“Why isn’t it crying?” Cassie asked, exasperated.

She held the most hideous baby doll I had ever seen at arm’s length. The Crybaby was a powerful, semi-occult tool that would cry whenever any unperceived danger was nearby. When we had first acquired it from the Tea House on our quest to find the Omen to rescue Logan and Avery, we had tested its power.

The baby doll had the Fear of the Unknown trope, and it meant that literally. When we tried to use it to detect a monster lair, it would not work if anyone had even the remotest psychic trope equipped, because then the danger wouldn’t be unknown; there would be some ethereal perception.

It only told you about things you weren’t consciously perceiving.

That wasn’t to say it was useless. For most things, it was actually very sensitive, too sensitive. That’s why Cassie had long ago banished it to the backpack she used with her luggage tag. Luckily, once it went inside the backpack, the screaming could no longer be heard.

I liked to imagine it was still screaming in that magical abyss, though. At the Loft, it would scream about the Omens outside if no one nearby had a scouting trope equipped.

But now she had brought it out just to passively scan for dangers around the castle, things that we might not have noticed. But the dang thing wouldn’t cry, not about the psychic turbulence going on around us, not for the invisible mental Omen of the apocalypse.

It would not cry because, somehow, Cassie was able to perceive the psychic turbulence, even with all of her tropes unequipped.

We discussed the possibilities, but ultimately the doll ended up getting put back inside her backpack. It could not detect the apocalypse because she would always be able to—just by virtue of being a psychic.

That was not how things were supposed to work. She was only supposed to be a psychic in storylines. Outside, she was only as psychic as her tropes let her be. But then, maybe that was something we were learning about apocalypses; even before you trigger the Omen, you are sort of in a storyline already.

Out the windows, I could hear the music of the circus, the cheers of the crowd. Every once in a while, a cannon would go off as some carnival worker got shot across a big tent. That had to be a job for people who didn’t like writing resumes. I left Cassie as she covered her ears and lay down on the couch in the smoking room of the castle.

I went up to the castle walls to glance around at the surrounding festivities. I needed to clear my head.

In a strange way, it was almost procedurally generated, like a video game. There were patterns, dead ends, subtle variations. None of the NPCs visiting the extravaganza or the clowns within the circus looked exactly the same, but whoever wrote the script wasn’t getting that creative. It was probably pretty difficult to fill out a town-sized circus.

It was filled with weird things, but I didn’t know if that was the circus or just Carousel’s fingerprints. There were glitches. Mini-parades repeated themselves, and sometimes identical stalls selling corndogs were put right next to each other.

One thing was conspicuously absent from those down below us. Despite this being an apocalypse, there were no monsters. Perhaps some of the clowns or other NPCs were secretly serial killers; I would have no way of knowing if they had the right tropes, but there were no enemies visible. Maybe there would be no enemies until someone triggered the Omen for the apocalypse.

There were carnival games and all kinds of shows with men who had alligator skin and women who had beards, but as far as I could tell, the most dangerous character who had shown up over the last few days as the circus moved in was the knife thrower, and that was just because he was always comically distracted by his big-bosomed assistant. That was their gimmick. He would be about to throw a knife at a target, but then turn his head to stare at her and end up hitting some other prearranged target.

That goober popped a poor clown’s balloon—three different times. I had to wonder if the whole circus was filled with acts like this, or were they showing off for us?

Maybe he wasn’t the most dangerous. That title would go to the serial killer ninja warrior who still held out in the woods outside the periphery of the celebration. Caleb Rowe would occasionally come out and pick off any NPCs that attempted to come anywhere near the river on the far side of the meadow beneath our little castle. Maybe he thought he could stop the circus from spreading. Who knew?

A clown dressed like a cop would come investigate the corpses of whatever NPCs he killed. He was followed around by a little-person clown named Rude Roy, who never passed the castle without trying to make us laugh. He would go around from circus act to circus act imitating whatever performer was currently working—whether they be a fire breather or a sword swallower—doing a humorous version of their act.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

It was all quite funny. Or at least it would be, if we weren’t surrounded on all sides.

While I watched the circus, for the most part, I then began watching Michael up inside the watchman’s tower, constantly re-aiming the rifle as if he was going to kill one of the performers. I knew he was just looking at them closely through the scope, but once hundreds of circus goers surrounded us, maybe the idea of keeping watch with a gun stopped being so practical.

If things turned ugly, there wasn’t anything he could do with that gun to save anyone. For a guy with such protective instincts, it must have been frustrating to know this Apocalypse would likely be a battle of the minds instead of fists.

As I watched him, I heard a noise that had become familiar back before the circus had come. It was a clicking and winding—it was the sound of the portcullis. Someone was trying to open the crisscrossed metal bars on either side of the entrance gate down in the courtyard.

