Book Five, Chapters 57, 58, 59

We gently wrapped the crybaby’s arms around the coat hooks at the entryway to the loft, both for convenience and practicality. Not to mention style.

If something came along that we needed to know about, we hoped that the baby would cry and tell us. But that was actually a point of confusion—ever since we had gotten the baby, it had yet to cry even once, and we had come close to some tremendous dangers in Carousel since obtaining it.

We did that every day, just traveling around.

As I sat eating cream of wheat, one of the only breakfast cereals available at Eastern Carousel General Store, I stared at the baby as it hung from its hooks and wondered what exactly the trope was supposed to do. Fear of the Unknown activated around dangers the user was not aware of, seemingly a catchall.

I scratched my head while I thought about it because I had a theory about why it wasn't working. If it only worked on dangers you weren't aware of, that implied that if you were aware of the danger, it just wouldn't do anything.

I wasn't the only one who was confused, but I was the only one who was thinking about it that morning—the day after we had purchased it. Everyone else was preoccupied.

We had decided to postpone our journey to the Speakeasy for a day because we wanted to get there around midday, as we had been told that we needed to leave at closing time, whenever that was. So, the sooner we got there in the day, the more time we would have to explore, and more importantly, the longer we would get to put off doing the dangerous thing that was going to the Speakeasy.

We knew, in theory, that this was how Carousel often worked back before the days of Camp Dyer—before everything started coming apart at the seams. You find a problem, you go to a Paragon to get an answer, and you follow their directions, continuously chasing clue after clue until you get your answer.

In a way, our mission was almost mundane.

We weren't trying to figure out some grand scheme or understand the nature of Carousel; we were just trying to figure out the name and location of a specific omen. I had to assume that such quests were the very reason that Paragons existed.

Still, as I stared at the baby, waiting for it to start crying, I could feel myself growing nervous because everything we had done seemed to be going a little too well. Maybe it was just the fake tutorial that had given me that anxiety, but the Paragons were helpful, and it felt like we were making progress.

I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

The others were watching The Strings Attached in the living room. They were all lying down or sitting with their legs crossed scooted up near each other so that they could see the little TV I had purchased from The Bare Wire.

They hadn’t had such a convenient source of entertainment in a long time.

Last night, we had watched Itch, and while we had anticipated we would enjoy it, no one actually had. It was such a source of frustration.

Then we watched Delta Epsilon Delta, and that one was a lot more fun. We got to introduce everyone to Anna and Camden and watch our entire team fumble without knowing how to run a storyline properly yet.

My triumphant scene, where I revealed the killer while stumbling up the stairs, too delirious to even notice they were there, was actually quite good—other than the fact that it made no sense for my character to be the one to figure everything out.

I was literally there as a red herring suspect, and it turned out that I was the one to solve everything.

The others complimented me, but all I could think was how silly of a twist that was. It was like the main character changed for the reveal.

This morning’s choice was a bit of a thrill ride.

"Grace was so smart," Kimberly said as The Strings Attached played. I could see a tear forming in her eye.

The finished film made Grace look like a major genius, and my scene of fighting off possession was one of the best sources of horror in the movie. Carousel had managed to catch the sound of my bones breaking in crisp, wet echoes.

"Can you imagine taking control and running a storyline without any research at all?" I said, as I watched her reveal what had happened during that wicked masquerade ball.

"I know, right?" Antoine answered. "They never even let us realize how much trouble we were in."

Grace was a Detective advanced archetype, originally a Scholar. She had turned what was likely some sort of thriller into a proper mystery, and she had kept all of her teammates in line with the collection of tropes and an abundance of leadership that she had obviously learned from herding her team composed of three Bruisers around.

My little TV allowed me to show the players what I saw in the red wallpaper, and the obvious use of that was showing them all the films we had run that I could see because of my Director's Monitor trope. So, I was watching the movie both in my mind and with my real eyes.

It was easy. I could do it just by thinking.

I was just glad there wasn't a delay between them because that would be annoying.

As soon as the movie was over, everyone begrudgingly rejoined the reality of what we had to do that day.

Andrew and I had looked through the Atlas for any references to the bar or a tavern or anything with the word "Speakeasy" in it, and we had struck pay dirt.

The Speakeasy was a Criminal-Outsider trope. That’s where it came from.

