Discount Dan’s Backroom Bargains · Book I · 2025
Discount Dan
A hungover contractor wakes in the Backrooms in a knock-off bathrobe, makes friends with a dog made of blue rubber, and decides the way to survive hell is to open a store in it.
Discount Dan (2025) opens James Hunter’s LitRPG horror-comedy in the Backrooms, the endless yellow-wallpapered maze of internet legend, re-imagined here as a jumble of numbered floors run by an absent Researcher and a snarky game system called the VIRUS. Dan Woodridge, thirty-six, a Cincinnati contractor and former Marine truck driver, wakes there after a bachelor party wearing whatever drunk Dan picked: a knock-off baroque bathrobe, very short jorts, unlaced work boots and his tool belt. He tells the story himself.
Within twenty minutes he has helped a legendary gunslinger fight the ruler of the 999th floor; when he comes to, hours later, he pockets the loot that fell out of the monster’s chest and finds himself marked for death by its whole court. Before his second day is out he owns a store, and a month later it is a refuge. The book is about how: a mimic called Croc who is doing his best impression of a dog, a stolen power that can carve pieces out of the Backrooms, and a contractor’s eye for what people stranded in hell actually need.
It is the first of three books to date. Shadow Alley Press published it in March 2025, and Steve Campbell narrates the audiobook.
Noclipped
Dan comes to on short gray carpet under flickering fluorescent panels, in a hallway of stained yellow wallpaper that ends in a red exit sign and no door. A floating yellow window signed by the Researcher informs him that he has suffered a Temporal Displacement Event, “Noclipping” for short, and that his prognosis is “vanishingly slim”.
In the conference room ahead two titans are fighting: a lanky gunslinger with an oversized foam anime sword, and the Flayed Monarch, an eight-foot, four-armed demon of raw red muscle on a centipede body, who calls his enemy Marcus. The gunslinger flips Dan a silver pog slammer whose words, “Let’s Pog!”, raise a golden birdcage of light. Their duel is all absurd magic until the Monarch runs Marcus through. Dan throws the slammer to the dying man, buying him seconds to heal through the plush toy at his neck, then hurls his hammer at the demon and is crushed under its will until Marcus runs it through from behind. Out of the rift in its chest rolls a battered bronze compass. Marcus thanks “Dan Woodridge from Cincinnati”, tosses him a healing Zima, and both titans vanish in a flash.
Dan wakes healed and Marked for Death: every Aspirant of the Monarch’s Skinless Court will try to kill him on sight. The compass is a locked Mythic Emblem; his hammer and even his bathrobe are magic Artifacts. The Lobby has no water, no outlets, and walls that heal like meat.
“This entire place was a contractor’s worst nightmare. Nothing was up to code.”
He maps it on a square of skin-like wallpaper, past grinning Lobby Greeters who shrink from his flashlight, to an employees-only bathroom whose guardian, the six-armed Janitorial Handyman, has a toilet for a head. Dan kills it with a screwdriver and a speed square and takes his first Relic, Bleach Bolt, a spray bottle of blue cleaner that sinks into his chest.
The stairs beyond end in a 1980s mall of salmon columns and pink neon. A dog made of glossy blue clog-rubber warns him off the ATM there: it is a mimic. The dog’s tag reads Normal Human Dog, F for friend. Dan names it Croc.
I · 1 The Worst Hangover Chapter 1. Dan Woodridge, a Cincinnati contractor of thirty-six, peels himself off gray carpet in a hallway of stained yellow wallpaper. A floating yellow window from the Researcher explains that he has been displaced through time, “Noclipping” for short, and that his chances are “vanishingly slim”. The last thing he remembers is a bachelor party with his crew. Drunk Dan chose the outfit: a knock-off baroque bathrobe, jorts, unlaced work boots and a tool belt.
I · 2 Titans in the Conference Room Chapters 1–3. In the conference room a lanky gunslinger with an oversized foam anime sword is fighting the Flayed Monarch, ruler of the 999th floor. The gunslinger tosses Dan a silver pog slammer that raises a golden birdcage of light, and the Monarch calls him Marcus. Their duel is all absurd magic, toy soldiers swelling into giants, until the Monarch runs Marcus through. Dan, armed with a hammer and a bathrobe, decides to help anyway.
