Chương 228: Book Five, Chapter 132: The Long Red Hallway

After I stepped into the long, dark hallway behind the theater screen, it only took a moment for my base instincts to trigger a fear response. Megalophobia- the fear of gigantic things. I didn't even know I had it until I looked up. The theater had a high ceiling, but this hallway put it to shame—I couldn't even see the ceiling. The hallway was like a long, dark crack in reality, with many doors spread along its walls. The art style was Art Deco. Why I was thinking about that at that moment, I didn't know.

I didn't even realize that my art history classes had sunk in, but as I looked at the satin draped walls and the gilded moldings, I recognized it. The hallway extended in both directions as far as my eyes could see, with a slight curve that led me to believe the building was one enormous circle.

It was wide enough for ten men to walk through shoulder to shoulder, but since the hallway had been used as a storage area for large wooden crates filled with props, the place was much more cramped than it should have been, given its size. I stared up at the back of the screen from the theater I had just exited. The image could be seen cast upon the fabric by an invisible projector, but now that I looked at it from behind, I realized that the image was practically paused. Of course, it was.

There must have been some spell designed to make someone in the theater perceive a fairly polished rough draft of the final cut in real time. The only way for that to work was if the theater itself made time slow down—or at least altered your perception to make you think it did. The real image on the screen was moving very slowly as Carousel gathered keeper footage of my teammates preparing for the coming battle. I couldn't focus on that right now.

I didn't have forever, and I needed to get answers—I needed to get a solid direction for us to move in. I stared down the hallway to the left and right. There was no indication of which way I should go, but before I could make that decision, my eye caught something hanging on the wall behind a stack of crates. How had I not immediately seen this? The wallpaper along the hallway was red. Even in the darkness, I could see it.

Normally, I only saw this pattern and color in my mind's eye, but here I was, looking at it for real. It was red wallpaper. The red wallpaper. I quickly moved the stack of crates as best I could. Luckily, they weren't filled to the brim and seemed to be mostly padded with straw. It looked like there was Egyptian pottery inside. Probably pretty valuable stuff in the world it was from. There it was, sitting in a box in a hallway.

Once I moved the crates, I saw that there were lamps mounted on the wall—two separate lights that both pointed at the same space on the wall. I reached out and touched one of the lights, feeling around to find some sort of knob that would turn them on. And then I found it. A pull chain. The hallway was mostly dark, and as I pulled the chain, I found myself so shaken that I forgot to breathe. As soon as I heard the click, the lights—both of them—started to flicker on.

These were the type of light fixtures meant to brighten up things like paintings at a museum or, in this case, posters at a theater. I saw a familiar image of an Asian American woman holding a flashlight and walking through a dark alley. The outline of an axe could be seen dropping into frame from above as the woman stared—not in abject terror, but with a healthy dose of fear. Valorie Choi is The Final Girl. Valorie. It was her poster. This was the red wallpaper. Not just like the red wallpaper—this was it.

When I had met Valorie on my first day in Carousel, this spot on the wall had been what I saw in my mind's eye. Now, it grew dusty from disuse. None of the variety of things that might appear on the red wallpaper were apparent here. There were no tropes, no stats. Below the poster and its gilded frame was a copper panel filled with lights—although only one of them was lit. The panel looked like it might belong on some sort of elevator at an old-timey hotel—except, of course, for the labels.

The labels had things like Mutilated, Unconscious, and Incapacitated. The only one of the lights that was lit was the one labeled Dead. Valorie, like so many others, was dead. I stared left and right down the large hallway with the impossibly high ceilings and realized that there were dozens upon dozens more of these little nooks—no doubt devoted to various players. I couldn't see any that were lit up properly, but I could see the faint glow of dozens of little Dead indicator lights.

Other than some very dim light fixtures that looked like seashells and the backs of the occasional movie screen, those little Dead indicators were the only source of light at ground level in the hallway. As my eyes started to adjust, I began to understand more of the design of the building I was in. Up above, there was a network of elevated walkways crisscrossing from one area to another.

I didn't see anyone on these passageways, but they looked thin and haphazard, meant for workers to scurry from one place to another unseen. I was convinced that there was some kind of large window on one of the walls up high, as there was a diffuse glow coming from above that didn't quite reach the hallway where I stood, but it did cast highlights on the metal walkways. It must have been night outside in Carousel proper. I had spent so much time on sound stages that I had no concept of day or night.

All I knew was that I had to find a way out of the hallway with all of the posters of my fellow dead players. I started moving quickly. I just picked a direction at random. I had no idea where I was going. It didn't take long for me to get out of the area dominated by the backs of theater screens. That was just as well because I had no intention of finding my way back into a theater. The screens were replaced with yet more doors and more darkened posters of players, but I tried to ignore those.