It allowed its users to incorporate the aforementioned Speakeasy into any story they ran and explained why the Speakeasy relocated.

There was a whole half-page on the trope written in tiny script by someone whose handwriting looked like typed words—it was so neat and uniform. The Speakeasy trope was really useful, creating a sort of sanctuary that could be used in a variety of ways.

It was a trope fit for an Apocalypse.

It turned out the Speakeasy just happened to exist even when that trope wasn't being used. Truthfully, there was probably a lot more information about it somewhere in the Atlas, but we had exhausted our abilities to search for it.

Whatever the case, finding it in the Atlas—even though we didn't get much information about the downsides of visiting the Speakeasy other than the random warning that things often change in Carousel—did make me feel a lot more secure about visiting it.

But that wasn't what was on other people's minds. Not first thing in the morning.

Because after the movie was over, their minds switched back to the crybaby.

Just as mine had been while I was eating my cream of wheat.

So, we had one of our famous 11-person huddles around a table with only six chairs as we planned what we were going to do that day.

"We need to go to the werewolf lair," Andrew said. "Not discounting our tip about the Speakeasy, I can't help but think that the crybaby was designed to help us stay safe near a monster lair. Whatever the case, having that answer will make me feel more confident about going into places we don't understand."

Michael was on board, as was Lila—but of course they were; they were his teammates.

I found that most people were on board with his detour. Isaac and Cassie obviously agreed with him because they were his brother and sister, and the others seemed open to the idea of returning to the werewolf lair if only to put off the eerie feeling surrounding the Speakeasy for a little bit.

I wasn't going to argue; the only real downside was the walk.

I had trouble hiding my pessimism over the soundness of the idea.

We had already received another lead to move our little mini-quest further, so if it turned out that the crybaby was all we needed, it would seem like Tar had given us a time-waster—or maybe he was just scripted to tell us about the Speakeasy regardless eventually.

Whatever the case, that was how we found ourselves on the long walk out to the KRSL Powerworks Pavilion that morning.

Andrew volunteered to hold the baby—what a sweetheart.

Again, Lila volunteered to show us how she could open up sound stages to traverse Carousel safely, but I didn't go for it, and I couldn't exactly explain why, other than it made me feel uncomfortable and that I would rather do things my way.

She didn't seem to take it too hard, but what did I know?

The trip there was uneventful, and the baby didn't cry once, even as we reached a part of the road where the smaller road up the mountain had been washed out by rain.

"This is it," Andrew said. "This is the road she led us to."

Andrew was actually nervous being back here. We all were.

"I'll take the baby," Michael said. "See if it warns us about the lair."

Andrew's face showed his shock immediately, and he stammered to explain to Michael that he was not going to be going into the werewolf lair on this trip. "We're just here to see if there is a notable interaction between the crybaby and the lair."

Michael nodded; he almost seemed disappointed, like he had a grudge to settle.

"Well, somebody's gotta say it," Isaac said. "Why don't we just sneak up there and get a glimpse at the werewolves and see what the storyline is called? Wouldn't that be faster?"

Andrew shook his head. "In order to see what storyline they're from, we would have to wait for them to transform away from being normal NPCs. I'm afraid at that point, we would likely be too far in to ensure our escape."

"You could use Oblivious Bystander," Antoine suggested. I noticed he was standing as far away from the forested side of the road as he could. "After the apocalypse, you used that, didn't you?"

I shook my head and said, "Look, yes, Oblivious Bystander is a possibility, but first, I'd like to understand what we gain by getting closer to the lair. I thought our goal was just to see if the baby cried when we walked by it or something like that."

"I assumed something would happen," Andrew said. "It seemed like we received the crybaby for this purpose."

He held the cursed little baby doll out as its eyes moved side to side.

I scratched my head. "That would make sense if it said it would help you detect any danger. But it only helps you detect dangers that you're not already aware of—that seems like such a specific use case."

"It would work on that crooked hallway omen that showed up a few nights ago," Antoine said, "not knowing if there was danger behind the door. Maybe that’s why we were given it."

That possibility had not occurred to the rest of us.

"I had hoped it would be useful for more than that," Andrew said. "If it makes us more secure at night, that is truly great, but it felt like we received this in order to help us find the name of the storyline that Logan and Avery were trapped in. I had to hope that bringing it here would do something. After all, none of us were able to detect the lair when we arrived here a year ago and started to climb the mountain. Perhaps it would grant perception of the film’s poster."

