Chương 302: Book Six, Chapter 64: Interlude

Bobby Gill held the ticket in his hands all the way up the stairs. Backstage Access. A proper scouting trope that belonged to Lila, but she would let him borrow it at night so he could walk the dogs. He tucked it into his pocket. He had purchased a big coat that could keep him warm on cool nights. It was one of the only expenditures he had made on himself; most of his money went to the dogs.

As he walked through the roof access door and over to the makeshift kennel he had designed for them, with access to an air-conditioned room, he withdrew two leashes from his coat pocket. He only carried two because he didn't need more than that. Even with the ability to control the dogs thanks to his license, if he tried to walk more than two, they would manage to tangle him up. So, he did what he did every night as the sun began to set. He took all five dogs out two at a time, with one of them getting to go twice.

Tonight's winner was Shasta. She was a big, friendly dog, possibly a wolfhound, but like the others, a mixed breed. For the final trip of the night, it would be Shasta and Doughboy, who were best friends. They worked the best together, and Shasta was the smartest of all the dogs. He would need her. His Animal Whisperer trope gave his pets the enemy trope called Animals Are Psychic.

Every storyline he had taken them on, he had learned new and exciting applications for that trope, and he rewarded his dogs every time they surprised him with their cleverness. He knelt down and hooked his second leash onto Doughboy. The three of them turned to leave.

"Going for a walk?" a voice called from the other side of the roof. Bobby strained his eyes to see who was talking to him. It was Logan, lying out in one of the beach chairs, reading some horror book he had found in a storyline. Back when he had been at Camp Dyer, Logan had amassed quite a collection of horror books and often lamented having lost them. How Logan was reading by starlight alone on a cloudy night like this, Bobby didn't know, but then his night vision had never been that great.

"Yep. Last one of the night," Bobby said.

"Just going around the block?" Logan asked.

"We'll see where they take me," he answered. Logan stared at him across the roof as if he wanted to say something else, but instead he just said, "Well, be safe. I really wish you wouldn't do this at night." Not this conversation again, Bobby thought.

"It's safest at night," he said.

"There are fewer Omens. I guess Carousel doesn't see the point in putting a bunch of odd things out when no one can see them." That much was true, but then again, the amount of Omens was never the problem. The problem was the Omen that found you. Bobby was beyond caring about that.

"Anyway, I'll be back," he said.

"I'll be here waiting for you," Logan said. Bobby wrapped his coat tightly around his body and walked the dogs over to the access door and then down the stairwell to the exit. He didn't like to take the dogs out through the restaurant, which was objectively safer, because the staff would always yell at him, and even if it was just words on a script, it interrupted his night. So, he took the exit straight from the stairwell. Shasta pulled him to the left hard, and Doughboy joined her soon after.

She was always the first to notice an Omen. Bobby looked to the right and saw Isaac's favorite zombie lumbering about aimlessly. He wouldn't attack you unless you tried to talk to him, or god forbid, help him, but Shasta really didn't want to risk walking by him. So instead, Bobby took the long walk out the other side of the alley. There, the only risk was a homeless man prophesying the coming of three sisters back from the grave to seek revenge. He had been prophesying that one for a while.

Before that, it was something about an old-timey blacksmith who had been betrayed. So much betrayal here in Carousel.

"Ah, the sisters," he croaked, eyes clouded like stormwater.

"Three women, pure as the driven snow, until the men with dirty hands dragged them to the gallows. Innocents, strangled by ambition. Now they stir in the earth, teeth sharp, patience gone. They don't just want revenge; they want to share their misery. Death rots even innocence, you know. It curdles. Turns love to hate, turns grief to teeth." Bobby took a coin out of his pocket and handed it to the homeless man.

"Thank you," the man said, seeming to snap out of his prophecy. Just like that, the Omen disappeared. Nothing to worry about anymore.

"You should have let him finish," a familiar voice said. Bobby didn't have to look to know who it was.

"It's a good story."

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

"Thought I would join you," Jules said. She had ditched her army fatigues and was dressed for rainy weather, but Bobby hoped none would come. Shasta and Doughboy were quick to run up to Jules and beg for pets, which she gave them in good measure.

"I didn't ask you to come," Bobby said.

"Yeah, I'm quite the party crasher, aren't I?" she responded.

"But, you did equip my trope." He didn't push back. He wanted her there, even if he didn't want to say it. She knew more than she let on. He simply walked past her, and she turned and joined him. Shasta and Doughboy were so good at spotting Omens, Bobby practically didn't even need Lila's scouting trope, but there was no way he would go out without it. Carousel was a scary place, and the dogs couldn't actually speak, even if he felt he understood what they were trying to say with every mannerism.

"I suppose your friends think you're going to the park," Jules said.

"It is the safest place to walk the dogs," Bobby said.

"We have the whole thing mapped out."

"Naturally. Was that the Film Buff's doing?" she asked. Bobby shook his head.

"He started it, but Isaac took it over. It's his hobby these days," he said.

