Arc II, Chapter 27: Early Morning Poker

Back to the resort we went. We were all anxious about finding the spirits of the dead there, but it was clear that we were meant to return to Jed Geist’s old home, now the largest, fanciest hotel suite I had ever been in.

Since we had triggered the time capsule scene earlier this time, there was no need to enlist a Paragon to guide us to our hotel room. It was still light enough outside. The scene with the front desk clerk at the resort played out similarly but without Bobby’s involvement.

It turned out that Bobby’s Recast trope had some staying power because she asked him why he was at work that day. Apparently, his character had weekends off.

The Stranger didn’t approach us. The mirrors weren’t covered in the suite. Everything looked normal. I could smell fresh paint from the repairs that had been done. It was strange for a reality-altering entity like Carousel to use NPCs for something like fixing windows and sheetrock, but it apparently did. To be fair, there were plenty of building materials on the premises due to the ongoing construction in the rest of the resort.

None of the others found this as interesting as I did.

They were just relieved to not be running a storyline that night.

“But we have to be doing something,” I protested.

The rain and clogged sewers were as close to a ticking clock as we could get. We had two days. Whether we were supposed to prevent some sort of flood or prepare for it, I didn’t know, but taking the night off felt unwise.

“We need a break,” Kimberly said. She was referring to Antoine, which was funny because Antoine was more than willing to find whatever challenge was next on our list.

No one wanted to sleep in the actual rooms. The Ten Second Game was safe enough, but still, it would be hard to sleep while it was going on.

We pulled the mattresses into the living room and spread out the furniture. All of the bedroom doors were closed tight.

Still, tension remained, especially among the newbies.

“You think this is rattling,” Antoine said. “Back at Camp Dyer, there was this clearly haunted cabin out by the lake. It was covered in police tape and the windows were shuttered. The little kids at the camp would act all sweet and ask to play tetherball or whatever, but eventually they always tried to get you to go in the cabin. Creepy little kids.”

They talked about Camp Dyer like it was full of fond memories. They told stories about the Vets, both funny and scary. We never would have spoken so highly of it when we were there.

Dina and I were the only ones not going along. We were hunting for clues. We knew we had been sent to this particular suite for a reason. This building had been the property of a member of the Geist family. That was a little too much of a coincidence to let pass. We didn’t know how this suite played into things, but we knew that some of Jed Geist’s junk was still being used to decorate the place after it got purchased by the resort.

Within the storyline we had just played, Sidney’s character had been trying to communicate with Jed Geist’s ghost. That was a blinking neon sign telling us that we should attempt that too.

She had the obvious advantage. Her Outsider’s Perspective trope was perfect for finding something out of place, but in the end, it wasn’t something out of place that we needed.

We were in the storage room where we had found The Stranger lurking during the storyline. The room was filled with furniture and boxes, most of which were labeled, “To Geist Museum,” as if there was some intention of getting these items into the hands of some Carousel historian at some point in the future.

“You ever wonder how real these people were?” Dina asked me as she flipped through a book that must have been Jed Geist’s stamp collection.

I shrugged my shoulders. “The way Constance talked; they might have been once. Back before Carousel was Carousel.”

“You think we’ll ever meet any of them?” she asked. “The Geists.”

“Given Carousel’s obsession with them, there’s no telling.”

I closed up the box I had been rummaging through. It was a mess. The objects were all wrapped and cushioned with crumpled old newspaper. What was the point?

“To talk to him using our Licenses, we need a Keepsake, which as far as we know you get from killing an enemy in a story, or we have to find the murder weapon that did him in. I’m assuming he was killed and didn’t die naturally, because, well—”

“It’s Carousel,” Dina said.

“Yep. But why would the weapon that killed him be in with his belongings?” I asked.

“We need clues,” Dina said, diligently opening another box and digging through the next box. She pulled handfuls of crumpled newspaper out of a box and said with a smirk, “Maybe this is the murder weapon,” as she pulled out an ancient toaster that must have been one of the first ever produced.

I laughed, but before I could respond, there was a knock at the door. Bobby was standing in the doorframe.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“You guys, I got some food and stuff from the kitchens,” he said, smiling. “All I had to do was wear my uniform and they thought I was still my character!”

“Good call,” Dina said. She set her box down and followed Bobby out to the kitchen to share in the spoils. It really was good to have a Wallflower on the team.

As I walked out of the room after them, it hit me. Where would you find information about the death of a man from a famous family?

The clues we needed were in the boxes after all, but not in Jed’s belongings. They were used to wrap and protect his belongings.

I grabbed some of the newspaper inserts that Dina had left lying on the ground.

There was a little sticker on an old front-page section with this address and the name, “Geist, Jedediah” on it. That meant that whoever had packed up all his stuff after his death had used his own newspapers as packing material. He must have had a newspaper subscription that kept running after his death, causing them to pile up. If that was true, then an article reporting on his death could be somewhere in all of the mess.

I took the copy of the Carousel Gazette with me into the living room to show my discovery to the others.

When I got there, I realized very quickly that food wasn’t the only thing Bobby had taken from the resort. Everyone was gathered around the coffee table where Reply the Departed had once been set up. The table was covered in mini bottles of alcohol now.