As I went along, I noticed that many of the doors were labeled, and while I wasn't sure where I needed to be going, I had to start turning doorknobs soon. I stopped running. How had I not managed to see a single person in all my time in the hallway? I spotted the nearest door and its simple label.

"Deli on Fourth" was all it said. Apparently, this place I was in had a deli, and I wasn't going to complain. I approached the door, put my hand on the handle, and turned it cautiously, pulling the door toward myself. As I opened it, a small amount of light flooded the hallway. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

I didn't dare step through the door, but I peeked through and saw a dining room of sorts, with chairs stacked on top of tables like they had closed up for the night. I quickly looked at the back of the door I had just opened and saw that it was labeled "Maintenance." Looking around, I noticed that to my right, there was an oven, and to the left, past the tables, there was a large window opening up to a street. Fourth Street. That was not too far from Kimberly's loft.

Quickly, I closed the door, and the hallway grew dark again. I took a few steps to the right and found another door. This one was labeled "Muriel Pryce, Retirement." I opened the door just a bit to peek through, and on the other side, I saw a woman—or at least the back of her head—as she sat in a rocking chair, watching an old-fashioned television. A flickering image played on the screen: a cowboy riding a horse across the desert. She was in a small apartment or, as the door suggested, a retirement suite.

And the back of her head was all I needed to see to know that she was an enemy. Only a few seconds later, my mind started doing backflips as I pictured the woman in the chair getting up and turning her head to look at me. This wasn't happening in real life—she was just sitting there, watching the television. But in my mind, I could see her getting up and looking at me. Just an old woman with a knitted shawl and piercing cold blue eyes—unnaturally blue. I couldn't stop picturing it.

My mind was sick with the image playing over and over. I blinked. She was doing something to me. I quickly closed the door, and whatever it was ceased immediately. Moments after I did, something bumped up against the other side of the door, but it didn't open. Suddenly, I noticed there was something different about the doorknob. There was a wire wrapped around it, and hanging from it was a thin wafer of metal wrapped in red paper. It had been there before, but for some reason, I had ignored it.

Somehow, I knew that Muriel—the woman in the chair—had something to do with that. I backed away from the door and continued down the hallway, one doorway at a time, ensuring not to open the ones with the little red tags on them. One of the doors was labeled "Subway East Substation." As I opened the door, I could hear the screech of a subway car start to sound through the hallway. I immediately closed the door—I didn't want the sound to carry too far and attract attention.

Another door said "Halle's Castle, Basement," but it had a red tag, as if I would need to be told not to open it. There was another door that also said "Halle's Castle, Shop," but it didn't have a red tag—not that that made a difference to me. I ignored it. In total, I must have opened a dozen doors. Most of them opened to nothing—just empty buildings without NPCs because it was nighttime. Still, others opened to homes that were clearly occupied. This was how they did it.

This was how they moved around and set up scenes right under our noses. Lila's trope for traveling from soundstage to soundstage looked like child's play compared to this. If I was right, the building I was standing in was on the other side of the mountain, across the lake. That was what it appeared to be when my spirit had been sucked away back toward Carousel proper in The Die Cast. This was the location of the red wallpaper.

And when lightning struck this side of the mountain, the large window up above me would let in a burst of light that could be seen on the red wallpaper in our minds. This was the place across the mountain. And all this time, they had a way to get to us, even though we could never get to them. Maybe the Vets were right to set their sights on this place. I continued on, but I didn't open any more doors. That wasn't what I was here for.

The hallway intersected with other hallways as I moved along, but because I had no idea where I was and there was no sign to point me in the right direction, I just continued down the path I was already on. That way, I could find my way back if I had to. Eventually, I found the end of the enormous hallway. I was starting to worry that the hallway was one big circle and that I would eventually find myself right back where I started. Luckily, it was more of a crescent shape.

At the end of the hallway was an exit, propped open by what looked like a cannonball—stolen from a nearby crate filled with them. Cautiously, I pushed open the exit, and my view opened up to a beautiful courtyard—the likes of which I had only seen in pictures of the Palace of Versailles. I didn't know if leaving the building was a good idea or a bad one, but part of me wanted to. I wanted to look at it—to see how massive it was—to get some understanding of this place.

I stepped outside, hoping that whatever spell it was that gave me this fake body wouldn't break suddenly. And it didn't. I walked outside into the vast courtyard and stared up at the building. It was crescent-shaped—or at least, that's how it looked to me, standing at one end of the crescent. Just beyond the building was the backside of the mountain, as I had predicted.

And in the center of the crescent was a large tower—large compared even to the outer crescent that I had just walked through, whose ceiling was so high I couldn't even see it. The building was comparable in size to the mountain itself, so big that it would have to worry about atmospheric conditions on the top floors, I thought. The tower was built up the mountain so that the building and the terrain were one, with the crescent-shaped wings of the building wrapping around the courtyard.

