Book Five, Chapters 62 and 63

With an abundance of caution, we decided not to go to the bowling alley immediately but rather to head back to the loft to do some research.

Now that we knew the name of the storyline—or at least were reasonably confident that we were on the money—we could do some digging. The only way to confirm that this was the right storyline, unfortunately, was to find the actual omen and see if the missing posters of Logan and Avery appeared on it when we were near it.

It wasn’t that I didn’t trust the mini-quest we were on, but I didn’t need to trust when I could verify.

If we had the most recent copy of the Atlas, we would have all kinds of details about the bowling alley, even if it was missing a whole bunch of older stuff. But since we had the older version, Grace and her team weren’t around to map out how to navigate that area.

Luckily, we weren’t going to try bowling or hanging out indefinitely. We just needed to get in and get out, and I was confident that my scouting trope would be sufficient for that.

On the one occasion we had gone to the bowling alley before, I was able to anticipate most or all of the problems that Grace and her team had studied, even if I didn’t know how the individual mobile omens would behave.

Avoiding them would not be a problem, but we would certainly not be able to bowl a whole set.

As soon as we got back to the loft, we sat in the living room crisscross-applesauce because we didn’t have enough chairs for everyone, so it was first-come, first-served.

Meanwhile, Kimberly whipped out her phone and dialed up her talent agent, Sal.

It only rang for half a ring.

"Kimberly, sometimes it feels like you only call me when you need to ask about a role," Sal said as soon as he picked up.

"You try to tell me about a role every time I call anyway," she said.

"You got me there, sweetheart. What can I help you with?" he said.

"What can you tell me about the movie Stray Dawn: The Mark?" she asked.

"Huh, well, that one is a remake," Sal said. "Let me look through my stacks."

We listened as he shuffled through papers. I had to wonder if the NPC playing Sal was just fumbling through random sheets of paper or if he actually had information or scripts in front of him.

"Oh, here we go," Sal said. "That one was already made a few years ago. It was a moderate hit, but, you know, they do have a script floating around for Stray Dawn. I don’t know if it’s a reboot or a remake, or heck, this might actually be the original script. I can poke around if you’re interested."

Kimberly muted the phone and looked up at me. That was not a response we had gotten from Sal before. He would usually tell us about any story, even stories that we were grossly incompatible with.

"She’s the Detective advanced archetype," I said. "Stray Dawn: The Mark is probably a version of the movie that was altered by her advanced archetype, so we can’t run it."

Kimberly nodded. She unmuted the phone and said, "All right, tell me everything you know about Stray Dawn."

"I made some notes when I first read this script, and I have to say, this one will be a little bit of a challenge for you. It’s an older stylistic horror with some ancient curse involved. Honestly, if you ask me, it’s a bit of a clash. On the one hand, you have this angsty, emotional teen story that takes center stage, and on the other hand, you have a much older, more ancient backstory that I think doesn’t get the attention it deserves."

That was Sal for you—details without details.

"Do you know where it’s set?" Kimberly asked.

"Yeah, just something about a gothic mansion in southern Carousel, though I think most of the shots of Carousel Proper are from southeastern Carousel. I imagine they’ll try to make it look like those two places are close together, but I don’t know, whatever the case. There are no big city sites for this story. I know you’ll hate that."

"Can you tell me anything about my character?" Kimberly asked.

"A fish out of water who’s new to town and just trying to fit in. It’s that type of thing. It’s one of those frustrating stories that’s about finding yourself when all the audience actually wants to know about is the cool lore, the mystery, and the background characters."

"Anything else you can tell me?" Kimberly asked. "Anything about the difficulty or the plot?"

"I’ve forgotten the plot, and I didn’t make a note about it, but that was probably because it didn’t really have an effect on me. This is a coming-of-age sort of thing, probably not that complicated if you follow me. I will say there’s some brutal, bloody stuff in this that'll probably get cut out for TV," Sal said.

From what he was talking about, there was good news and bad news.

From the sound of it, the storyline was too challenging to get much concrete information using her talent agent trope. But on the other hand, it wasn’t going to be too far out of our league because he wasn’t exactly tight-lipped like he was when you asked him about a storyline that was just too strong.