I · 3 The Compass Falls Chapter 3. Dan’s thrown slammer buys the dying Marcus a few seconds to heal through the plush toy at his neck; Dan’s hammer, bounced off the demon’s mask, draws its wrath while Marcus runs it through from behind. A black rift opens in the Monarch’s chest, full of strange loot, and a battered bronze compass rolls out across the carpet. Marcus thanks “Dan Woodridge from Cincinnati”, throws him a healing Zima, and both titans vanish in a flash. The compass stays behind.
I · 4 Employees Only Chapters 5–7. A corridor of low vents leads Dan out of the Lobby’s maze to an employees-only bathroom with a locked stairwell door. Its guardian, the six-armed Janitorial Handyman, has a toilet for a head and a tongue like a cobra, and it spits acid snakes. Dan breaks its knee, guts it with a demolition screwdriver and finishes it with a steel speed square. The prize is the stairwell key and his first Relic, Bleach Bolt.
I · 5 A Normal Human Dog Chapter 8. The stairwell opens on a 1980s mall where an ATM stencilled “Progenitor Monolith” squats before a bank. A medium-sized dog made of glossy blue clog-rubber warns Dan off it: the ATM is a mimic. The dog copied its look from a children’s book and has no eyes, but its tag says F for friend. Dan names it Croc. “Is this what it’s like to have a friend? Because I quite like it.”
A Normal Human Dog
Pressed to show itself, Croc becomes a blob of bright blue goop with tentacles, toothy mouths and far too many eyes: a mimic, tagged Outcast. A blue, wolf-muzzled dog-man sets off Dan’s phobia of furries, so the dog comes back, with a first rule that could be the book’s:
“everything, everywhere, all the time is both lying to you and trying to murder you.”
Croc explains the place. The Dwellers were thought into existence by the God Box on floor 1,000 as helpers, before most of them lost their way (Croc blames the Blight); each carries Shards of its power that grow into Relics, which can be levelled and forged together. A dead Delver’s Relics keep their levels, so warbands hunt humans. Croc admits that “north of three hundred” Delvers he tried to help have died, and at Dan’s request grows a pair of oversized plastic googly eyes.
A real Monolith, an ATM outside a bank, electrocutes Dan into the VIRUS, and his first points unlock the compass. It is the Compass of the Catacomber, a whole class in six Relics: a live map, a trail-marker, a codex of every Dweller and Delver, a sense for traps and loot, an arrow to anything he can picture, and the Mythic Corvo’s Blanket Fort, which claims a cleared piece of the Backrooms as a pocket dimension of his own.
It is all utility, no firepower, and the Monarch will want it back. Dan remembers his father’s one good business lesson: if enough people have the same problem and you can fix it, you have a business. He will build a faction-neutral store and refuge, with doors on nearly every floor: “Teamwork and a splash of capitalism.” The model is a Walgreens, the modern frontier general store. Keeping the compass secret even from Croc, he picks a target from the Researcher’s Job Board of Blighted places: MediocreMart, held by a boss called the Harmacist.
I · 6 The True Form Chapter 9. Asked to show what he really is, Croc becomes a blob of bright blue goop with tentacles, toothy mouths and far too many eyes, the true form of a mimic cast out by his own kind. A wingback chair and a boneless pale “human” follow, then a blue dog-man with a wolf’s muzzle that sets off Dan’s phobia of furries, so the dog comes back. Croc’s first rule: assume everything here is lying to you and trying to murder you.
I · 7 Googly Eyes Chapters 11–12. Croc admits that more than three hundred Delvers he tried to help have died, then, asked for a face Dan can read, grows a pair of big plastic googly eyes. At a real Monolith Dan presses his palm to the green handprint and is electrocuted into the VIRUS, the system that runs the place. A depressed, chain-smoking paper clip explains his stats, and the points he spends unlock the bronze compass.
Gearing Up
First he needs gear. With the compass equipped, traps glow red and a blue arrow points the way. At the Loot Arcade, all neon and hypnotic cabinets, capsule machines turn Dan’s hammer handle a light-eating black and its head burning silver. Then the Mobile Murder Muncher arrives, a sedan-sized yellow sphere with shark eyes and anglerfish teeth chanting “WAKA-WAKA-WAKA”, and Dan escapes only by kicking one of its ghost-sheeted prey into its jaws.