Monster lairs didn't show up on the red wallpaper like omens did with our scouting tropes. Yet, at the same time, that wasn't to say we didn't detect them at all.

After all, some combination of my hysteric scouting trope and my psychic background had clued me into the presence of something on the mountain that we were able to deduce was a monster lair.

As I thought about that, stared up at the mountain, and felt the anxiety overcome me at how close we were to a monster lair, an idea struck me.

I looked through the group.

We weren't exactly the best stocked in scouting tropes. I got curious.

"Does anyone here feel like they can sense the monster's lair on the mountain?" I asked. "Because I can, especially now that I know it's there."

They each gave me a funny look at first, and then they turned to the mountain. Most of them closed their eyes; Cassie stuck out her hands as if feeling for vibes.

"I have no idea," Kimberly said, "I'm afraid, but I think that's just normal fear."

"I'm not getting anything," Isaac said.

And that was the answer for most of them.

Except for Cassie, who seemed to focus longer than the others, her face bound into knots of focus.

Cassie was a psychic archetype, and she did have equipped a few tropes that should theoretically have some influence over her ability to sense something like a monster lair, even though they didn't explicitly say that they did.

Even something like her I'm Blocked trope, which allowed her to get some form of interaction with an entity within a storyline, might still work on a monster lair, even if she didn't know what the omen or storyline was.

I was grasping at straws. I had no idea if Psychic tropes made you Psychic.

"Do you feel anything?" I asked.

"I think so," Cassie said, "but I don't know if it's just in my head."

"Of course, it would be in your head; that's where psychic powers happen," Isaac said.

"So why are you asking?" Antoine asked.

"I can sense that there is a monster lair there," I said. "It would make sense that certain archetypes or certain tropes would innately give you some ability to detect a monster's lair. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the baby is supposed to detect things that you can't detect, so maybe us being here—those of us who detect the lair—well, maybe we should leave."

"So you take the wording of the trope literally?" Andrew said. "That it ceases to function unless it's your only resort?"

"It's just a hunch," I said, "and it doesn't hurt to take things literally sometimes. So, anyone who feels that they have some inkling that there is a monster lair on that mountain, come with me. Anyone certain that they can't detect it, stay here."

So I turned and started walking back down the road. Cassie followed. So did Dina, whose background trope often gave her supernatural insights, although not in the most direct way, as hers only allowed her to have some quasi-psychic vibes connected to the loss her character receives.

Still, a trope that gives you psychic abilities might disqualify you from the crybaby's protection, and it didn't hurt to see what would happen.

Sure enough, as soon as we were far away enough from the monster's lair that I could no longer feel it, I heard a baby start crying in the distance.

We replayed that experiment several times to see if our hunch was correct, and it ultimately was.

When Cassie or Dina or I were in the group, the thing just didn't work.

If Dina took off her tropes, it did. If I took off my background trope, causing my scouting trope also to become unequipped, suddenly, the baby would cry when I was around.

Even Cassie could get the baby to cry when she was around if she unequipped all of her psychic tropes, which meant that having a psychic archetype did not actually make you psychic.

"So what have we learned?" Andrew said.

"I think there's something strange up on that mountain," Isaac said.

"I mean, what did we learn about the crybaby’s purpose?" Andrew said. “Given its niche use case?”

Many people offered suggestions, but I said, "We learned it was given to us for a very specific reason. Maybe that itself is a clue."

And that wasn't really an answer because what did that mean?

Where was a place that we needed to go where there was a danger none of us were aware of?

Well, if it was the Speakeasy, we were about to find out.

~-~

The laundromat we were directed to had perhaps one of the laziest names in all of Carousel: The Laundromat.

Perhaps that was supposed to be ironic because, secretly, it wasn't just a laundromat, and therefore, just calling it that was funny.

I wasn't sure, but by all accounts, it looked like an average laundromat to me. People were inside doing their washing and drying. There was a woman inside of a little office who would take your suits or dresses to have them dry cleaned, which was a nice thing to have at a laundromat.

They went above and beyond.

We ignored them all and walked to the back. As we followed the hall further into the building, we eventually found a large man standing next to a door whose only notable quality was that it was made out of thick metal and opened with one of those large handles like they used to close submarines in cartoons.

It was surrounded by industrial-sized washers and dryers.

