Book Five, Chapters 20 and 21

It didn't take long after acquiring the Carousel Atlas to figure out that the book was made for Scholars, not puny Film Buffs.

At first glance, it did look organized.

Everything was divided into sections based on spoilers, geography, and by topic. But beyond that, there was no way to navigate the massive tome.

There was no reference section in the back of the book like you would expect.

The best you could do was try to find something related to what you were looking for and see if that section pointed you to the section you were actually looking for. Scholars didn’t have to worry about that because they had the Eureka trope, which allowed them to move from page to page as if the location of any given fact was obvious.

We managed to find the monster lair entry pretty easily.

The problem was that there was no centralized map of monster lairs. There was just a long list that referenced locations by description rather than plotting it out so we could easily figure out where things were.

The reason for that was simple: the authors of the Atlas didn’t really care about monster lairs. That wasn’t an omission on their part; the fact was, as we read through the entry on monster lairs, we realized the subject of lairs just didn't come up a lot, which sounded insane.

There were literal monsters underneath the streets, in boarded-up houses, and hidden in the woods. But in Carousel, that was the last thing on your mind.

Omens would go out of their way to hunt you down and trick you if you didn’t have a good scout with you who could suss them out. Monster lairs, on the other hand, were not designed as traps.

After some research, it seemed that they were there for logistical reasons, as crazy as that might sound.

Or, as the man named Harley put it when he wrote the lair entry in the Atlas:

“Carousel keeps its beasts under control. When they aren’t inside a storyline, they don’t leave their lairs—at least the non-human ones don’t. Sure, there are serial killers you pass by on the street and don't even know it. The monsters, though, are hidden, and the only hints that they exist are their roars at night and the occasional player who comes up missing because they couldn't follow directions.”

The fact was, my friends and I knew about monster lairs, although we didn’t often call them that.

After all, we lived on Dyers Lake for months. We knew there were things living in that lake, some of which were attached to omens, but others just swam through those haunted waters, an ominous reminder of what lay in wait in the depths of Carousel.

In fact, when the Black Snow Apocalypse had occurred, we had come across monsters fleeing their lairs to get out of the way of the upcoming apocalypse.

We heard howls in the night.

We heard screams coming from darkened windows in neighborhoods as we passed by houses.

However, we had never encountered a monster’s lair other than the sewers, which seemed to be home to many monsters, not that we had dealt with many of them.

“What exactly are we saying happened here?” Antoine asked.

We had been discussing Andrew Hughes’ team and their odd fate all morning, but we weren’t getting anywhere.

“I think it looks pretty straightforward,” I said. “I think they somehow wandered into the lair of some monster, and it chased them, killing two of them. Three managed to get to an omen, which triggered the storyline they ended up dying in because they only had three players and couldn’t win.”

Andrew Hughes, our target, had died in a storyline called Itch. It was a tough story, but it should not have been so far out of their grasp to justify their team's wiping, especially if they had done their research. The fact that they had apparently just run in there for refuge from some unknowable terror explained a lot.

“Are we safe to be over there?” Kimberly asked.

I had no idea.

“It’s hard to imagine why they would wander into the woods in the first place,” I said.

“Hunting, maybe,” Antoine said. “There are deer and wild boar in the woods, along with a lot of other things. The vets used to say that they would gather together hunting parties just to go get food back in the day.”

“Before they found Eternal Savers Club?” I asked.

“No,” Antoine said, “just for the variety. They wanted to go get fresh meat, and they had a few tropes that would help them do it.”

That sounded like the Vets. They were here so long that a hunting trip into monster-infested forests was something they would do.

Of course, there was probably a reason they had stopped doing it by the time we arrived, but they wouldn’t tell us something like that.

“I don’t think they were hunting in the woods,” I said, “but maybe they were on some kind of expedition. I don’t know why. The Atlas doesn’t seem to have anything going on over there except a few omens.”

Antoine flipped the Atlas around and looked through it.

“It is crazy to me that there is no way to look at a location and tell what lairs might be near,” Antoine said.

“I guess no one was looking for lairs,” I said. That was the only explanation I could come up with at first.

“Maybe the people who did go looking for monster lairs didn’t stick around long enough to write it down,” Antoine said.

Maybe. Wouldn’t be the only time someone died before being able to tell others why.