Croc wants froyo, and gets it. Outside Yogurt Oasis Dan swaps his blood-soaked undershirt for a black T-shirt and opens the capsules: a red Twinning String, the gold Seal of the Researcher, and the Fabled Mana Capacitor, which fits only cloth armour and so binds for good to the hated bathrobe, leaving a glowing blue sigil on its back. He steals every tub of froyo for Croc.
Through six hours of trap-filled mall Dan leaves Mana-charged spray-painted warnings for whoever comes after, forges Relics with the Codex predicting the results, and spends points at a Monolith that melts the fat off him in minutes. MediocreMart is Blighted, its faded salmon walls lit by a sick inner glow. A home-movie Christmas at the photo counter lulls Dan while a Photophage stalks him and Pharmacy Techs set the aisles alight; Croc’s bite to his calf wakes him. Then Croc rears up as big as a bear, his belly splits into a fanged mouth, and he swallows a raven-headed Tech whole. Ashamed, he hopes Dan won’t think less of him; Dan calls it the coolest thing he has ever seen.
I · 8 The Mobile Murder Muncher Chapters 17–18. The Loot Arcade is all neon and hypnotic cabinets, and its capsule machines turn Dan’s hammer black and silver. Then the sheets rustle. Four-foot Arcade Specters scatter before the Mobile Murder Muncher, a sedan-sized yellow sphere with a shark’s eyes and an anglerfish’s teeth, chanting “WAKA-WAKA-WAKA”. The front is shuttered. Dan reaches the emergency exit only by mule-kicking a specter into its jaws, and comes out drenched.
I · 9 Froyo for Everyone Chapter 19. Dan swore there would be no froyo. Half an hour later he is on a bench outside Yogurt Oasis with a coffee swirl, in a fresh black T-shirt, while Croc eats mango sorbet with a pair of human hands grown for the purpose. The capsules hold a red Twinning String, the gold Seal of the Researcher and a Fabled Sigil that binds for good to the hated bathrobe. Dan steals every tub of froyo for Croc.
I · 10 A Very Good Boy Chapters 21–22. MediocreMart is Blighted: its salmon walls glow sickly, and Pharmacy Techs set the aisles alight while a home-movie Christmas lulls Dan. Croc rears up bear-sized, his belly splits from throat to crotch into a fanged mouth, and he swallows a Tech whole. Then, ashamed, he hopes they can still be friends: he is a good boy, F is for Friend. Dan calls it the coolest thing he has ever seen.
Discount Dan’s Backroom Bargains
The boss waits in the pharmacy: the Harmacist, a rail-thin Store Manager in a raven-beaked plague-doctor mask whose silver revolver fires syringes of black sludge. When its cleansing light washes Dan’s spells away, he fights like a contractor: a riot shield cut from photo-booth plexiglass, a cloud of Metamucil to vanish into, and a trap he marked earlier. The blast takes the Harmacist and Dan’s eyebrows, and Croc, peering down at Dan’s sprawled body, sighs that he really liked this one.
Dan traces the store’s outline in blue light and casts Corvo’s Blanket Fort: 14,200 square feet cut out of floor 3 into a pocket of the Backrooms that is his. Remembering Big Time Bargains, the flea market of his boyhood, he names it Discount Dan’s Backroom Bargains. Croc knows a Mythic ritual when he sees one. “Lying by omission is still lying, Dan,” he says. Dan tells him everything, and Croc laughs until he rolls on the floor: the gunslinger was the Boundless Wanderer, a folk hero with a monarch’s power and no kingdom, and the Monarch has lost a Mythic Emblem to a brand-new Delver. Cast out by his own kind as defective, Croc was once carried for four months in the tote bag of Gertrude Evans, a seventy-two-year-old who had flown in the Second World War, until an Aspirant killed her. He has helped new Delvers ever since.
