Arc II, Chapter 60: The Empty Frame

I froze in place. Never before had Casting Director thrown me a curveball like that.

Ramona Mercer.

She was one of the victims of the original Centennial disaster. What kind of link must she have to this storyline and the Throughline itself? I knew who the Mercers were, or at least, I knew that the family could summon a psychokinetic, parasitic poltergeist. I didn’t expect them to be connected to the Throughline or, at the very least, the Tutorial.

Why was Casting Director telling me information about an NPC? It had never done that before. It sounded like this was an escort mission. That could be tricky.

As I considered this, I realized one thing further: if Ramona Mercer had called the fire department, that meant she must have been nearby.

I put my head on a swivel and surveyed the crowds of looky-loos who watched the factory burn.

There were dozens of them.

Only one of them was looking at me.

She was a tall woman, I would say. She had dark hair with a streak of red. She dressed practically in a jacket and jeans with Carousel brand Converse all-stars.

I saw nothing for her on the red wallpaper except for a frame with lights, like the one where a player poster was meant to go. No tropes, hidden or otherwise. Not plaques with names on them.

The absence of information was revealing in itself. Something was very strange about her.

I walked toward her slowly.

She walked toward me.

As we got closer, I recognized her face from the flashback from Jedediah Geist’s story.

I kept looking over toward Antoine and Isaac in the car, hoping they would see what I was doing.

Eventually, we met in the middle. I slowed a bit so I would still be visible to the car. At a glance, I saw Antoine had gotten out and was watching us.

“Ramona Mercer?” I asked cautiously.

She didn’t confirm or deny it.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” she said. “You’re not the director who drives Carlyle Geist to the factory. He’s shorter and has a ponytail. You’re dressed like him, though…”

She was gripping something in her jacket pocket. I expected it to be a weapon, so I spoke calmly and slowly.

“I’m not the director,” I said. “I’m just playing his character.”

Saying that was enough for her to take a sharp inhale.

“You and the others, the plotters, you’re all just…?” she asked, hoping I would fill in the blank.

I looked back toward the car with Antoine and Isaac.

“Those two are like me,” I said, pointing toward them.

“I was watching you,” she said. “You didn’t say the things they normally say.”

“No,” I said. “We don’t know what’s on the script. We have to guess.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Did Mr. Dyrkon send you?” she asked.

She knew about Silas Dyrkon. We might have been on to something.

“More or less,” I said. “He hinted someone like you might be here. You want to go to the Centennial, right?”

She nodded her head.

It sounded like we needed to talk.

~-~

I convinced her to go against her better judgment and go with us to the diner. She was afraid of us. I didn’t blame her.  We were probably as alien to her as she was to us.

“What is she?” Antoine asked me when she entered the diner before us.

“It almost looks like,” I said. I was hesitant to continue that thought.

“She looks like a player with a missing Archetype poster on the red wallpaper,” he said, completing the thought. “Doesn’t look like an NPC.”

I had never seen that exact format before. There was the axe murderer who didn’t show up on the red wallpaper at all. Outsiders could hide details of their information, but some of it leaked through if you had good Savvy or Moxie.

A blank frame where a poster should go? That was new.

We entered in and sat with her at a corner booth.

“So,” she said. “Tell me what we have to do. I’ve been waiting years for this.”

I somehow got elected emissary, so I answered, “We’re in a storyline. Or a trap, as Jedediah’s ghost called it.”

Her eyes went wide. “You know about that? Oh damn, this is really happening.”

It couldn’t have been that long. She didn’t look any older than she had in the flashbacks.

“You want to get to the Centennial,” I said. “We escort you there. I think that’s the mission.”

She nodded but didn’t speak for a moment. She was clearly waiting for more.

“That can’t be it,” she said. “You’re not going to explain what’s going on?”

I looked at Antoine. He shrugged. He was still in a funk.

“Tell us what you think this is,” I said. “Then I’ll tell you what I know.”

“Hold on,” she said. “Mr. Dyrkon said that you would arrive to show me the way, assuming he was talking about you. So, enlighten me. I don’t know anything.”

