Chương 393: Book Eight, Chapter 60: False End

One of the fundamental problems that Antoine and Cassie were going to have was explaining how they knew where the hag's hovel was. Their solution was actually pretty simple. When I used the Insert Shot on objects inside the hovel, the red wallpaper gave them the general direction. Funny enough, since I had never actually received information from the Insert Shot, I didn't actually know what it looked like. Was it a set of arrows pointing in the right direction, or just an intuitive feeling? I didn't know.

But once the monster started to drag Anna through the woods, it became clear what their plan was. They were just going to pretend they were following the monster. That might have been true for maybe a few hundred yards before it lost them in a large, dark, dead forest, but after that, they were just going off what the red wallpaper told them about the cauldron and the piece of paper I'd used the Insert Shot on.

Even once the monster outran them, they continued acting like they could see it in the distance, that they were right on its tail. Carousel could easily stitch those shots together to make it look like a proper chase. The audience around me had no idea they had been tricked, and as things started to pick up, they stopped looking back at me every once in a while, because they were actually hooked on what was happening in the movie. The camera cut to Anna being slammed into the very same cage I had been in.

In fact, she wasn't so far away from what was left of my body. Fortunately, for my modesty, it was wrapped up in the remains of my jumpsuit. That would have been embarrassing otherwise. As soon as she awoke, she started scrambling, trying to find something that should have been in her pockets. But then she looked across the room and saw what she was after, the canisters of microfilm, which in part contained maps of the area that, if broadcast by the witch's brew, might defeat her.

The hag stared at the canisters, not fully understanding what she was looking at. She reached out and touched them the same way a human might touch a knife's blade or a sheet pan fresh out of the oven. She knew they were dangerous, but her curiosity drove her. Anna seemed to hold her breath, hoping that the hag wasn't wise enough to destroy the microfilm. Of course, the players had divided the canisters so that each would have some. So even if Anna lost hers, Antoine and Cassie could bring their share.

"What are you going to do to me?" Anna asked. At first, the hag tried to ignore her, much as she had me, but there was a difference this time. She was On-Screen, and the script was compelling her. Even in the final edit that I was watching, it was clear she didn't like it. She snarled like a dog fighting its leash. But, like all other monsters in Carousel, eventually she gave in.

"Got to make stew," she said, in a voice that sounded much more human than I remembered. I could see her biting her lip, not wanting to continue talking. The camera was doing something weird. It was changing angles more often than Carousel normally did, more often than most directors or cinematographers would ever do. It took a while before I could tell why. Ol' Nonnie was looking into the camera. It was only clear in one or two shots, and the audience probably didn't notice it, but I did.

For a split second, she would turn her eyes right toward the camera, as if she could see it, and, in a weird way, the face on the giant screen seemed to be staring directly at me, as if she could see me specifically, sitting in the theater watching. And maybe she could. Carousel had clearly not worked out all the bugs of controlling this powerful being. Anna continued to talk to her, to beg for mercy, all the normal things that a Girl Next Door-Final Girl should be expected to do. But she never cried.

She never broke. I could see she wanted to. It was coming across as great acting. Every breath that she took was slow and deliberate, and I feared for her. The whole audience did. Unfortunately, I only had one trick left. I could use my Intermission trope to pause the story and take it back a little bit from there. I could use the Insert Shot on something, but that was it. If the team didn't pull things off, I was going to be dead forever.

I wondered if I would stay in the theater as some sort of tourist attraction. That would be a terrible afterlife, but not the worst I had seen. The screen cut away, and we were suddenly outside with Antoine and Cassie. They were incredible. They had found the hag's hideout and were standing outside of it in the rain. While I wasn't sure exactly where it was at first, once I saw where they were, I recognized it from my dream.

It was a lone tree on top of a hill, and somehow, in some way, Ol' Nonnie lived under that tree.

"It went this way," Antoine said.

"I don't see anything," Cassie said, "but she's nearby. I just know it." They began searching around the top of the hill, looking up into the tree, trying not to trip over the enormous roots that cascaded down the hill. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

"I think I found something," Cassie said, as she stared down between two large roots in the side of the hill. At first glance, it didn't look like it was deep enough. It might have worked for an animal, some sort of burrow, but as she got closer, the darkness got bigger, and it was clear they were right on the money. They were on the outside of the darkness that functioned as a door between the hag's hovel and the outside world.

"I think she's in here," Cassie said, pointing in. And she was right. Unfortunately, Anna was not the only one inside that hole in the ground. The raggedy cat with Camden's eyes and my teeth poked its head out of the darkness. Cassie fell back onto the ground, struggling to get her gun, and pointed at the creature. The guns were never going to do any damage, but once we picked them up, we had to use them, or else the audience would think that we were stupid. In a strange way, they were actually an inconvenience.

The large, lanky cat pounced on her, and as it wrapped its limbs around her, she struggled against it, dropping her gun and doing her best not to be consumed in the darkness of the creature's flesh.