The store heals itself, restocks its original goods from a pool of Mana, and ejects anyone who breaks the rules. Its golems are junk plus a sacrificed Relic: Baby Hands, a nine-foot bodybuilder of cereal boxes and melted doll arms behind the Harmacist’s cracked mask, and Princess Ponypuff, a glittering patchwork of toys with a pink pony’s head, who calls herself Legion, devourer of worlds, and runs the till. Newcomers get a free kit and a free night. Dan Blanket-Forts a Progenitor Monolith into the store, plants his first Doorway Anchor on a bank door, and bars the Blighted, the Skinless Court and anyone over level 30.
To advertise, he hangs rings of red Twinning String on nails across the Lobby, each ring’s twin waiting in the till. Two weeks of grinding take him and Croc through floor 1, a parking garage on pillars the size of skyscrapers, where he finds an orange 1972 Pinto that runs on Relic Shards and shrinks to a die-cast toy. The first customer is Taylor, twenty-two, from Oklahoma State; soon two or three newcomers arrive every day. The first who can pay is Jakob, a level-25 Cendral, once human, with pale serpent scales, violet hair, curling black horns and a graffiti-sprayed bazooka. He shows an arm the Skinless Court flayed, buys every elixir before the Black Harbor Syndicate’s resale monopoly can cost Dan his fingers, and over beer advises a door in Howlers Hold, a Safe Harbor on floor 7 that answers to no sovereign.
I · 11 The Harmacist Chapter 24. The boss is the Harmacist, a rail-thin Store Manager in a raven-beaked plague-doctor mask whose silver revolver fires syringes of black sludge. Its cleansing light washes away Dan’s spells, so he fights like a contractor: a riot shield cut from the photo booth’s plexiglass, a taunt about a mop bucket, a cloud of Metamucil to vanish into, and a spray-marked trap he shoves it onto. The blast takes the boss and Dan’s eyebrows.
I · 12 Corvo’s Blanket Fort Chapters 25–26. Dan traces the store’s outline in blue light and casts Corvo’s Blanket Fort: 14,200 square feet cut out of floor 3 into a pocket of the Backrooms that is his. He names it for “Discount Dan”, the achievements’ nickname, and Big Time Bargains, the flea market of his boyhood. Croc knows a Mythic sequester ritual when he sees one, and is hurt that Dan kept the compass from him. Dan tells him everything.
I · 13 Baby Hands and Princess Ponypuff Chapters 27–28. The store allows golems built from junk and a sacrificed Relic. A jockstrap Relic makes Baby Hands, a nine-foot bodybuilder of cereal boxes and melted doll arms behind the Harmacist’s cracked mask, who lives to serve. A tinfoil hat makes Princess Ponypuff, a glittering patchwork of toys with a pink pony’s head, who calls herself Legion, devourer of worlds, and is put in charge of the till.
I · 14 The Pinto of the Hobo Chapter 31. Two weeks of grinding take Dan and Croc through floor 1, a parking garage held up by pillars the size of skyscrapers and haunted by the blind, fast Faceless. There Dan finds a bright orange 1972 Pinto that runs on Relic Shards, tops out at eighteen miles an hour and plays one song forever. Say the words and it shrinks to a die-cast toy that fits in a pocket. Keep it in mind.
I · 15 The First Paying Customer Chapter 32. The first customer is Taylor, twenty-two, from Oklahoma State; soon two or three newcomers a day arrive. The first who can pay is Jakob, a level-25 Cendral, once human, with pale serpent scales, violet hair, black horns and a graffiti-sprayed bazooka. He moves like a soldier who has seen too much, shows the arm the Skinless Court flayed, and buys every elixir in the store.
Down to the School Zone
Declining Jakob’s offer of an introduction, Dan and Croc go alone: a stairwell to floor 5, a 1920s hotel where a piano plays and nobody is seen; a dumbwaiter to floor 6, a darkness that eats flashlight beams; and a freestanding door into floor 7, the School Zone. A children’s painted mural comes alive, led by Harold the Funtime Imagination Friend, a gangly clown whose balloon animals are bombs. When a balloon blasts Croc back into goop, Dan has a bear-sized Croc throw him, hammer swelling and blazing blue, and takes Harold’s head off in mid-flight. Two days and one murderous goose-man later, they find a mildewed locker room.