"All right," Kimberly said. "I’ll give you a call later."

"Ciao," Sal said, and he hung up the phone.

"That doesn’t sound right," Andrew said. "It’s on the mountain near the Powerworks Pavilion. I don’t remember there being a gothic mansion up there, and if there were, surely that would be the location listed on Logan and Avery’s missing posters."

I had similar thoughts.

"It has to be," Antoine said. "It would be too much of a coincidence if we just happened to find a very similar werewolf in a storyline that’s completely unrelated. Plus, the Powerworks Pavilion is as southern as Carousel goes."

"There’s only one way to know for sure," I said. "We have to actually take the missing posters and get eyes on the omen. Until then, we’re just guessing. And let’s not forget that we don’t actually know how missing posters work. For all we know, the Powerworks Pavilion is just listed as their place of death because it’s the nearest major setting."

We talked for a bit about our plans, and most of us were in agreement.

In the morning, we were going to the bowling alley, but this time we weren’t bringing everyone. This wasn’t a relaxing time out or a shopping trip.

This was surveillance, and we needed to move quickly and be ready in case we encountered a problem.

~-~

Personally, I just wanted to bring myself, Antoine, Kimberly, Dina, and Bobby, but Andrew and Michael insisted on coming. While Lila would have liked to, she did not speak up, so she didn't get to go. Since we wanted to keep our group small, Bobby stayed home, and the rest of us hiked out to the bowling alley with nothing but the ghost of a memory of how to stay safe there.

Luckily, we didn't need to be as exacting as the bowlers were.

As we approached, everything was as I remembered it, including the woman talking to her reflection in the building's window.

We knew a few things we had to do, like not interacting with the mobile omens, locking the doors, and flipping the closed sign around when we wanted certain patrons not to enter the bowling alley.

Still, we did not remember the exact sequence or timing as Grace had determined it.

We also didn't plan on being there long enough for it to matter.

The bowling alley didn't actually have a name; it was just called a bowling alley. Whatever its name was had been ripped off the roof of the building.

As I stared at it, I could still see the struts designed to hold a large sign up there. If I didn't know any better, that looked like some sort of indication of danger, but I couldn't say what danger it was referring to.

"Andrew, do you remember any of the safety precautions that the bowlers used to do?" Antoine asked as we approached the building.

"I regret to admit that I was not interested in the subject matter when Grace and the bowler showed us the alley. I came because it seemed impolite to turn down their offer," Andrew said.

That was similar to how I had treated the whole event. My only interest was in learning the concept of how to clear an area, not to learn the bowling alley specifically. Unsurprisingly, I barely remembered it.

"That being said, we're in, then we're out," Antoine said.

"I could probably go in alone," I said. "I mean, let's face it, without any scouting tropes, I'm not sure how useful the rest of you will be in there. No offense."

"We'll be really useful if you accidentally trigger an omen," Michael said. "Then you're going to need some muscle."

I didn’t say anything in response, but I would certainly say something if he ended up triggering something because he couldn’t see the omens or wasn’t even trying to look.

With that, Antoine led us across the street and into the building.

It looked like an ordinary bowling alley from back in the real world. I could hear the sound of pins crashing and balls rolling across the wood. People were laughing, and the child's birthday that had been there on our first trip to the bowling alley wasn't even happening, which was good because there was apparently a pretty risky mobile omen associated with it.

"What do you got, Radar?" Michael said, looking at me.

"Don’t call me that," I said. I really didn’t need a nickname, especially one that came with a job. "The bowling bag is an omen. Don’t touch it." I continued scanning around the room. "Something is unscrewing the bolts to that neon sign on the wall. It’s an omen—something tough, and there’s something invisible. Don’t go anywhere near it. It won’t activate unless the sign falls and hits you."

That day was not a dense one for omens at the bowling alley. Of course, the real danger of the alley is if you spent too much time there, because so many omens moved in and out. At any one time, there might not be that many, but throughout the day, many cycled through.

"There’s a trope item over in the glass prize box," Andrew observed.

I looked over and found it quite hilarious. The trope item was a container of string gum, like chewing gum, but in string form, and it had a trope called She Caught Her Own Killer that guaranteed there would be some piece of evidence linking the victim to the killer and the act of killing. It was a Scholar Sleuth trope.

