Chương 239: Book Six, Chapter 1: Urban Foraging

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The Red Chalk Circus Returns Tonight By W. Averill, Staff Writer (filling in for R. Averill) Low Top & Co. Present: The Red Chalk Circus — the infamous dusk-only show — has resurfaced on Lot 7, behind the old Dairy Mart (yes, the Dairy Mart is still there, please don't send corrections). Flyers appeared overnight with no schedule, no cast list, and no contact info. Just red letters. Just the same tagline:"One Night Only. Every Night."

Witnesses from prior years recall acts such as The Acrobat Who Cannot Fall, The Mirror That Watches Back, and The Final Act (Subject to Change). City officials advise attendees to bring exact change and write their names clearly on their wrists and notify a loved one of your evening plans. The tent opens at dusk. The air smells like popcorn and static. They're ready. Carousel Casino Opens "The Reckoning Room" — All Bets Welcome By R. Averill, Staff Writer (filling in for W. Averill) The Carousel Casino has cut the ribbon on its newest attraction: The Reckoning Room, a betting hall where you can bet for or against absolutely anything. Casino spokesperson Lucien Graves described The Reckoning Room as a "space for speculation, strategy, and a little chaos." He boasted: "Want to wager your neighbor makes it through the week? You can. Bet against your own birthday happening this year? That's on the board.

Will the couple tying the knot at the newly renovated 24/7 Wedding Chapel call it quits by sunrise? Place your chips. Think the plucky survivors crawling around a hell dimension won't make it to credits? We'll take that action."

Bets currently circulating on the whiteboard include:"Randy finally snaps during horror movie trivia night" (3: 1, heavy action)"Kimmy returns from the cornfield crawl" (25: 1)"It's all been a dream" (Even odds — suspiciously stable)"Tonight is The End" (Line shifting hourly) You don't need to know the rules. You just need to believe it could happen. Odds are calculated by The House. Outcomes are final. Disputes are... discouraged. PECATTO'S OLD-FASHIONED PIZZA PARLOR Est.

1966 · Ash & Market, Northwest Carousel · Call 555-7468 BUY 5 PIZZAS IN ONE WEEK, GET YOUR 6TH FREE No coupons. No cards. We'll keep track. New Management has taken possession. Same crust. Same sauce. Greater bargain. Open late. Dine in, take out, or delivery. Trespassers be advised. Satisfaction guaranteed. PECATTO'S — A SLICE ABOVE. I crept slowly toward the end of the aisle, trying to hide the sound of my breath. You had to be intentional in Carousel. You couldn't just stay hidden—you had to think about it.

You had to put your every effort into it. And if your Hustle was high enough— A sound. Was he coming this way? I froze. I didn't dare take a breath. On the other side of the aisle, a bearded man screamed and hollered into a cell phone. He hadn't heard me—he was just pacing angrily, yelling at the CBI agent on the other end of the line.

"They aren't real," he said.

"Don't you get it? I can't kill the hostages because they're already dead. This is not Red Hammond. This is not his wife, Betty. I am trying to tell you that they've been replaced! Why won't you listen to me?" He was desperate and earnest. I was tempted to say he was a good actor, but it felt more like he was repeating lines he had once said in real life. You could almost tell when an NPC was in the storyline that actually got them brought to Carousel—it felt much more real.

Across the room from me, Lila was walking, carrying a bundle of rope. A thick, strong rope. It was so heavy she couldn't pick it up for long and had to roll the bundle, which was wrapped around a piece of cardboard tubing. Antoine quietly arrived next to her, picked it up, and started sneaking it out the back. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

"Red has a glass eye. This thing—whatever it is—has two normal eyes. I'm not stupid. I know something is going on," the man screamed into the phone. The man, whose name was Coop on the red wallpaper, was desperately pleading with the CBI agents outside to believe him. He swung his rifle around to emphasize his words as he spoke. I surveyed the shelf in front of me. There were two omens here. One was a weathervane of a rooster that had been bent up and then straightened back out.

It was an omen for a storyline related to a storm. The name of the storyline was Ida Rae. It was a very character-heavy storyline from what we had seen in the Atlas. It was on the grab list. Unfortunately, as a weathervane, it was too large to fit into my hoodie's pocket of holding, so I had to carry it around with me. Funnily enough, as soon as I grabbed it, I could feel my hair blowing, as if in the wind. It was subtle and not too big of a distraction, but quite interesting.

I didn't have to worry about the omen being activated unless I tripped and accidentally installed it on some outdoor structure. Gotta love an omen that's hard to activate. We were at a hardware store called Better Bea Wares. Red Hammond had named the store after his daughter, Bea Hammond. I could see them—or at least, the monsters that had replaced them—tied up in the back, acting terrified. Acting. Bea herself just seemed annoyed. She had been a nice young lady. I wondered what they had done with her.

She stared at me as I went along. These hostages never tried to get us to help them. There had been a stock clerk who would scream and beg if he was taken captive. We had to lure him outside before the hostage situation started. The players who wrote about this place in the Atlas had it all mapped out. Every action you needed was documented and confirmed. Coop was right. These were not the Hammonds. They never asked for help. They didn't need it. They were acting.

Next to the weathervane, there was another omen of interest: a lantern shaped like a goat that would apparently attract some type of... sensual... cult to your door if you hung it outside. The storyline for it was called Clover Hearts. It was also within our level range. It also couldn't fit in my pocket.

For as useful as having an infinite storage zone attached to my hoodie was, the limitation of not being able to put anything in it that didn't fit through the pocket hole could be quite debilitating while trying to sneak around a hostage situation. Still, I crept on toward my next goal. Coop was at the front of the store. He had let down the blinds to cover the windows and was now peeking through them at the cops outside, who were ordering him around through a megaphone.

