winston. Your mom asked me to see how you’re doing.” Rachel waited for a response, but none came.
The makeshift shroud billowed with each breath. William raised his hands, vigorously rubbing his eyes through the sheet. Rachel could hear the fabric grating on his skin.
“I’m going to need some light to do that, okay?” She stepped into the darkened room. “I’m going to open these curtains a little and have you lift up the sheet.”
Rachel carefully crossed the room and moved the blanket that was blacking out the window, parting the curtains just enough to faintly illuminate the space. The sheet covering William vibrated faster, his breathing accelerating as dim light filled the space. Real- izing the boy needed a moment to adjust, Rachel took a seat on the floor opposite. “We can take our time, okay? Can you tell me what’s been going on? How’s your head feeling?”
“It hurts.” William’s already small voice, muted by the fabric, was barely audible.
“When did it start?” Rachel asked. No answer. “Does the light make it hurt worse? And being in the dark makes it better?”
She waited a moment, watching as William’s breathing inten- sified even further. “William? Are you okay?”
“It’s not a headache,” he finally replied.
“Oh. Because your mom—”
“She doesn’t know,” William cut in, tone curt.
The sound of a door creaking open drew Rachel’s attention toward the hall. Expecting to catch sight of Sam walking past, she instead heard the door close. Then open again. Then close. Rhyth- mically, every few seconds, over and over.
“It makes me see things I don’t want to,” he added, voice small and worried again.
Rachel turned back toward him, unsettled by his response. “What makes you see things?”
The boy could barely manage a response, nearly breaking into tears as he spoke over the sound of the door continuing to open, shut, open, shut. “I just want it to stop. I don’t want to see it.”
“What’s ‘it,’ William? What are you seeing?” As Rachel asked the question, she gently lifted the sheet over his head. The skin around his eyes was puffy, raw from being obsessively rubbed. She stifled a gasp.
“Goddamn it, Samantha!” Elise’s voice shrieked from downstairs. Rachel could hear her as she bounded up the stairs, saw the fear, agitation on her face as she stormed past William’s room toward Sam’s.
“I’ll be right back, okay?” Rachel said as she rose from the floor. William immediately pulled the sheet back over his head and resumed rubbing his eyes.
Down the hall, Sam continued opening and closing, opening and closing the door to her room. Grabbing the doorknob, Elise yanked it out of Sam’s hand and slammed the door shut in her face. She’d reached her limit.
Rachel, now standing just down the hall, watched as Elise backed away, beginning to quietly sob. But before Rachel could even try to speak with her, Sam began ramming the door from inside with the full weight of her body. Again and again, backing up each time for a running start.
“Elise, I think maybe you should—” But before Rachel could finish her thought, Elise sprang forward and threw the door open, bouncing Sam hard off the other side and onto the floor.
Careening into her daughter’s room, Elise began screaming as Sam staggered to her feet. “I want you to stop this. Now! Stop it stop it stop it!”
Sam shoved her mother back, Elise feebly grabbing at her to no avail, suddenly desperate for things not to escalate any further than they already had. Shoving with all her weight, Sam sent Elise out of her room and into the wall, the back of her head hitting so hard it cracked the plaster.
Quickly moving aside and allowing an unworried-looking Sam to glide past, Rachel hurried to Elise, who had slumped to the floor. The wall was ringed in blood where the back of her head had impacted.
“I’m fine,” Elise said, the distant look in her eyes suggesting otherwise.
Rachel put a hand on her shoulder, reassuring but firm. “No, you’re not. You might be concussed. I need to—”
“I said I’m fine!” Elise snapped as she shoved Rachel back and staggered to her feet.
From down the hall, shockingly loud in light of the fact that he could barely muster an audible response before, William shouted, “Stop drawing that!”
Both women turned toward the commotion. Not seeing Sam, Rachel assumed she’d gone into William’s room and hurried back to head off another potential altercation. But she wasn’t there, only William, who’d inched closer to the doorway to see what the fuss was about. “William, who are you talking to?” Rachel asked, following his eyes—just visible between the folds of the sheet still wrapped around him—toward the staircase.
“Stop drawing that. Stop drawing. I don’t want to see that. Stop. Stop it!” he shouted.
The fear and fury in his disembodied voice shook Rachel to the point she backed out of his room. Hearing the stairs creak, she turned and followed the sound until she found Sam on the steps, descending one at a time, tracing a kind of runic shape along the wall with her bloodied fingertips over and over.
“Sam, what are you doing?” Rachel asked, voice shaky. It felt to Rachel like everything had suddenly, violently started falling apart.
No answer came as Sam reached the bottom of the staircase and disappeared into the house below. Rachel felt Elise push past her, racing downstairs after Sam, who was walking outside.
Rachel followed her. “Elise, can you—”
“Get out of my house,” Elise snapped, not bothering to turn around.
“Y-you called me,” Rachel stammered. “I came here to help you. And this is—”
“You’re not. You’re not helping. You’re passing judgment on me. Telling me how to deal with my kids. My kids.”
Rachel’s mind raced. What the fuck is going on? “I’m not. Elise, honestly. But I think that—”
Elise whipped back toward Rachel. “Get out!” she screamed, before continuing after Sam. “Samantha, get back inside. Goddamn it, listen to me!”
Shell-shocked, Rachel didn’t know what to do. Turning, glanc- ing back at the door to William’s room, she thought about return- ing to the boy to continue her examination. But everything about the situation felt off. Threatening. And Elise had sounded very certain.
Self-preservation outflanking duty, Rachel made a line for the door. It was a dangerous environment, and by the time she’d made it back to her car, she’d decided to report it to the sheriff ’s office. She could see Sam wandering along the edge of their property near the woods, finger whipping through the air in an inscrutable pattern, over and over. Elise stood on the porch, hand on her head, watching with no idea of what to do about any of it.
As she drove away from the home, Rachel glanced up in time to see the curtains being pulled shut inside William’s room.
Excerpted from Polybius, copyright © 2025 by Collin Armstrong.