The man didn't say anything to us, but Antoine coolly said, "Pyrite."

The man didn't respond, and for a moment, all we could hear was the laundry machines going as he looked us up and down and reached over to open the door, revealing a freight elevator.

"I'm sure it's normal to have a freight elevator in a one-story building," Isaac said.

The man didn't respond.

"Yeah, like we'd get into an elevator without a light," Isaac said—and he was right; there was no light inside the elevator.

"Isaac," I said, "there's not an omen. You can stop checking."

He was calling out strange details, hoping to unveil an omen because that's how his scouting trope worked, but mine said nothing was going on, and the baby wasn't crying, so we were probably good.

Probably.

We stepped into the elevator, and as we did, a light flickered on. There was only one button in the elevator, so we pressed it.

The trip down was jittery and frankly quite terrifying because, with all the shaking, it became possible that we were walking to our deaths despite all the evidence that we would be safe. That fear pushed itself into my mind.

But then it stopped. There was a small gate between the elevator and the floor, and another goonish-looking guy was there to open it for us.

Beyond that was a hallway with detailed red wallpaper—not the red wallpaper we saw in our heads, but similar.

We loaded out into the hallway, and carefully, I led us down to the sound of music in the distance.

Jazz music.

The further we walked, the more sounds we heard—people dancing and laughing. There was an energy and a buzz in the air.

As we finally reached the end of the hallway and turned to look, we saw a 1920s Speakeasy absolutely alive with a couple dozen NPCs. The cocktail waitresses and the bartender were wearing appropriate outfits. People were gambling at blackjack and roulette.

The bartender specifically caught my attention because not only did he have a wiry, muscular frame and sharp, penetrating eyes, but he also had a Plot Armor of 50 and a bunch of tropes I couldn't see.

On the red wallpaper, his name was Vic Malone, but as I watched, his first name changed. It started at Vic and then became Roger and then John, and every few seconds, it would change.

He spotted us the moment we rounded the corner. He didn't exactly smile, but there was something inviting about the way he looked at us—a sort of sardonic amusement.

I couldn't spend all of my attention on him; there was just so much to see.

"Check out the two people dancing over by the piano," Dina said. Her Outsider's Perspective trope allowed her to notice strange things quickly, and she had undoubtedly noticed something strange.

The two people who were dancing were dressed to the gills and wearing masquerade masks. They didn't register as enemies but rather as NPCs, and they didn't seem to care that we were there. But I recognized the style of those masks, and I knew for sure what storyline they were from. Miss Brunette and Mr. Cobalt ignored us and danced like that was the only thing that mattered to them.

That couldn’t have been a coincidence. Nothing ever was.

There was a man named “Cauliflower Bill” set up at a table in the far corner with an easel, and he had a sign out that said, "Caricatures 10 dollars." He was marked as an NPC, too, but his sign had a picture on it of a collection of clowns at a circus, and I swore as I looked at that picture that one of those clowns seemed to be looking back at me.

It was a terrifying clown that almost looked like it had another face painted above its face with makeup.

I had to look away.

"Does anyone else get the feeling that everyone here is an enemy?" Antoine asked.

"I think you might be on to something," I said.

And sure enough, as we looked around at the room filled with smoke and jazz, everyone who wasn't an employee did have a sort of dark look over them—a haunting gaze. Danger leaked from their aura, and even though I couldn't see any confirmation of this on the red wallpaper, my Hysteric Scouting trope I Don't Like It Here was making me feel very anxious.

The collection included all sorts of people—some carrying obvious weapons, others looking like ordinary folk.

"Should we leave?" Kimberly asked, clearly unsure of whether we should be here.

I had no idea. The baby wasn't crying, so there was no danger that we weren't aware of, but at the same time, there were plenty of dangers that we were aware of, and for some reason, they were all pretending to be NPCs.

"Let's talk to the Paragon over here behind the bar," I said.

Tar had hinted that the Speakeasy took in all types, but this was ridiculous.

Antoine was quick to talk to the bartender, and he didn't waste words.

"Are we safe here?" he asked of the obvious Paragon.

The man—Vic, or whatever his name was, Malone—smiled and said, "You know, we don't get a lot of players around here these days. Wonder why that might be."

Antoine kind of dismissed his playful greeting and said, "I just want to know if we should be here. Aren't Paragons supposed to help the players?"