I couldn't quite tell what they were saying, but they weren't happy. Among the worst jobs to have in a cosmic horror town was a hostage negotiator. The job satisfaction levels had to be in the toilet. They must have never won. Their phone conversation had ended, so he wasn't screaming anymore, but he was still talking to himself, planning his next action. I needed to get to the register, and luckily, I was very sneaky.

I crept across the break in the aisle toward where Lila was and handed her the two mobile omens I had picked up.

"What about this one?" she whispered, nodding her head toward a box full of old antique tools that, at first glance, were very rusty—but at second glance, were covered in dried blood.

"Not a chance," I said. While Lila did have a good scouting trope for finding omens, hers didn't give her good information on the difficulty of an omen. Apparently, hers only gave her physical signs on the red wallpaper—stuff like STOP or YIELD or CAUTION —telling her that there was an omen and then giving her a little bit of information about it. She didn't get a lot of information about how to activate the omen, just how to avoid it. I took a glance at it.

You had to store the tools in the same building where you slept. Then, their previous owners would return for them. That was a no-go. Kimberly had a strict no killers in the loft rule. My scouting omen, I Don't Like It Here, told me that those bloody tools would be our undoing. I couldn't even see what the title of their storyline was—it was so tough. She nodded and took the omens I handed her, walking away quietly.

She had the highest Hustle in the entire group and had virtually no chance of getting caught by Coop—unless she was just stupidly careless. Lila was never careless when she was allowed to operate on her own terms. I had the lowest Hustle of anyone who had come on this outing, so I had to be really careful. There was a time when my Hustle was unmatched by my friends, but my priorities had changed. I needed things like Savvy, Moxie, and, recently, Grit. Carousel was all about making choices, I had found.

I snuck around the aisle and headed up toward the front of the hardware store, my eyes trained on Coop. He was still looking outside. Why the police hadn't shot him yet, I didn't know. Maybe they were hoping for a peaceful resolution. Maybe they just weren't scripted to kill him yet. According to the Atlas, that would change soon. The game here was that we could rob the hardware store blind during the hostage crisis.

But if Coop ever caught us, that would trigger the omen for the storyline called Cold Skins —and those tied-up hostages in the back, who looked a lot like the Hammond family? Well, it would be their time to shine. Up at the cash register, there was some rock candy inside little plastic bags being sold by the Friends of Azoor, one of the local cults. Nice people. Poor judgement.

The Atlas implied that it was not only an omen for a very beatable storyline at the low levels, but that it was some kind of drug, and if ingested, it would allow you to see on a higher plane, at least during the storyline. I didn't want to see on a higher plane, but having an omen for an easy storyline you could trigger just by ingesting it at a moment's notice would make me—and all of my friends—feel a lot safer walking around in this horror town. You never know what's going to sneak up on you.

I grabbed all ten little baggies of the cotton candy blue sugar crystals. And they fit in my pocket. Other omens I collected included a doorknob that, if installed, would lead you into a storyline regardless of what door you put it on. There was also a tape measure, which would always be wrong when used to measure the room you were in. I theorized that one was actually an omen for the same surreal, House of Leaves -style horror that had once appeared outside Kimberley's loft, trying to trick us into noticing it.

I never intended to use the tape measure, and I hoped we would never be in an emergency where it would be the better option. Cursed architecture was not my jam. But it was a very quick omen to activate, and the storyline was likely somewhere in the mid-30s in difficulty. The storyline was called Rent Control. Into my pocket, it went. There was also a jar of loose keys that had a variety of three different omens inside it, but I didn't want to mess with that.

It was kind of a trap—when you picked it up, it would definitely make a sound. At the back of the hardware store, Antoine, Kimberley, and Logan were passing things out of the side window as quietly as they could. We had to take out an AC unit—one of those window-mounted ones—just to get the stuff out of there. Luckily, they managed to do it quietly. Rope, metal gasoline canisters, jugs for water, a bear trap, climbing gear—they were stealing whatever they could for their next storyline.

I took another glance around the store. We were running out of time. The CBI was about to start shooting, and we didn't want to be here when they broke in. I found everything we had scouted out on our trips here before the hostage situation. We couldn't have afforded it all—or at least, we hadn't wanted to. I managed to get a knife—a nice folding one—that had a trope called Anointed, which made a weapon more deadly if the user had been cut with it previously. I had not expected it to be an Exorcist trope.

Carousel was full of surprises. I dropped it in my pocket with the omens. In order to get into this situation, we had been in the store when the hostages were taken. We snuck around to avoid detection from Coop while he tied up the fake Hammond family. Now, to get out, we had to crawl through the small window where the AC unit had been. Not very dignified—but exceedingly practical. Funnily enough, as soon as we were out, some SWAT units were politely waiting to enter through that same hole… to go kill poor Coop.

Maybe one day we would vindicate him. But not that day.

"Did you have to steal the whole store?" I asked when I saw how much loot they had taken.

"We're going into the jungle, baby," Antoine said.

"Gotta be prepared." He had a point.

"Okay, but you know that most of this is going to fall in a river or something, right? The bridge is going to break, or you'll careen off a cliff, or something like that, and all of this will be for nothing," I said.

"If that happens, it happens," Antoine responded. He seemed very happy about the storyline they were going to go on.

"I'm ready for anything." They had their storyline. I had mine. It had been so long since we had enough players to have multiple teams going at once, and it not feel like everything was on the line. We had learned more about Carousel, more about its plan for us and the Manifest Consortium. We could finally stop reacting to the things thrown at us and start making our own plans. And we did have a plan. I felt hopeful. Maybe that wasn't the right word. The fog was lifted.

Even if our situation was the same, we could at least see the terrain. Everything was new and bright and possible. Here we were. Surviving. Nowhere to go but The End.