Chương 68: Arc II, Chapter 59: Fire

Antoine, Isaac, and I jumped into my car. We watched the screens that had appeared in our minds. We were Off-Screen. Future Mayor Gray and the coked-out Ricky Zaragoza got back into the brown car and silently watched the factory.

"What is happening?" Isaac said, clearly not ready to be watching film footage in his mind's eye. What was happening? We were seeing the killer, I assumed, making his way through the twilight toward the factory. We were seeing things through his eyes.

"When Carlyle and I were going over the script for the movie we're making, I suggested we show a scene from the killer's point of view. Carousel must have thought it would be funny to do that for us in this storyline," I said.

"I don't like this," Isaac said. His shield wall of sarcasm and jokery was not equipped to help him deal with the video feed playing in his head.

"I can hear it breathing."

"Yeah," I said. Imagine that. Hearing a killer's breath in your ear. Luckily, this was not the same thing as what I was used to. This was audio playing on the red wallpaper, which sounded like an echo, almost like a radio playing in the next room. The axe murderer sounded like he was right behind you.

"Which is weird since it did just crawl out of a grave."

"So it's not a zombie if it's breathing," Antoine said.

"Not the normal kind, at least," I said. I tried to project an air of confidence, as if that might soothe Isaac. The truth was it was incredibly scary sitting there in the car waiting for the killer to walk toward its victim.

"He's on the other side of the factory," Antoine said.

"He's walking into the sunset." That was a nice observation. The downside was we wouldn't get to see the baddie in action.

"We're safe for now," I said.

"We're not anywhere near First Blood." In fact, the needle had barely ventured into the Party Phase. This was shaping up to be a long story. We waited and watched as the killer walked along toward the factory.

"You know, it's kind of funny," I said.

"He hasn't walked past a single civilian. That's how it is in the movies. No one sees the hulking monster making its way across town." It reminded me of one of the enemy tropes I had seen before on Ranger Danger.

"Are we supposed to just sit here?" Isaac asked. Antoine and I looked at each other. I'd let him answer.

"Our characters want the Geists dead. Sitting here and watching it is what our characters would do. You have to be in character, or else Carousel gets mad," he said. Isaac had not yet had a taste of playing an actual character with preset motivations and desires. Antoine and I had only had a taste of it.

"Our characters suck," Isaac said.

"I think mine is supposed to be stupid. Everyone in his family talked to me like I was an idiot earlier today. Apparently, I crashed my car in a lake, too. I don't get how we're the main characters, either. Aren't we like the bad guys? We summoned whatever this thing is."

"Breathe, man," I said.

"We're alright. Being the main characters does not mean we are good people. Besides, in this story, I get the sense that the killer will eventually turn on us. It's what we deserve." I imagined that didn't help calm Isaac's nerves, but he needed to be prepared for that reality. We were the worst kind of horror movie characters: we were complicit. Frankly, I doubted I was a main character. I got the sense that my character was someone the audience would love to see die.

The over-sexualized movie script and the terrible motivation for taking a life all added up to me getting the kibosh.

"There's the factory," Antoine said as the video feed on the red wallpaper finally showed the killer approaching the building in front of us.

"Should we go take a peek?" I thought about it. I could use a look for Trope Master. I would love to know exactly what we were dealing with, but there were other concerns.

"Maybe we don't want our characters to know too much about what they've done," I said.

"They can't see the POV cam of the killer approaching. Do they even know what this thing is supposed to look like? I know it would help my Oblivious Bystander strategy if my character didn't see the killer just yet." Antoine nodded.

"I just hate sitting here watching. I don't know where Kimberly is," he said.

"She might be in there." I shook my head.

"She's an actress in my character's movie. I imagine she won't get center stage until later," I said. That seemed to soothe his worries. The killer's live feed was very strange from that point forward. He approached a loading dock door and climbed up into the building like it was nothing, even though that involved a five-foot vertical. I heard a sharp snap right before the bay door slammed behind him. He walked forward. The video changed color. It was the lighting. It was orange and bright all of a sudden.

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"What is happening?" Isaac asked. I didn't know. The camera turned toward a desk with a stack of papers and a lamp. The bulb in the lamp burst, catching one of the papers on fire. The fire spread. The figure continued walking. I hoped it would come across a window or mirror so we could see its reflection, but it never did. It walked forward. A drinking fountain hanging on the wall lunged forward as a pipe burst behind it. Water started spraying out from the fountain.

The water landed on a machine that was pressing metal disks into shapes. The machine began to spark as the killer walked by. Carousel was putting on a show for us. The sparking machine started spraying oil. I could see people in the distance. They were wearing ear protection while they buffed some metal die-cast parts. They had no idea what was happening. The killer was not in the same building as the office where Bensen and Carlyle were, but hallways connected the buildings.

Then, for the first time, I got a glimpse of the killer, though it was only just a quick look at his hand as he grabbed a large rod of metal from a scrap heap. It had a rusty, jagged end. The killer continued through the building. Sparks flew. Oil leaked. A light fixture fell from above and landed just to the left of the killer. He continued walking miraculously, never crossing paths with a witness until he found himself in the same building as the office. I didn't want to watch.

It turned out I would never have to. In the distance, I heard a siren. Then another. Pretty soon, the night air was filled with the sound of fire engines.

"That's some great response time," Antoine said. I could tell he was rattled.