"But how would that work?" Kimberly asked. "How does bubble gum link to the killer?"

That one had me scratching my head.

Any explanation that I could come up with sounded convoluted. I almost wanted to win the prize just so I could test it out to figure out what the heck a pack of chewing gum was going to do to help you solve a murder, even with a powerful trope like that attached.

Trope objects were very new, so deciding how the trope would apply wasn’t an exact science yet.

"Maybe the killer gets the bubble gum on their shoe?" Andrew said.

"Gumshoe," I said. "That has to be it. It's a pun."

Had I seen any movies where a killer was found out because they got the victim’s bubble gum stuck to the bottom of their shoe? I tried to remember. In fact, I had only seen one such instance on an episode of Monk.

As we were talking about it, somewhere in the arcade someone must have won something, because the lights started flashing and noises started dinging. But when I looked over there, no one was there.

I continued to search around the small food service area and along the lanes and checked every bowling ball. There were two different balls with tropes attached. One was Antoine’s Athlete trope, which allowed him to bring a sports implement into a storyline and gave it bonus damage in melee combat.

The other one was called Clutter Collateral, a Comedian Stooge trope that made it so that when the enemy crashed into a shelf or something with lots of objects on it, the objects would fall on them and cause extra damage. In this case, the object was a bowling ball.

I continued looking around and found additional omens here and there, including an omen that was nothing but a foul odor near one of the walls in the bowling alley by the bathroom.

Except the odor wasn’t from the bathroom. It was from something inside the wall. The Omen was triggered by breaking through the drywall. The storyline was called After Hours, as far as I could tell, and it was a really easy storyline.

"Guys, there’s nothing here," I said. "No omens anything like what we’re looking for—just all the normal bowling alley omens."

"Maybe we should check the back again," Andrew suggested.

"No," I said. "There’s a dangerous omen at the back door. We need to regroup outside because being in here is dangerous."

"We can’t just give up," Michael said. "You said that a lot of omens show up and travel around the bowling alley, so maybe we just need to stay here and wait it out."

"We can watch them enter the bowling alley from outside," I said. "We don’t have to wait in here where it’s dangerous."

"Why are we even saying that the omen is at the bowling alley?" Michael said. "If the riddle was about the bowlers, it was because they were in the movie. That doesn’t mean that the omen is at the bowling alley. Are we just wasting our time here? Do we even have any idea where the omen is?"

I understood his frustration but I was starting to get annoyed by it.

"The bowlers spent a lot of time here," Antoine said. "If they ran that storyline, I’d bet anything that the Omen is around here somewhere. It just makes sense."

That was our logic originally. We thought the bowling elements of the riddle that Madam Celia had given us might be a clue that the omen was at the bowling alley. But then it turned out that it was a clue that the bowlers themselves had been the last ones to run the werewolf storyline we were looking for.

Still, the bowlers were called that for a reason, and if that omen existed, it was likely nearby. We were out of clues. That had to be it.

"Let’s take a break," Antoine said.

"That sounds fair," Andrew agreed. "We can stake out the entrance and see what comes by."

He mainly was talking to Michael, whose patience was growing thin and who reacted to his own worry with irritation.

~-~

"Nothing has walked in the bowling alley in the last forty minutes," Michael said. "Are we even sure that this stuff happens when players aren't around? Maybe if we went in there—"

"It happens whether players are there or not," Andrew said. "You know that. I know you want to find that omen as much as I do, but you have to be patient. This is a large undertaking."

We waited at the corner of the street across from the bowling alley, in a place where there was very little activity of any kind, whether it be NPCs or omens. I sat under a tree and scanned around, looking for danger. Kimberly had brought the baby doll along, but it hadn't screamed even once.

Antoine came over and sat next to me.

"So, you got any ideas?" he asked. "People are getting a little antsy."

Truthfully, I wasn’t sure, and if I was being honest, I was starting to believe that the omen we were looking for might not be in the bowling alley.

"When we talked to Sal, he said that Stray Dawn was set at a mansion in southern Carousel and that the town footage would be southeast Carousel," I said. Like eastern Carousel, there were other sections of Carousel that acted as separate towns in storylines.