“So, what are our options?” Kimberly asked.

I looked at Antoine. He looked at me, and we both shrugged our shoulders.

“We could go take a look,” I said sheepishly.

“What?” Kimberly asked, appalled.

“If we know what they are, we can better guess what storyline they belong to,” I said. “We just need a peek.”

“Is that even true? Antoine asked. “Is knowing what the monster is even helpful? Is there a way to look up what type of monster is in each story?”

“No,” I said, and then it hit me. “Of course, they don’t have one place where you can look up where all the monster lairs are or which monsters are in which stories. That would all be spoilers. If you knew that there were vampires at the lumber mill, you would hugely be spoiling yourself about the nearby storyline.”

Lair location did correspond to the storylines the monsters belonged to, we knew.

“Oh, that’s probably it,” Antoine said. “Damn.”

The rules of what was spoilers and what wasn’t usually revolved around whether you got information from a trope or some other allowable source. Knowing what was allowed and what wasn’t took some guesswork.

“Whatever,” I said. “I don’t know why they wandered into a monster lair, but I don’t think there’s any evidence that the monsters just attacked them on the road. If they had, they probably would have attacked us when we were up there. So, unless we want to rescue a Monster Hunter so they can use their tropes to tell us what lives on that mountain, we may never know.”

“Well, we do know where some eyewitnesses are,” Antoine said, pointing across the table to the missing posters for Andrew Hughes and his two fellow players who had died with him in the storyline called Itch.

They would know, I had to assume.

At the end of the day, you could only be so cautious before you had to take action. I had no idea why their team had been attacked, but I couldn’t find any reason to think it would happen to us. Monster lairs were put out of the way so that players wouldn't run into them by accident.

There were only a few possibilities for what caused them to fall prey to some random beasties, and there was little chance of it happening again.

We decided to take a break. Investigating the monster lair wasn’t a priority. It was just a precaution.

We felt we had done our due diligence. It was time to move on.

~-~

Antoine and Kimberly were up on the roof as noon rolled around. They were making hot dogs or hamburgers or something. They had to do it now so that Isaac wasn’t around to burn it.

I was down in the loft, sitting at the table, searching the Atlas in vain for any reference I could find to “The Town of Carousel: Horrific Events Through the Ages.” Of all the books in Carousel, that was the one that I wanted the most.

I had seen Anna and Camden using it in Post-Traumatic, the storyline they had played through and eventually died in.

I had to believe that it was an important clue.

If I could just find it, it would give me useful insights into the eventual rescue of my two best friends.

As far as I could tell, using the book wouldn’t be a spoiler because I learned about the book by using a trope. It was my Film Buff trope that allowed me to watch trailers of other ongoing or recent storylines.

It had allowed me to see my friends in peril.

I could still watch that trailer on the red wallpaper at the end of The Strings Attached storyline.

It hurt to watch.

Camden was in bad shape. If only I could find that damn book.

I flipped the Atlas open to a page for the library, of which there were several. This one contained a flyer for some sort of event the library was hosting, but I couldn’t see what it was because so many other pieces of paper were attached to the page detailing the ongoings inside the marble building.

I couldn’t just go in and check out the book. There was a very powerful mobile omen in the library that would pretty much guarantee we would get postered.

Even the Vets were afraid of it. The problem was that the Vets’ method of avoiding that mobile omen, which was said to run around the library at knee height, was to play through another library omen that we were also too under-leveled to complete.

They would play through that second storyline and burn down the children's section of the library so that the mobile omen wouldn't be around to be a threat.

But if we couldn't do that, then what could we do?

I stared at the page, hoping that if I stared at it long enough, I would see the matrix and know exactly what we needed to do.

I stared at it for so long that I fell asleep.

“What are you researching?” Kimberly asked.

My head jutted up, alarmed. I looked around.

Kimberly had brought me a pork chop and potato salad.

“Just trying to figure out how to get a book out of the library,” I said.

“I always used my library card,” she said.

I gave her a polite chuckle.

“I’m afraid that’s not enough,” I said.

“What was the deal with the book again that you're trying to get?” Kimberly asked.

“It’s a prop that they used in the storyline that they died in,” I said. “Anna and Camden seemed to think it was important. If we can get a copy of it, maybe we will be that much more prepared.”