We had to break out of the contest for who knew the least. I decided to start.

“This is the Game at Carousel,” I said. “Everything here looks real, but it’s fake. We’re all playing the game. Maybe even you are, assuming you aren’t a part of it.”

“Game?” she asked. “I’m talking about the time travel, which of course, isn’t really time travel.”

She didn’t know about the game, but she did know about something.

“Okay,” I said. “Time travel. You know that this storyline is set in the past.”

“Set in the past,” she repeated. “The factory is. It’s not burned down anymore. I guess it is now, but you know what I mean. The Geists are alive again. Trust me, I checked. It’s definitely them, as far as I can tell. Every time I come here, the same events play out. I always intervene because I’m supposed to. Then, a few hours later, nothing. I can’t get past today.”

She took a deep breath.

“I was really hoping you all would know what was going on,” she said. “You said your name is Riley?”

I nodded.

“Riley, Antoine, and Isaac,” she said, “Guys, I’m pulling out my hair here. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been through this. I know everything that happens today. I know the name of every person who gets evacuated from the factory, every person who watches from the outside. I know as much as I can about… that thing tries to kill everyone… And it all means nothing. I’ve been stuck on this day for years.”

The waitress arrived with some coffee. Ramona must have ordered it for us.

“Look, it took me a year just to get to this point, and every time I look at the calendar, it’s like another year has passed. I just want to find my sister and save her. I can’t do that from 1984. Right now, we should live about twenty blocks that way,” she pointed east. “I’m 19 years old and dating a guy that had a job and a place for my sis and me to crash. I can’t get there because if I walk too far away, I go back to the present. It’s useless. I need your help.”

She was doing her best to keep her emotions in.

Some of the things she said made no sense. If she was trying this storyline over and over, how was she surviving? Was she really able to just walk away from it? It must have had something to do with whatever she was within the game—player or something else.

“I don’t mean to unload on you,” she said. “God, you guys are basically just kids. You go to Carousel U?”

I shook my head.

She took a deep breath.

“Look, I am Ramona Mercer. I went to Carousel East High. Never went to college because I had to take care of my sister. I play guitar for fun and tips. I was not prepared for any of this. I just need your help. Can you do that?”

 “We’ll help you,” Antoine said. “You have to help us though. You’re not the only one with questions.”

No one talked for a few minutes. I didn’t know what to ask first, and I really didn’t want to overwhelm her.

After enough silence, she started talking anyway.

“I used to come here when I was a teenager to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at the cigarette vending machine down the hall near the bathrooms. That was not there normally, but in Carousel 1984, the script said it was. “Rebellion came naturally to me. Unfortunately, I had attentive and loving parents who supported me no matter what, so rebelling was kind of a waste. You say this is all fake. What I want to know is how it happened. Things were normal up until 1992. After that, the town got weird. It’s hard to explain.”

I wished Anna or even Kimberly were there. How do you tell someone that their entire life was a lie? Was I even sure it was a lie? What if she were a relic of a time before the game?

Antoine wasn’t usually at a loss for words, but he wasn’t talking now. He didn’t seem to trust Ramona. How could I blame him? It was only a matter of time before Carousel did something tricky, and this whole situation looked ripe for manipulation.

“My understanding,” I said, “Is that 1992 was the year the last game started, so it became the year of the original Centennial in this game. I think Carousel uses patterns to decide stuff like that.”

“There was no game in 1992,” Ramona said. “Everything was normal before the Centennial.”

I simply shook my head. Normal was a relative term.

“People dying mysteriously,” I said. “Have you ever been able to leave town? Did it seem like everyone knew who you were?”

I was operating under the assumption that she was like Jedediah and that she was the center of everyone’s attention.

“What are you talking about?” Ramona said. “I had a normal life. We went on vacation. We went skiing. We went hiking up north. My mom and stepdad weren’t wealthy enough to go too far. After they died, I had to take care of my sister. She was just a kid. I was all she had. No one knew my name. Well, maybe not my first name.”