I ran the fastest I had ever run, faster than Michael, to find my way there, and when I did, it was the usual suspect to blame. Janet had been pushed up against the wall by Bobby as he scolded her for trying to open the door.

It had happened three times already. Bobby barely got to sleep because he was watching his wife at all hours.

“Everything okay over here, Bobby?” I asked.

“It’s fine,” he said with a weary voice. “She got away from me, but everything’s okay.”

“I told you we should disable those,” Michael said. “If we need to make an escape from this place, that’s not the exit we would use. We could disable that chain in a heartbeat.”

I nodded. I had never agreed to that particular suggestion, and neither had Camden or Logan. Nicole’s group barely even acknowledged Janet. They would just walk away whenever her issues showed up.

“I thought you said we were going to the circus today,” Janet said. But it was strange, she didn’t use the proper intonation. She wasn’t upset that he was holding her against the wall, and she didn’t sound excited about going to the circus. She was just running through a line.

In a strange way, it sounded like she was just as tired as Bobby was, always being kept from doing what her script told her to do. The eternal debate of whether she was scripted to sabotage us, or if that was incidental, reared its ugly head.

Maybe she really was just supposed to go enjoy the circus, and it had nothing to do with our presence or our desire to stay away from the circus, and everything to do with the fact that she was an NPC and the circus was here and had taken over the town.

“Bobby, what does her script say?” I asked.

“Doesn’t say anything,” he said.

“What does the general script for NPCs say?” I clarified.

“It says the circus is in town,” he said.

By that time, word had spread around about Janet’s most recent unintentional attempt on all our lives.

“Too bad her script never says ‘time to go to the basement,’” Michael said.

Everyone’s attitude toward the Janet situation had soured in our time at the castle, and we all had a pretty negative view of it to begin with. We couldn’t even lock her in a tower to keep her and the rest of us safe. She would get out.

“Maybe we just see what she does,” I said. “We let her go.”

“What are you talking about?” Bobby asked. “I can’t—you know I can’t do that. I worked so hard to make any progress at all pulling this thread. I can’t just let it all go.”

“I’m gonna suggest it again next time,” I said, “assuming that I’m alive next time.”

In all honesty, I didn’t even know if opening the doors was dangerous. Was the writ protecting us or not? It wasn’t quite clear. Once the apocalypse was triggered, it would be a coin flip or maybe the roll of a loaded die.

“Maybe I’ll go to the circus,” Janet said. “And then one day you can too. How is that, sweetheart?”

Whatever it was I was thinking about, or what I was going to say next, I forgot immediately because that line of dialogue was different from any other she had said.

“What are you saying?” Bobby asked. “Wait a second.”

He was staring off into space, vaguely in the direction of his wife’s forehead, as he backed away from her.

“Her script changed,” he said.

“What is it?” I asked, secretly hoping that someone in the consortium had snuck into the room full of typewriters and edited Janet’s script so that she would leave peacefully or that she would say the right thing to convince Bobby.

“It says something about Highbrow Hew’s arrival,” Bobby said. “Who is that?”

“Bobby, we have to let her go,” I said immediately. “That name is related to the Omen for the apocalypse.”

I hadn’t told the others about this simply because this was some sort of cognito hazard. We tried not to talk about it at all for fear that someone might accidentally trigger the Omen.

“That’s it,” Antoine said. “She has to go.”

I didn’t even notice he had arrived. The others agreed with him.

“Wait,” Bobby said. “What are you saying?”

“Bobby,” I said, “she is being scripted for something related to what I think is probably the main antagonist of the apocalypse. It is no longer safe for her to be here.”

Bobby stared back at his wife, reading the script again, looking for any information he could, but it was apocalypse-level difficulty, so he wasn’t going to learn much.

“I’ll go this time,” Janet said. “And maybe one day you’ll come too.”

She wasn’t crying. She looked stone cold, no emotion whatsoever, and yet, in a strange way, this was the first time I ever considered that some part of Janet might actually be in this NPC. This did not appear like a performance. I didn’t know what it was.

“I’ll go now,” she repeated. “And one day you’ll follow.”

Whatever she was saying, it didn’t really matter. Michael grabbed her while Logan and Antoine raised the inner portcullis. Janet was shoved into the interior of the gate, with one set of bars blocking her away from the circus outside and another set blocking her from us.

Bobby was done fighting. He dropped to his knees, all out of tears, all out of begging.

“I’ll find you,” he said.

I was pretty sure she was going to find us, and probably not at an opportune moment.

Then Antoine raised the outer portcullis, and she walked away, not even looking back.

As dangerous as Janet was around us, I hoped that she wouldn’t be even more dangerous out there. Only time would tell because Carousel certainly wouldn’t.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep