“What were they thinking throwing another anniversary celebration after what happened last time? Thirty years isn't enough for the whole town to forget. All they’re going to do is bring back bad memories. The mayor has lost his mind! I don’t care if it’s the centennial, it’s in bad taste.”

- Bonnie Hayworth, A Concerned Citizen

“My family doesn't have any skeletons in our closets. And if we were truly cursed, how could I be killing it on the stage and screen right now? You don’t reach this level of stardom without some cosmic vibes on your side.”

- Ramona Mercer (February 21, 1965 - August 5, 1992)

"Step right up, ladies and gentlemen! If you reckon there's a ticket in this town that offers more thrill and excitement than what we have right here, I challenge you to seek it out! Why wait? Off you go!"

- The Barker

“I talk to the soothsayer, and she lays out the story of my family’s sins end to end and what do you know, the damn thing makes a circle.”

- Jedediah “Jed” Geist

August 2, 2022

Welcome to Carousel, the town where movies come to life.

Will you rise to the occasion or fall to the knife?

The film’s about to start, and you're in the front row!

The audience is watching you, so give them a show.

You had better be willing to do what it takes,

Because even as I’m speaking, Carousel wakes.

We were speechless.

So many things had been done to ensure that we—or a group of people like us—ended up in that forest, out-of-bounds. I had asked for answers and I had gotten them.

“I just got him back,” Antoine said, pacing back and forth. “I just got Christian back and now what? He’s dead. Is he dead? Is there any chance he can make it?”

He was asking me. I was pretty sure he already knew the answer, but he had to ask.

I didn’t want to have to say it out loud. I had seen the moment Chris died with my scouting trope. I was certain he had not survived. I shook my head.

He continued pacing back and forth.

“Can we go?” Kimberly asked. “How long do we have to stay here?”

“Wait your turn,” Silas said in his usual jokey cadence, “There’s plenty of disappointment to go around. Hehehe.”

That wasn’t a direct answer, but Silas rarely gave direct answers. It was enough for us to understand.

We had to wait here in the infinite forest until everyone had failed their storylines back in Carousel. That could take hours. It could even take days. If we left too early, Project Rewind wouldn’t work.

And Project Rewind had to work.

Whether it was the right decision or the wrong decision, so many people had sacrificed themselves for that plan.. or been sacrificed by others. It was our only hope. It had to work.

Dina sat with her back against Silas. She was the only one of us that looked relieved to learn about the latest developments.

Bobby hadn’t moved an inch. He still stood there in shock. “Can someone explain what’s going on? How did you know to come here?”

No one answered him. He didn’t repeat himself.

“Antoine,” Kimberly said gently, “Do you want to try your trope? It might help.”

He stopped pacing.

“No,” he said. “I don’t need that right now.”

She was talking about his You Were Having a Nightmare… trope, which was good for helping with his stressors. Stressors like being in the woods and not being able to leave. He had been trapped in the Straggler Woods for years by Silas and our Friends in High Places to help unlock Secret Lore. Whether those years were real or in his head, I couldn’t say. Didn't much matter.

The trope made his trauma feel like it had not happened, that it was only a nightmare, but even that had its limits because of his low stats. Every minute we spent in this unending forest surrounded by wiggling corpses hanging from trees was further agitating him. I couldn’t blame him.

“I just thought it might help,” Kimberly said.

“I know my limits,” he said. He was breathing hard.

“Do you want to just come over here with me and wait?” she asked.

“I am fine,” Antoine said a bit too firmly. He recognized that he may have overstepped. “Look, I can’t forget right now. I can’t. That trope makes everything foggy. It makes me forget. Makes all the bad things feel fake. Maybe in a few days, I can do it.”

Kimberly walked to him, grabbed his hands, and asked, “Doesn’t it help?”

“It helps,” he reassured her, “But I don’t want it right now. I don’t want to forget this. I need to keep... this," he said, moving his hand toward his chest. "I need it until we get Chris back. I can’t forget this feeling until we do it.”

“You won’t forget,” Kimberly said softly. “It’ll still be there. He’s your brother. We’re going to save him. We’re going to save him, right everyone?”

Dina and I nodded, but Bobby was still lost in thought.

“Please,” Kimberly said. “Just do it for me. I don’t want to see you hurting.”

“I say if he doesn’t want to forget, don’t make him forget,” Dina said solemnly. “He wants to save his brother. It’s fuel. It’ll help him keep going.”

Of course, that would be what Dina thought.

Kimberly shot her a fierce glance.

I didn’t know how long we would be waiting there, so I said, “Look, if he wants, he can use my sleeping trope. Just to help him wait things out.”

Kimberly and Antoine looked at each other, silently coming to an agreement.

“Yeah,” Antoine said. “Just that, though.”

He walked over near Silas and found a soft grassy spot. As I handed him my sleeping trope, he handed me his nightmare trope. He must have been afraid Kimberly would try to activate it the moment he nodded off. Unequipping it wasn’t enough for him to be sure.

Out Like A Light did the trick and he was soon asleep.

“I’ll never forgive you for what you did to him,” Kimberly said. She was looking at Silas. “I don’t care why you did it. I’ll never forgive you.”

Silas didn’t respond, but for a moment, I thought I saw his lights dimmed.

