The tape had stopped playing by the ti we got to the end of Olde Hill Road. The inside of the carriage was quiet as we all waited to find out where this ride would take us. Antoine held Kimberly but neither dared to say a word.
The windows of the Carriage were warped in the way that old glass often was, but I could still see clearly enough when we passed the plot of land called the “Patcher Rehabilitation Ranch”.
At first, I was confused. I didn’t rember there being such a place before, but then I realized exactly where we were. Bobby must have realized about the sa ti that I did because he scooted up to the seat directly behind the driver and leaned forward.
“Wasn’t there an amusent park or sothing there?” he asked.
“Over there?” the driver, Kenny Patcher, asked. “That’s my family’s place. We rehabilitate injured horses.”
As he said that, I saw three other carriages exactly like the one we were riding in being stored in a large barn. The only difference was that one was an off-white color and one was brown.
“No,” Bobby said. “Patcher’s Family Farm. With hay rides and a corn maze.”
“Oh,” Kenny said, “Yeah, they used to do a little roadside attraction a long ti ago. Way before I ca along.”
That didn’t make sense. I surveyed the place as the carriage pulled away. The large farmhouse we had been in days ago was gone. There was no sign of the various farm-thed attractions. We had been brought there an hour or so after we arrived.
We had run our first storyline there, The Final Straw II. Suddenly it didn’t exist anymore. I saw no signs of a corn maze or a flying scarecrow nad Benny.
I kept my eyes peeled as the carriage moved forward the rest of the trip. I looked for other changes. I was not incredibly familiar with the town, especially not the route we were taking, so finding differences was difficult.
Still, I felt like the place before was changed. The place felt more modern. Carousel had always been a tapestry the old and the new, but now, it looked like a mostly ordinary town. A suburb even.
“What is it?” Kimberly asked.
“No Ons out there,” I said. “Not a single one.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?” Cassie asked ekly.
I shrugged.
“The players before us said that predictability was the most important part of surviving here in Carousel,” Dina said with a shadow of amusent. “Wonder what they would have done if they were here right now.”
“I think they would have been thrilled,” Antoine said. “They were doing the best they could to survive. They lived for years thinking that this place was just an inescapable bottomless pit. And then when we found out it might not be, we just kept them in the dark. All they wanted was answers… and now everyone… now Chris is dead.”
“We’re going to save him,” Kimberly said as if she was responsible for fixing every negative emotion Antoine ever had.
“Maybe. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Antoine said. “The players couldn’t win the first ti. We have to do our best not to repeat their mistakes or we might just end up on missing posters ourselves.”
There was silence for a ti. Nothing but the sound of hoofbeats.
“Is anyone optimistic about the near future?” Isaac said. “Sobody’s gotta… I don’t know… keep things light.”
“Pretty sure that’s your job, codian,” I said.
Isaac sighed. “Then we’re screwed.”
“We’re going to be okay,” Cassie said weakly like she was trying to will it into existence.
None of us knew if we would be okay. We didn’t even know that we would survive the night.
“Let’s just focus on the Tutorial,” I said. “There’s important information here. We can worry about our futures after it’s over.”
We were afraid, but also a little excited. Excited that when Project Rewind ended, we were the ones left alive. Excited that we might just be able to find out why we had been brought to this place.
As the carriage moved further down the road and the neighborhoods grew denser, a loud explosion could be heard in the distance. For a mont my heart jumped into my throat. Everyone in the carriage moved into action, ready to flee or fight.
“It’s just fireworks,” Dina said, as bright purple light filled up the sky.
More bursts followed in many colors. More followed.
“Looks like they’re letting them off early,” our driver, Kenny said nervously. He had been ignoring us and our conversation like most NPCs when you started talking about the ta.
After we had all cald down, Cassie asked, “How do we find out what happened to Andrew?”
I knew this conversation couldn’t be avoided for too long, despite my best efforts. Their older brother Andrew had been killed in Carousel. We didn’t know when or how yet.
