Arc II, Chapter 28: Not the Worst Ending

That was the first night in a while that I was able to use my instant sleeping trope all to myself. That was fortunate, as every noise in the suite jolted me awake with thoughts of ghouls and ghosts. I woke up early and sat around in one of the chairs in the living room, planning what I thought was going to be a very important meeting.

I needed to rally everyone toward figuring out what we were supposed to do next. It was clear that we needed to find the weapon used to murder Jedediah Geist. It was unclear at that time how we were meant to go about it. The continuity loop that we were stuck in revolved around the town square and the Centennial. Trying to solve a murder in the middle of that felt very busy.

Somehow, Bobby had beaten me to consciousness and was already in the kitchen, making multiple loaves of toast to be eaten with jam that he had taken from the kitchens. They were individual serving packets, but they hit the spot.

Bobby had a nervous energy as he worked. He muttered to himself as he wiped up crumbs. He was distant.

Everyone got up one by one. The last up was Isaac, and when he did finally scrape himself off his mattress, he was clearly hungover. I remembered back at the Lodge, whenever people would get hungover, they would find their way to Reggie or one of the other owners of the Hair Of The Dog trope, which could cure their hangover or at least undo most of its harmful effects by serving them a splash of peach tea.

Before people got off on tangents, I decided to say, “We need to find Chief Willis. The only way we’re moving forward is if we find that fireplace poker and my money says we need him. We can’t focus on anything else until we find him, okay?”

“I’ll have to check my calendar,” Isaac said.

“We’re going to figure this out,” Kimberly assured me. “We all know what’s at stake.”

I didn’t think they were acting like it, but luckily I didn’t speak my mind before there was a knock at the door.

Whatever he was doing before, Antoine jumped to his feet and ran to the door. First, he looked out the peephole. There was a look of shock on his face, and then relief. He opened the door to reveal Police Chief Willis standing outside.

He was a tall man in his fifties or sixties by demeanor, but with an athletic build that made him look younger than he was. He wore a ballcap that said, “CPD” and mirrored sunglasses.

“Productive day,” Isaac said. “What else did we have to do today?”

What was it Constance had said? Information was power. Maybe knowing the next step was enough to manifest it. Maybe I was just stressing myself out. Chief Willis was the exact person we needed to see at that moment. He might have answers. I had hoped that when I looked at him on the red wallpaper, I would see that he was acting as a player. But he was still an NPC. We were going to have to play our roles.

As soon as the door was opened, Antoine said “Hello,” and asked “How we could help you?”

“We got some reports of some screaming happening here last night. We’re always getting reports of screaming coming from this place, but I thought I’d come check it out anyway,” Chief Willis said.

“Is that normally the kind of thing that the police chief investigates?” Antoine asked.

“Well, as a matter of fact, it isn’t,” Police Chief Willis said, “But with the Centennial coming up, I thought I’d come check on it myself.”

“Fair enough,” Antoine said.

Willis stuck his head inside the door and took a look around. “So, what was the deal with the screaming?” he asked.

“We were playing a game,” Antoine answered matter-of-factly.

“A game?” Willis asked. “Is there any chance it’s the type of game that could be used to contact the dead?” He put on a wide grin. He knew exactly why people came to this particular hotel room.

“We might have,” Antoine answered.

I could see where the conversation was going. Discovering the photograph of a young Kurt Willis working at the crime scene of Jedediah Geist’s murder must have triggered the next part of the Throughline.

“I don’t know why kids in this town are so obsessed with the death of Jedediah Geist. If you were to list out his family members, he would be the least interesting. In many ways, he died one of the least interesting deaths too.”

“Least interesting?” Kimberly asked, approaching the door. “Does that mean they know who did it?”

“That means that a person did it and not some sort of thing that goes bump in the night,” Willis answered. “For those guys, that is pretty boring. So, have you kids had any luck?”

“Not so much,” I answered.

“Well, shoot,” he said, backing out the door. “So, if the screams last night weren’t anything major, I’m gonna go ahead and head out.”

“Wait a second,” I said. “Did you have any involvement with the original investigation?”

“As a matter of fact, I did. It’s part of the reason that I am bewildered at people’s fascination with it. Even back then, people made a bid deal out of it. The mayor at that time brought in a special team to investigate. Of course, they found nothing, and when they found nothing, the mayor helped this story disappear. Disappearing isn’t the right word; he helped to turn it into a legend. That’s how everything goes around here. First it’s an emergency, then its taboo, then it kids talk about it at summer camp.”

He turned to leave, but then Kimberly asked, “He was killed with a fireplace poker, right?”

Chief Willis looked at her with a side-eye. “Now, how did you know about that? Most people think he was stabbed. That’s the tall tale at least.”

I grabbed the newspaper leaflet that we had found and showed it to him. It depicted a younger Officer Willis holding a fireplace poker with an evidence tag tied around it.