Five Aspirants of Hudson’s Red Hands have cornered Temperance: five feet of fury in a pink bodysuit with white fur, cartoon paws and floppy bunny ears, holding a nail-studded bat: a furry, Dan’s one true fear. Their leader Braxton, pink Mohawk and razor-blade hockey pads, has torn a red Twinning ring from her finger. The Aspirants cannot pass the store’s door, so their orders are to maim its customers. Braxton offers her the choice of which ear, and Dan decides to do something stupid again.
Croc becomes the Croc-apult, a half-size catapult with googly eyes and angry eyebrows, and flings Dan onto the spellcaster Natasha Anno. Pinning her, he hesitates; in eight years as a Marine he never killed a person. She knifes him in the ribs, and inside the Pog dome he beats her to death with the hammer. The System awards him a title, Cold-Blooded Murderer, and he feels sick. Braxton swells into a nine-foot red brute and breaks half of Dan’s bones, and then a leather loveseat bowls him into the sinks. Jakob, who slipped a twin of the red yarn into Dan’s bathrobe pocket and has shadowed him for days, breaks the brute’s legs with two shields but will not kill a Delver; Temperance runs across thin air and splits Braxton’s skull with her cleaver. Croc lies in his true form, nearly dead. When Jakob calls him Dan’s pet, Dan corrects him from the floor: “Not a pet,” “a friend.”
Back at the store, Temperance tells her story over coffee. Salem called her a witch; she fled into the woods and into the Backrooms, and lay frozen in a time pocket for some three hundred and thirty years until Jakob freed her. Now Howlers Hold has expelled her for cutting off the hands of Jackson, brother of the Howler Wraith, and her one way back is to cleanse the Blighted arcade beside the Hold. Her Grimoire, a floating tome bound in what looks like skin, shows the bounty in mock-Shakespearean green script: Funtime Frank’s Jungle Gym Jamboree, three stars. Jakob joins on one condition: Dan and Temperance reach level 20 first.
I · 16 The Door in the Dark Chapter 34. Bound for Howlers Hold, Dan and Croc take a stairwell that skips a floor into a 1920s hotel where a piano plays and nobody is seen, then a dumbwaiter down to floor 6: a darkness that eats flashlight beams a few feet out. After an hour’s walk the light finds a lone metal door with no wall. Opened from the front it shows a sweltering machine shop on floor 2; from the back, floor 7.
I · 17 Human Cannonball Chapter 35. On floor 7, the School Zone, a children’s mural comes alive: painted Doodles and Harold, a gangly clown whose balloon animals are bombs. Dan hates clowns. When a balloon blasts Croc back into goop, Dan has a bear-sized Croc throw him: hammer swelling and blazing like a falling star, he takes Harold’s head off in mid-flight. It bursts into a geyser of party confetti.
I · 18 The Murder Bunny Chapter 37. In a mildewed locker room five Red Hands Aspirants have cornered Temperance, five feet of fury in a pink bunny suit with a nail-studded bat. Dan’s one true fear is furries. Their leader Braxton has torn a red Twinning ring from her finger: the Aspirants cannot pass the store’s door, so they mean to maim its customers. He offers her the choice of which ear. Watching from the shadows, Dan decides to do something stupid.
I · 19 The Croc-apult Chapter 38. Croc puts on angry anime eyebrows and becomes a half-size catapult with googly eyes. It flings Dan over the brawlers onto the spellcaster Natasha Anno. Pinning her, he hesitates: in eight years as a Marine he never killed a person. She knifes him in the ribs, and inside the Pog dome he beats her to death with the hammer. The System calls it an achievement, Cold-Blooded Murderer. Dan feels sick.
I · 20 Knight in Scaly Armor Chapters 39–40. Braxton swells into a nine-foot red brute with bone spikes and breaks half of Dan’s bones, and then a leather loveseat bowls him into the sinks. Jakob, who slipped a twin of the red yarn into Dan’s bathrobe pocket and has shadowed him for days, wades in with two shields, breaks the brute’s legs and refuses to kill a Delver. Temperance does it for him. Croc, near death, is a friend, Dan insists, not a pet.
I · 21 The Grimoire Chapters 41–42. Over coffee Temperance explains herself: Salem called her a witch, she fled into the woods and the Backrooms, and lay frozen for some three hundred and thirty years until Jakob freed her. Now the Howlers have expelled her. Her way back in is a bounty, which she shows in her Grimoire, a floating tome bound in what looks like skin: Funtime Frank’s Jungle Gym Jamboree, three stars. Jakob says: level 20 first.