Kimberly nodded. “But we can't go in the library,” she said.

“Nope,” I said, “but I’ve got a plan.”

She waited eagerly for me to tell her about our heist.

“That mobile omen that gives us so much trouble in the library is only active during business hours,” I said. “So, if we were to get Dina to pick a lock, we could sneak in, and as long as we avoided the fairy tale section, we would be home free to find that book. Oh, and we would have to be careful not to ‘wake the books up,’ which means something ominous, I’m sure.”

“How dangerous is it?” she asked.

“It’s probably really dangerous, but it could help us in rescuing Anna and Camden.”

She thought for a moment, then she pulled out her cell phone, brushed away a piece of paper that had covered the library flyer, and started dialing a number.

Someone answered on the other end.

“Hello, Sue,” Kimberly said. “I was hoping to put a book on hold… Kimberly Madison… As soon as possible... It's called ‘The Town of Carousel: Horrific Events Through the Ages.’ I don’t know the author.”

She waited for a moment.

“You do?” she asked. “That’s great! When will we be able to pick it up?... That sounds great… Also, I know this is weird, but it would mean the world to me if you could have someone deliver it to us outside of the library. My friend is afraid of books... You are such a sweetheart. Thank you so much. We'll be there.”

She hung up her phone with a smile.

“We can pick it up tomorrow,” she said.

Of course, the solution was talking to people.

How did I always manage to forget that?

I thanked her, and she went back up to the roof. Now, I had to research if Kimberly’s little plan would get us killed in some other way.

~-~

Having not been able to find anything that explicitly forbade the type of NPC trickery that Kimberly had come up with, I decided to join her and Antoine on the roof.

When I got up there, I saw Antoine staring through the telescope, searching for omens while simultaneously petting dogs on his left and right.

The dogs were very obedient and well-trained, but they were anxious with Bobby gone. Antoine seemed to be in a good mood, but I couldn’t say whether he actually was.

It had been two days since the others had gone on their run.

The plan was for us to go pick them up because, although Isaac did have a scouting trope, it was a lot more hands-on than mine was.

He had to notice things first and comment on them, and then he would be given information. It was safer if I guided them.

That plan apparently wasn’t good enough for them.

“I see the others,” Antoine said.

“Already?” Kimberly asked. “We were supposed to head over there in a few. Do they look OK?”

Antoine stared through the telescope. “They don't look happy,” he said.

They didn’t need to look happy; they just needed to be alive.

Before too long, they were storming in from the back door into Kimberly’s loft.

We greeted them in the living room area.

They marched in one by one. Isaac looked completely exhausted mentally. Cassie gave me a weak smile. Ramona looked completely emotionless. Bobby seemed his old chipper self and quickly made his way up to the roof to see his dogs after waving hello.

I couldn’t see that Dina had any negative impacts from the storyline they had run, but then she was pretty high level for that story.

“Did you guys know?” Isaac asked.

“Did we know what?” I asked.

“You know,” he said. Did you guys know what the storyline was about?”

I shook my head. “We didn’t know anything more than you did going in.”

That was true.

Of course, I did avoid some educated guessing that might clue them in to things that might make them hesitant to do the run.

I didn’t want to send them into a storyline that would disgust them, but I would rather do that than send them into one where they could lose.

“Normally I would be alright with you venting about this,” I said, “but we don't want to risk you spoiling the story for us in case we need to run it.”

Isaac nodded his head and then found his way to the bathroom, where he could be heard loudly brushing his teeth.

Of course, there was no real chance that we would ever run that storyline. Spoilers didn’t matter.

~-~

“What’s this?” Cassie asked as she saw a missing poster on the table and picked it up. “Oh my God, are you guys going to rescue him?”

“That’s the plan,” Antoine said.

Cassie started to tear up. “Isaac, Isaac, get out here! They’re planning to rescue Andrew!”

I could hear Isaac spitting into the sink, and then he rushed out to join us again. “A rescue? I thought you guys said you weren’t going to do it,” he said.

“We moved it up on the schedule,” I said.

“Are we going soon?” Cassie asked, suddenly excited.

“We’re still in the planning phase,” I said. “We can't risk rushing this.”

“Do you want me to use my trope?” she asked.

I nodded and said, “That'll be tomorrow, though. You guys need to rest up.”

