Grin

Grin

Full of chills and twists, a twelve-year-old boy is thrilled that he'll get to play endless games at his family’s arcade, but soon realizes he’s in the fight of his life when he’s forced to save himself and his possessed Uncle from a sinister video game. Danny is spending a week with his Uncle Bill who runs a massive retro arcade called PixelWorks. His only plan is to play as many games as possible from open to close, but he wasn’t expecting to find the Holy Grail of arcade collectors, a gruesome looking game titled Grin. Anyone who plays the game becomes surprisingly violent, and soon with the help of his friend Jodi and a knowledgeable videogame streamer, Danny realizes that Grin holds the soul of a dead serial killer. Soon, the killer makes the jump into Bill’s body, and it’s up to Danny to figure out a way to stop him for good. "A compulsively readable “follow you home” horror novel, recommended for gamers and fans of K.R. Alexander."— School Library Journal "This high-octane narrative is an excellent choice for readers who are ready for something with real bite ."— Kirkus Reviews "Perfect for budding horror fans that like Five Nights at Freddy’s and Stranger Things ."— Bloody Disgusting " Clever , twisty , and full of chills !"—Lindsay Currie, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Delta Games series "Give this to any kid who loves video games and they're guaranteed to come away loving books, too. It's that good ."—Josh Roberts, author of The Witches of Willow Cove "Will leave readers, gamers, and streamers gasping and grinning "—Ally Russel, author of It Came From the Trees " Grin gave me literal nightmares . Danny is the realistic hero we all hope we'd be, and his friends are the support we all need to keep the darkness at bay."—Darcy Marks, author of Grounded For All Eternity Born and raised in Middle Tennessee, D.W. Gillespie wrote his first short story in second grade. It involved (unsurprisingly) monsters wreaking havoc on some unsuspecting victim. Some things never change. He began writing seriously after taking a creative writing class in college, and he’s written steadily ever since. He lives in Tennessee with his wife and two kids, and on dark nights, you might find them huddled around a campfire sharing spooky tales. Chapter 1 “I want to tell you a story. A story about death, about danger, and about an item so cursed that most people think it’s not even real. Time and again it appears unexpectedly, and when it pops up, mayhem is sure to follow. You might be asking yourself, what could be so dangerous, so deadly? Maybe it’s a creepy doll containing the souls of the dead . . . or a forgotten relic from ancient times. But no, this cursed object is something that no one would ever suspect . . . an arcade game.” Danny had to laugh. He was sitting in the front passenger seat of his mom’s SUV with one earbud in. The other one was currently missing in action, probably somewhere in his room lost in a sea of video games and action figures. His mom glanced over at him from the driver’s seat. “What’s so funny?” “Just this YouTube guy,” Danny said. “He’s so dramatic.” The YouTuber was in his twenties and went by the name Mr. Griller, and Danny was his biggest fan. His focus was on horror video games, the more obscure the better, with occa­sional Twitch live streams and longer, story-­driven videos about game legends and lore. It was the kind of thing Danny lived for. The image onscreen transitioned from a series of black-­and-­white crime scene photos to a shot of Mr. Griller in his usual spot, the small corner of a well-­lit room. Over his right shoulder a massive HD monitor played a loop of a bloody first-­person shooter. Mr. Griller had a thin black beard and a head full of shaggy curls that fell out from underneath a baseball cap with a logo for the Raccoon City Rangers. According to a video from the previous year titled “Get to Know Me,” his parents were from India, and in his words, “They really want me to go back to college.” “Imagine a game,” he said, talking directly into the camera in a hilariously serious tone, “so disturbing that everyone who has ever played it has died at some point.” Wait, Danny thought, doesn’t everyone die at some point? “Most people wrote it off as an urban legend. For years, people in the arcade trading and restoration scene would whisper about it, trying to convince themselves that they were safe, that the danger wasn’t real. But in my research, I’ve been able to uncover the truth, which has never been seen before now.” Danny would often laugh whenever the videos got too dramatic, but he could easily get sucked into the storytelling. He leaned forward, squinting at his phone. “This,” Mr. Griller said, “is the only known photo of the game to exist online.” A blurry picture appeared. The arcade machine looked like a six-­foot-­tall box made out of particleboard, big and unwieldy. The photo didn’t include the mac