The Jungle Gym Jamboree
From the gang’s loot Dan forges his first Fabled Relic, StainSlayer Maelstrom, a thirty-foot downpour of industrial bleach that burns anyone without protective gear. On the march Jakob whispers a theory: the Researcher, his resources finite, uses the first twenty-five floors to test who is worth investing in against the Blight.
The Jamboree is a neon city of games on sticky purple carpet, an empty Ferris wheel turning, and overhead a web of plastic play tubes like veins, all leading to a striped big top. Nine hours of murder games follow, Whack-a-Mole with hippo-sized moles among them, and ten thousand tickets later Dan is level 20, Temperance 21 and Croc 16. The prize booth sells Dan the Rare Mental Micromanagement: telekinesis for anything under forty-five pounds. Back at the store he hires Taylor and Stephanie to run a grafted-on hot-dog stand, bleeds from the eyes and ears equipping the Relic, then practises for hours while Croc tosses tennis balls. He finds a hack: each minute of telekinesis counts as a new cast, so juggling it keeps triggering his bathrobe’s Wild Surge. Near-endless Mana.
I · 22 The Jungle Gym Jamboree Chapter 45. The Jamboree is a neon city: an ocean of games on sticky purple carpet, carousels and bumper cars, an empty Ferris wheel turning, a train racing the perimeter, and overhead a web of plastic play tubes like veins, all leading to a striped big top. Croc is enraptured by the slides. Temperance warns that some of them hide saw blades. Somewhere inside the tent waits Funtime Frank.
I · 23 Whack-a-Mole Chapter 46. Nine hours of murder games follow. In Whack-a-Mole they must defend a whimpering carrot-man with green hair from hippo-sized Tunnel Maulers, and Dan’s first Fabled Relic, StainSlayer Maelstrom, makes its debut: a downpour of industrial bleach. They last eleven waves of thirteen. Ten thousand tickets later Dan is level 20, Temperance 21 and Croc 16, and the prize booth sells Dan telekinesis.
I · 24 The Mana Hack Chapter 49. Equipping the telekinesis Relic makes Dan bleed from the eyes and ears for five minutes. Then he practises for hours, first in his tent, then in the aisles while Croc tosses pillows, ramen packets and tennis balls, and compares the scene, to Dan’s disgust, to Twilight. He also finds the hack: each minute of telekinesis counts as a new cast, so juggling it keeps triggering his bathrobe’s Wild Surge. That means near-endless Mana.
The Funhouse
The way to the big top runs through the play tubes, past booby-trapped slides and pits of acid-spitting plastic balls, all named Barry. A slide drops them into a circus tent, and a steel cage erupts around the ring. The band rises on four circus wagons, bad taxidermy over machinery: Synthia Lynx on keytar, Drumbo Chumbo with drums in his belly, Vex Vixen on violin, and Bellatrix Black, the Bassist Bear, with a beautiful woman’s face and glowing yellow orbs for eyes. They play a synthwave “The Final Countdown”. Then the spotlight finds Funtime Frank atop the stands, an eight-foot gorilla in an electric-blue necktie beside a stack of barrels. While his band plays he is all but invulnerable.
They split the band. Purple barrels burst into reanimated murder monkeys. Dan hurls a green barrel into Drumbo by telekinesis and finishes him with a blow that also pops Synthia’s head; Croc and Jakob kill Vex Vixen; Dan bounces a firebomb back into Frank’s barrel stack and leaves a smoking crater where the stands were. Frank climbs out with his Health untouched, since the bassist still lives, and the surviving monkeys melt into him: a twenty-five-foot Franken-Kong studded with monkey arms, tails and faces. Croc eats Bellatrix’s head and the last buff falls; then, as a bear drawn by a four-year-old, he straps the battered Dan to his belly.
Bleach rain and a floating hammer bring Frank to a quarter of his health, but Jakob and Temperance go down and Dan’s Mana is nearly gone. Wishing he had one of Frank’s exploding barrels left, he realizes he has something better in storage. Croc wheels him to face the giant, and Dan flicks the die-cast Pinto into Frank’s roaring mouth by telekinesis and says the words that summon it. The car grows to full size inside Frank’s head.