"Well, hang on there. There's a way of going about things. Don't just ask me if you're in danger. Endear yourself to me so that I'm inclined to help you," Malone said, smiling. His eyes were searching and revealed something his smiling face hid well, a slyness, a cleverness.

He wore his sleeves pushed up, and his thin, nimble fingers could fit all the way to the bottom of the glasses he was polishing.

He was one of those guys whose smile could transform his face from fierce and unwelcoming to charismatic and, frankly, warm.

I welcomed that in a place like this.

"Take a beer for each of us," Antoine said.

"That'll be a 50-cent piece apiece," Malone said. "Would you like to start a tab?"

Fifty cents seemed like really cheap brews, and even though none of us actually wanted to drink at that moment, we were happy because we were still counting on the whole if you pay for something, you're safe logic, which was only 85% true at best in practice because plenty of restaurants and stores had dangerous things in them.

As he poured our drinks, he said, "And relax. These characters don't mean you any harm, and they couldn't if they wanted to. Not here. But I suggest you don't be too friendly with any of them because while you learn about them, they’re learning about you."

I looked over the cast of characters who were having a good time in the Speakeasy that night. How many black widows, serial killers, and psychopaths were there with us? I had no idea.

The crybaby didn't cry, and I never saw an omen. We found ourselves a booth, squeezed in, and listened to jazz.

Eventually, we got Malone, the bartender, to come talk to us. He wouldn’t talk to us at the bar.

He scooted into the booth with us and asked, "So, what brings you to this neck of the woods? People like you don't show up at a place like this unless they have a real good reason."

Andrew was the first to talk.

"We're on a mission," he said. "We're looking for a storyline that involves werewolves and takes place on the mountain near the Powerworks Pavilion. Do you have any information on the location of an omen for a storyline like that or anything that could help us?"

"I see," Malone said. "See, I cater toward the human type of killer.” Then quieter, he commented, “Fella comes in here asking about werewolves…” like he was making fun. “What I suggest is that you drink, and you think on it, and just take it all in. You never know what you might find here."

He smiled, got up from the booth, and walked back to the bar.

"This is useless," Michael said. "I don't like going on wild goose chases, and I don't like being toyed with by those…whatever you call them. Pelicans, politicians, paramours..."

"Paragons," Andrew said. "They're called Paragons. The older version of the Atlas that we have now talks about them."

"Doesn't matter," Michael said, and then he was the first of us to take his beer and take a swig, and because he didn't fall over, the rest of us followed, even though no one really drank much.

"Maybe we should take off all our tropes," Kimberly said, "just to make sure that if there's danger here, none of us are unknowingly detecting it and stopping the baby from working."

That was actually a smart idea. We were pretty emotional and tense, so if one of our tropes was detecting danger or magic or anything, we possibly would not know it, but our ability to detect it might stop the baby from crying.

So we all took off all our tropes, and when the baby didn’t cry, we put them right back on.

“It was a good idea,” I said. “Maybe we actually are safe here.”

It still didn’t feel like it, and frankly, I was growing really frustrated not knowing why we were there in the first place.

I let my eyes wander.

There was a man drinking alone in the corner.

He looked like a regular guy, probably good with the ladies if I could guess, but he spent all his attention staring at a woman and a man across the room, and occasionally the woman would look back at him like they shared a secret.

I pieced together that they were working together to fleece the third man that the woman was talking to. Yep, from the looks of it, that fellow talking to the woman was going to have a rough night.

Which is to say, I was having trouble focusing on why we were actually there.

My eyes carried further around the room as I watched other narratives play out—a couple of con men trying to sell a coin to a dupe, a woman sneaking something into the drink of a jazz pianist, and so on.

And the man over there in the corner just waiting to paint someone’s caricature.

Strange fellow.

He didn’t seem to be interacting with anyone; his eyes were yellow where the white should be and black everywhere else—not in a supernatural way, but more in a drinking-himself-to-death sort of way. He had a funny shape to him, too, kind of like a bowling pin with noodle arms. His shape was so distinctive that I recognized him from the picture he had of all those clowns, even without his makeup.

“Does somebody want to go with me? I want to go talk to this guy over here,” I said. It wasn’t as if I thought he was part of our reason for being there, but I still wanted to know what his deal was and why a Speakeasy filled with criminals needed a caricature artist.

