Chương 21: Arc II, Chapter 14: Exploring in the Dark

I passed around the rules for The Ten Second Game so that everyone could read them. As they did, they looked around and realized how this place was perfect for the ritual. There were many windows and no signs of humanity on this side of the hill.

"That is so creepy," Kimberly said.

"I don't like this," she pleaded to Antoine.

"It's just a dumb internet thing," Antoine said.

"Yeah," I said.

"But I'm creeped out too." If we played up being upset by the game rules, we would have an excuse to try to prepare ourselves for what was to come. I was sure such things didn't matter for new players, but with Carousel awake we needed to cover our bases.

"Well I'm going to look around," Dina said. And then she did. Over time, most of us peeled off from the big central living room to explore for one reason or another. It was the Party, after all. The more experienced of us spread out. Isaac and Cassie stayed in the living room with the collection of big overstuffed furniture to sink into. Despite the openness of that room, with its high ceilings and many pathways branching from it, it did feel the safest.

Antoine and Kimberly went off together so that they could activate Get a Room! The trope was good for finding things while exploring. We still hadn't gotten many tropes like that and we needed to take advantage of it every chance we got. There was a chance they could find something really useful. They might not, of course. I walked around and surveyed the many trinkets and pictures throughout the suite. All of them featured a man with white, untamed hair. He stood on an old airplane. He paddled a canoe.

He cut a ribbon wrapped around the entrance of the library. Whoever this was, he was important, but I knew it wasn't Bartholomew Geist unless the depictions I had seen were wildly inaccurate. This man was tall and gangly, for one. I was On-Screen periodically as I went. After finding nothing of value, I happened upon the suitcases and luggage that had been dropped off for us that didn't actually belong to us. The bags all had stickers from Carousel's Airport that said, "Misrouted Baggage."

There were clothes and toiletries, as I expected, but there was also a picture of four people inside one bag, all with deep red hair and identical noses. They looked like siblings. Two girls and two boys. The picture was taken on top of a mountain. Looked like a fun bunch.

"What's that?" Cassie asked from her seat in the living room.

"I think it's the baggage of the people that checked out early," I said.

"Looks like you and Isaac are the only ones who actually got to keep their luggage in this town."

"Oh," she said.

"I… hope it gets back to them." Eventually, Antoine came back to the main room and reported that Kimberly was taking a shower.

"She's really freaked out right now," Antoine said.

"Maybe we should get rid of that game."

"In case someone accidentally winds the key, and a ghost rings it?" I asked trying to act like that was a ridiculous idea. I picked up the game board and stored it under the coffee table it had been placed on. There was a second shelf. It made sense for our characters to get it out of sight, but we needed to know where it was. After a few minutes, Kimberly marched back into the living room. She was shaken.

"Who keeps turning off the bathroom light?" she said angrily.

"What?" Antoine asked.

"While I was in the shower, someone kept flicking the light switch. It was right between the bathroom mirror and the door. Who was doing it?"

"None of us," I said. The detail she threw in about the mirror was intentional, I thought.

"Did you cover the mirror?" I asked, trying to affect the personality of someone who would be mocking her. Isaac would be better for that, but he was wide-eyed and filled with dread. Kimberly didn't answer at first, but then, she nodded her head and quietly admitted, "Yes. I'm telling you that game thing freaked me out."

"It's fine," Antoine said.

"There is nothing to be ashamed of. I assure you none of us flicked the light switch." Kimberly looked distrustful, but eventually softened.

"I mean…" she said, "It wouldn't hurt to just leave the lights on, would it?"

"If you want, we can," Antione said.

"Right guys? Nothing's going to hurt us but there's no harm in making things a little less dark around here, right?" I nodded.

"And we can shut all these blinds too," he added.

"We should cover all the mirrors," Kimberly said.

"Oh yeah. That's part of the rules, right? Antoine said. He wrapped Kimberly in his arms and brought her over closer to himself on the couch.

