The hand game
A counting game two children made up in a house that does not exist anymore.
The first half
One for the porch and two for the door,three for the dog on the kitchen floor,four for the truck that will not start,five for the swimming hole, six is the hard part.
The second half is not written here, and it is not going to be. It is four more lines and it belongs to two people.
How it goes
- 01Palms, then the backs of the hands, then your partner's palms. Three beats to a number.
- 02On every number you knock knuckles instead, which is the only part that hurts, which is the only part either of them ever cared about.
- 03The count goes up on the first half. It comes back down on the second, and the second half is faster.
Where it came from
It was invented in a yard in 2012 by a nine-year-old and a six-year-old, over the course of about a week, mostly while they were supposed to be doing something else. Every object in it was within sight of the porch they made it on. There is no version of it written down anywhere, because there was never any reason to write it down, and the house it was made in is not there.
Nobody else ever learned it. Not a cousin, not a friend from school, not either parent. This was not secrecy. It was a game for exactly two people that was never once offered to a third, the way most things children make are never offered to anybody, and it is the only reason it still means what it means.
In Hallowbound you perform it. The prologue teaches it as the first thing two players ever do together, before there is any combat to attach it to, and it teaches it the way a child teaches a game: badly, in the wrong order, with the other player getting it wrong twice. It is a mechanic and not a symbol, and the game protects it by never once telling you it matters.
It is worth being plain about what the second half is for. There is a scene later in the story that only exists because of it, and it is the reason this game is a game and not a film. That scene is not on this website, it will not be in a trailer, and if you would rather not know it exists, you already know as much as we are going to tell you.
Who has it
One of them remembers making it up.
The other one still taps it on tables and has never once wondered where it came from.