Antoine volunteered to go with me.

As we approached, the man started to smile—a big toothy smile with yellow teeth that matched his yellow eyes. When he spoke, I could almost hear every cigarette he had ever smoked in his voice.

“Can I interest you two gents in a portrait?” he said, coughing. “I’ll give you one hell of a price, just 10 dollars.”

“Would you like to see some of my other portraits?” he asked, flipping open a book filled with Polaroid pictures of drawings he had done. They were mostly of families with children, as well as a few romantic ones with couples, and of course, a few friend groups who decided to get their picture drawn together.

“What’s with the clowns?” Antoine asked, staring at the sign and the picture on it.

“You like that?” the man said—not asking, but declaring. “Yeah, I work at the Low Top Circus. It’s coming back to town next month; it’ll be a thrill. This one’s me,” he said, pointing to the one that was obviously him because of his funny shape and yellow eyes.

“You like being a clown?” I asked.

“Oh yeah, but if I’m being honest, I mostly do it for the children,” he said, then looked at me blankly.

I looked through the picture at all the clearly murderous clowns. In movies, clowns usually come in at least two different versions of themselves—the perfectly ordinary one that you would expect to see at a real-life circus and the scary one that you would only see when you were about to be killed. The picture had the non-scary versions, and yet they were obviously still murderous, but not in a way that would hold up in court.

I couldn’t stare at the picture too long because the one clown with the face drawn above his face was starting to freak me out.

I didn’t know what I was hoping to see, but I thought that maybe because he wasn’t going through his own little narrative like all of the other characters in the Speakeasy, he had something to do with us.

I looked at Antoine and shrugged my shoulders.

He shrugged his shoulders back, and we went back to our booth, where everyone was on their second round, even if they didn’t finish their first.

“Well, maybe we were supposed to go to the mall,” Isaac said. “Do you remember all those people talking about going to the mall when we were at the outlet mall? It’s malls all the way down. Think about it—there’s a costume shop at the mall, remember? Maybe there’s a werewolf costume, and we’re supposed to buy it, and that’s the omen. Wouldn’t it make sense for a werewolf movie to have a werewolf costume as an omen—literally turning into a werewolf?” He kept tapping his temple as if he was showing you exactly how clever he was.

And yet, when he said that, all I could think was, What exactly would a werewolf costume look like in Carousel? Because there were so many different types of werewolves. Would it be a big fur suit, or would it be some sort of mask, or maybe some of that facial putty that you’re supposed to glue onto your face to add a snout or something?

As I started thinking about it, something occurred to me, and I really just couldn’t stop thinking about it. Instead of taking my place back in the booth, I went back to the bar and took a seat there, and finally, the pieces started to click into place.

Werewolves from different franchises didn’t look alike at all, did they?

~-~

"So, what are you over here planning?" Kimberly asked after I had been sitting at the bar by myself for half an hour, piecing together a theory.

"Who says I'm planning anything?" I responded. "I'm just hanging out at the Speakeasy, like the rest of you."

"Your status on the red wallpaper says planning," she said.

"Oh, right," I said. Who even remembered that that was one of the statuses? Maybe since I was always the one planning, I never saw it on other players.

"I remember it because it's always good to see the high-Savvy people planning things. Makes me feel safer. I assume you're thinking about the prophecy we got from Madam Celia or the baby doll. Did you figure it out?"

Ah, yes, the fortune.

Your friends have all fallen, some here, some there;
'Til they have risen, you've no friends to spare.

"You know that is what's on my mind," I said. "But here’s the thing—I don’t think it’s a prophecy. I don’t think it’s a fortune, and I don’t think it’s a warning."

"It sounds like a warning," she said. "If it’s not all that, what is it?"

"I think it’s a riddle, like an old-fashioned riddle where you’re talking about one thing but look like you’re talking about another," I said. "My grandpa used to like them. Unfortunately, they’re not really in vogue—not for a long time. I think it’s because they’re too up for interpretation. You know, like, What creature walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening?"

"I don’t know," Kimberly said. "What is it?"

"A human who crawls and then walks and then uses a cane as they age. That’s the Riddle of the Sphinx, but I don’t think this riddle is as universal as all that. I think this riddle is about our specific experiences, and it’s also a lot more mundane."

"All right, what do you think it is?"

I repeated, repeated the fortune, word for word.