The cage drops and the Blight is purged. Dan reaches level 22, takes a Relic for building minions from corpses, salvages the band and the wrecked Pinto into storage, and wins, among the prizes, a Golden Kiosk Franchise Opportunity. Not yet ready to walk into Howlers Hold, he plants a door in its sector and steps home. Baby Hands is mopping the condiment aisle; Ponypuff squeals like a goat. A month ago Dan woke with the worst hangover of his life and wanted only to go home.
“Now I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to leave.”
He climbs onto the checkout counter, tells the frightened Delvers that they are a community, and raises a beer.
I · 25 The Band Chapter 50. A slide drops them into a circus tent of hay and peanut shells, and a steel cage erupts around the ring. In multicoloured steam the band rises, bad taxidermy over machinery: Synthia Lynx on keytar, Drumbo Chumbo with drums in his belly, Vex Vixen on violin, and Bellatrix Black, the Bassist Bear, with a beautiful woman’s face and glowing yellow orbs for eyes. They play a synthwave “The Final Countdown”.
I · 26 Funtime Frank’s a Gorilla Chapter 51. The big spotlight finds Funtime Frank atop the stands: eight feet of grimy black fur speckled with silver, an electric-blue necktie, a fat cigar in an all-too-human mouth, and a stack of coloured barrels beside him. “Funtime Frank’s a gorilla,” Croc observes, and reminds Dan that, back when he planned his guerrilla marketing, he promised there would be no gorillas. While his band plays, Frank is all but invulnerable.
I · 27 The Baby Bjorn Chapters 52–54. The band falls one by one, Frank’s barrels go up in a mushroom cloud, and Frank climbs out of the crater and absorbs his monkeys into a twenty-five-foot Franken-Kong. With Dan too battered to stand, Croc becomes a bear drawn by a four-year-old and straps him to his belly. “Keep your friends close and your best friend in a Baby Bjorn made of flesh.”
I · 28 It’s Cruising Time Chapters 54–55. Jakob is down, Temperance is skewered, and Dan is almost out of Mana. Wishing he had an exploding barrel left, he remembers something better in storage. Croc wheels him round to face Frank, and Dan flicks the tiny orange Pinto into the roaring mouth with telekinesis, then says the words that summon it to full size. A twenty-five-foot gorilla’s head is not big enough for a car. The cage drops, and the Blight is purged.
I · 29 Beer and Pizza Epilogue. A month after the worst hangover of his life, Dan climbs onto his own checkout counter and introduces himself as the friendly neighbourhood shopkeeper. He tells the frightened Delvers that they may all die, but not tonight, and that they are a community now. Then he pulls a beer out of storage and raises it. “Tonight, we drink. Tonight, we celebrate. Tonight, beer and pizza are on me!”
Borrowed from the Backrooms legend
- The premise. The legend began with a 2019 4chan reply about people who “noclip out of reality” into endless back rooms; “noclip” is the old game cheat for walking through walls (Wikipedia: The Backrooms; Wikipedia: glossary of video game terms). Hunter keeps the word and gives it bureaucratic dress: a Temporal Displacement Event, “sometimes referred to as ‘Noclipping’”.
- The Lobby. The wikis’ Level 0 has yellowed wallpaper, moist carpet and buzzing fluorescent lights, the back rooms of a dated retail outlet (Backrooms Wiki on Fandom: Level 0; Backrooms Wiki on Wikidot: Level 0). Hunter keeps the Fandom wiki’s name for it, the Lobby, and the look, makes the carpet gray, adds dead-end exit signs and doors onto walls, and makes the walls alive: they digest Sharpie and heal like meat.
- Smilers into Greeters. The wiki’s Smiler is a pair of glowing eyes and a sharp grin in the dark, drawn to light (Wikidot: Entity 3). Dan’s Lobby Greeters have the white eyes and the needle-tooth grin, and a smiley pin, but they flinch from his flashlight. (The nod is this page’s reading, not Hunter’s statement.)