I didn't have time to stop and stare, because I was bombarded with a collection of important sightings. First, I noticed that this courtyard was not abandoned like the hallway had been. There were people out walking in it. They were talking, laughing. They stood in different social groups. Their clothes looked like they had been robbed from the props department without regard to any particular era—a mix of Victorian sensibility with a flair from styles all the way up to the New Look of the 1950s.

I wished that Kimberly was there. She might have had a better grasp. The funny part was that it was literally possible that these people had dressed themselves from the props department. But I didn't think that was the case. Their style, despite being a mishmash from my perspective, did seem consistent among themselves. Some gentlemen wore suits and nice coats, but instead of neckties, they wore scarves.

They laughed and joked, warming themselves against the cool night air by standing next to large gas heaters that had been spread around the courtyard. I was lucky to have my hoodie, although I didn't quite fit in. Or at least, I thought I wouldn't. A woman was wearing a dress—but she was also wearing a red hoodie. Exactly like mine. It didn't go with her outfit at all. I didn't know what to think of it, so I just kind of ignored it. There were several others amongst them, all wearing my hoodie. How strange.

My hood was still up, and it was bright enough outside with the lamp posts that I could put my sunglasses on and hope that these people didn't know who I was. And if they did, maybe they wouldn't recognize me immediately. None of them were registered on the red wallpaper, so if they were enemies, I didn't know it. Still, I would try to use Oblivious Bystander, though I wasn't hopeful.

As I moved about the courtyard, trying to get a lay of the land, I noticed that many of these people were checking their various time pieces as if they were waiting for something to happen. Not that I could ask them. Because I had exited at the end of the crescent, I was already near the far edge of the courtyard. And as I moved further away from the large tower, I got a better look at the building—and a better look at its most striking feature.

More striking than the fact that it was literally on par in size with the mountain itself. At the very top of the central tower—at the center of the crescent—there was a large penthouse, and the outside of that penthouse was surrounded by giant spotlights. Purple spotlights. The light wasn't cast downward at the courtyard but instead up into the air, creating a faint purple glow in any direction they pointed. But mostly, the purple light was cast upon the penthouse.

A giant display was affixed to the outside of the penthouse, which read, "The Town of Carousel." It was far too high up for me to see any level of detail through the windows, but a certain crossroads demon—whose word I felt I could trust—had implied that there was a man in that penthouse who had some answers. I was in awe of the size of the building—so large that the courtyard within the crescent shape was big enough to contain a forest. A forest large enough to get lost in if it wasn't so manicured and well-lit.

I didn't know if I could physically get to that penthouse within the time limit I had. I didn't even know what that time limit was. I had to assume I had at least six hours of real time. In the theater, I would have had less than 30 minutes because I would have been watching the movie, with its time condensed by the magic of that room. But my best guess was that since I had left the theater, I was experiencing time at the same rate my friends were back in the storyline.

Heck, I might have been experiencing it even slower. A healthy dose of time dilation would make a lot of the movie magic we experienced seem more feasible. After all, how else did the Carousel seem to have sets prepared for subplots that we improvised? I couldn't possibly know how long I had. I had hoped that Deathwatch would let me watch the film on the red wallpaper once I left the theater.

That's what happened whenever my character died, but I didn't, such as when I used Cutaway Death to move about Off-Screen after my character's demise. Since I was basically breaking the game, I couldn't exactly complain that it didn't work exactly as I had hoped. I kept to the edge of the courtyard and hoped not to get noticed as I observed all the various food stands and fountains that attracted people. It was so strange seeing these people buying sandwiches and coffee. Like they were just normal people.

Heck, I wondered if that food stand even took the money that I had earned through storylines. I felt so out of my depth. Beyond the food stands was an entrance gate of sorts. It was built across the only main path into the courtyard toward the building. It had those little spinning gates—the kind you might expect to pass through to get onto the subway. No one was over there. The entire area was roped off and unlit. In my gut, I knew what I was staring at, but it took a few moments for my brain to keep up.

There was a row of Silas the Mechanical Showman in front of the turnstalls. There was a sign above with letters cut out and covered in light bulbs. They weren't lit up, but I could still read them, even if they were backward from my vantage point.

"WELCOME PLAYERS," the sign said. Welcome players. I almost started to laugh. When my friends and I came to Carousel, we had entered an area with a large parking lot and nothing around but a big building with a sign that said "EMPLOYEES ONLY." We didn't even come through the entrance. My entire world was connected to Carousel through a back way. Yes, as I stood in the courtyard, planning my next move— I felt so insignificant.