"They got here already and the smoke isn't even visible in the air." Fire trucks started to pour in from every street. Police and ambulances were right after them. Soon, the fire started to burn in earnest. I could see an orange glow over the building where the killer had entered. A loud crash sounded. The building was coming apart. On the red wallpaper, the feed continued. The killer stopped short. It stood in a hallway just in view of the stairs that would lead up to the office.

"Why isn't he moving?" Isaac asked. I couldn't say. The longer it stayed in that spot, the worse the ambient destruction became in that area. An alarm sounded. Firefighters burst into the factory and started escorting workers out. The killer stood still and watched, having found a perfect spot to never be seen by anyone.

"That's got to be the work of a trope," I said.

"Has to be," Antoine agreed. Meanwhile, workers poured out of the factory, coughing and screaming for their friends. The killer watched as Carlyle was led down the stairs by a firefighter. Bensen was dragged behind, screaming about how he needed to empty the safe. Carlyle and Bensen were evacuated. The firefighters turned their attention to putting out the flames. They failed. The killer, or whatever it was, never left the factory, even as the walls collapsed and everything that could ignite went up in flames.

Eventually, the feed cut off with a loud crunch.

"Did he just die?" Isaac asked. I shrugged my shoulders. On-Screen. Knuckles rapped against Antoine's window. It was Future Mayor Gray. He looked absolutely ticked off. Antoine opened the door. Gray started ranting, "They didn't even die! That's Carlyle Geist over there with the cane." He pointed in the distance.

"What the hell just happened?" Ricky Zaragoza was in the brown car next to mine, wide-eyed. He had been crying.

"What did we just do?" he kept saying over and over again. It was all too real for him. He got out of the car and started pacing in circles.

"What did we just do, man? What did we just do? It could have killed all of them!" He let off a string of expletives.

"This can't just be coincidence. This was us. It's no good. We might have killed somebody!" He bent down and threw up.

"We didn't kill the person we were after!" Roderick Gray said.

"He's right there." He, too, let off a string of curse words, but for different reasons. Antoine and I looked at each other.

"This is too real for me," I said.

"I can't be a part of this anymore."

"We were only supposed to be getting revenge," Antoine said.

"Those are my friends in there that almost got burned alive." Isaac stayed in the back seat, bent over like he had a stomach cramp.

"I didn't think it was going to work," I said.

"I thought it was just a little game… I didn't think it was going to work!" Antoine let loose a stream of tears. I was caught off guard by that. Since when was he that good of an actor? He immediately tried to hide that he had done it, to wipe away the tears.

"We are not done!" Gray said.

"We started this. We need to finish it. You hear me?" Ricky was dry-heaving behind the brown car.

"We meet back up at the diner tomorrow," Gray said.

"We have plans to make. You better show. I don't understand. Why didn't it work? We need to talk to that psychic." Off-Screen. Ricky and Roderick Gray got in the brown car and left after a few minutes. Something strange happened. It felt like we were between the scenes, but for some reason, the "scene" kept going on over near the factory. The NPCs must have been keeping up their act for the benefit of the Geists. Fascinating.

I still half-expected the Geists to eventually reveal that on some level, they were controlled and not just manipulated, but it hadn't happened yet. When I saw the script while Lillian Geist told her backstory, it had been written as if the scriptwriter knew the gist of what she would say. I couldn't tell if that was her reacting to the script or the script reacting to her. I didn't know which possibility was more perplexing. We were just scratching the surface of this storyline.

Even now, the needle on the Plot Cycle had barely moved. This was the backdrop of what was to come. That was the only explanation. I opened my car door and got out.

"You guys wait here," I said. The factory was a few blocks away. I ran the whole way there until I found Carlyle in the parking lot.

"Riley!" Carlyle exclaimed.

"What are you doing back here?"

"I saw the smoke. I got a funny feeling. Came back as fast as I could," I said, thinking quickly.

"What happened? Did you guys have a meltdown or something?" I noticed Carlyle was using his cane and clutching his chest. He didn't answer me at first.

"You alright?" I asked, bracing his shoulder with my hand.

"I'm fine," Carlyle said.

"It's nerves. That's all. Nerves." He took a few deep breaths as firefighters ran around us. The blaze was still going strong inside. Something in there was sputtering and spitting glowing metal.

"I don't know what caused it," he said.

"The foundry wasn't even online. The machinery couldn't have caused this; I just don't know."

"Let's get back away from the building," I said.

"Is everyone alright?" Carlyle seemed to be off in his own world briefly. He eventually answered.

"Yes. Everyone is alright," he said.

"Apparently a young woman saw the smoke and called in the fire department. If she hadn't, we would have all been trapped. I've had some close calls in my life, but this may have been the closest to death I have ever been. I could hear the building falling down as we ran. How could it fall apart that quickly?" I stood with him for some time more. He was clearly in shock. I waited until a man driving a town car came to bring him home. I couldn't help but feel sorry for the Carlyle.

I felt guilty; even though I didn't really have a choice in the matter, I still felt a piercing pang in my heart. As he left, I had plenty to think about. Earlier, when I saw Kimberly's headshot, her Casting Director entry appeared on the red wallpaper. When I heard a reference to a certain witch, Cassie's entry had done the same. I got another entry while speaking with Carlyle Geist. Specifically, when he said that a young woman had called in the fire department, a new entry appeared on the red wallpaper.

The entry had intrigued me from the moment I saw it. It read, "Ramona Mercer: a woman lost in time; she seeks to find her way back to the Centennial, but she will need an escort."