"Antoine!" she screamed. And he heard her. He moved so quickly it was almost as if he were the predator and the cat were the prey, tackling both of them down the hill and pulling as best he could against the creature's grasp. But it was too late. It was always too late from the first moment, because Cassie wasn't just getting strangled or crushed. She was getting incorporated into the familiar. Her scream was all I could hear for a while, but then it stopped suddenly.

"It's okay, Antoine," her voice said.

"Everything's going to be okay." The creature stood up, now a bit bigger, and Cassie was gone. It pounced upon Antoine, and what at first was a battle of strength was becoming a battle of will. The creature wasn't trying to strangle him. It was trying to consume him the same way it had Cassie, its amorphous limbs wrapping around him, its stomach opening up like a giant mouth, ready to take him in. But Antoine had something Cassie didn't. He had a whole lot of Grit.

His trope, Willpower Is Magic, was designed specifically for this type of interaction, allowing him to resist magical or other influence by pushing through the pain. As the creature tried to consume him, he was pulling it off of its skin, ripping it, throwing it. At first, it looked like he was a goner, but as he continued to struggle, it was the cat that had bit off more than it could chew. He was ripping its stitches and breaking its borrowed bones as he bashed it against the ground and the roots on the hill.

And the more he fought, the weaker it got, as he ripped and tore and broke, even harming himself in the process. His skin was bloody, his suit torn to shreds, but when the battle was over, all he found were scraps of black magical flesh and a whole lot of human body parts. Cassie lay there, all but dead, looking up at him. He reached down for her to try to save her, but it was clear her body had been torn apart in the struggle.

"Save them," Cassie said.

"I am," Antoine said.

"I'm going to go save Anna and Camden and Riley, if they're there."

"No," Cassie said.

"Not just them. There are people she's been feeding off of. I can see it. You need to save them." She began coughing up blood, and she didn't last much longer than that.

"I will," Antoine said, fighting through the confusion and doubt. He looked up the hill at the hole the cat had come from and quickly began climbing, grabbing onto his own gun, but by now, he must have realized how little help it would be. There was no way you were going to kill a proper hag with a firearm, and he knew it. When he reached the hole, it was a test of faith because it really did just look like some sort of animal's burrow.

He bent over and pushed himself through it, and the doorway became larger and larger the closer he got to it, until it was the size of a hallway that he could walk through. Suddenly, he was in the place where the hag lived. Eventually, he found his way to what must have been her laboratory deep underground, and inside, he saw her finishing the stew.

It was the old familiar brew, the one that allowed her to send out deceptive signals and dreams, the one that she had sung her little poem into to tempt travelers on the road. The same one that tempted the Arbiter, the same one that gave Cassie and me dreams, Anna false memories, and Antoine false signals. Carousel had heard their plan to throw a map into the brew, to make the place known, and it had set things up so that would be possible, but that didn't mean it was going to be easy.

Because as Antoine entered the room, the hag looked over at him and smiled. She lifted a hand toward him, and as she did, he lifted into the air. She balled her fingers into a fist, sending terrible pain through Antoine's body, causing him to wince and grunt, but whatever she was expecting to happen didn't. He didn't die. Not from that. He lifted his gun, pointed it at her, and started firing.

In the background, Anna was trying her best to escape the cage, looking through the piles of corpses, including mine, for some sort of weapon or metal implement, but she found none. The fight between Antoine and the hag raged on as she tried to launch him through the air with some sort of magical telekinesis. He resisted, shooting at her. At one point, he even managed to grab her and try to strangle her, only to discover, as I had, that she was impossibly strong and big-boned.

As the struggle went on, I realized that whatever the result of Antoine and the hag's fight would also be the result of the entire film. Anna could not face her on her own. She couldn't even get out of the cage. Anna was screaming at Antoine to let her out so she could help, but he wasn't exactly in a position to do anything. He was surviving the hag's magic, but he wasn't really able to do any damage back. He couldn't even get close enough to the cauldron to put the microfilm in.

"Put the maps in the cauldron!" Anna had been screaming. Luckily, I had managed to communicate that part of the magic system, though it wasn't clear how Anna would know that in the world of the story. Maybe she intuited it. I didn't care if we lost points. She began panicking and trying to strike the bars of the cage, but that did nothing. They didn't budge. I was on the edge of my seat, ready to call intermission, but not knowing how I could possibly help. I had to think, but unfortunately, I didn't have time.

Ol' Nonnie lifted Antoine into the air one last time, and with a flick of her wrist, I heard a deafening snap as Antoine died the same way I had. Now, after that, the hag turned and looked at Anna. She knew she had won.

"Intermission!" I cried. Had I waited too long? Should I have called it after Cassie's death? I had thought that was too early. Suddenly, the film paused, and the lights inside the theater came on. I found that I hadn't taken a breath in a while. Every person in attendance turned to look at me, as if I could offer reassurance that everything was going according to plan. I tried to show no emotion. If we were going to die, I wasn't going to give them the satisfaction of watching me panic. I had to think.

What object in that room could I use the Insert Shot on that could possibly make a difference?