"Everything is going to be okay." Cassie watched them as they whispered sweet nothings to each other. She looked afraid. I could only imagine what she was thinking. Antoine and Kimberly were pretending to be characters. My friends and I had been introduced more gradually to the game. We broke character all the time back then. I didn't even look at the Off-Screen light once on my first storyline. The Vets knew that it was all too much to take in so they gave it to us slowly, one small lesson from Adeline at a time.

Cassie was seeing us jump through hoops and pretend to be loving happy young people. She had just learned about the horror of this place and now she watched us pretend it didn't exist. There was something unsettling about that itself, I imagined. We were puppets on strings, and she just saw it for the first time. And Cassie knew because we had covered this concept many times, that turning off the lights and covering the windows and mirrors would not save us. Carousel would have its story.

It would watch us struggle. The comforting tones of Antoine's assurances meant nothing. We all knew it. This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. Isaac was less observant. He paced in circles staring into the pictures on the walls and in frames on the tables and shelves around the room. He was trying and failing to act like it didn't bother him at all. For all his cockiness, I saw that he didn't stray too far from the group. Dina was in the wind.

Who knew where she had gone? Her background trope, A Haunted Past, and the Psychic trope it allowed her to equip, Encouragement from Beyond were right at home in this storyline. She was probably off trying to talk to her son. After a while of Carousel getting shots here and there of us talking and lounging, we went Off-Screen. Finally able to speak freely, Kimberly whispered, "When the lights turned off, I saw the towel I put over the mirror move. It happened twice. I turned it back on and it did it again."

I had suspected as much. The rules said things started at 3 am. They also said someone could initiate the ritual earlier and then leave. We were never going to get to sunlight safely.

"Let's get our minds right," Antoine said.

"Kimberly and I found a receipt for three hand mirrors and three flashlights from just over a week ago." I had nothing to report other than the pictures and the luggage, but an awful feeling grew in the pit of my stomach. I had equipped my background trope as well, My Grandmother Had the Gift… and it would probably kick in this storyline. Background tropes did not have predictable effects, but they did give Carousel something to work with when weaving the story. I dreaded to find out what. Bobby was the lucky one.

He wasn't in the building that was soon to be the subject of a horror show. I was glad to have him around, though, as he had a trope that ensured food could be found on set and I was getting hungry. As the others laid out in the living room for what little sleep they could get, I made my way to the refrigerator and found, to my dismay, there was no food in there. There was a sign on the counter that contained a late-night room service menu. There wasn't really a good time to eat in Carousel.

Even between storylines, it felt like there was a predator at the water hole. It was just past two in the morning and the Plot Cycle was still frozen. I was beginning to suspect that when it got to 3 am, we would still have some time in the Party before the dying started. It was difficult to understand how things would go because of the Stranger's trope. New players probably couldn't even see the Plot Cycle at that point.

They would have been able to understand the heavy-handed warning that the Stranger gave when he stopped us outside the hotel, though. I grabbed the phone off the counter and dialed room service.

"This is… room service," Bobby said on the other end. I recognized his voice immediately.

"Can I get a plate of the chicken wings," I asked.

"Riley? This is Bobby. They have me bouncing from job to job. That paper Cindy gave you was printed off of my site or made to look like it. Arterial Oasis, remember? I read the ritual. It sounds like someone could have already activated it before you guys even got there. At three, everything will probably get started. The Plot Cycle is frozen on my end. I don't know what's going on." He had likely disappeared and been cast as an NPC before the Stranger showed up. I didn't see it.

He must have been Off-Screen on his end, which meant the audience could only hear me talking.

"Yeah… Buffalo flavor or any flavor really. I'd just like to eat real quick."

"Oh," Bobby said.

"You're On-Screen. Okay. I can't access any more background information right now but I know there was more. My character is always having to run teenagers out of the place you're in. Vandalism, theft, that kind of thing. Especially before the renovation. They also try to channel the ghost of the guy who lived there. Like a spooky legend kind of thing. He was one of the Geists." So this place had a history of people contacting the dead within it.

"My character is cousins with someone who works at the University. I don't think that's relevant to the storyline but isn't it weird how these stories have been connected like this?"