"Right," Antoine said. "You think we need to go look over there? In southern Carousel?"

I shook my head. "No," I said. "I like our theory. The bowlers played basically every storyline within their level range that existed in this area."

"So, do we need to fan out?" he asked. "Figure out where the omen is? Maybe they left the bowling alley in search of new storylines?"

"Yes, but it's more than that," I said. "If the story is mostly set in south and southeast Carousel, I imagine it doesn’t start here because this is basically central, west-central Carousel."

"Yeah, nowhere near where the movie is set," he said. "So what does that mean?"

"Well, if the omen is found here as we theorized, but the story is not triggered here, it could be like those in the library, where as soon as you trigger it, a bunch of NPCs start pushing you toward wherever the setting is, one way or another, through bits of dialogue or some sort of narrative device. Or…"

I paused to think.

"Or?" Antoine asked.

"Or… you could just purchase the omen over here and run it somewhere else," I said.

He nodded enthusiastically.

"A purchasable omen," he repeated. "So we need to look for a store."

"That's what I'm thinking," I said. "But again, it could just be an omen that is placed in a silly area. Places like the library or even the hospital sometimes had a bunch of omens that weren't set in those places, but that was kind of their gimmick. That was not the norm necessarily."

Antoine stood up and quickly raised his voice. "Everybody, gather up. We’ve got a plan."

Everyone was eager to do something other than wait and watch a bowling alley, so they came from where they had been waiting.

"Riley thinks that the omen might be a purchasable omen, so we need to find stores nearby where the bowlers might have found the omen we're looking for."

We didn’t even have to look.

"What about the For Your Life Flea Market?" Kimberly said. "A block over, there's a whole lot with a bunch of different booths selling clothes and furniture. We could get some more chairs."

Of course, Kimberly knew where the nearest shopping venue was.

"We’ll start there," Antoine said. "But we’re not buying chairs from a flea market. We’re going to steal them from storylines like proper players."

Interior decorating was a high-risk, low-reward pastime in Carousel.

~-~

It didn't take long to find the flea market that Kimberly was talking about.

I barely even remembered it being there because the last time we had seen it was when we were loaded into a bus, running away from the black snow, and all the omens were deactivating like bubble wrap popping in a microwave.

"Alright, stay with me," I said, and I must have said it with some intensity because they all got really close to me. When I moved, they moved.

That was a good thing because the flea market was filled with omens, cursed and haunted objects, as well as lots of trope items. It also had tons of old-looking props and vintage clothes.

"Alright, at first glance, it looks like the omens are constrained to the shelves and the tables, so don't touch anything unless you've really given it a good look," I said. "Even then, don't touch anything."

There were probably lots of items that we could have bought there, but I wasn't looking for them, and frankly, we were running low on cash from our recent shopping spree.

The flea market was one of my favorite types of places in Carousel, in its own way, because a lot of the omens had NPCs interacting with them and adding little narrative flair.

A woman was haggling to purchase an old desk, claiming that it was her father's but that it was sold in an estate sale without her knowledge. She didn’t have enough for the purchase. The storyline was called The Bureau of Investigation, and it was a pretty difficult one. It was triggered by bringing the desk to your base and unlocking its clues, whatever that meant. I liked it because I thought it was a fine name for a storyline and a beautiful desk.

"This is where we need to take Cassie," Kimberly said.

I nodded. "Yeah, there are lots of cursed and haunted things here that she could use for her Curios and Trinkets trope."

"Well, that and the clothes here are just her style," she said, eyeing a clothing rack that looked like it was taken from the set of an early '90s counterculture movie.

There were plants for sale, including one that was clearly moving under its own power—an omen for a movie called Gorticulture.

As I looked around with a mix of panic (because I was surrounded by dangerous omens) and amazement (because I was also surrounded by really cool omens), I started to hear a conversation getting heated.

"I told you," one of the voices said, "I am not here to purchase paintings. I am here to sell paintings; I buy mine from estate auctions and other events where I can check their provenance. I do not have anyone here to authenticate this specimen. If you would like to take it six blocks that way, there is an antique shop that might have more interest."