She was getting defensive. Convincing Isaac and Cassie that Carousel was an otherworldly entity was only possible because I could show them supernatural things and the red wallpaper. Neither was possible for Ramona. She didn’t appear to be able to see the red wallpaper and she was raised to believe the supernatural was normal.

“I have to assume that whatever happened, it was done to keep you in Carousel,” I said.

“Because everything is scripted?” Ramona asked. “You say my life is scripted just like the people here in this fake 1984? And this is the same script you say you can’t see.”

She sounded almost receptive, if a little skeptical.

“Okay,” she said. “Why? Hamm? What is the reason? Just give me an answer, dude. Anything. Why go through all the trouble?”

“Why” was one of those luxury questions that we couldn’t afford. I had no answers. Only guesses, both educated and otherwise.

“To entertain the audience,” I said. That was our most solid lead. “You are a character central to the story of Carousel.”

Ramona started to laugh.

“You know, that’s not at all what it feels like,” she said after a moment. “Is the audience enjoying me slowly going crazy?”

It might have been.

“Hey,” Isaac interrupted, “Is 1984 far enough back in time to be able to order an egg cream? I’ve always wanted to try one of those.”

Ramona was temporarily befuddled by that question but then said, “How can I be an important character? I’m a loser in every way imaginable. Nothing I try succeeds. They say it’s because of the Mercer family curse. I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s starting to feel like it.”

Carousel and family curses, what a pair.

“That how your parents died?” Antoine asked. “Your family curse? The big invisible guy who goes berserk on every perceived threat?”

That caught Ramona off-guard.

“That’s just… a rumor,” she said. “Look, boys, I need to make it to the Centennial in 1992. So far, I’ve never been able to make it past January 1st, 1984. In a few hours, I find myself back in the present. I’ve even seen them haul the cigarette machine onto a truck every time the day resets. Mr. Dyrkon said people would come help me if I just triggered the ‘storyline’ every day. I’ve done my part every morning for longer than I can remember. I’ve never made it to the Centennial. Now, it’s your turn to do your part.”

“We already are,” Antoine said. “The next scene is set in this Diner on January 2nd, 1984. Carousel might expect us to actually wait all night, but if it did, it would have shown us to a place to sleep. Since it didn’t, I suspect that if we just wait here, the next scene will get here soon.”

“No,” Ramona said, shaking her head. “I’ve waited in this diner all night before. It doesn’t work.”

That was an interesting point. She was clearly player-adjacent, if not a player outright. Could it be a simple answer?

“You don’t have a role,” I said. “You aren’t playing a character in this story. If the next scene has all of the dirtbags meeting at the diner, but there are no players cast as dirtbags, does the scene even happen?”

Minor roles don’t have to be cast. Perhaps Major ones didn’t either, but to have no roles at all filled by players? Maybe that was why she couldn’t move the story forward.

Antoine and I discussed the matter in more depth. Isaac stayed quiet. Something was bothering him. Perhaps it was just nerves.

After a bit, the bell on the door rang, and we looked up to see Cassie walking in dressed an awful lot like Madam Celia.

“There you are!” Cassie said, rushing to our table. “I came as soon as I knew the next scene was at the diner. The mayor guy told me we were meeting to discuss something about the flask. I saw something on the red wallp—”

She stopped speaking as soon as she saw Ramona.

“What is she?” Cassie asked. “I have her as an ally on the red wallpaper.”

Cassie could see her allies’ health on the red wallpaper thanks to her The Anguish trope. Normally, only players and Paragons acting as players were affected by that trope. Same as with Casting Director.

“We’re still trying to figure that out,” I said.

I quickly explained what we knew so far.

Cassie listened intently and then looked Ramona over.

“I don’t normally wear dresses,” she said. “I just woke up in this.”

“Okay,” Ramona said.

I tapped the table gently.

“I know you don’t trust us,” I said. “You don’t have the luxury of that mattering. I need to know what happened to you. Can you please tell us?”

Ramona looked down at her coffee. “You won’t believe me,” she said. “Or maybe you will. I can’t believe I’m saying this.”

Then, she drank her coffee and began telling the story.