"Good for him. I'm impressed that kid gets out of bed in the morning. So instead of the park, we're going where?" she asked. Was she going to tease him? He wondered. Was she going to talk him out of it? Worse than that, he feared that he would give in, that she would be able to do it. He gripped tight on Shasta and Doughboy's leashes and willed them to move faster, and they obeyed.

"You know where I'm going," Bobby said, picking up the pace. The trip across town to the north side was not a quick one, especially with Shasta keeping him as far away from Omens as she possibly could. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. Bobby could technically open up sound stages to walk across because of Lila's trope, but that would just add more time, and frankly, he wanted to be afraid. He wanted the adrenaline rush.

He hated every part of himself that sought comfort or safety. As they arrived at his destination, he looked up at the street sign. Toother Street. How many times had he come here, and every time walked home empty-handed?

"You know most people over here are in bed," Jules said.

"It's a sleepy part of town. I don't know who you're going to talk to."

"I'm not here to talk to anybody," Bobby said.

"I just want to look, see if the dogs pick up anything." After all, thanks to Bobby's trope, animals were psychic, and Shasta was getting better and better at it. In fact, he felt that Shasta knew exactly what he was looking for, and every time Doughboy would fool around or sniff something another dog had marked, she would go over there and nip at him to get him back on track, searching for a scent that only a psychic dog could find.

"What makes you think this is the place you should look?" Jules asked.

"Is this where she went missing?" Bobby shook his head.

"I don't know, but it is the last place that I know for sure she was." He had been given the address. It was one of the settings for The Grotesque storyline that Janet, his wife, had gone on before she disappeared. When Riley finally got a trope to be able to show Bobby the film itself, this was the only scene that she was in, walking up to one of these houses, never entering, and as far as Bobby knew, never leaving. But Shasta knew better than that.

She followed a ghastly scent that led through the neighborhood and then back out, and Bobby followed her, dodging around the Omens in the night, bats with horse heads flying from tree to tree, the occasional serial killer staring him down from afar. Every time he wanted to go home, he chastised himself. How could he save Janet if he was a coward? Shasta was getting further this time than she ever had before.

"Come on, girl. Where did she go?" Bobby asked her. As they walked, the area became less and less populous. The grass grew higher, and the trees grew gnarlier. The north side of Carousel was mostly a transitional area, with lots of very old Omens and a road that led to Carousel Heights. Shasta pulled him onward until eventually she came right up to the edge of a graveyard. Doughboy would have continued walking, but he sensed whatever Shasta had sensed a few seconds later and yelped.

"The graveyard?" Bobby asked.

"She made it all the way to the graveyard?" Shasta sniffed the air as if to confirm. He looked past the rows of old, crumbling tombstones to the gothic church that stood with light coming from one, and only one, of its windows. The graveyard was in The Grotesque. In fact, it had been the location of the finale, with all of the statuary in the entire place turning into little monsters.

Up until now, Bobby had always assumed that Janet had disappeared before the first scene here took place when they investigated this area, but if Shasta and Doughboy were to be believed, she had made it further than he thought. The adrenaline rush from simply having made progress thrilled Bobby.

"Maybe she's buried in one of these graves," he said.

"Dear lord, Bobby, you're not going to dig these up, are you?" Jules asked. Bobby didn't answer. He knelt down and gave each of the dogs a treat.

"Good girl, Shasta. Good boy, Doughboy," he said, rubbing their backs and necks and patting them enthusiastically. The dogs had lost concentration on finding Janet. They didn't want to cross through the rows of graves. It didn't help that several NPCs had arrived and started filtering into the church down the main path. Bobby scanned them, looking for an Omen, but didn't see one, and even Shasta didn't seem that alarmed, just interested.

"Church service," Jules said. She was reading off the script. Bobby knew whenever she looked at the script, she would often pinch the bridge of her nose and scrunch her eyes like she was getting a headache, but it was just a cover that she was looking at something with her mind's eye." That place is still having service?" Bobby asked.

"Well, a kind of service," Jules said. She then started to read something off the script.

"Come, all who see the thread, and fear not tomorrow."

"What's that?" Bobby asked. Jules shrugged.

"Some kind of invitation. The script is trying to describe what is going on. If it's what I think it is, we should probably go take a look."

"I'm not going in there," Bobby said.

"Suit yourself," Jules said.

"I've always wanted to figure out what went on at these meetings."

"What meetings?" Bobby asked, but Jules simply walked further down the road and turned onto the path leading to the old stone church. Bobby looked at Shasta, and Shasta looked back at him.

"If something weird happens, you tell me right away," he said, rubbing her head. Bobby quietly began following Jules, his dogs in tow. He kept his eyes open for an Omen, but he never saw one, not on the path to the church or with the NPCs, though there were quite a few graves that had them. But that was to be expected.

"What kind of meeting?" Bobby repeated when he caught up with Jules.

"If it's what I think it is," she said, "these are NPCs who started a religion. A new religion."