“Your friends have all fallen, some here, some there;
'Til they have risen, you've no friends to spare.”

I twisted in my seat to look at her.

 "If I'm wrong, don’t make fun of me, all right? I think the riddle is referring to rolling a strike in bowling. That was my first thought. The friends are bowling pins—they've all fallen because you rolled a strike, and then, 'til the machine sets them back up, you can't roll a spare because you have no friends—no bowling pins."

"Bowling?" she asked. "I don’t know…does that mean the omen’s at the bowling alley?"

"Maybe," I said. "But then I looked at it again, this time without the metaphor, and I realized that it’s about the bowlers themselves—you know, our Bowlers, Grace and Reggie, and the others. They all fell in different places, one or two at a time, and now we have none of them left to spare. The bowling plus the 'friends'—that’s what I’m thinking about. I think we’re supposed to seek out something about the Bowlers."

Grace, her brother Reggie, her ex Jessie, their friends Bella and Dirk.

Kimberly looked excited. I figured there was something so simple about my interpretation that she really wanted it to be true; otherwise, reading that riddle at face value was pretty depressing.

She turned to the others and said, "You all, come over here."

Her urgency was very convincing to them because soon enough, I was surrounded by everyone, drinks in hand, wanting to know what Kimberly had called them over for.

"I think Riley figured it out," she said. "The fortune from Madam Celia." She turned to me and said, "You’re confident you’re right, right?"

"I don’t know. I’d like to think I am."

"Go on, tell us," Andrew said, barely able to contain his enthusiasm.

So I explained to them what I had explained to Kimberly, and while I had thought it was a silly little idea, they seemed to think it was a lot more serious than that.

"That is a simple and far more practical interpretation than I was worried might be correct," Andrew said.

They seemed genuinely excited. Even though I thought it was just a whack at getting the correct interpretation, they seemed to trust that I must be right for some reason. And as much as I wanted to dampen their expectations, they were talking excitedly, and Kimberly was going over her memory of how to disarm omens at the bowling alley.

They were joyful because I had given them a really straightforward heading; it was such a simple interpretation.

Antoine turned to me in the middle of their revelry and asked, "So, next up, the bowling alley?"

"Nope," I said.

And all at once, they stopped talking and just stared at me.

"And why not?" I think it was Cassie who asked.

"The crybaby," I said.

"How does that work in?" Michael asked.

"The baby doll is only useful against dangers that you are not aware of. The bowling alley has lots of omens, but we have three people here who are perfectly capable of scouting them out. Why would we be sent to pick up the baby doll if we just had to go to the bowling alley?"

"So what then?" Kimberly asked.

"There’s a place in Carousel that’s dangerous, but no one knows why. Don’t you remember?" I asked. "People will get postered there, but there are no omens."

After a moment, Antoine said, "Carousel Family Video."

The first time we’d ever held a version of the Atlas—a very redacted version—we had learned that Carousel Family Video, a once-important hotspot for players that allowed them to rent movies they had played in and rewatch them for whatever benefits that might entail, was actually dangerous for reasons that no one knew.

At least one person had gotten postered there, and no omen could be found, so being extraordinarily cautious, the vets had stopped going there, and by the time we showed up, the new vets barely remembered it.

"Okay, but other than the baby doll, why would we go to Carousel Family Video?" Antoine asked. “That’s a bit of a leap.”

It was actually Isaac's comment that made me realize something: He talked about going to the mall to see if they had a werewolf costume in the costume shop that we were all being told to go to when we went to those outlet stores.

"Wait, we don’t have to go to the mall, do we?" Isaac asked. "I was just joking around."

"No," I said. "It occurred to me that they would have to have multiple werewolf suits because werewolves always look different in horror movies. I mean, every makeup artist or costume designer wants to put their flair on what werewolves look like, and you can practically guess the movie just by looking at its werewolves."

I paused for them to catch up to where I was headed.

"None of you saw the name of the movie that the werewolves who killed Logan and Avery were from, but you did see the werewolves. You remember what they looked like, don’t you?"

"I’ll never forget it," Michael said.

"Describe them," I said.

Andrew, Michael, and Lila exchanged glances, and then Michael said, "Big, hairy, sharp teeth…they were werewolves."