"How soon can you be here?" I asked.

"If I think of anything, do you want me to call the room or come down there myself?"

"See you soon."

"Right, I'll come down there myself." He hung up. I wondered if he was even going to bring the food. He eventually brought it right to our door. He arrived right at 2: 55 am. The doorbell ringing got everyone up and awake, though they were only pretending to sleep.

"Who's that?" Antoine asked.

"Room service," I said. I opened the door and Bobby was standing there holding a tray with a dome cover on it. I reached out to take the food, but he pushed past me and brought the food in himself.

"Got your chicken tenders," he said, lifting the dome and placing it on the kitchen counter. He had timed his delivery so he would be here when things started. He could have stayed out there away from the fray, but he didn't. Even though there might have been some utility in having a man on the outside, I couldn't deny I was glad to have another teammate here as we awaited our fate. We didn't have to wait long.

Before I could thank Bobby and come up with something for us to talk about as time ticked forward, the Plot Cycle turned back on and within seconds of that, the lights in the building flickered off with a "clink" sound. The needle moved to about halfway through the Party. The inky darkness was overwhelming.

"The breaker just tripped," Antoine said.

"I know where that is," Kimberly said.

"I saw it earlier when we were looking around."

"Wait," Antoine said.

"Shouldn't the resort employee take care of it?" Bobby didn't respond for a moment. We were all thoroughly spooked. He was no exception. Whatever bravery had led him to charge into the room had left with the lights.

"Yes," he said.

"I should call maintenance… or you know what, he'd probably just make me do it anyway. I'll go do it." He thought for a moment, no doubt sifting through the collection of NPC memories he was given.

"I know where it is. Down the hall here. Just a moment." He walked cautiously as his eyes adjusted to the moonlit room. Having drawn all the shade made things even darker, but I wasn't going to be the first to open them right then.

"There's a candle and some matches right over there," Cassie said. She didn't get up from her overstuffed chair. A quiver in her voice told me she probably couldn't.

"On the mantle, right?" I asked.

"Y…yes," she said. I made my way over to the mantle slowly as my eyes adjusted. I found the decorative candle and matchbox. There was a problem.

"It's empty," I said, shaking the matchbox. I grabbed the candle anyway. If I could find a way to light it, it would be useful. Moments later, I heard a crash and a scream coming from the direction Bobby had gone.

"Help!" Bobby screamed. Antoine was up off the couch at a moment's notice, his baseball bat already in his hand. His Like a Security Blanket trope buffed his Grit and supposedly soothed his and his allies' fears when he brandished a weapon. I didn't feel soothed, but that might have been a higher-level feature. Since no one wanted to be left behind, we all walked together down the hallway that Bobby had walked as we heard him asking for help.

Once we got in there, Kimberly was quick to go flip over the breaker and we were once again bathed in light. What we saw in the middle of the room next to piles of old furniture, Bobby was on the ground, having fallen or tripped. Above him, attempting to shush him, was the Stranger.

"Just a moment," the Stranger said, "Don't be alarmed. I can explain this."

"Get the hell out of here," Antoine yelled.

"I can explain. Hear me out, hear me out. Perhaps you should all go outside," he said. Thoughts rose up in my mind like: "In the middle of the night?" and "It's cold out there, I'm not going outside!" But I didn't say those things. Isaac did. Almost those exact words. That meant two things. One, the Stranger had more tropes equipped than those we had been allowed to see on the red wallpaper. And two, he was using that secret trope that made targets disagree with him.

He was here, in part, to ensure new players didn't just run away as things ramped up. He wasn't just a fellow player.

"So, explain then," I said. The Stranger nodded and said.

"You aren't going to believe what I am about to tell you, but I promise I am telling the truth. I came here to look for my daughter and I fear I may have doomed us all." As he said that, the lights flickered off again. This time, though, there was no breaker trip to blame. They just went off.

"I didn't want anyone else to be here!" he explained.

"I ran the others off and the woman at the front desk said no new guests had taken their place. No one was supposed to be here except for me. Now it's too late."