“Well, ain’t that a handsome son of a gun?” Willis said as he looked at the picture. “I imagine that particular piece of evidence is currently locked away in a storage room under City Hall…”

At first, he waited for a response, but then seemed to decide to deliver the rest of his exposition all at once as if he felt he was wasting his time.

“Now, if you really wanted to take a look at it, I might suggest you go apply for a permit because the mayor turned the cold case storage into a sort of museum called the Cold Case Museum. It goes with the aesthetic of Carousel being this creepy place that everyone wants to make it out to be. If I were you, I would hurry; it is the day before the Centennial, after all, and City Hall closes at noon. You might get a glimpse of some of the evidence. Maybe not the stuff you like, but the stuff that they set up for display. Not that I’m suggesting you do any of that.”

Only in Carousel would cold case file storage be turned into a museum.

“We might just do that,” Antoine said. “You know, I’m heading back that way if you’re interested in a ride. I remember them saying that you all didn’t have a car,” Willis said.

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Unlike our previous run-ins with Paragons, I felt no pull to comply with what Willis had just told me to do. Still, I didn’t need it. It was all starting to form a picture for me. Find the murder weapon. Talk to Jedediah Geist. Figure out what it was we were supposed to be doing here. A hundred steps later, we’d get to go home.

~-~

The moment we got inside his SUV, his demeanor changed. His information on the red wallpaper changed too. Now he was a player.

“Sorry to rush through that,” he said. “I have to say it like that. It’s in the script. I just didn’t see the point of drawing out the conversation with experienced players.”

I looked at his poster.

Kurt Willis is the GI.

The poster depicted a tense scene: both Willis and the axe murderer were positioned back-to-back, each on opposite sides of a doorway. They were hidden from each other’s view, pressed against the walls in a strategic stand-off. Willis, armed with a gun, was poised and ready, mirroring the axe murderer’s silent menace.

He was a soldier Paragon.

“I figured you for the Sheriff Paragon,” I said.

He nodded. “Understandable. Can’t put one of the advanced Paragons in a Throughline story unless you want the plot scrambled.”

That made sense. Advanced Archetypes like Detective, Monster Hunter, or Sheriff changed the story around considerably.

Kimberly was talking with the newbies outside, trying to convince them to go along. There are only so many times you can tell someone to just go along with things, things will be fine, before they realize that you don’t know what you are talking about.

Still, Cassie seemed to be amenable to our predicament. Isaac wanted to debate. I only hoped Antoine didn’t join in the argument. He’d try to put his foot down. Kimberly’s approach was to be empathetic but unyielding, much like Adeline. I thought that was a good route.

Kurt Willis sat in the driver’s seat, waiting for everyone to get in so we could go.

“You’re doing better than you think,” he said. “I know you feel like you don’t have a grasp on things yet, but you are doing well. Soon you’ll see a fuller picture of what your task is. Then you can panic.”

“It does feel like every answer just adds on three new questions,” I said.

“I can see that. If it helps, you already avoided the worst ending for the Centennial storyline. Fun ending, but the worst.”

“That’s good to know,” I said. “And what was that ending?”

“Never find the early Omen for the second storyline so you get stuck in the late Omen,” he said. “Never figure out who killed ol’ Jed. Never get to talk to Jed. Die, most likely, a terrible death unless I can save you, which I can, but still. Not a good ending for the new players.”

“So that’s where we’re going?” I asked. “To an Omen?”

“Oh, so you have played this game before?” he asked with a chuckle.

Bobby, who had been waiting patiently for the others to come with us, said, “If I use my veterinarian background enough, do you think that will give me some animal taming tropes?”

“If it’s entertaining,” Willis said. He lit a cigarette and looked patiently out toward Kimberly and the others. “You’ll regret it, but that’s everything here.”

“Every decision is the wrong decision,” I said, wondering if Willis would mirror my observation. “It’s a horror movie.”

Willis laughed. “I hadn’t thought about it like that.”

Antoine approached the vehicle and asked me, “I’m not going to be able to bring a baseball bat into City Hall, am I?”

“I’m afraid not,” Willis said. He tapped his bulletproof vest, and his various policing weapons. “But I’ve got us covered.”

If the omen was outside the building, his bat would just disappear and reappear somewhere on set, like it had in Subject of Inquiry. If the omen was inside a government building, getting weapons in would be a problem.

Antoine looked at Willis and realized he was acting as a player already.

“Alright,” he said and went to put his bat back in the hotel room with everything else we were leaving behind.

Our patience was eventually rewarded. Kimberly convinced Isaac to go along with us. Isaac still protested as he entered the SUV, saying, “You’re all just okay with giving Carousel what it wants? Am I the only sane person here?”

The sooner he got his head wrapped around our predicament, the better. I knew what he was going through. The mind makes all sorts of excuses under the pretense of just being logical or skeptical, or whatever excuse it can muster to convince you not to willingly enter a horror story.

I was past that in many ways. Still, the butterflies were playing laser tag in my gut, and my heart was beating so fast it could phase out of my chest.