I rolled my eyes. "Were they bipedal? Were they completely covered in fur? Were they human-shaped and covered in fur, or did they take on a completely wolf-like anatomy? Did they keep their clothes on when they transformed? Did their eyes glow? Did they have a snout, or did their normal mouth just grow sharp teeth? Did it look like they were wearing a monkey suit, or did it look like they had a bunch of fur glued to their skin? Did they perhaps look like they were wearing special contacts to change the shape of their eyes? Could you see their natural hair color after they had transformed? Did they have claws or paws, or still human hands with long nails? Could you tell what the human looked like before the transformation just by looking at the fully transformed wolf? Did they look like demons or animals, or possibly just humans with a bunch of rubber on their faces? Did they get bigger? Did their arms get longer? Did it look like they were wearing masks? Did they have lots of drool? Did their tongues hang out?"

I took a breath. "I can keep going. There are a million different ways that werewolves differ from movie to movie, and I need you to remember the details."

Something about my long rant seemed to cause a software malfunction in their brains as they tried to remember exactly what the wolves looked like.

I pointed to the man painting caricatures in the corner. “And I'm asking you all this because, while that clown is not out killing children, he just happens to be a sketch artist, and they placed him here at the Speakeasy where Tar told us to go.”

They all turned and looked, realization dawning on them all at once.

“So we identify what the werewolves look like, and then we go look at the covers of the movies at the movie rental store to find the right werewolf,” Antoine said.

“You got it,” I said. “Werewolves are almost always featured on movie covers because the first thing a werewolf fan wants to see is whether the werewolves look stupid. And once we get the title of the storyline, we go look around the bowling alley to find the omen. I already looked in the Atlas for stuff about the bowling alley—there’s barely anything. Grace and the Bowlers were the ones that wrote out most of the pathing around that area, but of course, we don’t have access to what they wrote because we have an older version of the Atlas from before they would have written it.”

For some reason, I didn’t expect my thoughts to be well received. I thought there would be arguments, but they all seemed genuinely happy to hear what I had to say and how all the elements lined up. If I wasn’t wrong, I thought Kimberly looked proud.

So that's how the eleven of us sat around a caricature artist who just happened to probably be a killer clown when the circus was in, as Michael, Andrew, and Lila tried to describe the monster they had seen kill their friends.

“His arms were long so that he could run on all fours without bending over too much,” Andrew said. “I distinctly remember it—this one large, muscular fellow, his arms just seemed to keep lengthening every time I looked at him.”

“I often wish my arms were long enough to run on all fours,” Isaac said. He had more than his fair share of the booze.

That got a chuckle as the clown, and I teamed up to ask more details and questions.

“What about their faces?” I asked. “Were they wolf-like or Wolverine with sharp teeth?”

“Definitely like the head of a wolf sewn onto a human body,” Lila said. “Except, at first, they did just look like humans with sharp teeth. But then I turned my head back, and suddenly they were wolves.”

“The same thing happened to me,” Michael said. “I never actually saw them transform—it’s just that every time I looked back, they were a little bit more wolf-like.”

“Andrew,” I asked, “is that what you saw too?”

He nodded.

“I had thought it was just my imagination, or maybe I was just panicking, but it's true—I never saw them actually transform.”

“That’s a common horror movie trope,” I said. “Saves on the budget. Better to miss out on the transformation than to ruin it with CGI. Or maybe they could only afford one proper transformation.”

Humans turning into monsters was an art form in horror movies, and one of the cheapest and most reliable tricks was to have the camera look away during the transformation. Carousel, it seemed, had turned that into an enemy trope. I would have to think about why that would be important or how it would play into the game.

As we talked, a picture started to transform and appear on the easel of an unclothed, long-armed, short-clawed, wolf-headed monster with distinct muscular bodies and obvious sexual dimorphism between the males and the females. Apparently, the lady werewolves kept to their curves—an observation that set the creepy clown caricature artist into a laughing frenzy.

“I, for one, think Carousel made a good call by getting rid of their clothes,” Isaac said. “They always look goofy with clothes on.”

By the time we were finished, we had a really good sketch of the monsters we were after, all without risking a trip further into the lair.

Now, all that was left was for us to travel to Carousel Family Video and hope that a spooky, crying baby doll could save us from whatever was dangerous about a movie rental store.

I just hoped that my theories were right, that the clues we had been given were personalized to us, and that I hadn’t gotten carried away.

There was no way I was getting sleep that night without the help of my Out Like a Light trope.