“So, there’s sothing we have put off asking because… there was always sothing more pressing. What year do you think it is?” I asked.
“What year?” Isaac asked cautiously. “2022. Please say that doesn’t surprise you.”
I looked around at my friends. “Oh good. Yeah, that’s the right year. What date exactly?”
“It should be April 1st,” Cassie said.
April… that ant they had arrived on the long road to Carousel a month or so before we did. Like Dina, who had been out of ti for ten years, they had been preserved until a precise mont.
“I wonder why you weren’t a part of our group then,” Bobby said.
I had theories, but there was another question. I quickly checked the Atlas registry for Andrew Hughes before we left. There wasn’t one. That ant that he either had been in Carousel before the Atlas was written or he was not in the sa group as the Atlas’ creators.
Or, of course, he had arrived after the date that our version of the Atlas was plucked from ti by Anna and Camden.
Given their ages and what we knew about them, it looked like he was recent. Very recent.
“When did your brother co to Carousel?” I asked.
Cassie and Isaac looked at each other. “A little over a year ago,” she said.
That ant Andrew had been part of the group that had arrived in Carousel directly before mine. I didn’t know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. With Isaac’s tie-dye shirt and Cassie looking like she had thrifted clothing items from head to toe, it was easy to believe they had co to Carousel from any of the last three decades.
But they were new, well, new enough.
“That ans his team must have been the one that wiped out a few weeks before we got here,” Antoine said.
I heard Cassie take a sharp breath, but she didn’t say anything. I got the impression she was holding back so emotion.
“What happened to him?” Isaac asked.
“We don’t know,” Dina said. “The players before us didn’t like to talk about the dead.”
We had been trying not to use the word, “dead”. From what we explained, Cassie and Isaac would know their brother was dead, but it was gentler to say he needed rescue.
Cassie started to cry.
Isaac looked like he wanted to say sothing, to double-check, clarify, but he didn’t. We had explained how it worked. No matter how much you explain sothing like this to a person, it takes a while for reality to catch up.
“But we can save him?” Isaac asked eventually.
“Yep,” I said. “But we have to save ourselves first.”
I had no concept of ti as we arrived at the town square. Through the windows, we could see the streets bustling with NPC families and people working in the booths at the celebration. It all seed so… normal.
There were carnival rides, fun houses, and exhibits of all kinds, all thed around horror and, sotis, horror movies.
I looked around for Ons or signs of the abnormal.
The only abnormal thing I saw was exactly how normal everything actually was. They were just people having a fun night out. I could sll tasty carnival treats and hear calliope music in the distance. The fireworks had mostly slowed down, but the black powder sll in the air remained. Kids ran around wearing monster masks, chasing each other with sparklers.
Kenny got down from his seat and opened the door for us. The steps were nowhere to be found. He must have left them where he t us, or they had otherwise fallen off the carriage on the road.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, rushing, as he helped each of us down.
At least he offered. We mostly jumped down except Kimberly, who took his offer for help and thanked him. I could see him blushing through his pale makeup.
As he was helping her down, I got a look at the vintage tape player that Kenny had used to play us the audio about the founding of Carousel. Strangely, it looked like there was no tape in the player at all. It was empty.
Strange.
“So, what’s the first step?” Isaac asked.
“We investigate,” I said.
“We stay together and watch out for danger,” Antoine said.
“Can we find so funnel cakes?” Bobby asked.
I took a mont just to look around. The park near downtown was filled with people and rides. The Ferris wheel was the very sa one that had been set up for The Grotesque scene between Roxy and I. Carousel really did like to recycle.
As I scanned our surroundings, I saw sothing that looked out of place.
“Was there a clock tower before?” I asked.
My friends turned to look where I was staring. In the distance was a large, ancient-looking clock tower.
“I think there was a clock tower ntioned in the audio tape,” Bobby said.
We stared at it.
“I don’t rember if that was there,” Antoine said.
“I can rewatch Delta Epsilon Delta later. I think there were so establishnt shots from the square in that one,” I said.