As if someone selling paintings at a flea market would care about provenance.

"Just 60 bucks," another voice said. "Come on, you're already set up to sell paintings. Just look at it. You don't need it authenticated; it's beautiful, it's an antique. It has to be. It was in an ancient house."

"If you've stolen this painting, do you think that makes me more likely to purchase it?" the first voice asked.

I found myself drawn to the exchange, so I led the others toward the back of the flea market, where a woman had an entire rack of paintings and other paintings stacked up on easels and desks.

A grubby-looking man was holding a medium-sized painting and talking to a woman wearing a large hat—just NPCs reading off a script.

As we approached, the man turned to look at us, and I saw the ancient painting in his hands. It was of a beautiful, regal woman—a close-up portrait. While I'm sure that she was quite a dame, what drew my attention was her necklace.

It was a silver vial on a silver chain. I wasn't sure what it might contain, but it looked like some liquid, like mercury in a thermometer. It was entrancing, and it was an omen.

We had found it.

Stray Dawn. Its danger level was, "Honey, I’m scared." The omen was triggered by bringing the painting to the historic Southeast Carousel and placing it in the back of a wood-panel station wagon parked on Green Street.

"That's it," I said. I grabbed the folded-up missing posters from my pocket for Logan and Avery. Sure enough, they showed up on the red wallpaper next to the omen and its information.

We had figured it out.

"Holy hell, we found it," Antoine said, and as he stared at it, like me, he was entranced by the necklace. In fact, as I looked around, everyone was.

"You like it?" the man said. He had no name on the red wallpaper other than Miscreant.

Now it was Kimberly's turn. She had good Moxie and actual people skills to go along with it.

"We're just here to browse," she said. "That is a nice painting."

"You're right, it is," the Miscreant said. "Tell you what, 70 bucks, and it's yours."

Kimberly shrugged. "Like I said, we're just looking."

"Oh, come on. I saw the way you looked at it," the Miscreant said. "Tell you what, take it off my hands, and we can do 65."

Kimberly said, "No, thank you," and turned to the NPC who was selling all the other paintings.

"I'm looking for something pastoral, almost. You know, a painting of nature," she said.

"I think I have a couple that you might be interested in. Just give me one moment," the woman said.

"Look," the Miscreant said, trying to get Kimberly's attention. "This is the painting you want, I can tell. You almost look like the lady in the picture."

In fact, I had not even spotted that, but Kimberly did kind of look like the woman in the picture. But the painting was an oil painting, and it wasn't exactly fine on the details of anything but the necklace. It could have been any blonde woman, but after he said it looked like Kimberly, I couldn't help but notice it.

"Then I guess all I really need is a mirror, then, huh?" Kimberly said.

"Don't be like that," the Miscreant said. "I'll tell you what, just give me what you got on you. Come on, look at it—it's a beautiful painting, one-of-a-kind."

Only then did Kimberly glance at the painting and look it over.

"30," she said, "and that's just because I like the frame."

"We're not going all the way down to 30. What were we at, 65?"

"I thought you said 60," Kimberly said.

"I said 65," the Miscreant said.

"And I said 30," Kimberly said.

"60," the man said.

Kimberly shook her head. "30."

"55."

"30."

"No, you have to go up. That’s how this works," the man said.

"35," Kimberly said.

"I'm staying at 55," the man said.

Kimberly turned back to the woman selling all the other paintings and said, "Do you have any frames like that one?" Then she pointed at the frame with the painting of the omen.

"I'm sure I could find something similar," the woman said.

"Oh, bull," the Miscreant said. "50, then."

"Hmmm… I only have 40 dollars," Kimberly said.

The man growled in frustration and looked up at the air. "Oh, all right. But know that you are really hurting my bottom line for no reason. You don't know what I risked to get this thing."

The man reluctantly handed over the painting, and Kimberly handed over a stack of coins in large denominations.

"Nice doing business with you," she said.

"Nice doing business with you… ripping out my guts," the man growled as he walked away.

And just like that, we had finally accomplished what we had set out to do, what we had walked all over Carousel for.

We had the omen for Stray Dawn.

It was time for the planning to really begin.