Isaac and Cassie suddenly were in a good mood, as good as could be expected.

Isaac even promised to cook us dinner.

I noticed that Ramona stayed back and listened before returning to her room. Her face was blank.

I decided to talk to her again.

Even if we didn’t have a personal conversation, at least we could talk about the storyline—a sort of debriefing. As she turned to close the sheet that separated her area from the rest of the dead-end hallway, she saw me following her and paused.

“I’m fine,” she said.

I'm glad to hear it,” I said. “It would be cool if you could talk about the storyline.”

“I thought we couldn’t talk about the storyline because of spoilers?”

“That’s just something I told Isaac so he wouldn’t complain,” I said. “There’s no chance that I’m ever going to run The Box Lunch, so spoilers don't matter.”

She smiled at that. “So what do you want to know?” she asked.

“This may be a silly question, but how was it? Do you feel like you contributed? Did you get any rewards?”

“I got two stat tickets and a trope,” she said. “I also got a buy-one-get-one-free coupon from a buffet in town that promises no omens or danger while eating.”

She pulled the ticket out of nowhere and showed it to me.

“I’m guessing the last thing you want to do is go eat at a buffet.”

“You're guessing right,” she said. “Cassie locked me in a freezer, and I ate all of the frozen food. Just shoved it in my mouth. I’m not proud of that.”

“Dentists don’t recommend doing that, you know,” I said.

“Oh, trust me, I know.”

She ran her finger over her teeth.

“So, how are you doing? Are you feeling OK?” I asked.

“You know, if you keep asking me that, I will lie to you eventually.”

I had the same tactic.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t imagine how you feel.”

“I don’t feel anything at all,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “So you don’t have to worry anymore.”

That was part of what I was worried about.

In addition to my concerns about her mental health, I knew that her mental well-being was important in other ways, too.

 She was a Hysteric, an archetype that weaponized their emotions.

I wondered if she would be able to do her job and survive if she closed herself off. Perhaps her plight was yet another reason we needed to rescue a Doctor. I didn’t know what tropes Andrew Hughes had, but if he had a Psychiatrist trope that could help, it would be a lifesaver. Possibly literally.

“After you guys went into the story, we got the missing posters and I saw that no one had ever wiped out in that story, so there were no rescues to be done in it. I decided to spoil it for myself and read what the story was about in the Atlas... I am so sorry for sending you there,” I said.

I couldn’t contain my laugh as I said that.

Ramona laughed, too.

That was a good thing, I thought.

“It wasn’t bad,” she said. “Really. After I got… infected, I just wanted to eat and make more of the slimes. It was all I wanted. It made me happy. I could feel dopamine surging in my head like bubble wrap popping.”

“Gotta love a generous parasite,” I said.

“You should have seen Isaac running from me, though,” she said. “He cursed so much we went Off-Screen.”

I smiled. That was likely why he didn’t get a single stat ticket.

“He should have given in to the slime,” I said. Isaac already had some experience being honked out of his mind for most of a storyline.

“He did eventually,” Ramona said, “but it was like Carousel was messing with him because he was a Comedian, and the story was kind of a comedy but not really.”

“Yeah, something similar happened with him in The Die Cast storyline. He must give really good reactions if Carousel is keeping him alive to terrify him.”

“I couldn’t tell,” she said. “I just couldn’t figure out why he didn’t want the slime.”

“I think he likes his slime well done,” I said.

She smiled but didn’t laugh.

“Well, I’m glad it wasn’t traumatic for everyone.”

“No,” she said as she stared into the distance. “Not for me.”

There was a silence then that seemed to stretch forever.

“So, I was going to take a nap,” she said.

“Great,” I said. “Get rested up.”

I turned and left. It felt like a productive conversation.

At least we were talking about something.

It was a step in the right direction, at least.

~-~

Itch was not a popular storyline.

The recommended archetypes for scouting were Scholar-Researcher, Adventurer, and Engineer, which was an advanced archetype I had not come across before.

The section that had information from scouting tropes that were not considered spoilers was blank.

No one had gotten around to scouting out this story, at least not at the time this copy of the Atlas was obtained.

There just wasn’t a lot of information on it. That was unusual, as there was usually at least one Psychic scouting trope in every storyline. There were none for Itch.

But we weren't completely out of options.

We had our own scouting tropes.

"Kimberly, we haven’t talked in so long," Sal said. "Are you quitting acting or something, sweetheart?"

"You know I could never quit," Kimberly said. "I was hoping you could give me advice about this movie called Itch that I’ve been hearing about. If you could tell me all about it, I’d appreciate it."

And then we waited for his response, which took a moment.

"Oh, that one," Sal said. "I’ve heard of it. I wouldn’t say I’m a big fan, but it's not exactly a mistake if you want to go for that sort of thing. You definitely have the range. Though I will say the old saying 'looks don’t last' is very literal in this screenplay."

"What’s it about?" Kimberly asked.

"I don’t recall," Sal said. "Certainly a psychological horror, maybe a creature feature. Who knows? It's not my sort of thing. I just skimmed it."

We all looked at each other. We had played around with Kimberly's trope that allowed her to call her fictional talent agent Sal, and he had never been this tight-lipped.

"Is that all?" Kimberly asked.

"It is. I wish I had more for you. I’ve got to go. Bye now."

Sal hung up.

"What just happened?" Kimberly asked.

"Is this storyline that much harder than the ones we've tested before?" Antoine asked. "Maybe you just don't have high enough Moxie to get a good reading."

I wasn’t so sure. Itch was a harder story than The Final Straw was, but not that much more difficult. Her trope should not have been blanking that hard.

"When I used my tropes on it when we were out there, they didn't seem to have too much trouble," I said.

Location Scout had given me a whole list of rooms and hallways that included terms like "living quarters" and "storage." Not incredibly useful, but pretty standard for the trope.

If I had wanted it to do better, I would need to put a lot more points into Savvy.

I don’t like it here… had told me how to activate the trope just fine and told me its difficulty was higher than average, but then there were only three of us there, so it might actually be pretty average in difficulty for us.

Of course, when we used a rescue trope on it, it would be more difficult, but its base difficulty seemed to be about in line with what our levels were.

"Just a second," I said. "Antoine, equip your rescue trope."

He quickly did.

"Now Kimberly, call Sal again."

She dialed out again.

"Kimberly, I was just thinking about you. What are you doing?" Sal asked.

Kimberly paused, looked at me, then looked at Antoine, and then said, "I was hoping you could tell me about that new movie Itch. Do you know anything about that?"

"Huh, you know I was reading about it, but I gotta say I’m not a big fan. It's a little bit of psychological horror, a little bit of a thriller, a creature feature, more or less. You probably wouldn’t stand out in all that testosterone."

"What kind of character would I play?" Kimberly asked.

"I can’t imagine," Sal said.

Again, he didn't have much to say.

I waved my hand across my neck, telling her to cut the call.

She did so.

"He's just not saying anything," Kimberly said. “Not as much as usual.”

"Not only is he not saying anything, but he’s saying the same amount he did before," I said. Even though the rescue version would be more difficult. I don’t think it’s the difficulty that’s the problem."

When Antoine had equipped his rescue trope, Sal had a new version of the screenplay to go over with Kimberly—a version that should have been harder and should have given us even less information than the original.

That's how rescues worked; they were supposed to be harder.

But the two summaries from Sal were roughly equivalent.

Something else was at play, but I didn’t know what.

"Should we try Dina’s rescue trope?" Kimberly asked.

It was better than hiking all the way out there to see if it would work. I nodded my head. Antoine unequipped his rescue ticket, and then Dina equipped hers.

Kimberly called Sal again.

"Kimberly!" Sal exclaimed when he answered the phone. "I’m having major déjà vu. I just knew you were gonna call me. It is so weird."

"Hey, Sal. I was wondering about that movie called Itch."

"Straight to business there, aren’t you?" he asked. "I know we were talking about Itch a few days ago, and I know you were excited to do psychological horror, but unfortunately, I got a new copy of the script, and your role has been almost completely cut. They revamped the script to focus on some other characters. It's still a creature feature or something like that, but you barely get a cameo in it. There was nothing I could do."

"Do you know what the plot is about?" Kimberly asked.

"I did before, but I have had so many things on my mind it must have gotten pushed out," Sal said. "Well, if that's all, I’ve gotta be going."

Again, he hung up.

This time, we just sat back and stared at each other, bewildered.