“What’s Delta Epsilon Delta?” Cassie asked.
“A storyline we cleared. A murder mystery. I can watch it like it was a movie,” I said.
“Film Buff,” she said under her breath.
I nodded.
“What is an NPC?” she asked afterward. She must have seen Kenny on the red wallpaper.
Antoine swooped in. “Non-Player Character. Any person not trying to kill you.”
Cassie shuddered.
As we moved onto the sidewalk, a person in a werewolf mask chased a fake-knife-wielding masked man down the street, howling the whole ti.
The calliope music ended, and a band sowhere started to play so off-brand version of Monster Mash. I knew it was a band and not a recording because they were terrible. Despite that, people cheered and made rry.
“Madam Celia!” Kimberly said, pointing to an empty booth across the street.
Madam Celia was a psychic Paragon, a level 50 NPC who knew information about Dina’s quest. She wasn’t at the booth, but a sign read, “Madam Celia Dane’s Ethereal Emporium: Antiques and Spiritual Readings.”
The booth was covered and none of her rchandise had been stocked yet. The celebration didn’t technically start until the next day, so she hadn’t finished it yet.
Kimberly explained to Cassie and Isaac who Madam Celia was while I continued to survey the area. Everywhere I looked there was sothing new to see.
Across from us, there was a little path into the park. A spot had been set up for soone called, The Barker on the red wallpaper. That was all the information it gave. Not level, or character type. The space consisted of nothing but a large step stool and a microphone.
A man dressed in a red and white striped shirt and suspenders stood on the step ladder as if he were climbing up. He held onto the ladder with one hand and the microphone with the other.
"If it's thrills you seek, the Banshee's Drop will have you falling... perhaps falling too far!" he announced into the microphone.
"Look at this daring group,” he said, addressing a group of four people walking in front of him, “Ready for a fright—or perhaps you hunger for a taste of deep-fried spider legs? We don’t sell them here; I was just asking if you hungered for them."
Little kids nearby said, “Eww,” as their mothers laughed and smiled at them.
“Or perhaps sir, you would like to march with our invisible phantom parade starting next evening? The price of admission is an arm and a leg… and one or two vital organs,” the Barker said.
So people laughed at his corny joke.
“The Ferris Wheel of Fate turns round and round—It is guaranteed to send you on a one-way trip back to where you were when you started!" He cleared his throat. “The mayor’s office would like to remind you not to ss with the caskets set up around the downtown areas. Those are for ergencies only.”
The man continued to launch one joke after another, sotis advertising the attractions, other tis heckling passersby.
My attention was brought back to the sidewalk we were standing on as a woman approached us. She wore a fashionable suit and was talking to soone on a cell phone. On the red wallpaper, her na was, “Rhonda Moore-Coordinator.” She was a Paragon. Level fifty. Tropes were visible but unreadable, just like Madam Celia and all the others I had seen.
“I don't care that it's only rainwater; we can't have the you-know-what backing up during the centennial. You need to get soone to fix it imdiately!”
She hung up the phone as she approached us. “Hello! Welco to Carousel, the town where movies co to life! Are you all visitors?”
Kenny was about to take off with the carriage, but just as he heard Rhonda’s greeting, he shouted, “Welco to Carousel, the town where movies co to life!”
It was as if he had forgotten. He then stirred his horses to move forward and waved back at us.
“We just got here,” Antoine said.
“Great!” Rhonda said, clapping. “My na is Rhonda Moore. I am responsible for making sure this all goes smoothly. Many of the attractions have already been set up if you want to go explore. Otherwise, you can find your lodgings and co back tomorrow when things kick off for real.”
For so reason, as she spoke to us, I really felt excited about doing just as she had said, exploring.
“I’ve got to go, just ask anyone with a Centennial shirt on and they can point you to an attraction. I hope I see you tomorrow!”
She then waved goodbye and was back on her cell phone within ten seconds.
“Now we explore?” Cassie asked cautiously.
“Now we explore,” I said.
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