Time passed. Hours. I sat near the group, listening to make sure that none of the far-off undead noises got any closer.

“Can someone explain to me how you knew to come here?” Bobby said eventually.

This was hard to explain, but he deserved to know, especially if he was going to be on our team.

We took turns. Dina explained her letters. I showed him my tickets with the encoded messages. We had even brought our cell phones in the hope that we might find a cell signal over here so we showed him the picture Camden had sent of the sign for the bed and breakfast.

Bobby was quiet for a while. I expected him to get angry, but mostly, he just looked sad.

After a while, he said, “You know, I remember making that.”

“Making what?” Kimberly asked.

“The ‘closed fur renovations’ sign,” he explained, “I have the NPC’s memory, or at least some of it. I remember that. I had just moved us out to the middle of nowhere. My daughter, well, the NPC’s daughter, Samantha, and I moved out here to start over after her mother died. We were going to start the little B&B and raise a whole pack of dogs. Train them to do tricks to impress the guests. When I wrote close fur renovations as a dad joke, Samantha rolled her eyes, but she smiled too. It was a happy memory.”

He didn’t speak for a few moments.

“Janette and I decided not to have kids. She had some genetic things she didn’t want to pass on. I always wondered what it might be like though. To have a child. Now, suddenly, I have another hole in my heart for this kid that wasn’t even really mine. What are you supposed to do when there is nothing left of your heart but holes?”

He was asking me. Or maybe he wasn’t. I’ve never been the best at these conversations.

“I haven’t figured that one out yet,” I said honestly.

“They’re reminders of the people you love,” Dina said, shedding a rare tear. “If you can’t live without them. You either stop living or you do what it takes to get them back.”

“You rescue them,” Antoine said. He had woken back up. He was calmer.

That was all we could do. Anna and Camden were out there waiting for rescue. I was going to do it no matter how long it took.

We waited even longer. The only lights we could see by were the yellow flashing ones on Silas' box.

“I saw my son,” Dina said nonchalantly.

That took me by surprise.

“Where?” I asked.

“I was hiding out in the woods. Trying to stay away from those assholes. Suddenly, the dogs started howling. A thick fog came over the field. I could hear his voice, telling me not to be afraid.”

“Oh,” I said. “Guess that’s around the time Samantha’s trope activated. Made things supernatural, so your trope got stronger.”

Dina had a trope called Encouragement from Beyond that allowed her dead loved ones to comfort her in some form during a storyline. In a story without magic, the effect was like getting a sudden memory of her loved one. In stories with explicit magic, that trope became much more literal.

She nodded. “He told me not to attack the dead people. That they wouldn’t hurt me. I tried to find where the voice was coming from, and I did. He was sitting on a log waiting for me. A shining light.”

“That must have been… quite the experience,” I said. I knew what people said to you when your loved ones died. I had heard plenty of it myself. I had no idea what to say to someone who just saw their loved one’s ghost. Heck, the very mention of my grandmother had freaked me out. Dina didn’t seem freaked out at all.

“He wanted to talk about you,” she said.

“About me?” I asked.

“He said that you used to watch scary movies with your grandfather,” she said.

I didn't want to hear that.

“I don’t think you should be listening to that stuff,” I said. “It’s just Carousel. That wasn’t your son.”

“I believe it was. I know that Carousel would jump at the chance to mess with us; I’m not stupid. I just don’t think it would settle for a fake. I think it brought Sean’s soul here to torment me. I think it’s really him. Besides, wasn't Carousel supposed to be asleep?”

“Dina…”

“He said you and your grandfather would watch scary movies and that he would fast forward through parts you weren’t supposed to see.”

That was true, but it didn't mean her son's ghost was real. It was just the effect of the trope.

“Stop,” I said. “Please.”

“Don’t you want to know what else he said?” she asked. She was almost ready to cry.

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t decide.

“He said go downstairs first. When you get three choices: up, down, or through a door with an eyeball on it. Go downstairs first. Do you know what that means?”

“Go downstairs first?” I repeated. “I have no idea.”

That didn’t even make sense. In a horror movie, going into a basement is almost always the wrong decision.

“You have to remember that,” she said.

“Okay,” I said. “Fine.”

I tried to think of something else to say, but I couldn’t. More than anything I just wanted to get out of there.

Downstairs first. A strange warning for sure.

We stayed there waiting for a few more hours. Eventually, Silas started playing music and then disappeared.

We all looked at each other.

"I guess that means we're alone," Kimberly said.

We were. The training wheels were off.

It only took us fifteen minutes to walk back to the bed and breakfast. It took hours to walk in, but minutes to walk out.

As soon as we were out of the out-of-bounds zone, something appeared on the red wallpaper. It was something that Amelia and the Insider had taken offline so long ago.

Now Playing

The Throughline

Storylines

Bonus

The Centennial Celebration:

The Final Straw II: Abridged

The Astralist: Short Film

Delta Epsilon Delta: Theatrical

The Grotesque: Monster Hunter Rewrite

Even More Stories from the Campfire: Fatal Folktales: Extended

Subject of Inquiry: Theatrical

The Strings Attached: Detective Rewrite

Permanent Vacancy: Alternate Ending

???

Secrets of Carousel #6: The Dark Water

???