"That's strange," Bobby said. Most everything in Carousel was recycled from somewhere else.

"What storyline is it for?"

"Who said anything about storylines?" Jules said as they got near the entrance of the church. They slipped inside, and while the NPCs would cast glances at the dogs, they didn't say anything. Bobby looked around. He had expected cultists, maybe some people wearing robes, hopefully a shaved head and odd tattoos, but he didn't see a single one. They were just normal people from all over, wearing their everyday clothes.

Nothing out of the ordinary, except for the fact that their meeting was taking place in an ancient stone church that was about three hundred years overdue for maintenance. The room was lit by candles and lanterns.

"Welcome, all who see the thread and do not fear tomorrow," a woman at the front of the room said. She was standing next to a man. They were wrapped arm in arm. Both of them were old, with pure white hair, but they just looked like a normal, possibly wealthy couple, clean-cut and friendly. They were Brenda and Alan Stevens on the red wallpaper. Around thirty NPCs gathered in total, while Bobby and Jules stood at the back of the room with the dogs, ready to run out the exit the moment things got weird.

But they never really did.

"I'm excited to see our little group grow," Alan said.

"We got our meeting catered so if you are hungry, please dig in, and mostly today we just want to go around and talk about all the instances that the people here have seen the thread, and why they will not fear tomorrow."

"What is going on?" Bobby asked. Jules was smiling, more of a smirk, but still about as close as she got to expressing joy.

"Don't you want to figure it out for yourself?" she asked. Bobby looked at her to see if she would give in, but when she didn't, he looked back at the group of NPCs as they had started giving testimonials. Two men, either related or married, because they had the same last name, Bobby couldn't tell, stood up in front of the others and started to tell a story about how they were at work in downtown Carousel when they got a strange feeling that they needed to leave.

"Somehow, I just knew I didn't want to be in that building anymore, so I told Teddy, 'We've got to go,' and he didn't even question it because he was feeling the same thing," one of the men said.

"And so we just stood up and left. I don't know what would have happened if we didn't, but I just know that we were being guided to safety." He went on to talk about how he had heard terrible screams and roars behind him as they ran away, but he never saw what it was he was escaping. Bobby furrowed his brow.

Another NPC stood up and talked about how she had narrowly escaped the recent flood because a strange feeling had come over her, and she had taken her children and moved to higher ground before it even started raining. Bobby looked over at Jules.

"They think this script is god," Bobby said. None of these NPCs were meta-aware. One by one, they would stand up and give testimony about how their lives were saved because of a strange feeling that came over them and moved them to safety. Others told memories, dreams of having died only to wake up later, believing that this strange thread had saved them, and how things could have gone so much worse.

"They formed a religion based on the script," Bobby said. Jules grinned ear to ear.

"Let's just hope these people never learn the truth about their god," she said. Later, the NPC leader duo, the Stevens, started to preach.

"All you have to do is believe in that thread and continue working toward what you desire, and it will happen. It may not be immediate, it almost certainly won't be, but after enough time, the things you need can be yours. I can't tell you how long Brenda and I struggled with debt and poverty, but the more we put forward, the more blessings began to rain down on us, and just last week, we closed on a home in Carousel Heights. And all we had to do was continue to pull that thread.

It is real, folks, and people are starting to wake up to the power of the thread," the man said, walking back and forth like some sort of fiery preacher.

"And when you believe in the thread, you do not have to fear tomorrow," he said. Bobby started to zone out of the odd religious lecture.

"They're talking about thread pulling," he said.

"Why would Carousel do this? Is it like a lesson so that players can learn about creating through lines or something?" Jules shook her head.

"Bobby, none of this is in the script. These NPCs are doing this all on their own." What did that mean? That even NPCs had access to the central power of Carousel, of thread pulling itself?

"So these NPCs can pull a thread to make more money, but no matter how much I try to find my wife, I learn almost nothing?" Bobby asked angrily.

"Slow down, cowboy," Jules said, grabbing him by the arm and guiding him outside. The dogs followed happily.

"You think that bringing back the dead is as easy as getting cast as wealthy retirees? Then you've got another thing coming."

"So it's real," Bobby said.

"It's actually real, that if you continue to try and pursue what you want, Carousel will make it happen." Jules pursed her lips.

"Carousel will make something happen," she said.

"You gotta understand, the only reason I know about this is because you know about it. Most of the time, I'm just as clueless as them on the subject. But I gotta tell you, thread pulling doesn't make your dreams come true, it just moves the story forward. And when the story is about bringing back the dead…" She paused as she looked out over the graveyard, lit only by the moon.

"Well, maybe you don't want that story to go forward," she said. Bobby directed Shasta and Doughboy to walk forward. He didn't want to listen to that. He didn't want to hear about how silly or dangerous his plans were. If Dina could come here to find her son, then he could find Janet.

"Come on, Shasta," he said.

"Try and pick up the scent." He reached down and gave the dogs another treat, and then the four of them, Bobby, Jules, and the dogs, walked back out into the night.