Once we were all squeezed into his vehicle, Chief Willis said, “Alright gang, it’s time to give Carousel what it wants.”

Isaac cursed at the mockery, but at least he didn’t try to climb out of the car.

The drive was much faster than the walk, even with most of the streets being closed to traffic. Willis could just pull up on a wooden barrier, and one of his officers would move it so he could go through.

“That’s Officer McCarthy over there,” Willis said, pointing to a rather old uniformed police officer. “We got him from a storyline about these sea witches with a taste for long pig. Oh, and that’s…” he seemed to have forgotten the man’s name until he glanced at the red wallpaper. “Hayton. His father was a constable wherever, but he was born here.”

“Some NPCs are from other worlds. Others were born here?” Kimberly asked.

“Yep. This run is a strange one. It’s been thirty years since the last game started. Thirty years of Carousel almost being a normal place to live. I’m not sure a gap that big was intended. Normally, the game is meant to start within a few months of the last or to ignore the previous game completely. We just had a game that lasted thirty years. When all that story got rewritten, an entire generation past in Carousel just waiting for the Centennial to start. We’re in new territory here. Things aren’t going to be gentle.”

“Thirty years,” I said. “If the last game had started thirty-one years ago, then the time capsule would have been buried in 1991 instead of 1992.”

“You got it,” he said.

The way he and the other Paragons talked about what was happening was frustrating. It was like they thought we understood, but it took me a moment to process.

“Why does the previous game matter?” Antoine asked. “Is there a reason we can’t start new? Is it just for rescuing?”

“Rescues, yeah. You want to bring back people who died in the last game, you need to do it like this,” Willis said. “Don’t worry about it though. This is the way the game is meant to be played. Oh, that’s Marnie Singer. She’s from a storyline where the government puts explosive collars on criminals and makes them compete in games of chance. Look, when she sees us, she’s going to hide because she doesn’t trust the police.”

I couldn’t blame her if that was how things were in her storyline. Marnie was an older woman, well over thirty.

“If thirty years have passed without Carousel being a hellscape because it was caught in a continuity loop, where do the storylines come from? If her story starts back up, is she going to be part of it? What about stories with evil kids? Are they evil adults now?”

Willis laughed. “You’re asking good questions, but prematurely. There’s a phrase we’re building toward, but revelation that will help you understand things. You’re almost there. Lucky you.”

“And if we make it to the Centennial, come find you?” Dina asked. She had a sense of humor hidden behind her quiet demeanor.

Willis really laughed at that one. “Find one of us for sure. I’d be honored.”

He pulled the SUV into a parking lot near a large government building labeled City Hall.

“You see that over there,” he said, pointing back toward Town Square, toward the clock tower.

I could see its face easily enough. It was nine-thirty.

“Carousel is like a giant clock. All the cogs and gears are lined up in place. The brass is polished. The hands and numbers pristine. But it has no spring. No power. It needs something to get its gears turning. Carousel can’t brute force it. It can’t script itself to work. It needs… you. People like you. Paragons weren’t enough. We’re still attached to the script. So the mop head was right. Your job is to give it what it wants.”

“What does it want?” Antoine asked.

“Sometimes I think it just wants to watch,” Willis said. “Whatever it’s after, I just hope I’m around to see it. I’m dying to know.”

The process of applying for a permit to get a tour of the “museum” of Carousel cold cases was not that difficult. The clerk practically threw it at us as she got prepared to leave for the Centennial. We were meant to be doing it, after all. NPCs weren’t going to stand in our way, “Not until the big leagues,” at least, Chief Willis had warned us.

When he said it was a museum, I had first thought he was saying it tongue-in-cheek. He wasn’t. The signs leading to the stairwell were filled with little ads for the museum.

Come see a genuine reproduction of the very gun used to kill Councilman Teague during the ’64 labor riots.

The Enigma of Echo Bridge – View the recovered personal belongings of the victims from the infamous Echo Bridge disappearances.

And many more like it.

“Why do they keep it in the basement?” Cassie asked as we descended the stairwell.

“For plot reasons,” Willis answered. “Their volunteer staff of the Cold Case Museum are getting things ready for the Centennial. The custodian will be meeting us down here.”

As we made our way down to the lower levels, I could hear the distinctive sound of water moving. The air smelled humid, and there was a vaguely unpleasant smell in the air.

Someone was screaming down below. Not scared screaming, more like asking for a favor.

“Kurt,” a man’s voice said. “We have some flooding down here. I could use a little bit of help.”

As we turned our way down one last flight, it was clear they did, indeed, have some flooding. The entire floor was covered in a foot of water. The fluorescent lights blinked from the roof.

“This is an omen,” I said as calmly as I could muster. Like they needed me to know that.

“It sure is,” Willis said. “Now get your tropes ready. Once the first toe goes in it triggers the whole thing, and this one is one you need to be ready for. I’ll cover First Blood, in a manner of speaking. You lot draw straws for Second.”

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