Looking around, they had clearly been into them already. Back at Camp Dyer, that had been a common salve to Carousel’s various afflictions as well.

Everyone had a plate full of chicken wings and a red plastic cup filled with off-brand soda and spirits.

And they looked happy to be doing something other than trying to survive.

Isaac must have been a bit of a partyer back in the real world because he had already built up a collection of half a dozen empty bottles in front of him. Antoine wasn’t far behind.

So that was going to be what kind of night we were having.

Luckily the others hadn’t partaken as wholeheartedly.

“What’d you find?” Dina asked when she saw me holding the newspaper.

“I think I know where the clues are,” I said. I showed her the sticker and gave her my theory about how the newspapers used to fill the old boxes were likely from the days and weeks after Jed Geist’s death.

Antoine was still with us enough to realize the importance of what I had figured out. He said, “Guess we need more newspaper.”

And he was right.

We spent the next few hours collecting every scrap of newspaper from the boxes in the storage room. Kimberly divided them up among all of us except Isaac, who had drunk more than Antoine but didn’t have the tolerance to handle it.

“A local swimmer is missing after being sucked through a crack in the bottom of the city pool,” Cassie read aloud.

Something like that had happened before if my memory of the newspaper clippings on the history board was correct.

“It must have been Jed Geist,” Isaac said sloppily. “Case closed. We need that swimming pool.”

“Food poisoning at a noodle bar in downtown Carousel. November 1992,” Bobby read.

“We need those noodles,” Isaac said.

The search continued.

“You know, this would have been really good information for Constance to tell us. Being the Carousel historian and all,” Antoine said.

Constance had plenty of chances to talk about Jed Geist. We had asked enough, but our questions had been too broad. If she was allowed to tell us, she must have needed specific questions.

“Or maybe we should have chosen Chief Willis,” Dina said, holding up a newspaper for Kimberly to read.

“Final Geist Found Slain,” Kimberly read. “Marring tomorrow’s Anniversary festivities, the last known heir to the Geist legacy was found dead this morning in his North Carousel home. Police are currently investigating all leads. While the cause of death has not yet been determined, the death has been ruled a homicide.”

She squinted her eyes at the article. “Continues on page A13. Look at the picture. It’s that Willis guy. There’s something in his hand.”

Kimberly passed the article around so we could take a look at it. The future Chief Willis was only an officer in this photo. He was holding something long and thin that had an evidence tag hanging from it, whatever it was. The photo was too grainy to make out exactly.

At first glance, I thought it was a riding crop, but that would be a silly murder weapon.

“Fireplace poker,” Dina said once she got another look at it.

We all turned our heads to the fireplace nearby. It still had its fireplace poker.

“What do you want to bet that there is a fireplace tool set in that storage room that is missing a poker?” Dina continued.

It didn’t take long to find. There was a set of five tools for the fireplace in one of the boxes. The poker was missing.

“The poker, so cliché. If he had been killed by the tiny shovel I’d be impressed,” Isaac said from his chair.

“You guys catch the day he died?” I asked. “It was the day before Carousel’s Anniversary.”

“Every day is the day before the Anniversary,” Antoine reminded me.

“Maybe this is the reason for that,” I suggested.

We continued searching through the newspaper for a while longer, but then it was time to get some sleep. Not that that’s the first thing we did.

They wanted to talk first. Their lips were loosened by the booze and the thrill of discovery.

Cassie told us about their brother. Isaac sat glumly trying not to throw up.

“When our parents died,” she said. “He took care of us. He was older. Barely out of med school, but still, he took in two teenagers. Do you think that’s why Carousel wanted us? Because we had no one left to look for us?”

No one answered that. We could all explain why we were ideal victims. My family was dead. Bobby just had Jeannette and they weren’t close to their relatives. Dina had driven off everyone who cared about her, and Antoine was already on a rocky foundation with his parents.

“My parents must be worried sick,” Kimberly said. It didn’t sound like she was bragging, but she clearly was certainly an outlier, as were Anna and Camden who both had parents and siblings who would miss them.

“If Carousel could take Chris without anyone doing anything, it could take anyone,” Antoine said. “He was a superstar before he left. My parents devoted their lives to getting him into the NFL. He even had a manager already. If he can disappear, anyone can.”

That was something I had never pushed Antoine on. He was the only one of us who really knew what it looked like for Carousel to kidnap a loved one. Cassie and Isaac said that their brother just got a job at some hospital. They didn’t know anything was up.

Chris, however, had all kinds of loose ends.

But Antoine didn’t want to talk about how Chris had been taken by Carousel without anyone knowing something was up. He rolled over on his mattress and checked out mentally once the conversation started.

I didn’t have much to contribute. All I left behind was student loans.

I tried talking about strategies involving our new tropes, but no one wanted to talk about that. I went and grabbed some of the now cold chicken wings and sat up watching everyone. My sleep pattern was off.

How could anyone rest at a time like this?

But none of them really slept. That was made clear when the clock on the wall struck 3am and nothing happened. We knew we weren’t in a storyline. We knew that. But still, the fear that 3am would come and the Ten Second Game would start again was on all of our minds.

Everyone cheered.

Then, we finally got to sleep.

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