- Floors kept close. The wiki’s Level 1 is a parking-lot-and-warehouse maze of concrete pillars (Wikidot: Level 1), and Hunter’s floor 1 is a parking garage on pillars the size of skyscrapers; the featureless Facelings (Wikidot: Entity 9) become the Faceless, and the old belief the wiki records, that they were once human, is what Dan works out for himself from a Relic that slowly turns its wearer faceless. Level 2’s utility tunnels of pipes and machinery (Wikidot: Level 2), Level 5’s 1920s-furnished hotel with its jazz (Wikidot: Level 5) and Level 6’s total darkness where lights fail (Wikidot: Level 6) all survive almost intact.
- Floors changed. The wiki’s Level 3 is an electrical station and its Level 7 an endless ocean (Wikidot: Level 3; Wikidot: Level 7); Hunter’s are an ‘80s mall and a ruined school. His floor 7 is also nicknamed “Level Fun” (on Wikidot, a party cruise ship and the Partygoers’ supposed home), and its chalkboard warns against the Partygoers, the wiki’s party monsters who bake people into cake (Wikidot: Level Fun; Wikidot: Entity 67), with a line borrowed from the game Portal: the cake is a lie.
- Almond water. The legend’s healing drink (Fandom: Object 1) gets two small nods, both Jakob’s: a “Super-strength Almond water” and an almond-scented salve. Everyday healing comes in bottles of ‘90s Zima, and Mana in Jolt Cola.
- Arcade bosses. The text names its own targets: the Mobile Murder Muncher is a nightmare Pac-Man, and Funtime Frank with his barrels a nightmare Donkey Kong. Dan calls the Jamboree a Chuck E. Cheese and Discovery Zone mash-up; its animatronic band, playing “The Final Countdown” inside “a carnival version of the Thunderdome”, reads like Five Nights at Freddy’s (this page’s reading).
- Nostalgia. Pogs and slammers, Zima, Jolt Cola and a depressed Clippy-style paper clip from the ‘90s, and Croc’s devotion to the 2000s’ Twilight: the nostalgia engine the legend runs on (its first photo was a former furniture store; Kane Parsons has called the place a poorly remembered late 1990s and early 2000s; Wikipedia) turned into loot.
- The shadow on the shelf. Readers’ main comparison is Dungeon Crawler Carl: a hero in absurd clothes, a talking animal companion, snarky achievements, loot boxes (Goodreads; Holo Writing). No screen adaptation of the book exists.
Continuity notes
- Dan: level 0 → 5 (integration, ch.12) → 9 (ch.20) → 12 (ch.25) → 15 (ch.31) → 17 (ch.38) → 20 (ch.46) → 22 (ch.55). From ch.17 the hammer is black-handled with a silver head and the screwdriver blood red; from ch.19 a black T-shirt and a glowing blue sigil on the bathrobe’s back; fitter from ch.20; eyebrows singed off in ch.24; first human kill in ch.38.
- Croc: first dog form eyeless (ch.8–10); googly eyes from ch.11; can grow hands, eyebrows, a catapult or a crude bear at will. Level 7 → 10 → 16. Lives at the store.
- Marcus and the Monarch: both vanish in a flash in ch.3 and are not seen again. The Monarch’s Aspirants hunt Dan and, unable to pass the store’s doors, are ordered to maim his customers; one Red Hands thug escaped the locker room.
- Jakob (from ch.32) and Temperance (from ch.37) end the book at the store; Temperance has earned her way back into Howlers Hold, which Dan has not yet entered.
- The store: 14,200 sq ft (ch.25), grown by grafting in the Monolith (ch.29) and a ninety-square-foot concession stand (ch.46) to 14,291 sq ft (ch.48); a shipping elevator appears behind its doors on its own after the second anchor (first used ch.34). Ten Doorway Anchors by the epilogue, the tenth in Howlers Hold’s sector.
- Carried forward: the unused Seal of the Researcher; the Black Harbor Syndicate’s elixir monopoly; a Golden Kiosk Franchise Opportunity; the band’s bodies and the wrecked Pinto in storage, raw material for his new corpse-and-machine minion Relic, Unhinged Taxidermist; a trap Relic kept for the Monarch.
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The whole walk: The Series · I · Discount Dan · II · Cul-de-sac Carnage · III · Kiosk Kingdom · The Backrooms